III
MOLIÈRE
The way of entertainers is hard. It is a good enough world for those who entertain us no higher than the ribs, but to attempt to entertain the mind is another matter. Comedy shows men and women (among other things) what humbugs they are, and, as the greatest humbugs are often persons of influence, the comic writer is naturally hated and disparaged during his lifetime in some of the most powerful circles. That Molière’s body was at first refused Christian burial may have been due to the fact that he was an actor—in theory, an actor was not allowed even to receive the Sacrament in those days unless he had renounced his profession—but his profession of comic writer had during the latter part of his life brought him into far worse disrepute than his profession of comic actor. He was the greatest portrayer of those companion figures, the impostor and the dupe, who ever lived, and, as a result, every kind of impostor and dupe, whether religious, literary, or fashionable, was enraged against him. That Molière was a successful author is not disputed, but he never enjoyed a calm and unchallenged success. He had the support of Louis XIV and the public, but the orthodox, the professional and the highbrow lost no opportunity of doing him an injury.
Molière was nearly forty-two when he produced L’École des Femmes. He had already, as Mr. Tilley tells us, in his solidly instructive study, “become an assured favourite with the public,” though Les Précieuses ridicules had given offence in the salons, and performances were suspended for a time. With the appearance of L’École des Femmes he at length stood forth a great writer, and the critics began to take counsel together. A ten months’ war followed, in the course of which he delivered two smashing blows against his enemies, first in La Critique de l’École des Femmes and L’Impromptu de Versailles. Then “on May 12, 1664, he presented at Versailles the first three acts of Tartuffe.” This began a new war which lasted, not merely ten months, but five years. It was not until 1669 that Molière received permission to produce in public the five-act play that we now know. The violence of the storm the play raised may be gauged from the quotation Mr. Tilley makes from Pierre Roullé’s pamphlet, in which Roullé called Molière “un démon vêtu de chair et habillé en homme, un libertin, un impie digne d’un supplice exemplaire.” Mr. Shaw himself never made people angrier than Molière. Having held a religious hypocrite up to ridicule, Molière went on to paint a comic portrait of a freethinker. He gave the world Dom Juan, which was a great success—for a week or two. Suddenly, it was withdrawn, and Molière never produced it again. Nor did he publish it. It had apparently offended not only the clergy but the great nobles, who disliked the exposure of a gentleman on his way to Hell.
It was, we may presume, these cumulative misfortunes that drove him into the pessimistic mood out of which Le Misanthrope was born. He had now written three masterpieces for the purpose of entertaining his fellows, and he was being treated, not as a public benefactor, but as a public enemy. One of the three had been calumniated; one was prohibited; the third had to be withdrawn. And, in addition to being at odds with the world, he was at odds with his wife. He had married her, a girl under twenty, when he himself was forty, and she apparently remained a coquette after marriage. One could not ask for clearer evidence of the sanity of Molière’s genius than the fact that he was able to make of his bitter private and public quarrels one of the most delightful comedies in literature. Alceste, it is true, with his desire to quit the insincere and fashionable world and to retire into the simple and secluded life, is said to be a study, not of Molière himself, but of a misanthropic nobleman. But, though Molière may have borrowed a few features of the nobleman’s story, he undoubtedly lent the nobleman the soul of Molière. He had the comic vision of himself as well as of the rest of humanity. He might mock the vices of the world, but he could also mock himself for hating the world, in the spirit of a superior person, on account of its vices. He could even, as a poet, see his wife’s point of view, though he might quarrel with her as a husband. Célimène, that witty and beautiful lady who refuses to retire with Alceste into his misanthropic solitude, has had all the world in love with her ever since. Molière, we may be sure, sympathised with her when she protested:
La solitude effraye une âme de vingt ans.
Molière himself played the part of Alceste, and his wife played Célimène. The play, we are told, was not one of his greatest popular successes. As one reads it, indeed, one is puzzled at times as to why it should be giving one such exquisite enjoyment. There is less action in it than in any other great play. The plot never thickens, and the fall of the curtain leaves us with nothing settled as to Alceste’s and Célimène’s future. To write a comedy which is not very comic and a drama which is not very dramatic, and to make of this a masterpiece of comic drama, is surely one of the most remarkable of achievements. It can only be explained by the fact that Molière was a great creator and not a great mechanician. He gives the secret of life to his people. His success in doing this is shown by the way in which men have argued about them ever since, as we argue about real men and women. There are even critics who are unable to laugh at Molière, so overwhelming is the reality of his characters. Mr. Tilley quotes M. Donnay as saying, “Aujourd’hui nous ne rions pas de Tartuffe ni même d’Orgon”; and even Mr. Tilley himself, discussing Le Malade imaginaire, says that we realise that Argan—Argan of the enemas—is “at bottom a tragic figure.” Again, he sees a “tragic element” in the characterisation of Harpagon in L’Avare, and, speaking of Alceste in Le Misanthrope, he observes that, “though we may be sure that [Molière] fully realised the tragic side of his character, it was not this aspect that he wished to present to the public.” It seems to me that there is a good deal of unreality in all this. It is as though the errors of men were too serious things to laugh at—as though comedy had not its own terrible wisdom and must not venture into the depths of reality. Molière would probably have had a short way with those who cannot laugh at Tartuffe, as Cervantes would have had a short way with those who cannot laugh at Don Quixote. There is as much imagination—as much sympathy, even, perhaps—in the laughter of the great comic writers as in the tears of the sentimentalist. And Molière’s aim was laughter achieved through an exaggerated imitation of reality. He was the poet of good sense, and he felt that he had but to hold up the mirror of good sense in order that we might see how absurd is every form of egotism and pretentiousness. He took the side of the simple dignity of human nature against all the narrowing vices, the anti-social vices, whether of avarice, licentiousness, self-righteousness or preciosity. He has written the smiling poetry of our sins. Not that he is indulgent to them, like Anatole France, whose view of life is sentimental. Molière’s work was a declaration of war against all those human beings who are more pleased with themselves than they ought to be, down to that amazing coterie of literary ladies in Les Femmes savantes, concerning whose projected academy of taste one of them announces in almost modern accents:
Molière has been accused of writing an attack on the higher education of women in Les Femmes savantes. What we see in it to-day is an immortal picture of those intellectual impostors of the drawing-room—the not-very-intelligentsia, as they have been wittily called—who exist in every civilised capital and in every generation. The vanities of the rival poets, it is true, are caricatured rather extravagantly, but the caricature is essentially true to life. This is what men and women are like. At least, this is what they are like when they are most exclusive and most satisfied with themselves. Molière knew human nature. That is what makes him so much greater a comic dramatist than any English dramatist who has written since Shakespeare.
Molière has been taken to task by many critics since his death. He has been accused even of writing badly. He has been accused of padding, incorrectness, and the use of jargon. He has been told that he should have written none of his plays in verse, but all of them, as he wrote L’Avare, in prose. All these criticisms are nine-tenths fatuous. Molière by the use of verse gave comic speech the exhilaration of a game, as Pope did, and literature that has exhilarating qualities of this kind has justified its existence, whether or not it squares with some hard-and-fast theory of poetry. If we cannot define poetry so as to leave room for Molière and Pope, then so much the worse for our definition of poetry. As for padding, I doubt whether any dramatist has ever kept the breath of life in his speech more continuously than Molière. His dialogue is not a flowing tap but a running stream. That Molière’s language may be faulty I will not dispute, as French is an alien and but half-known tongue to me. He produces his effects, whatever his grammar. He has created for us a world, delicious even in its insincerities and absurdities—a world seen through charming, humorous, generous, remorseless eyes—a world held together by wit—a world in which the sins of society dance to the ravishing music of the alexandrine.