L’École des maris was a great success for Molière, but it is a three-act farce written in verse, the twelve-syllable, or “pieds,” alexandrine verse.The play has ancient roots. It was written by Menander (born c. 342—died c. 292 BCE) and featured two brothers. Menander’s play was entitled (the) Adelphoe (The Brothers). Menander was the foremost dramatist of Greek New Comedy. According to Britannica, Menander’s “Second Adelphoe (Les Adelphes) constitutes perhaps his greatest achievement.”L’École des maris’ Greek roots may explain the use of le vers noble and, therefore the degree of tension characterizing the play. We associate the celebrated Aristophanes (c. 446 – c. 386 BCE) with Old Comedy.
Roman playwrights Terence (c. 195/185 – c. 159? BC) and Plautus were influenced by Greek comedy, but they wrote comedies which were considered erudite by Renaissance playwrights: commedia sostenuta. Terence‘s Adelphoe is rooted in Menander’s play and features two brothers. It may have been Molière main source. The play also borrows from Giovanni Boccacio’s Decameron (Book III, 3). Boccacio’s (16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) The Decameron was a main source of stories. These are plague stories devised by individuals who have fled Florence to avoid the plague.
Closer to Molière are Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza’s (1581-1639) Le Mari fait la femme(The Husband makes the Wife), Dorimond’s La Femme industrieuse (1661), Larivey’s Les Esprits (1653) and Boisrobert’s Le Comble de l’impossible (The Height of the Impossible), which borrowed from Lope de Vega.
Ariste, 60 years old and Sganarelle’s older brother
Valère, in love with Isabella
Ergaste, Valère’s valet
A Magistrate
A Notary
Isabella, in ward to Sganarelle
Léonor, Isabella’s sister, in ward to Ariste
Lisette, Leonor’s maidservant
ACT ONE
two brothers & two world views (Weltanshauung)
enters Valère, the young lover
In Act One of The School for Husbands, the spectator-reader is introduced to Molière’s two brothers and, whatever the source of the play, the brothers are Molière’s brothers and the comedy altogether Molière’s. Sganarelle will develop into The School for Wives’ Arnolphe, but he is the coarse Arnolphe and altogether selfish and cruel. He is putting Isabelle into the service of his needs.
Il me semble, et je le dis tout haut, Que sur un tel sujet, c’est parler comme il faut. Vous souffrez que la vôtre, aille leste et pimpante, Je le veux bien: qu’elle ait, et laquais, et suivante, J’y consens: qu’elle coure, aime l’oisiveté, Et soit des damoiseaux fleurée en liberté; J’en suis fort satisfait; mais j’entends que la mienne, Vive à ma fantaisie, et non pas à la sienne; Que d’une serge honnête, elle ait son vêtement, Et ne porte le noir, qu’aux bons jours seulement. Qu’enfermée au logis en personne bien sage, Elle s’applique toute aux choses du ménage; À recoudre mon linge aux heures de loisir, Ou bien à tricoter quelque bas par plaisir; Qu’aux discours des muguets, elle ferme l’oreille, Et ne sorte jamais sans avoir qui la veille.
Enfin la chair est faible, et j’entends tous les bruits,
Je ne veux point porter de cornes, si je puis,
Et comme à m’épouser sa fortune l’appelle,
Je prétends corps pour corps, pouvoir répondre d’elle. Sganarelle à Ariste (I. ii, pp. 5-6)
[It seems to me, and I say it openly, that is the right way to speak on such a subject. You let your ward go about gaily and stylishly ; I am content. You let her have footmen and a maid; I agree. You let her gad about, love idleness, be freely courted by dandies ; I am quite satisfied. But I intend that mine shall live according to my fancy, and not according to her own ; that she shall be dressed in honest serge, and wear only black on holidays ; that, shut up in the house, prudent in bearing, she shall apply herself entirely to domestic concerns, mend my linen in her leisure hours, or else knit stockings for amusement; that she shall close her ears to the talk of young sparks, and never go out without some one to watch her. In short, flesh is weak; I know what stories are going about. I have no mind to wear horns, if I can help it ; and as her lot requires her to marry me, I mean to be as certain of her as I am of myself.] Sganarelle to Ariste (I. 2, p. 13)
Isabelle tries to say something, but she is told to keep quiet:
Taisez-vous; Je vous apprendrai bien s’il faut sortir sans nous. Sganarelle à Isabelle (I. ii, p. 6)
Hold your tongue; I shall teach you how to go out without us. Sganarelle to Isabelle (I. 2, p. 13)
Moreover, Sganarelle is days away from forcing Isabelle into a marriage she loathes. Ariste and Sganarelle signed a contract that gave them the right not only to bring up their respective ward as they pleased, but also stipulated that they marry their wards. Molière has introduced the contract George Dandin brandishes claiming he has a right to his wife.
Mon Dieu, chacun raisonne, et fait comme il lui plaît. Elles sont sans parents, et notre ami leur père, Nous commit leur conduite à son heure dernière; Et nous chargeant tous deux, ou de les épouser, Ou sur notre refus un jour d’en disposer, Sur elles par contrat, nous sut dès leur enfance, Et de père, et d’époux donner pleine puissance; D’élever celle-là, vous prîtes le souci, Et moi je me chargeai du soin de celle-ci; Selon vos volontés vous gouvernez la vôtre, Laissez-moi, je vous prie, à mon gré régir l’autre. Sganarelle (I. ii, p. 5)
[By Heaven! each one argues and does as he likes. They are without relatives, They are without relatives, and their father, our friend, entrusted them to us in his last hour, charging us both either to marry them, or, if we declined, to dispose of them hereafter. He gave us, in writing, the full authority of a father and a husband over them, from their infancy. You undertook to bring up that one ; I charged myself with the care of this one. You govern yours at your pleasure. Leave me, I pray, to manage the other as I think best.] Sganarelle to Ariste (I. 2, p. 13)
Ariste has been a kind and easy-going father and, despite the contract, he is not planning a forced marriage:
Qu’il nous faut en riant instruire la jeunesse, Reprendre ses défauts avec grande douceur, Et du nom de vertu ne lui point faire peur; Mes soins pour Léonor ont suivi ces maximes, Des moindres libertés je n’ai point fait des crimes, À ses jeunes désirs j’ai toujours consenti, Et je ne m’en suis point, grâce au Ciel, repenti; J’ai souffert qu’elle ait vu les belles compagnies, Les divertissements, les bals, les comédies; Ce sont choses, pour moi, que je tiens de tout temps, Fort propres à former l’esprit des jeunes gens; Et l’école du monde en l’air dont il faut vivre, Instruit mieux à mon gré que ne fait aucun livre: Elle aime à dépenser en habits, linge, et nœuds, Que voulez-vous, je tâche à contenter ses vœux, Et ce sont des plaisirs qu’on peut dans nos familles, Lorsque l’on a du bien, permettre aux jeunes filles. Un ordre paternel l’oblige à m’épouser; Mais mon dessein n’est pas de la tyranniser,
Je sais bien que nos ans ne se rapportent guère,
Et je laisse à son choix liberté tout entière,
Si quatre mille écus de rente bien venants,
Une grande tendresse, et des soins
Si quatre mille écus de rente bien venants,
Une grande tendresse, et des soins complaisants,
Peuvent à son avis pour un tel mariage,
Réparer entre nous l’inégalité d’âge;
Elle peut m’épouser, sinon choisir ailleurs,
Je consens que sans moi ses destins soient meilleurs,
Et j’aime mieux la voir sous un autre hyménée,
Que si contre son gré sa main m’était donnée. Ariste à tous (I. ii, p. 8) [Have it so; but still I maintain that we should instruct youth pleasantly, chide their faults with great tenderness, and not make them afraid of the name of virtue. Leonor’s education has been based on these maxims. I have not made crimes of the smallest acts of liberty, I have always assented to her youthful wishes, and, thank Heaven, I never repented of it. I have allowed her to see good company, to go to amusements, balls, plays. These are things which, for my part, I think are calculated to form the minds of the young; the world is a school which, in my opinion, teaches them better how to live than any book. Does she like to spend money on clothes, linen, ribands what then? I endeavour to gratify her wishes; these are pleasures which, when we are well-off, we may permit to the girls of our family. Her father’s command requires her to marry me; but it is not my intention to tyrannize over her. I am quite aware that our years hardly suit, and I leave her complete liberty of choice. If a safe income of four thousand crowns a-year, great affection and consideration for her, may, in her opinion, counterbalance in marriage the inequality of our age, she may take me for her husband; if not she may choose elsewhere. If she can be happier without me, I do not object; I prefer to see her with another husband rather than that her hand should be given to me against her will.] Ariste to all (I. 2, pp. 14-15)
In fact, far from teaching Isabelle obedience, privations and confinement have prepared her to flee at any cost. As for Sganarelle, he has acted much as the School for Wives’ Arnolphe will. He has kept Agnès away from the world believing she would be a loving wife and never turn him into a cuckold.
Agnès will grow into a woman and fall in love when she meets Horace, as does the School for Husband’s Isabelle when she meets Valère. A scientist must be methodical, but we cannot separate reason from instinct, or intuition.
Well, although Isabelle has received very little education and has not been exposed to the world, she uses Sganarelle himself as the means of contacting Valère and escaping. Sganarelle is about to force Isabelle into a marriage with a man she loathes, so she uses the means to justify the end. Both Ariste and Sganarelle have a right to marry their wards, Ariste, however would not coerce Leonor into marrying him.
However, Isabelle will find a way to speak to Valère and, ironically, she will use
Sganarelle to the young man she has seen and is attracted to. Their eyes have spoken for four months.
At the end of Act One, Valère and his valet, Ergaste, return to their home to dream up a stratagem that will liberate Isabelle.
What am I to do to rid myself of this vast difficulty, and to learn whether the fair one has perceived that I love her ? Tell me some means or other. Valère to Ergaste (I. 6. p. 19)
That is what we have to discover.
Let us go in for a while the better to think over. Ergaste to Valère (I. 6. p. 19)
I will break here and go through the plot in my next post. Molière’s L’École des maris is considered a comédie d’intrigue: twists and turns. Until now, it has been a comedy of manners (une comédie de mœurs): two conflicting views on how to raise a young woman have been expressed. We will now see how an extremely clever Isabelle frees herself, with a little help for Léonor, and uses Sganarelle to achieve her goal.
Molière and Lully’s Le Mariage forcé(The Forced Marriage), is a farce and a comédie-ballet, in prose. It was first performed on 29 January 1664 in the Queen Mother’s apartments, at the Louvre. On 15 February 1664, it was performed at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, where it proved less popular. It closed after 12 performances. It was performed again on 12 May 1664 during festivities known as Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée, The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island. Louis XIV wanted to show Versailles at an early date. He had hired architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architectAndré le Nôtre, and the painter-decorator Charles Le Brun. These gentlemen had built Nicolas Fouquet‘s castle at Vaux-le-Vicomte. Molière’s La Princesse d’Élide and Tartuffe also premièred during Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée, on 8 May 1664. In its original form, The Forced Marriage was a three-act comédie-ballet, by Molière and Lully It did not use figures from a mythology in which it differed from earlier comédies-ballets. At Versailles, King Louis XIV and other aristocrats performed in the comedy. In 1664, Louis was very much in love with Louise de La Vallière who lived at Versailles, in the small castle used as a hunting-lodge by the very private Louis XIII.
Molière transformed Le Mariage forcé into a one-act play in 1668, which is Le Mariage forcé as we know it. However, it was reborn as a comédie-ballet in 1672. Lully having broken with Molière, the music was composed by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
In his Preface to the Forced Marriage,Henri van Laun provides information concerning the posterity of the play. Sganarelle is Sir Toby Doubtful in Love’s Contrivance, a play by Mrs. Carroll, born Susanna Centlivre (c. 1667–1670 – 1 December 1723).
pedants & philosophy: Aristotle and Pyrrho (doubt)
Although Molière drew some of his material from Spanish author Lope de Vega’s Intermède du sacristain [sacristan] Soguizo, and Giordano Bruno’s[1]Candelaio, or The Candle Bearer, entitled Boniface et le Pédant in French, Le Mariage forcé belongs mainly to a French tradition.
How Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel whether he should marry, yea, or no.
Affinities between Molière and Rabelais leap off the page, and so does Pantagruel’s advice to Panurge. Pantagruel urges Panurge not to marry, which is Géronimo’s initial response, until he learns that Sganarelle has obtained permission to marry Dorimène from Alcantor, her father. In the Third Book, Panurge has decided to marry, but revisits his decision. In Rabelais’ Third Book, Panurge also seeks the advice of Trouillogan, the model for Molière’s Marphurius, a Pyrrhonian philosopher, and a pedant. He prefigures The Learned Ladies, or Femmes savantes‘ Trissotin and Vadius. The mouton de Panurge is featured in the fourth of five books constituting Pantagruel and Gargantua. A mouton de Panurge,“describes an individual that will blindly follow others regardless of the consequences.” (See Panurge, Wiki2.org.) We cannot exclude Sganarelle.
SGANARELLE. (Molière)
GÉRONIMO.
ALCANTOR, father to Dorimène.
ALCIDAS, brother to Dorimène.
LYCASTE, in love with Dorimène.
PANCRACE, an Aristotelian Philosopher.
MARPHURIUS, a Pyrrhonian Philosopher.
DORIMÈNE, a young coquette betrothed to Sganarelle.
Two GIPSIES.
The Scene is in a Public Place.
The Plot
Dorimène surprises us
la race des Sganarelles
Scene One of Le Mariage Forcé, Sganarelle, Molière’s mask, wants to know from his friend Géronimo whether he should marry. Sganarelle has already sought and obtained from Dorimène’s father, Alcantor, permission to marry Dorimène. Alcantor has agreed. In his mind, the mind of a pater familias, le Seigneur Sganarelle, a well-to-do 53-year-old gentleman, is a perfect match for his daughter.
However, Dorimène surprises us. One would expect her to oppose her tyrannical father, but she differs from other ingénues, forced to marry or be thrown in a convent. Young Dorimène is une mondaine who thinks a marriage to Sganarelle will allow her to escape her father. When she and Sganarelle meet in Scene II, she makes it clear that she wishes to be free. In fact, as we will see later, she has a lover, Lycaste, who cannot understand why she is marrying Sganarelle. She reassures Lycaste. Sganarelle is an older gentleman who has no more than six months “in his belly.” She wants to be a widow, the privileged women of 17th-century France. Widows were free to marry whom they pleased, or not to marry. Le Misanthrope‘s Célimène is a widow.
Yet, although arrangements are being made for Dorimène to marry Sganarelle that very day, Sganarelle would like to discuss marriage with his friend Géronimo, which should have happened earlier. When Géronimo learns that the bride-to-be is the lovely Dorimène and that she is not opposing Alcantor, her father, Géronimo has little left to do than exclaim:
Mariez-vous promptement; je ne dis plus rien. Géronimo to Sganarelle(Scene I, p. 9)
[Make haste and get married.] Géronimo to Sganarelle (Scene Four, p. 227)
The most amusing lines of Scene One are Sganarelle’s:
Outre la joie que j’aurai de posséder une belle femme, qui me fera mille caresses; qui me dorlotera, et me viendra frotter, lorsque je serai las; outre cette joie, dis-je, je considère, qu’en demeurant comme je suis, je laisse périr dans le monde la race [3]des Sganarelles; et qu’en me mariant, je pourrai me voir revivre en d’autres moi-mêmes… [4] Sganarelle à Géronimo (Scene I, p. 8) [Besides the pleasures I shall have in possessing a wife to fondle me when I am tired; besides this pleasure, I consider that, by remaining as I am, I suffer the race of the Sganarelles to become extinct ; whilst, by marrying, I may see myself reproduced, and shall have the joy of seeing children sprung from me… Sganarelle to Géronimo (Scene Two, p. 226)
Marriage and Marriage
Matters change. Sganarelle believed he would own Dorimène:
Hé bien, ma belle, c’est maintenant que nous allons être heureux l’un et l’autre. Vous ne serez plus en droit de me rien refuser; … Sganarelle à Dorimène (Scène II, pp. 9-10)
[Well, my dear, both of us are going to be happy now. You will no longer have a right to refuse me anything; and I can do with you just as I please, without any one being shocked. You will be mine from head to foot, and I shall be master of everything, of your little sparkling eyes, your little roguish nose, your tempting lips, your lovely ears, your pretty little chin, your little round breasts, your … ] Sganarelle to Dorimène (Scene Four, pp. 227-228)
Dorimène, however, wants to escape her father’s tyranny and would not accept to marry a tyrannical Sganarelle. Two contrary discourses are juxtaposed. The second all be erases the first. Sganarelle realizes that he has made a mistake.
Tout à fait aise, je vous jure: car enfin la sévérité de mon père m’a tenue jusques ici dans une sujétion la plus fâcheuse du monde. Il y a je ne sais combien que j’enrage du peu de liberté, qu’il me donne; et j’ai cent fois souhaité qu’il me mariât, pour sortir promptement de la contrainte, où j’étais avec lui, et me voir en état de faire ce que je voudrai. Dorimène à Sganarelle (Scene II, p. 10)
[Immensely glad, I assure you. For, indeed, my father’s severity has kept me hitherto in the most grievous subjection. I have been raging, I do not know how long, at the scanty liberty he allows me ; I have wished a hundred times that he would get me a husband, so that I might quickly escape from the durance in which I have been kept by him, and be able to do as I pleased. Dorimène to Sganarelle (Scene Four, pp. 228-229)
The Dream
In Scene Three (FR), Géronimo returns. He has found a jeweler who has a beautiful diamond for sale. Sganarelle is no longer so eager to marry. He would like to confide that he has had a dream:
Avant que de passer plus avant, je voudrais bien agiter à fond cette matière; et que l’on m’expliquât un songe que j’ai fait cette nuit, et qui vient tout à l’heure de me revenir dans l’esprit. Sganarelle à Géronimo (Scene III, p. 11)
[Before going farther I wish to sift this matter to the bottom, and to have interpreted to me a dream which I had last night, and which just recurred to me.] Sganarelle to Géronimo (Scene Five, p. 229)
In Scene Three (FR), Géronimo returns. He has found a jeweller who has a beautiful diamond for sale. Sganarelle is no longer so eager to marry. He would like to confide that he has had a dream:
Avant que de passer plus avant, je voudrais bien agiter à fond cette matière; et que l’on m’expliquât un songe que j’ai fait cette nuit, et qui vient tout à l’heure de me revenir dans l’esprit. Sganarelle à Géronimo (Scene Three, p. 11)
[Before going farther I wish to sift this matter to the bottom, and to have interpreted to me a dream which I had last night, and which just recurred to me.] Sganarelle to Géronimo (Scene Five, p. 229)
Pancrace & Marphurius
Géronimo is too busy, so he asks Sganarelle to speak to his neighbours: Pancrace, an Aristotelian philosopher and Marphurius, a Pyrrhonean philosoper. Sganarelle fears cuckolding. It so happens that Pancrace is also busy. He is wondering whether one should use the word “form” or “figure” concerning the shape of a hat. Moreover, Sganarelle pressures Pancrace a little. Pancrace nevertheless delays the process by asking Sganarelle which tongue he will use. Sganarelle says that he will use the tongue (la langue) in his mouth, but Pancrace means “language” (la langue). Matters deteriorate, so Sganarelle leaves.
Parbleu, de la langue que j’ai dans la bouche; je crois que je n’irai pas emprunter celle de mon voisin. Sganarelle à Pancrace (Scene IV, p. 15)
[Zounds! The tongue I have in my mouth.] Sganarelle to Pancrace (Scene Six, p. 232)
So, as of “Zounds,” matters truly deteriorate. Sganarelle leaves. (I am not discussing the quotations in Latin.)
Sganarelle then visits another neighbour, a Pyrrhonian skeptic. This character reflects Sganarelle’s uncertainty and adds to his distress. Doubt has entered Sganarelle’s mind and matters will not improve. When Sganarelle says: “[I]t seems to me,” (il me semble que), Marphurius corrects him. “Me” expresses certainty, which is wrong. “Nous devons douter de tout” (we must doubt everything), says Marphurius. Sganarelle is so frustrated that he ends up hitting Marphurius with a stick and speaks Marphurius’ language:
Corrigez, s’il vous plaît, cette manière de parler. Il faut douter de toutes choses; et vous ne devez pas dire que je vous ai battu; mais qu’il vous semble que je vous ai battu. Sganarelle à Marphurius (Scène V, p. 22)
[Pray, correct this manner of speaking. We are to doubt everything; and you ought not to say that I have beaten you, but that it seems I have beaten you.] Sganarelle to Marphurius (Scene Ten, p. 238)
Marphurius is Rabelais’ Trouillogan. He doubts everything (Chapter 3.XXXV)
How the philosopher Trouillogan handleth the difficulty of marriage.
Sganarelle has entered a cul-de-sac.
Cuckoldry and Widowhood
Le Mariage Forcé was a comédie-ballet, with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Unlike other comédies-ballets, Le Mariage forcé did not use characters inhabiting mythologies. In Scene Twelve, Sganarelle asks three Égyptiennes (Gypsies) whether he will be cuckolded.
In Scene Twelve, Lycaste, who loves Dorimène, wonders why she is marrying Sganarelle. She reassures him. Not only will she be free, but she expects Sganarelle to die within a few months. She looks forward to widowhood. In 17th-century France, widowhood freed women who have married against their will.
Je vous le garantis défunt dans le temps que je dis; et je n’aurai pas longuement à demander pour moi au Ciel, l’heureux état de veuve.
Dorimène à Lycaste (Scene XII, p. 25)
[I guarantee that he is dead in the time I say. I shall not long have to pray Heaven for the happy state of widowhood.]
Dorimène to Lycaste (Scene Twelve, p. 240)
Sganarelle has heard everything. Lycaste gets away as does Dom Juan. Dom Juan’s father, Dom Louis tell his son that “la naissance n’est rien où la vertu n’est pas,” IV. iv (Birth is nothing without virtue, IV. 4). Dom Juan’s response is appalling. He invites his father to sit down so he will be more comfortable. Dom Louis is speechless. Lycaste’s obsequious response to Sganarelle, also leaves Sganarelle speechless. It is formulaic.
Agréez, Monsieur, que je vous félicite de votre mariage, et vous présente en même temps mes très humbles services. Je vous assure que vous épousez là une très honnête personne. Lycaste à Sganarelle (Scene VII, p. 25)
[Allow me, sir, to congratulate you on your marriage, and at the same time to offer you my most humble services. Let me tell you that the lady, whom you are marrying, possesses great merits…] Lycaste to Sganarelle (Scene Twelve, p. 240)
Lycaste then goes away, having silenced Sganarelle.
A Forced Marriage
The remaining scenes feature Dorimène’s family. Alcantor will not allow Sganarelle to roll back his promise to marry Dorimène.
Seigneur Alcantor, j’ai demandé votre fille en mariage, il est vrai; et vous me l’avez accordée: mais je me trouve un peu avancé en âge pour elle; et je considère que je ne suis point du tout son fait. Sganarelle à Alcantor (Scene VIII, p. 27) [Mr. Alcantor, it is true I asked your daughter in marriage, and you granted my request; but I find that I am rather old ; I think that I am by no means a proper match for her.] Sganarelle to Alcantor (Scene Fourteen, p. 241)
Vous vous êtes engagé avec moi, pour épouser ma fille; et tout est préparé pour cela. Mais puisque vous voulez retirer votre parole, je vais voir ce qu’il y a à faire; et vous aurez bientôt de mes nouvelles. Alcantor à Sganarelle (Scene VIII, p. 28)
[You gave me your word that you would marry my daughter, and everything is prepared for the wedding; but since you wish to withdraw, I shall go and see what can be done in the matter; you shall hear from me presently.] Alcantor to Sganarelle (Scene Fourteen, p. 242)
During Scene IX, Sganarelle refuses to fight Alcidas, Dorimène’s brother, who has brought swords. In the end, Sganarelle is compelled to marry.
Hé bien! j’épouserai, j’épouserai… Sganarelle à Alcidas (Scene IX, p. 30)
Well then, I will marry, I will marry! Sganarelle to Alcidas (Scene Fourteen, p. 244)
Sganarelle (www.cosmovisions.coms.com)
Sganarelle (Wikipedia)
Conclusion
The Forced Marriage turns matters upside down:
Sganarelle makes wedding arrangements before seeking advice from Géronimo, or taking matters into consideration.
An older gentleman is forced to marry.
Dorimène is pleased to marry a senex iratus. She will be a widow.
Sganarelle is a cocu (cuckolded) before he marries.
Our philosophers have long left reality. Molière has created Les Femmes savantes‘ Trissotin and Vadius.
We are therefore reminded of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World: carnival and grotesque. We are also reminded of the comic genre’s plasticity. It isn’t always an “all’s well that ends well,” a tout est bien qui finit bien. And we are not dealing with Rabelais’ giants.
Floating just below the surface of this play is the farcical trompeur trompé, the deceiver deceived. How can Lycaste ever trust Dorimène? The extremely polite manner he uses to greet Sganarelle could be read as a criticism of Dorimène’s ploy. It is “affected.” As for Dorimène, she is her own senex iratus and will not change. Besides, destiny rules. She should be prepared to love the husband she has married and to give birth to a petit Sganarelle.
The play also features pedants. Pancrace’s pursuit of a correct term, forme or figure, for the shape of hats is trivial. As for Marphurius, he is Rabelais Trouillogan (See Chapter 3, XXXVI) in Gutenberg’s [EBook #1200])
I am leaving behind the comédie-ballet, as written and composed in 1664. This post is already too long. But it is interesting to know that at Versailles, the King and aristocrats played roles in the comédie-ballet.
[1] Giordano Bruno was tortured and burned at the stake by the Inquisition. Among other notions, Bruno perceived the plurality of worlds, as would French philosopheFontenelle, a century later. [2]Maurice Rat, ed., Œuvres complètes de Molière (Paris: Gallimard, collection La Pléiade, 1956), pp. 878-884. [3]In the French language race means race, breed, and, occasionally, line. [4]Cf. Rabelais.
Love to everyone 💕
This post did not reach all of my readers. Hence, the second edition and revisions.
Baroque Music – Bourrée du Mariage Forcé (Jean-Baptiste Lully)
Molière and Lully’s Le Mariage forcé(The Forced Marriage), is a farce and a comédie-ballet, in prose. It was first performed on 29 January 1664 in the Queen Mother’s apartments, at the Louvre. On 15 February 1664, it was performed at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, where it proved less popular. It closed after 12 performances. It was performed again on 12 May 1664 during festivities known as Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée, The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island. Louis XIV wanted to show Versailles at an early date. He had hired architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architectAndré le Nôtre, and the painter-decorator Charles Le Brun. These gentlemen had built Nicolas Fouquet‘s castle at Vaux-le-Vicomte. Molière’s La Princesse d’Élide and Tartuffe also premièred during Les Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée, on 8 May 1664. In its original form, The Forced Marriage was a three-act comédie-ballet, by Molière and Lully It did not use figures from a mythology, in which it differed from earlier comédies-ballets. At Versailles, King Louis XIV and other aristocrats performed in the comedy. In 1664, Louis was very much in love with Louise de La Vallière who lived at Versailles, in the small castle used as a hunting-lodge by the very private Louis XIII.
Molière transformed Le Mariage forcé into a one-act play in 1668, which is Le Mariage forcé as we know it. However, it was reborn as a comédie-ballet in 1672. Lully having broken with Molière, the music was composed by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
In his Preface to the Forced Marriage,Henri van Laun provides information concerning the posterity of the play. Sganarelle is Sir Toby Doubtful in Love’s Contrivance, a play by Mrs. Carroll, born Susanna Centlivre (c. 1667–1670 – 1 December 1723).
pedants & philosophy: Aristotle and Pyrrho (doubt)
Although Molière drew some of his material from Spanish author Lope de Vega’s Intermède du sacristain [sacristan] Soguizo, and Giordano Bruno’s[1]Candelaio, or The Candle Bearer, entitled Boniface et le Pédant in French, Le Mariage forcé belongs mainly to a French tradition.
How Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel whether he should marry, yea, or no.
Affinities between Molière and Rabelais leap off the page, and so does Pantagruel’s advice to Panurge. Pantagruel urges Panurge not to marry, which is Géronimo’s initial response, until he learns that Sganarelle has obtained permission to marry Dorimène from Alcantor, her father. In the Third Book, Panurge has decided to marry, but revisits his decision. In Rabelais’ Third Book, Panurge also seeks the advice of Trouillogan, the model for Molière’s Marphurius, a Pyrrhonian philosopher and a pedant. He prefigures The Learned Ladies, or Femmes savantes‘ Trissotin and Vadius. The mouton de Panurge is featured in the fourth of five books constituting Pantagruel and Gargantua. A mouton de Panurge,“describes an individual that will blindly follow others regardless of the consequences.” (See Panurge, Wiki2.org.) We cannot exclude Sganarelle.
SGANARELLE. (Molière)
GÉRONIMO.
ALCANTOR, father to Dorimène.
ALCIDAS, brother to Dorimène.
LYCASTE, in love with Dorimène.
PANCRACE, an Aristotelian Philosopher.
MARPHURIUS, a Pyrrhonian Philosopher.
DORIMÈNE, a young coquette betrothed to Sganarelle.
Two GIPSIES.
The Scene is in a Public Place.
The Plot
Dorimène surprises us
la race des Sganarelles
Scene One of Le Mariage Forcé, Sganarelle, Molière’s mask, wants to know from his friend Géronimo whether he should marry. Sganarelle has already sought and obtained from Dorimène’s father, Alcantor, permission to marry Dorimène. Alcantor has agreed. In his mind, the mind of a pater familias, le Seigneur Sganarelle, a well-to-do 53-year-old gentleman, is a perfect match for his daughter.
However, Dorimène surprises us. One would expect her to oppose her tyrannical father, but she differs from other ingénues, who are forced to marry or be thrown in a convent. Young Dorimène is une mondaine who thinks a marriage to Sganarelle will allow her to escape her father. When she and Sganarelle meet in Scene II, she makes it clear that she wishes to be free. In fact, as we will see later, she has a lover, Lycaste, who cannot understand why she is marrying Sganarelle. She reassures Lycaste. Sganarelle is an older gentleman who has no more than six months “in his belly.” She wants to be a widow who were privileged women in 17th-century France. Widows were free to marry whom they pleased, or not to marry. Le Misanthrope‘s Célimène is a widow.
Yet, although arrangements are being made for Dorimène to marry Sganarelle that very day, Sganarelle would like to discuss marriage with his friend Géronimo, which should have happened earlier. When Géronimo learns that the bride-to-be is the lovely Dorimène and that she is not opposing Alcantor, her father, Géronimo has little left to do than exclaim:
Mariez-vous promptement; je ne dis plus rien. Géronimo to Sganarelle(Scene I, p. 9)
[Make haste and get married.] Géronimo to Sganarelle (Scene Four, p. 227)
The most amusing lines of Scene One are Sganarelle’s:
Outre la joie que j’aurai de posséder une belle femme, qui me fera mille caresses; qui me dorlotera, et me viendra frotter, lorsque je serai las; outre cette joie, dis-je, je considère, qu’en demeurant comme je suis, je laisse périr dans le monde la race [3]des Sganarelles; et qu’en me mariant, je pourrai me voir revivre en d’autres moi-mêmes… [4] Sganarelle à Géronimo (Scene I, p. 8) [Besides the pleasures I shall have in possessing a wife to fondle me when I am tired; besides this pleasure, I consider that, by remaining as I am, I suffer the race of the Sganarelles to become extinct ; whilst, by marrying, I may see myself reproduced, and shall have the joy of seeing children sprung from me… Sganarelle to Géronimo (Scene Two, p. 226)
Marriage and Marriage
Matters change. Sganarelle believed he would own Dorimène:
Hé bien, ma belle, c’est maintenant que nous allons être heureux l’un et l’autre. Vous ne serez plus en droit de me rien refuser; … Sganarelle à Dorimène (Scène II, pp. 9-10)
[Well, my dear, both of us are going to be happy now. You will no longer have a right to refuse me anything; and I can do with you just as I please, without any one being shocked. You will be mine from head to foot, and I shall be master of everything, of your little sparkling eyes, your little roguish nose, your tempting lips, your lovely ears, your pretty little chin, your little round breasts, your … ] Sganarelle to Dorimène (Scene Four, pp. 227-228)
Dorimène, however, wants to escape her father’s tyranny and would not accept to marry a tyrannical Sganarelle. Two contrary discourses are juxtaposed. The second all be erases the first. Sganarelle realizes that he has made a mistake.
Tout à fait aise, je vous jure: car enfin la sévérité de mon père m’a tenue jusques ici dans une sujétion la plus fâcheuse du monde. Il y a je ne sais combien que j’enrage du peu de liberté, qu’il me donne; et j’ai cent fois souhaité qu’il me mariât, pour sortir promptement de la contrainte, où j’étais avec lui, et me voir en état de faire ce que je voudrai. Dorimène à Sganarelle (Scene II, p. 10)
[Immensely glad, I assure you. For, indeed, my father’s severity has kept me hitherto in the most grievous subjection. I have been raging, I do not know how long, at the scanty liberty he allows me ; I have wished a hundred times that he would get me a husband, so that I might quickly escape from the durance in which I have been kept by him, and be able to do as I pleased. Dorimène to Sganarelle (Scene Four, pp. 228-229)
The Dream
In Scene Three (FR), Géronimo returns. He has found a jeweler who has a beautiful diamond for sale. Sganarelle is no longer so eager to marry. He would like to confide that he has had a dream:
Avant que de passer plus avant, je voudrais bien agiter à fond cette matière; et que l’on m’expliquât un songe que j’ai fait cette nuit, et qui vient tout à l’heure de me revenir dans l’esprit. Sganarelle à Géronimo (Scene III, p. 11)
[Before going farther I wish to sift this matter to the bottom, and to have interpreted to me a dream which I had last night, and which just recurred to me.] Sganarelle to Géronimo (Scene Five, p. 229)
Géronimo is too busy to converse. So, he urges Sganarelle to speak to Pancrace, an Aristotelian philosopher, and to Marphurius, a skeptic. Sganarelle fears cuckolding. Unfortunately, Pancrace is also busy. He is wondering whether one should use the word “form” or “figure” concerning the shape of a hat. Moreover, Sganarelle pressures Pancrace a little. Pancrace delays matters by asking Sganarelle, which tongue he will use. The tongue (la langue) in his mouth, exclaims Sganarelle, but Pancrace means “language” (la langue):
Parbleu, de la langue que j’ai dans la bouche; je crois que je n’irai pas emprunter celle de mon voisin. Sganarelle à Pancrace (Scene IV, p. 15)
[Zounds! The tongue I have in my mouth.] Sganarelle to Pancrace (Scene Six, p. 232)
Therefore, as of “Zounds,” matters truly deteriorate. Sganarelle leaves. (I am not discussing the quotations in Latin.)
Sganarelle then visits another neighbour, a Pyrrhonian skeptic. This character reflects Sganarelle’s uncertainty and adds to his distress. Doubt further enters Sganarelle’s mind. When Sganarelle says “it seems to me,” (il me semble que), Marphurius corrects him. “Me” expresses certainty, but, says Marphurius, “[n]ous devons douter de tout” (we must doubt everything). Sganarelle is so frustrated that he ends up hitting Marphurius with a stick. Marphurius is defenceless. Sganarelle turns himself into a skeptic, mocking Marphurius:
Corrigez, s’il vous plaît, cette manière de parler. Il faut douter de toutes choses; et vous ne devez pas dire que je vous ai battu; mais qu’il vous semble que je vous ai battu. Sganarelle à Marphurius (Scène V, p. 22)
[Pray, correct this manner of speaking. We are to doubt everything; and you ought not to say that I have beaten you, but that it seems I have beaten you.] Sganarelle to Marphurius (Scene Ten, p. 238)
Marphurius is Rabelais’ Trouillogan. He doubts everything (Chapter 3.XXXV)
How the philosopher Trouillogan handleth the difficulty of marriage.
Sganarelle has entered a cul-de-sac.
Cuckoldry and Widowhood
Let us remember that Le Mariage Forcé was a comédie-ballet, with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. However, unlike other comédies-ballets, Le Mariage forcé did not use characters inhabiting mythologies. In Scene Twelve, the ballet, Sganarelle asks three Égyptiennes (Gypsies) whether he will be cuckolded.
In Scene Twelve, comedy, Lycaste, who loves Dorimène, wonders why she is marrying Sganarelle. She reassures him. Not only will she be free, but she expects Sganarelle to die within a few months. She is looking forward to widowhood. In 17th-century France, widowhood freed women who had married against their will.
Je vous le garantis défunt dans le temps que je dis; et je n’aurai pas longuement à demander pour moi au Ciel, l’heureux état de veuve. Dorimène à Lycaste (Scene XII, p. 25)
[I guarantee that he is dead in the time I say. I shall not long have to pray Heaven for the happy state of widowhood.] Dorimène to Lycaste (Scene Twelve, p. 240)
Sganarelle, who was nearby, but unseen, has heard the conversation. He appears as Lycaste is leaving. Lycaste does as Dom Juan will do. Dom Juan’s father, Dom Louis, tells his son that:
La naissance n’est rien où la vertu n’est pas. Dom Louis (IV. iv)
[Birth is nothing without virtue.] Don Louis (IV. 4)
Dom Juan does not answer. He simply invites his father to sit down to be more comfortable. This is formulaic, as is Lycaste’s obsequious:
Agréez, Monsieur, que je vous félicite de votre mariage, et vous présente en même temps mes très humbles services. Je vous assure que vous épousez là une très honnête personne. Lycaste à Sganarelle (Scene VII, p. 25)
[Allow me, sir, to congratulate you on your marriage, and at the same time to offer you my most humble services. Let me tell you that the lady, whom you are marrying, possesses great merits…] Lycaste to Sganarelle (Scene Twelve, p. 240)
Lycaste then goes away, having silenced Sganarelle.
A Forced Marriage
The remaining scenes feature Dorimène’s family. Alcantor will not allow Sganarelle to roll back his promise to marry Dorimène:
Seigneur Alcantor, j’ai demandé votre fille en mariage, il est vrai; et vous me l’avez accordée: mais je me trouve un peu avancé en âge pour elle; et je considère que je ne suis point du tout son fait. Sganarelle à Alcantor (Scene VIII, p. 27) [Mr. Alcantor, it is true I asked your daughter in marriage, and you granted my request; but I find that I am rather old ; I think that I am by no means a proper match for her.] Sganarelle to Alcantor (Scene Fourteen, p. 241)
Vous vous êtes engagé avec moi, pour épouser ma fille; et tout est préparé pour cela. Mais puisque vous voulez retirer votre parole, je vais voir ce qu’il y a à faire; et vous aurez bientôt de mes nouvelles. Alcantor à Sganarelle (Scene VIII, p. 28)
[You gave me your word that you would marry my daughter, and everything is prepared for the wedding; but since you wish to withdraw, I shall go and see what can be done in the matter; you shall hear from me presently.] Alcantor to Sganarelle (Scene Fourteen, p. 242)
During Scene IX, Sganarelle refuses to fight Alcidas, Dorimène’s brother, who has brought swords. In the end, Sganarelle is compelled to marry and he has much to fear:
Hé bien! j’épouserai, j’épouserai… Sganarelle à Alcidas (Scene IX, p. 30)
Well then, I will marry, I will marry! Sganarelle to Alcidas (Scene Fourteen, p. 244)
Sganarelle (www.cosmovisions.coms.com)
Sganarelle (Wikipedia)
Conclusion
The Forced Marriage turns matters upside down:
Sganarelle makes wedding arrangements before seeking advice from Géronimo, or taking matters into consideration.
An older gentleman is forced to marry.
Dorimène is pleased to marry a senex iratus. She will be a widow.
Sganarelle is a cocu (cuckolded) before he marries.
Our philosophers have long left reality. Molière has created Les Femmes savantes‘ Trissotin and Vadius.
We are therefore reminded of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World: carnival and grotesque. We are also reminded of the comic genre’s plasticity. It isn’t always an “all’s well that ends well,” a tout est bien qui finit bien. And we are not dealing with Rabelais’ giants.
Floating just below the surface of this play is the farcical trompeur trompé, the deceiver deceived. How can Lycaste ever trust Dorimène? The extremely polite manner he uses to greet Sganarelle could be read as a criticism of Dorimène’s ploy. It is “affected.” As for Dorimène, she is her own senex iratus and will not change. Besides, destiny rules. She should be prepared to love the husband she has married and to give birth to a petit Sganarelle.
The play also features pedants. Pancrace’s pursuit of a correct term, forme or figure, for the shape of hats is trivial. As for Marphurius, he is Rabelais Trouillogan (See Chapter 3, XXXVI) in Gutenberg’s [EBook #1200])
I am leaving behind the comédie-ballet, as written and composed in 1664. This post is already too long. But it is interesting to know that, at Versailles, the King and aristocrats played roles in the comédie-ballet.
[1] Giordano Bruno was tortured and burned at the stake by the Inquisition. Among other notions, Bruno perceived the plurality of worlds, as would French philosopheFontenelle, a century later. [2]Maurice Rat, ed., Œuvres complètes de Molière (Paris: Gallimard, collection La Pléiade, 1956), pp. 878-884. [3]In the French language race means race, breed, and, occasionally, line. [4]Cf. Rabelais.
Love to everyone 💕
Baroque Music – Bourrée du Mariage Forcé (Jean-Baptiste Lully)
Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire de Molière : « Allez, fripier d’écrits, impudent plagiaire. » Œuvres: Dessins par Lorentz, Jules David, etc. Gravures par les meilleurs artistes, Paris, Schneider, 1850. (Wiki2.org)
—ooo—
I wrote a very long post on Sganarelle, ou le Cocu imaginaire and apologize. Yet there are points I would like to underline, the first of which is Célie’s suivante’s praise of marriage.
Célie’s Suivante: a Praise of Marriage
In those pleasant times, which flew away like lightning, I went to bed, in the very depth of winter, without kindling a fire in the room; even airing the sheets appeared then to me ridiculous; but now I shiver even in the dog days. In short, madam, believe me there is nothing like having a husband at night by one’s side, were it only for the pleasure of hearing him say, “God bless you,” whenever one may happen to sneeze. Clélie’s suivante praise of marriage (Scene 2).
Can this praise of marriage reassure Célie? She faints and drops her portrait of Lélie.
Sganarelle’s Wife: Jealousy or Love
I did write that Sganarelle’s wife was jealous, but did not quote her. When she sees Sganarelle helping Célie who has fainted, Sganarelle’s wife thinks he is unfaithful to her.
Ah! what do I see? My husband, holding in his arms… But I shall go down; he is false to me most certainly; I should be glad to catch him. Sganarelle’s wife (Scene 4)
Moreover, Sganarelle’s wife knows that her husband is not a handsome man. She says that the young man the portrait depicts is the kind of person a woman would find attractive.
Que n’ai-je un mari d’une aussi bonne mine, Au lieu de mon pelé, de mon rustre… Sganarelle’s wife, (Sc. 6, p. 6) Alas! why have I not a handsome man like this for my husband instead of my booby, my clod-hopper…? Sganarelle’s wife (Scene 6)
Yet, in the “recognition” scene (Scene 22), an anagnorisis, Sganarelle’s wife asks Célie not to seduce her husband’s heart. She is fond of her husband despite poor looks.
I am not inclined, Madam, to show that I am over-jealous; but I am no fool, and can see what is going on. There are certain amours which appear very strange; you should be better employed than in seducing a heart which ought to be mine alone. Sganarelle’s wife to Célie (Scene 22)
Sganarelle viewed by Lélie
But Lélie is confused. Not only has Célie chosen Sganarelle, but the man is ugly, uglier than Lélie was told. How could Célie have found qualities in Sganarelle?
Alas! what have I heard! The report then was true that her husband was the ugliest of all his sex. Even if your faithless lips had never sworn me more than a thousand times eternal love, the disgust you should have felt at such a base and shameful choice might have sufficiently secured me against the loss of your affection… But this great insult, and the fatigues of a pretty long journey, produce all at once such a violent effect upon me, that I feel faint, and can hardly bear up under it. Lélie, alone (Scene 10)
Lélie cannot see Sganarelle’s heart. He thinks his good looks should have served him. He doesn’t know the “other” man is Valère, nor does he know that “the cœur has its reasons, which reason doesn’t know.” (“Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.”) (Blaise Pascal)
It is at this point that Célie’s maid decides to “interfere.” She knows that Célie loves Lélie and that Gorgibus has decided his daughter would marry Valère, rather than Lélie. What Célie’s suivante does not appear to know is that Célie dropped her portrait of Lélie and that Sganarelle’s wife picked it up and admired it. Hearing his wife praise the portrait, Sganarelle snatched the portrait and became extremely jealous.
Célie’s suivante (maid) “interferes”
Célie’s suivante knows that Célie is in love with Lélie, but that her father wants her to marry Valère.
Upon my word, I do not know when this entanglement will be unravelled. I have tried for a pretty long time to comprehend it, but the more I hear the less I understand. Really I think I must interfere at last. (Placing herself between Lelio and Celia). Answer me one after another, and (To Lelio) allow me to ask what do you accuse this lady of? Célia’s maid to Lélie (Scene 22)
In other words she knows that Célie is not Sganarelle’s lover and that his wife is keeping him on a short leash.
But, the plot is as Lélie says, except that Célie has not married Sganarelle. Célie dropped the portrait which is in Sganarelle’s hands when Lélie talks to him.
As soon as I heard she was going to be married I hastened hither, carried away by an irrepressible love, and not believing I could be forgotten; but discovered, when I arrived here, that she was married to Sganarelle. Lélie to Clélie’s suivante (Scene 22)
Lélie does have a rival, but the rival is an invisible Valère. That is why he was riding back to Paris as quickly as possible. So there is a blondin berne le barbon (the young man fools the old man). But as the plot unfolds, Gorgibus does not seem a blocking-character. The blondin berne le barbon seems to provide a frame story. The themes are jealousy, cuckolding, and false appearances. Sganarelle imagines that he is a cocu, and he can’t resist his bile.
Comments
By the way, yes Les Précieuses ridicules were extremely successful when the farce was first performed, on 18 November 1659. But, in the long run, Sganarelle, ou le Cocu imaginaire has been the more popular play. It’s progeny is truly impressive. I have unearthed more sources, but Sganarelle was paraphrased, imitated and adapted time and again. (See The Imaginary Cuckold, Le Cocu imaginaire, Wiki2.org.) During Molière’s life time, or from 1660 to 1673, Sganarelle was played 122 times.[1]
The fact that Sganarelle’s wife loves her husband says a great deal about Molière. Sganarelle, played by Molière, may not be handsome in the eyes of other persons. In fact, his wife knows that he is not handsome, but he is her man.
Célie’s suivante unravels the mess, and her praise of marriage makes sense. A good husband provides warmth and reassurance. A man and wife are a household. They operate a small business and may become the best of friends. We will be looking at Les Quinze joyes de mariage(The Fifteen Joys of Marriage) a satire, but… Molière read it. It’s an Internet Archive publication, in old French, but I had to study old French.
Painting of Blaise Pascal made by François II Quesnel for Gérard Edelinck in 1691
Imagination. It is that deceitful part in man, that mistress of error and falsity, the more deceptive that she is not always so; for she would be an infallible rule of truth, if she were an infallible rule of falsehood. But being most generally false, she gives no sign of her nature, impressing the same character on the true and the false.
—ooo—
The computerworks quite well, but be very careful. Internet criminals are now very convincing. They use a form of terrorism. They say they want to protect you from the “bad guys” who are already helping themselves to your pension fund and stealing your identity. This isn’t true. They are the “bad guys.”
Yesterday, I realized I could not copy passages from my usual internet publications, such as toutmolière.net. I hope this is a temporary setback.
I apologize for not reading your posts. I could not use the computer.
Sources and Resources
Sganarelle or the Self-Deceived Husband is [eBook #6681]
Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire (The Imaginary Cuckold) is a one-act play consisting of twenty-four (24) scenes. It premièred on 28 May 1660, at the Théâtre du Petit-Bourbon, the first theater the troupe of Molière used after their return to Paris, in 1658. Molière’s comedians had found patronage, that of Monsieur frère unique du Roi, Louis XIV’s only brother. Monsieur‘s theater was the Petit-Bourbon, a theater Molière shared with la Comédie-Italienne, which is still a theater.Plays are performed in Italian. Molière’s comedians had become la troupe de Monsieur.
Molière’s Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire was staged in the wake of his very successful Précieuses ridicules, which had premièred on 18 November 1659. Molière’s Précieuses ridicules earned his troupe considerable notoriety. Although Sganarelle, ou le Cocu imaginaire was not as successful as Les Précieuses ridicules, Sganarelle as a type is one of Molière’s perplexing characters: Arnolphe (The School for Wifes), Tartuffe‘s Orgon, The Misanthrope‘s Alceste, L’Avare‘s miser, The Imaginary Invalid‘s Argan and, above all, the jaloux among them. According to scholar Paul Bénichou,[1] these characters, the jaloux above all, blend in almost equal proportions vanity and insecurity: vanité et inquiétude.
[1] Paul Bénichou, Morales du Grand Siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), pp. 295-296.
Molière as Sganarelle (Wiki2.org)
Sources
Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire has been associated with Boisrobert’s Les Apparences trompeuses (1656) and Scarron’s La Fausse Apparence (1657). Deceptive appearances are a familiar theme in 17th-century French literature. In his Pensées, Blaise Pascal writes that human beings are at the mercy of puissances trompeuses, deceptive powers, one of which is imagination. Sganarelle is an imaginaire, thirteen years before Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid).
Therefore, although appearances may be deceptive, in Le Cocu imaginaire, Sganarelle is an imaginaire whose jealousy so thwarts reality that seeing his wife admiring the finely encased portrait of a good-looking young man triggers a series of misunderstandings, quiproquos, to which there does not seem to be an end.
It remains that Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire‘s comedic plot formula is the usual all’s well that ends well, le tout est bien qui finit bien. However, the main obstacle to the young lover’s marriage does not appear to be Célie’s tyrannical father, a pater familias, but the imbroglio in which the self-deceived Sganarelle ensnares most members of the society of the play.
Given its depiction of jealousy, the play is a comedy of manners, but its numerous péripéties, twists and turns, also make it a comedy of intrigue. In fact, the mess is such that Célie’s suivante calls it a galimatias, a shemozzle. Célie’s suivante is the zanni of the comedy.
GORGIBUS, a citizen of Paris.
LELIO, in love with Celia. (Lélie) SGANARELLE, a citizen of Paris and the self-deceived husband.
VILLEBREQUIN, father to Valère.
GROS-RENÉ, servant to Lelio. A RELATIVE OF SGANARELLE’S WIFE. CELIA, daughter of Gorgibus.(Clélie) SGANARELLE’S WIFE.
CELIA’S MAID.
A PUBLICK PLACE IN PARIS.
A Pater Familias
As the curtain lifts, Clélie is crying because her father wishes to force a marriage with a man she does not love. Clélie loves Lélie:
Ah ! n’espérez jamais que mon cœur y consente Clélie à Gorgibus (I. i.) [Ah! never expect my heart to consent to that.] Clélie to Gorgibus (I. 1) or Sganarelle, p. 47 Que marmottez-vous là, petite impertinente ?
Vous prétendez choquer ce que j’ai résolu ? Je n’aurai pas sur vous un pouvoir absolu ? Et par sottes raisons, votre jeune cervelle Voudrait régler ici la raison paternelle ? Gorgibus à Clélie (I. i) (Sganarelle)
[What do you mutter, you little impertinent girl? Do you suppose you can thwart my resolution? Have I not absolute power over you? And shall your youthful brain control my fatherly discretion by foolish arguments?] Gorgibus to Clélie (I. 1)
It turns out, however, that Gorgibus has already agreed to a marriage between his daughter Célie and Lélie, a promise he cannot break on a whim.
J’aurais tort si, sans vous, je disposais de moi ;
Mais vous-même à ses vœux engageâtes ma foi. Clélie à Gorgibus (I. i)
[Do you suppose, dear father, I can ever forget that unchangeable affection I owe to Lelio? I should be wrong to dispose of my hand against your will, but you yourself engaged me to him.] Clélie to Gorgibus (I. 1).
The Portrait
After Célie’s conversation with Gorgibus and her suivante‘s comment to the effect that Lélie has been away too long, Célie faints and drops her portrait of Lélie. Sganarelle helps Célie.
Votre Lélie aussi, n’est ma foi qu’une bête, Puisque si hors de temps son voyage l’arrête, Et la grande longueur de son éloignement Me le fait soupçonner de quelque changement Suivante à Célie (I. ii)
[Upon my word, your Lelio is a mere fool to stay away the very time he is wanted; his long absence makes me very much suspect some change in his affection.] Suivante à Lélie (I. 2)
Et cependant il faut… ah ! soutiens-moi. Laissant tomber le portrait de Lélie. Célie à sa suivante (I. ii) [And yet I must—Ah! support me.]
(She lets fall the portrait of Lelio.) Célie (I. 2)
Sganarelle’s Wife and the Portrait
Sganarelle’s wife suspects he is unfaithful. She has seen him help Célie when she fainted next to her suivante.
However, it so happens that she picks up the exquisitely encased, a jewel, portrait of a fine-looking young man and comments, aloud, that she has never seen anything more beautiful, praising both the workmanship and the young man’s likeness:
(En ramassant le portrait que Célie avait laissé tomber.)
Mais quel est ce bijou que le sort me présente,
L’émail en est fort beau, la gravure charmante,
Ouvrons. Femme de Sg. (I. v) (p. 5) (Taking up the picture which Celia had let fall.) But what a pretty thing has fortune sent me here; the enamel of it is most beautiful, the workmanship delightful; let me open it?) Sg’s wife (I. 5)
…, sans l’apercevoir, continue.
Jamais rien de plus beau ne s’offrit à ma vue. Le travail plus que l’or s’en doit encor priser. Hon que cela sent bon. Femme de Sg. (I. vi) (p. 6) [(Not seeing her husband). I never saw anything more beautiful in my life! The workmanship is even of greater value than the gold! Oh, how sweet it smells!] Sg’s wife (I. 6)
Now, Sganarelle is furious. This must be the portrait of the man cuckolding him:
Tu ne m’entends que trop, Madame la carogne ; Sganarelle, est un nom qu’on ne me dira plus, Et l’on va m’appeler seigneur Cornelius : J’en suis pour mon honneur ; mais à toi qui me l’ôtes, Je t’en ferai du moins pour un bras ou deux côtes. Sg à sa femme (I. vi)
[(Snatching the portrait from her.) What, hussey! have I caught you in the very act, slandering your honourable and darling husband? According to you, most worthy spouse, and everything well considered, the husband is not as good as the wife?) Sg to his wife (I. 6)
Lélie’s Return
Meanwhile, having been detained, Lélie and Gros-René are rushing back to Paris because rumours have arisen concerning Lélie’s marriage to Célie. It could be endangered, which it is. The first person he sees is Sganarelle who soon recognizes him. Sganarelle has Lélie’s portrait, a pledge given to Célie. Sganarelle is holding a portrait which, is a portrait of him given as a gage, a pledge to Célie.
Je ne m’abuse point, c’est mon portrait lui-même. Lélie, seul (I. ix)
[Heavens! what do I see? If that be my picture, what then must I believe?] What do you say? She from whom you received this pledge… Lélie to Sganarelle (I. 9)
Puis-je obtenir de vous, de savoir l’aventure, Qui fait dedans vos mains trouver cette peinture. Lélie à Sg. (I. ix) (p. 10)
[Will you inform me by what accident that picture came into your hands?] Lélie to Sg. (I. 9)
(À part) D’où lui vient ce désir ; mais je m’avise ici… Ah ! ma foi, me voilà de son trouble éclairci,
Sa surprise à présent n’étonne plus mon âme, C’est mon homme, ou plutôt c’est celui de ma femme. Lélie à Sg. (I. ix) ou (p.10 toutmolière.net))
[(Aside). Why does he wish to know? But I am thinking… (Looking at Lelio and at the portrait in his hand). Oh! upon my word, I know the cause of his anxiety; I no longer wonder at his surprise. This is my man, or rather, my wife’s man.] Sganarelle, alone (I. 9) Retirez-moi de peine et dites d’où vous vient… [Pray, relieve my distracted mind, and tell me how you come by…] Lélie à Sganarelle (I. ix)
Sganarelle hesitates:
…Mais faites-moi celui [l’honneur] de cesser désormais
Un amour qu’un mari peut trouver fort mauvais,
Et songez que les nœuds du sacré mariage… Sg à Lélie (I. ix)
[… but henceforth, be kind enough to break off an intrigue, which a husband may not approve of; and consider that the holy bonds of wedlock…] Sg to Lelio (I. 9) Quoi, celle dites-vous dont vous tenez ce gage. Lélie à Sg. (I. ix) [What do you say? She from whom you received this pledge…] Sg to Lélie (I. 9) Est ma femme, et je suis son mari. [Is my wife, and I am her husband.] Sg to Lélie (I. 9)
Sganarelle needs a witness. In a scene reminiscent of George Dandin, he runs to fetch a relative, leaving behind a puzzled Lélie.
Ah ! que viens-je d’entendre ? On me l’avait bien dit, et que c’était de tous L’homme le plus mal fait qu’elle avait pour époux. Lélie, seul (I. x) (pp. 12-23)
Alas! what have I heard! The report then was true that her husband was the ugliest of all his sex.
Lélie, alone (I. 10)
So astonished is Lelio that he nearly faints. As Sganarelle leaves, his wife looks after a distressed Lélie.
Sganarelle’s Return
Sganarelle’s relative has good advice, but our jaloux thinks he has caught his wife, “in the act.” She is with Lélie.
… poursuit.
Tâchons donc par nos soins… Ah ! que vois-je, je meure, Il n’est plus question de portrait à cette heure, Voici ma foi la chose en propre original. Sg seul (I. xiv) (p. 14) [Aside seeing them. Ha! what do I see? Zounds! there can be no more question about the portrait, for upon my word here stands the very man, in propria persona.] Sg alone (I. 14)
Lélie is at his wit’s end. Destiny has betrayed him:
Ah ! mon âme s’émeut et cet objet m’inspire… Mais je dois condamner cet injuste transport, Et n’imputer mes maux qu’aux rigueurs de mon sort. Envions seulement le bonheur de sa flamme.
(Passant auprès de lui, et le regardant.) Oh ! trop heureux d’avoir une si belle femme. Lélie seeing Sg. (I. xv) (pp. 14-15)
[Oh! my soul is moved! this sight inspires me with … but I ought to blame this unjust resentment, and only ascribe my sufferings to my merciless fate; yet I cannot help envying the success that has crowned his passion. (Approaching Sganarelle). O too happy mortal in having so beautiful a wife.] Lélie, to himself, seeing and looking at Sg. (I. 15)
Célie has seen and heard Lélie, but he has not visited her. She decides to speak to Sganarelle and asks whether Sganarelle knows him.
Quoi, Lélie a paru tout à l’heure à mes yeux,
Qui pourrait me cacher son retour en ces lieux. Clélie (I. xvi) (p. 15)
[Who can that be? Just now I saw Lelio.
Why does he conceal his return from me?] Célie (I. 16)
Celui qui maintenant devers vous est venu Et qui vous a parlé, d’où vous est-il connu ? Célie à Sganarelle(I. xvi) (p. 15)
[Pray, sir, how came you to know this gentleman who went away just now and spoke to you?] Célie to Sganarelle (I. 16)
Sgnarelle says he doesn’t him, but that his wife does. The young man is cuckolding him. Célie probes further. Why does Sganarelle look so sad?
Si je suis affligé, ce n’est pas pour des prunes
Et je le donnerais à bien d’autres qu’à moi
De se voir sans chagrin au point où je me voi.
Des maris malheureux, vous voyez le modèle,
On dérobe l’honneur au pauvre Sganarelle ;
Mais c’est peu que l’honneur dans mon affliction
L’on me dérobe encor la réputation. Sganarelle à Célie (I. xvi)
[If I am sad it is not for a trifle: I challenge other people not to grieve, if they found themselves in my condition. You see in me the model of unhappy husbands. Poor Sganarelle’s honour is taken from him; but the loss of my honour would be small—they deprive me of my reputation also.] Sg to Célie (I. 16)
Célie is very disturbed. Being in love with Sganarelle’s wife could explain Lélie’s secret return. She says that she was right!
Ah ! j’avais bien jugé que ce secret retour
Ne pouvait me couvrir que quelque lâche tour,
Et j’ai tremblé d’abord en le voyant paraître,
Par un pressentiment de ce qui devait être. Célie (I. xvi)
[Ah! I find I was right when I thought his returning secretly only concealed some base design; I trembled the minute I saw him, from a sad foreboding of what would happen.] Célie (I. 16)
Sganarelle bares his grief, in a soliloquy. However, he realizes that he is not the only husband to have been betrayed and that his affliction it is not worth dying for.
La bière [the grave] est un séjour par trop mélancolique
Et trop malsain pour ceux qui craignent la colique,
Et quant à moi je trouve, ayant tout compassé, Qu’il vaut mieux être encor cocu que trépassé[.] Sganarelle, seul (I. xvii)
[The grave is too melancholy an abode, and too unwholesome for people who are afraid of the colic; as for me, I find, all things considered, that it is, after all, better to be a cuckold than to be dead.] Sganarelle, alone (I. 17)
But he is resentful and to avenge himself, he will tell everyone that his wife lies with Lélie. Morever, his bile is making him consider “some manly action.” He will return bearing arms, he will be incapable of using (scene 21).
Je me sens là, pourtant remuer une bile Qui veut me conseiller quelque action virile[.] Sganarelle, seul (I. xvii) (p. 18)
[I feel, however, my bile is stirred up here; it almost persuades me to do some manly action.] Sganarelle, alone (I. 17)
Meanwhile, a spiteful Célie, dépit amoureux, tells her father that she will do her duty and marry Valère.
Faites quand vous voudrez signer cet hyménée, À suivre mon devoir je suis déterminée, Je prétends gourmander mes propres sentiments Et me soumettre en tout à vos commandements. Célie à Gorgibus (I. xviii) (p. 19-20)
[…I will sign the marriage contract whenever you please, for I am now determined to perform my duty. I can Célie to Gorgibus command my own inclinations, and shall do whatever you order me.] Célie to Gorgibus (I. 18)
Célie’s suivante
Lélie thinks mistakenly that Célie loves Sganarelle. Sganarelle thinks mistakenly that Lélio loves his wife. Sganarelle has returned bearing arms. Why is Lélie being attacked? Célie’s suivante is perplexed.
Ce changement m’étonne. Suivante (I. xix) (p. 21)
[This change surprises me.] Suivante (I. 19) Et lorsque tu sauras
Par quel motif j’agis tu m’en estimeras. Suivante à Célie (I. xix) [When you come to know why I act thus, you will esteem me for it.] Suivante à Célie (I. 19) Apprends donc que Lélie,
A pu blesser mon cœur par une perfidie,
Qu’il était en ces lieux sans… Célie à sa suivante (I. xix)
[Know then that Lelio has wounded my heart by his treacherous behaviour, and has been in this neighbourhood without…] Célie to her suivante (I. 19)
Lélie asks Célie to remain where she is. (I. xx) (I. 20)
In Scene 21 Sganarelle returns bearing arms.
entre armé. Guerre, guerre mortelle, à ce larron d’honneur Qui sans miséricorde a souillé notre honneur. Sganarelle (I. xxi) (p. 20)
[I wage war, a war of extermination against this robber of my honour, who without mercy has sullied my fair name.]
À qui donc en veut-on?
(Turning round). Against whom do you bear such a grudge? Lélie (I. xxi) (p. 20)
In scene 22, Sganarelle’s wife is angry at Célie, whom she suspects is her husband’s lover. But finally, Célie’s suivante decides to clear up the misunderstanding. Lélie and Célie are undeceived, but Célie has accepted to marry Valère. Lélie comforts her. Her father will keep his word, which Gorgibus is not ready to do. (I. 23)
But in scene 24, the last scene, Villebrequin, Valère’s father, comes to announce that Valère has married secretly, which frees Célie and Lélie.
So, all’s well that ends well. A “bonheur éternel” (eternal bliss) awaits our young lovers.
Molière seldom signed documents, but this dénouement is Molière’s signature. No one suffers and nearly everyone has been blinded. Molière is not punitive. All are preparing for the forthcoming wedding.
As for Sganarelle, he is not the only character to have been deceived. He gives the entire adventure a moral, as though the play were a moralité.
A-t-on mieux cru jamais être cocu que moi. Vous voyez qu’en ce fait la plus forte apparence Peut jeter dans l’esprit une fausse créance : De cet exemple-ci, ressouvenez-vous bien, Et quand vous verriez tout, ne croyez jamais rien. Sganarelle, à part [Was there ever a man who had more cause to think himself victimized? You perceive that in such matters the strongest probability may create in the mind a wrong belief. Therefore remember, never to believe anything even if you should see everything.] Sganarelle, aside
Sources and Resources
Sganarelle or the Self-Deceived Husband is [eBook #6681]
My computer is working, but I am feeling rather fragile. You will find errors in this post and it is very long, due mainly to the bilingual translations. I apologize. Further articles on Molière will be shorter.
_________________________ [1] Paul Bénichou, Morales du Grand Siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), pp. 295-296.
There have been many Dandins. I remember François Rabelais‘ Perrin Dandin (Pantagruel, Third Book XLI), perhaps an early Dandin. Given the oral tradition, this Perrin Dandin may not be the first.
However, there is a Perrin Dandin in Racine’s Les Plaideurs (1668) and in La Fontaine’s “L’Huître et les Plaideurs” (“The Oyster and the Litigants”). La Fontaine’s “Oyster and the Litigants” was published in his second volume of fables (1678), but may date back to the early 1670s.
Perrin Dandin is a simple citizen in the “Pantagruel” of Rabelais, who seats himself judge-wise on the first stump that offers, and passes off hand a sentence in any matter of litigation; a character who figures similarly in a comedy of Racine’s, and in a fable of La Fontaine’s.
Ironically, Jean Racine‘s Les Plaideurswas first performed in November 1668, at l’Hôtel de Bourgogne, Paris’ most prominent venue. It therefore premiered, in Paris, the same month as Molière’s George Dandin. Molière’s George Dandin is not a judge, but whenener he runs to his in-laws, he brandishes a contract. I have pointed out that in Paris, George Dandin was no longer a comédie-ballet and pastoral. It was a three-act farce in which a peasant lived the consequences of a marriage which, he thought, would elevate him to gentilhommerie. George Dandin’s Gentilhommerie is the Sotenvilles. “Sot” means stupid (and related adjectives).
A sotie is classified as a medieval farce and morality. Some argue, however, that it is a separate genre. Marrying Angélique, whom he had not courted (galanterie), was unesottise (foolish or silly) on the part of George Dandin. Could he not see sot in her parents’ name? They are Monsieur and Madame de Sotenville (from sot), and Madame de Sotenville was born a La Prudoterie, from prude. In Molière’s Le Misanthrope, Arsinoé is the opposite of Célimène. The prude is the opposite of the mondaine. Moreover, names such as Sotenville do not seem real. They seem and may be allegorical.
Whereas the characters in a farce would be distinguished individuals with proper names, the characters in the soties were pure allegories. The characters had names such as “First Fool” and Second Fool”, or “Everyman”, “Pilgrim” etc. Sometime there would be a leader of the fools, called “Mother Fool” (Mère Sotte).[1]
(See Sotie, Wikipedia.) [1]Mère Sotte was the papacy. Soties were banned.
The above Dandin is not Molière’s George Dandin. It is Jean Racine’s Perrin Dandin featured in Les Plaideurs (1668). Racine’s Dandin is a besotted judge who has to judge at all times. While judging dogs, he allows his son Léandre to marry Chicanneau’s daughter Isabelle.
DANDIN : judge, LÉANDRE : son of Dandin, fils de Dandin. CHICANNEAU : bourgeois. ISABELLE : Chicanneau’s daughter, fille de Chicanneau (chinanery). LA COMTESSE. PETIT JEAN : portier. L’INTIMÉ : secrétaire. LE SOUFFLEUR (prompt).
LA FONTAINE
L’Huître et les Plaideurs
In my opinion, the best-known Dandin is Jean de La Fontaine’s. He is featured in L’Huître et les Plaideurs (The Oyster and the Litigants). Two pèlerins find an oyster. They both claim ownership of the oyster. Perrin Dandin walks by our pèlerins who decide he should judge who is the owner of the oyster. Perrin Dandin eats the oyster and takes our pilgrims’ money.
Un jour deux Pèlerins sur le sable rencontrent Une Huître que le flot y venait d’apporter : Ils l’avalent des yeux, du doigt ils se la montrent ; A l’égard de la dent il fallut contester. (read more)
Pendant tout ce bel incident, Perrin Dandin arrive : ils le prennent pour juge. Perrin fort gravement ouvre l’Huître, et la gruge, Nos deux Messieurs le regardant. Ce repas fait, il dit d’un ton de Président : Tenez, la cour vous donne à chacun une écaille Sans dépens, et qu’en paix chacun chez soi s’en aille. Mettez ce qu’il en coûte à plaider aujourd’hui ; Comptez ce qu’il en reste à beaucoup de familles ; Vous verrez que Perrin tire l’argent à lui, Et ne laisse aux plaideurs que le sac et les quilles.
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Livre 9, fable 9
1678
Two pilgrims on the sand espied
An oyster thrown up by the tide.
In hope, both swallowed ocean’s fruit;
But before the fact there came dispute.
(read more)
Amidst this sweet affair, Arrived a person very big, Ycleped Sir Nincom Periwig.
They made him judge, to set the matter square.
Sir Nincom, with a solemn face,
Took up the oyster and the case:
In opening both, the first he swallowed,
And, in due time, his judgment followed.
“Attend: the court awards you each a shell
Cost free; depart in peace, and use them well.”
Foot up the cost of suits at law,
The leavings reckon and awards,
The cash you’ll see Sir Nincom draw,
And leave the parties—purse and cards. JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Book 9, Fable 9
1678
I wrote that comedy has redeeming mechanisms, such as the deceiver deceived, or trompeur trompé. In l’École des femmes, despite raising a wife, Agnès, Arnolphe loses her when she meets young Horace. Her instinct leads Agnès to fall in love with Horace and find safety in his presence. Yet, one sympathizes with Arnolphe. He loves Agnès, but he doesn’t know galanterie. The comedy ends in the traditional marriage. But comedy has more than one plot formula. Farces are circular. Dandin will forever plead his cause, but what if he had opened the bolted door when Angélique was desperate, and comforted her. Beauty loves Beast.
But suddenly I remembered the medieval soties, not to mention Reynard the Fox, its comic trial and Bruin losing the skin of his nose when it gets wedged in an opening in a log. But it’s “no skin off my nose,” as it grows back. It’s like a cartoon. Jill Mann,[2] who translated the Ysengrimus, the birthplace of Reynard the Fox, into English, compares this phenomenon to the flattened cat of cartoons who fluffs up again. In the world of cartoons, injuries may be reversible.
George Dandin lived before cartoons, but Molière knew the sotie and the cartoonish Reynard the Fox (Le Roman de Renart).
The Wikipedia entry on sotie compares the genre to carnivals. Mikhail Baktin, who studied Rabelais, identified the carnivalesque in Rabelais, a world upside down. Molière has not broken any rule. The carnivalesque is a constante in literature. However, Molière has a way of humanizing fools and vice versa. The Misanthrope is the epitome in this æsthetics.
I will make these words, my last words on George Dandin who is both right and wrong. But he is less a fool than the Sotenvilles, or is it the reverse?
By the way, “se dandiner” means to waddle and Dandin is a family name. George Dandin’s name is not allegorical.
____________________ [1]Mère Sotte was the papacy. Soties were banned. [2]Jill Mann, “The Satiric Fiction of the Ysengrimus,” in Kenneth Varty (ed.), Reynard the Fox: Social Engagement and Cultural Metamorphoses in the Beast Epic from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), p. 11.
(This post is very long. If you have read Molière’s “George Dandin” revisited (1), go to Act Two.)
George Dandin: a Comédie-Ballet & Pastoral
George Dandin ou le Mari confondu (George Dandin or the Abashed Husband) is a comédie-ballet combining a three-act farce and a pastoral in the form of interludes mainly. The comedy and the lyrics to the pastoral were written by Molière to music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Contemporaries loved the music to George Dandin. It premièred at Versailles on 15 July 1668, as part of a Grand Divertissement royal celebrating the French victory at Aix-la-Chapelle. The comédie-ballet was performed three times at Saint-Germain-en-Laye from 3 to 6 November. However, when, on 9 November 1668, the three-act George Dandin was given in Paris, at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, the pastoral had been removed.
Henri van Laun‘s six-volume translation of the plays of Molière, an Internet Archive publication, includes the text of a three-act play and the text of the pastoral. The two could be separated. The pastoral lightened an otherwise sombre farce. We are still using Henri van Laun’s translation of the three-act play and the toutmoliere.net’s collection of Molière’s plays.
In my post on the Jalousie du Barbouillé, I stated that the Jalousiedu Barbouillé was a blueprint for George Dandin. George Dandin repeats the bolted door episode (Act Three)rom . In Molière, the unfortunate daughters of the nobility who were married against their will not be wives. Cuckoldry enters the picture. La Jalousie du Barbouillé does establish one of Molière central figures, le jaloux. It also introduces le cocu. If he marries, le jaloux faces cuckoldry.
Sources
Listed below, are sources Molière may have used when he wrote George Dandin:
*The Dolopatos was an Indian work written before the Common Era, and translated into Arabic and Hebrew (see Salon littéraire).
However, ascertaining sources for George Dandin and other plays by Molière is difficult. We know that Molière was well educated. He was a student at the Collège de Clermont, the current Lycée Louis-le-Grand. It was the finest lycée in Paris. Molière read Roman dramatists Plautus and Terrence, and may have read Greek dramatist Aristophanes. He also studied law.
Molière’s first company, l’Illustre Théâtre, established in June 1643, went bankrupt two years later. So, in August 1645, Molière was jailed briefly, a day or so. He then left Paris and toured the provinces of France until the late 1650s. His base was Pézenas, but the répertoire of his troupe cannot be determined in an accurate manner. He didn’t write the plays members of his troupe performed. There is a story about a lost suitcase, but it seems his actors may have improvised their role, or nearly so, as did the stock characters of the Commedia dell’arte.
However, Molière also borrowed from native French farces and fabliaux. As we have seenLe Médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in spite of himself) is rooted in the Vilain Mire, a medieval French fabliau about a doctor. By the seventeenth century, the original text of the Vilain Mire may have been a mere memory, but its subject matter had entered an oral tradition to return to a written tradition. In 1656, Barbazan published the first volume of his: Fabliaux et contes des poètes français du XIIIe, XIVe et XVe siècles. Barbazan’s collection “shares several elements with Le Médecin malgré lui, and, incidentally, Georges [sic] Dandin.” (See Molière 21). The complete French fabliaux were published in 1986. (See Molière 21.) For our purposes, the closest source of George Dandin is Molière’s own Jalousie du Barbouillé.
Georges Dandin (George Dandin), husband of Angelica
Angelica (Angélique), Georges Dandin’s wife
Sir Sotenville (Monsieur de Sotenville), Angelica’s father
Mrs Sotenville (Madame de Sotenville), Sir Sotenville’s wife
Clitander (Clitandre), in love with Angelica
Claudine, Angelica’s servant
Lubin, Clitandre’s servant
Colin, Dandin’s servant
ACT ONE
As the curtain lifts, Dandin tell spectators or readers how foolish he was to marry above his rank. He is a wealthy peasant.
Ah! qu’une femme Demoiselle est une étrange affaire, et que mon mariage est une leçon bien parlante à tous les paysans qui veulent s’élever au-dessus de leur condition, et s’allier comme j’ai fait à la maison d’un gentilhomme. George Dandin, seul (I. i, p. 1) (or p. 349)
[Ah ! what a strange thing it is to be a woman of quality and a wife! and what an instructive lesson my marriage is to all peasants who wish to raise themselves above their condition…, and to ally themselves, as I have done, to a nobleman’s family.] George Dandin, alone (I. 5, p. 261) ( or p. 349)
Dandin more or less bought Angélique, thereby affording the Sotenvilles money that would allow them to live up to their rank.
He complains that all he has acquired is a title: “de La Dandinière,” and being related to both the Sotenville and the La Prudoterie families. To the Sotenvilles and their daughter, he remains a peasant:
L’alliance qu’ils font est petite avec nos personnes. C’est notre bien seul qu’ils épousent, et j’aurais bien mieux fait, tout riche que je suis, de m’allier en bonne et franche paysannerie[.] Dandin, seul (I. i, p. 1)
[We ourselves count for very little in the match : they only marry our property; and I would have done much better[.] Dandin, alone (I. 1, p. 261) (or p. 349)
Dandin realizes he has made a mistake:
George Dandin, George Dandin, vous avez fait une sottise la plus grande du monde.
[George Dandin! George Dandin! you have committed the greatest folly in the world.] Dandin, alone (I. 1, p. 261) (or p. 349)
So, the action begins in scene two, when Dandin sees someone leaving his house. The person he sees is Lubin, Clitandre’s valet, who has delivered a message to Angélique. Not knowing who Dandin is, he tells him everything:
C’est que je viens de parler à la maîtresse du logis de la part d’un certain Monsieur qui lui fait les doux yeux, et il ne faut pas qu’on sache cela. Entendez-vous? Lubin à Dandin (I. ii, p. 3)
[Because I have just been delivering a message to the mistress of the house from a certain gentleman who has an eye upon her; and it must not be known. Do you understand?] Lubin to Dandin (I. 2, p. 261) or p. 350 Voilà la raison. On m’a enchargé de prendre garde que personne ne me vît, et je vous prie au moins de ne pas dire que vous m’ayez vu. Lubin à Dandin (I. ii, p. 3) [I have been told to take care that no one should see me; and let me beg of you, at least, not to say that you have seen me.] Lubin to Dandin (I. 2, p. 262) or p. 351 Le mari, à ce qu’ils disent, est un jaloux qui ne veut pas qu’on fasse l’amour à sa femme, et il ferait le diable à quatre si cela venait à ses oreilles. Vous comprenez bien. Lubin à Dandin(I. ii, p. 3 )
[The husband, from what they tell me, is dreadfully jealous, who will not allow his wife to be made love to; and there would be the devil to pay if it came to his ears. Now, do you understand?] Lubin à Dandin (I. 2, p. 263) (or p. 351)
Dandin wishes to know whether Angélique sent a message back to Clitandre.
Elle m’a dit de lui dire… Attendez, je ne sais si je me souviendrai bien de tout cela. Qu’elle lui est tout à fait obligée de l’affection qu’il a pour elle, et qu’à cause de son mari qui est fantasque, il garde d’en rien faire paraître, et qu’il faudra songer à chercher quelque invention pour se pouvoir entretenir tous deux. Lubin à Dandin (I. ii, p. 5)
[She has told me to tell him . . . stop; I do not know if I shall remember it all: that she is very much obliged to him for his affection towards her, and that he must be very careful not to show it, on account of her husband, who is whimsical, and that he must bethink himself to invent something, so that they may converse with each other.]
Lubin to Dandin (I. 2, p. 264) (or p. 352)
Having heard Lubin, Dandin engages in another soliloquy. It appears he will be a “cocu,” which is a breech of the marriage contract. He must tell the Sotenvilles, but his in-laws find fault with the language he uses. Madame de Sotenville does not want to be called belle-mère, mother-in-law. She belongs to the nobility:
Ne vous déferez-vous jamais avec moi de la familiarité de ce mot de ma belle-mère, et ne sauriez-vous vous accoutumer à me dire Madame. Madame de Sotenville à Dandin (I. iv. p. 6)
[Will you never divest yourself, with me, of the familiarity of that word, mother-in-law, and can you not accustom yourself to call me Madam?] Madame de Sotenville to Dandin (I. 4, p. 255) (or p. 354)
Monsieur de Sotenville will not allow Dandin to refer to his daughter as “ma femme” (my wife). She is Madame. He also insists on being called “Sir:”
Doucement, mon gendre. Apprenez qu’il n’est pas respectueux d’appeler les gens par leur nom, et qu’à ceux qui sont au-dessus de nous il faut dire Monsieur tout court. Monsieur de Sotenville à Dandin (I. iv, p. 6)
[Gently, son-in-law. Let me tell you that it is not respectful to address people by their names, and that we must only say, “Sir,” to those above us.] Monsieur de Sotenville to Dandin (I. 4, p. 254) (or p. 354)
Moreover, George Dandin is told that being related to the Sotenville and the La Prudoterie families is a privilege. Madame de Sotenville is a La Prudoterie. His title has not elevated Dandin. Having been duly humiliated, he dares tell that a gentleman is in love with Angélique.
Je vous ai dit ce qui se passe pour vous faire mes plaintes, et je vous demande raison de cette affaire-là. Dandin aux Sotenvilles (I. iv, p. 9) [I have told you what is going on, to justify my complaints; and I ask you for satisfaction in this matter.] Dandin to Sotenville (I. 4, p. 258) (or p. 357)
The Sotenvilles will investigate.
Nous allons éclaircir l’affaire. Suivez-moi, mon gendre, et ne vous mettez pas en peine, vous verrez de quel bois nous nous chauffons lorsqu’on s’attaque à ceux qui nous peuvent appartenir. Sotenville à Dandin (I. iv, p. 10)
[We are going to clear the matter up. Follow me, son-in-law, and do not trouble yourself. You shall see what we are made of, when people attack those who
may belong to us.] Sotenville to Dandin (I. 4, p. 258) (or p. 357)
Monsieur de Sotenville speaks to Clitandre who tells him that he is being slandered.
Voilà une étrange médisance. Qui vous a dit cela, Monsieur? Clitandre à Sotenville (I. v, p. 11)
[What strange slander is this ! Who has told you
that, Sir?] Clitandre to Sotenville(I. 5. p. 259) (or p. 359)
Having denied he sent une ambassade to Angélique, Clitandre wants to know who told Dandin that he sent une ambassade to Angélique. It could be Angélique herself:
Est-ce donc vous, Madame, qui avez dit à votre mari que je suis amoureux de vous ? Clitandre à Angélique (I. vi, p. 12)
[Is it you then, Madam, who have told your husband that I am in love with you?] Clitandre to Angélique (I. 6, p. 260) (or p. 360)
She defends herself by making believe she is accusing him, but if reversed her words are an invitation to Clitandre to continue the galanterie. It’s a brilliant double entendre.
Moi, et comment lui aurais-je dit? Est-ce que cela est? Je voudrais bien le voir Je voudrais bien le voir vraiment que vous fussiez amoureux de moi. Jouez-vous-y, je vous en prie, vous trouverez à qui parler. C’est une chose que je vous conseille de faire. Ayez recours pour voir à tous les détours des amants. Essayez un peu par plaisir à m’envoyer des ambassades, à m’écrire secrètement de petits billets doux, à épier les moments que mon mari n’y sera pas, ou le temps que je sortirai pour me parler de votre amour. Vous n’avez qu’à y venir, je vous promets que vous serez reçu comme il faut. Angélique à Clitandre (I. vi, pp. 12-13)
[I? And how could I have told him? Is it so then? I should really like to see you in love with me. Just attempt it, pray; you will find out with whom you have to deal; I advise you to try the thing! Have recourse, by way of experiment, to all the lovers’ stratagems: just attempt to send me, for the fun of it, some messages, to write me some small love letters secretly; to watch the moments of my husband’s absence, or when I am going out to tell me of your love: you have only to set about it, I promise you you shall be received as you ought.] Angélique to Clitandre (I. 6, p. 260) (p. 360)
After speaking with Angélique, Clitandre and Angélique both deny having sent or received a message. Clitandre is a gentilhomme and Angélique, Dandin’s wife, the daughter of the Sotenvilles. They are credible, but Dandin isn’t. Despite the money he gave the impoverished Sotenvilles, all Dandin received is a hollow title and a marriage contract, he remains a peasant. He has no credibility.
Si bien donc que si je le trouvais couché avec ma femme, il en serait quitte pour se dédire? Dandin à Sotenville (I. vi, p. 15)
[Thus, if I had found him in bed with my wife, he would get off by simply denying it?] Dandin to Sotenville (I. 8, p. 262) (or p. 363)
I will skip the episode where Dandin has to apologize to the Sotenvilles and Clitandre. They’ve lied, but they are “personnes de qualité,”
Woman’s Head by François Boucher, c. 1750 (WikiArt.org)
In Greek literature, George Dandin, would be called an agroikós (rustic), a stock character. He is a peasant who has married into the upper classes and wishes to be separated from his wife when he realizes that he has simply bought a title: de la Dandinière. His marriage is a mésalliance. There have always been mésalliances. Some of us marry the wrong man or woman. In 17th-century France, aristocrats spent a fortune in an attempt to see Louis getting up (le lever) and going to bed (le coucher). They wanted to be ‘seen.’ Consequently, they spent a great deal of money and could not endow more than one of their daughters.
The Sotenvilles do not live in Paris, but they needed money and their best source was a rich peasant, the agroikós of Greek comedy. Dandin, our agroikós tells Angélique that she should live as wives live:
Je veux que vous y fassiez ce que fait une femme qui ne veut plaire qu’à son mari. Quoi qu’on en puisse dire, les galants n’obsèdent jamais que quand on le veut bien, il y a un certain air doucereux qui les attire ainsi que le miel fait les mouches, et les honnêtes femmes ont des manières qui les savent chasser d’abord. Dandin à Angélique (II. i, p. 22) [I wish you to do what a wife who only wishes to please her husband should do. Whatev[er people may say, gallants never trouble a woman unless she wishes it. There are certain sweet looks which attract them, as honey does flies; and virtuous women have a manner that drives them away immediately.] Dandin to Angélique (II. 4, p. 269) (or p. 369)
Angélique disagrees:
Moi, les [men] chasser! et par quelle raison? Je ne me scandalise point qu’on me trouve bien faite, et cela me fait du plaisir. Angélique à Dandin (II. ii, p. 22) [I, drive them away! and for what reason? I am not scandalised at being thought handsome, and it affords me pleasure.] Angélique to Dandin(II.4, p. 270) (or p. 369)
Angélique thinks her husband should be pleased to know that other men admire his wife. Dandin should play that part:
Le personnage d’un honnête homme qui est bien aise de voir sa femme considérée. Angélique à Dandin (II. iv, p. 23)
[The part of a sensible man, who is glad to see his wife admired.] Angélique to Dandin (II. 4, p. 270) (or p. 369)
But the Dandins do not admire wives committing adultery. Besides, does she have obligations? She claims she doesn’t and that the Dandins will get used to her lifestyle, if they want to:
Oh les Dandins s’y accoutumeront s’ils veulent. Car pour moi je vous déclare que mon dessein n’est pas de renoncer au monde, et de m’enterrer toute vive dans un mari. Comment, parce qu’un homme s’avise de nous épouser, il faut d’abord que toutes choses soient finies pour nous, et que nous rompions tout commerce avec les vivants? C’est une chose merveilleuse que cette tyrannie de Messieurs les maris, et je les trouve bons de vouloir qu’on soit morte à tous les divertissements et qu’on ne vive que pour eux. Je me moque de cela, et ne veux point mourir si jeune. Angélique à Dandin (II. iv, p. 23)
[I declare that I do not intend to renounce the world, and to bury myself alive with a husband. What ! because a man thinks fit to marry us, everything must be at an end immediately, and we must break off all intercourse with every living being! This tyranny of husbands is a marvellous thing; and I think it very kind of them to wish that we should be dead to all amusements; and that we should live for them only! I laugh at that, and do not wish to die so young.] Angélique to Dandin (II. 4, p. 270) (or pp. 369-370)
Moi? je ne vous l’ai point donnée de bon cœur, et vous me l’avez arrachée. M’avez-vous avant le mariage demandé mon consentement, et si je voulais bien de vous? Vous n’avez consulté pour cela que mon père, et ma mère, ce sont eux proprement qui vous ont épousé, et c’est pourquoi vous ferez bien de vous plaindre toujours à eux des torts que l’on pourra vous faire. Pour moi, qui ne vous ai point dit de vous marier avec moi, et que vous avez prise sans consulter mes sentiments, je prétends n’être point obligée à me soumettre en esclave à vos volontés, et je veux jouir, s’il vous plaît, de quelque nombre de beaux jours que m’offre la jeunesse; prendre les douces libertés, que l’âge me permet, voir un peu le beau monde, et goûter le plaisir de m’ouïr dire des douceurs. Préparez-vous-y pour votre punition, et rendez grâces au Ciel de ce que je ne suis pas capable de quelque chose de pis. Angélique à Dandin (II. iv, p. 23)
[I did not make them willingly, and you forced them from me. Did you, before marriage, ask me my consent, and whether I cared for you ? You consulted only my father and mother. In reality, they have married you, and therefore you will do well always to complain to them about the wrongs which you may suffer. As for me, who did not tell you to marry me, and whom you took without consulting my feelings, I do not pretend to be obliged to submit, like a slave, to your will; and, by your leave, I mean to enjoy the few happy days of my youth, to take the sweet liberties which the age allows me, to see the fashionable world a little, and to taste the pleasure of having pretty things said to me. Prepare yourself for this, for your punishment; and thank Heaven that I am not capable of something worse.] Angélique to Dandin (II. 4, p. 270) (or p. 370)
Clitandre has been prowling around and George Dandin has seen him. He then learns from Lubin that Monsieur le Vicomte is with Angélique. George looks through the keyhole and sees Clitandre with his wife. At that very moment, kairos, the Sotenvilles arrive. Clitandre is about to leave, but he sees the Sotenvilles and Dandin. Angélique will make believe she is angry at Clitandre and will hit him with a stick. But it is her husband she hits: Dandin. The Sotenvilles are delighted to see their daughter chase Clitandre away and tell Dandin that he must be very happy.
In Act Three, during a dark night, Lubin takes Clitandre to Dandin’s house and Claudine leads him to Angélique. Because it is dark, there is quite the chassé-croisé, a mix-up. Our lovers believe Dandin is sound asleep. He was, but he has heard his wife going down the steps and he inadvertently bumps into Lubin who thinks Dandin is Claudine and talks again. Dandin knows that the Vicomte is with Angélique. He asks Colin, his servant, to fetch the Sotenvilles and to do so as quickly as possible.
When Clitandre is about to leave Angélique, he thinks that perhaps she is a wife to Dandin.
Oui. Mais je songe qu’en me quittant, vous allez trouver un mari. Cette pensée m’assassine, et les priviléges qu’ont les maris sont des choses cruelle pour une amant qui aime bien. Clitandre à Angélique (III. v, p. 38)
[Yes. But I cannot help remembering that, when you leave me, you go back to a husband. This thought kills me; and a husband’s privileges are cruel things to a fond lover.] Clitandre to Angélique (III. 5, 282) (or p. 385) Serez-vous assez fort pour avoir cette inquiétude, et pensez-vous qu’on soit capable d’aimer de certains maris qu’il y a. On les prend, parce qu’on ne s’en peut défendre, et que l’on dépend de parents qui n’ont des yeux que pour le bien, mais on sait leur rendre justice, et l’on se moque fort de les considérer au delà de ce qu’ils méritent. Angélique à Clitandre (III. v, p. 38)
[Are you weak enough to have such anxiety, and do you think it possible to love a certain sort of husbands? We marry them, because we cannot help ourselves, and
because we depend upon our parents, who look only riches; but we know how to be even with them, and we take good care not to value them above their deserts.] Angélique to Clitandre (III. 5, p. 282-283) (or p. 385)
Claudine warns Angélique that she and Clitandre must part.
Madame, si vous avez à dire du mal de votre mari, dépêchez vite, car il est tard. Claudine à Angélique (III. v, p. 38)
[Madam, if you have any harm to say of your husband, you had better make haste, for it is getting late.] Claudine to Angélique (III. 6, p. 283) (or p. 386)
Angélique and Claudine are returning indoors, but the door is locked. This episode was rehearsed in the Jalousie du Barbouillé. Angélique pleads with Dandin, but she must feigns suicide to re-enter the house. When the Sotenvilles arrive, Angélique is free to accuse her husband of having been out drinking.
Angélique’s father asks her to forgive Dandin:
Allons, venez, ma fille, que votre mari vous demande pardon. Sotenville à Angélique (III. vii, p. 47)
[Come hither, daughter, that your husband may ask your pardon.] Sotenville to Angélique (III. 14, p. 290) (or p. 393)
Moi ? lui pardonner tout ce qu’il m’a dit ? Non, non, mon père, il m’est impossible de m’y résoudre, et je vous prie de me séparer d’un mari avec lequel je ne saurais plus vivre. Angélique to Sotenville (III. vii, p. 47)
[I! pardon him after all that he has said to me? No, no, father I cannot possibly make up my mind to it; and I beg of you to separate me from a husband with whom I can no longer live.] Angélique to Sotenville (III. 14, p. 290) (or p. 393)
Angélique wants to end the marriage and so does Dandin, but Angélique’s father will not let her leave her husband.
Ma fille, de semblables séparations ne se font point sans grand scandale, et vous devez vous montrer plus sage que lui, et patienter encore cette fois.
[Such separations, daughter, are not brought about without a great deal of scandal; and you should show yourself wiser than he, and be patient once more.] (p. 395) Sotenville Comment patienter après de telles indignités? Non, mon père, c’est une chose où je ne puis consentir.
[How can I be patient after such indignities? No, father, I cannot consent to it.] Angélique Il le faut, ma fille, et c’est moi qui vous le commande.
[You must, daughter; I command you.] (p.395) Sotenville Ce mot me ferme la bouche, et vous avez sur moi une puissance absolue.
[This word stops my mouth. You have absolute authority over me.] Angélique What gentleness. Claudine FR III. vii, p. 47
EN III. 14, p. 290-291 (or p. 395)
As for Dandin, he must kneel down and apologize to his wife, repeating, word for word, as though he were a child, what Monsieur de Sotenville says.
Therefore, George says to himself that all he can do is drown himself:
Ah ! je le quitte maintenant, et je n’y vois plus de remède, lorsqu’on a comme moi épousé une méchante femme, le meilleur parti qu’on puisse prendre, c’est de s’aller jeter dans l’eau la tête la première. Dandin (III. viii, p. 48)
[Ah! I give it up altogether, and I can see no help for it. When one has married, as I have done, a wicked wife, the best step on can take is to go and throw one’s self into the water, head foremost.] Dandin (III. 15, p. 291) (or p. 396)
Conclusion
Angélique provides the most probable dénouement, which is the absence of a dénouement. Yet nothing is missing.
Tout ce que vous me faites faire ne servira de rien, et vous verrez que ce sera dès demain à recommencer. Angélique à M. de Sotenville (III. vii, p. 47)
[Whatever you make me do will be of no use; we shall have to recommence to-morrow, you will see.] Angélique to the Sotenvilles (III. 14, p. 291) (or p. 395)
If Dandin doesn’t drown, he will seek and find Angélique and Clitandre, perhaps in flagrante delicto, in the midst of it. He will run to the Sotenvilles and ask for satisfaction. There is a contract, but Angélique was never consulted. Her father probably said to her: “I command you.” Sotenville is both a pater familias and an impoverished aristocrat. All he could think of were his needs. The Sotenvilles are besotted by their rank, as we can see in Act One. As for Angélique, she was wronged, but she’s a “coquette.” However, the comedic formula used by Molière is consistent with that of farces: the deceiver deceived, except that Dandin knows he made a mistake.
J’enrage de bon cœur d’avoir tort, lorsque j’ai raison. (Dandin, I. vi, p. 15 )
[It makes me mad to be put in the wrong when I am in the right.] (I. 7. p. 262) (or p. 262)
Will Moore writes that “Dandin is essentially in the right, but he is in all actual cases made to appear in the wrong.”[2] But, according to Jules Brody, Alceste is “morally” right and “esthetically” wrong. In George Dandin, Molière remembers Le Misanthrope. Alceste is a jaloux and vain. “Je veux qu’on me distingue…” (I. i. v. 64, p. 3). “I must be singled out; to put it flatly,” (I. 1, Wikisource), but he seems “morally” right.
_________________________ [1]There is disagreement concerning the date. [2] See W. G. Moore, Molière: a New Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968 [1949]), p. 118. [3] See Jules Brody, “Don Juan” and “Le Misanthrope,” or the Esthetics of Individualism in Molière,” PMLA, 84 (May 1969) pp. 539-76.
La Jalousie du Barbouillé is a one-act farce, first performed in 1660. It is often associated with Le Médecin volant. Both are early plays. However, Le Barbouillé seems the blueprint for George Dandin, first performed in 1668. George Dandin is a rich peasant who foolishly marries into an impoverished aristocracy. La Jalousie du Barbouillé was staged a few times after it premièred, but the farce was unexpectedly removed from Molière’s répertoire and the text itself vanished. It was found by Jean-Baptiste Rousseau in the eighteenth century, but was not included in the complete works of Molière until the 1819 edition.
Sources
The Molière21 research group warn that ancestors to Molière’s plays are probably too numerous to list. Cuckoldry and jealousy have long been the subject of farces and fabliaux. Cuckoldry also provided canevas, plots, to the commedia dell’arte. However, Wikipedia’s entry on La Jalousie du Barbouillé mentions sources. One is the commedia dell’arte‘s Villano gelosi, another is a tale from Boccacio’s Decameron,Le Jaloux corrigé. Moreover, the angry or disconsolate Barbouillé and Dandin are incarnations of Pedrolino (Pierrot), the rejected and sad clown.
Le Barbouillé, husband to Angélique.
The Doctor.
Angélique.
Valère, lover to Angélique.
Cathau, maid to Angélique.
Gorgibus, father to Angélique.
Villebrequin (accompanies Gorgibus).
La Vallée.
Le Jaloux
La Jalousie du Barbouillé features one of Molière’s main figures: the jaloux. Le jaloux combines two comedic functions. On the one hand, he is “in love,” but on the other hand, he is the blocking character of comedy, thealazṓn of Greek Old Comedy. If he has yet to marry, he resembles Arnolphe. Reprimands and imprecations are his native and only tongue. We have just read Le Sicilien ou l’Amour peintre. Had Dom Pèdre known the laws of gallantry, Isidore may not have fled with Adraste.
After le Jaloux marries, he remains a jaloux because he fears cuckoldry, which is his fate. The cocu is the laughing-stock of the society of the play. In La Jalousie du Barbouillé, his name suggests that his face is smeared: barbouillé.
Angélique
Yes, Angélique has met Valère and, serving the couple, is Cathau, Angélique’s maid. She is on the lookout. If she sees Gorgibus, Angélique’s father, she warns Valère and Angélique, who stop speaking as lovers do. Valère knows how to change topics:
Mademoiselle, je suis au désespoir de vous apporter de si méchantes nouvelles ; mais aussi bien les auriez-vous apprises de quelque autre ; et, puisque votre frère est fort malade… Valère à Angélique (Sc. iv, p. 5)
[Mademoiselle, I am very sorry to bring you such bad news, but, you would have heard it from some one else, and since your brother is ill…] Valère to Angélique (Sc. 4)
The Barbouillé’s Soliloquy
As the curtain lifts, the Barbouillé engages in a soliloquy, as will George Dandin. His soliloquy, or tirade, is a litany of the wrongs he endures, saddled as he is, with a flirtatious wife. He wishes her dead, but would be hanged if he had no proof of adultery:
Il faut avouer que je suis le plus malheureux de tous les hommes ! J’ai une femme qui me fait enrager : au lieu de me donner du soulagement et de faire les choses à mon souhait, elle me fait donner au diable vingt fois le jour ; au lieu de se tenir à la maison, elle aime la promenade, la bonne chère, et fréquente je ne sais quelle sorte de gens. Ah ! pauvre Barbouillé, que tu es misérable ! Il faut pourtant la punir. Si tu la tuais… L’intention ne vaut rien, car tu serais pendu. Si tu la faisais mettre en prison… La carogne en sortirait avec son passe-partout. Que diable faire donc ? Mais voilà monsieur le docteur qui passe par ici, il faut que je lui demande un bon conseil sur ce que je dois faire. Barbouillé (Sc. I, p. 1)
[Everybody must acknowledge that I am the most unfortunate of men! I have a wife who plagues me to death; and who, instead of bringing me comfort and doing things as I like them to be done, makes me swear at her twenty times a day. Instead of keeping at home, she likes gadding about, eating good dinners, and passing her time with people of I don’t know what description. Ah! poor Barbouillé, how much you are to be pitied! But she must be punished. Suppose you killed her…? It would do no good, for you would be hung afterwards. If you were to have her sent to prison…? The minx would find means of coming out. –What the deuce are you to do?
But here is the doctor coming out this way; suppose I ask his advice on my difficulties.] Barbouillé (Sc. 1)
The Barbouillé seeks the help of a doctor, a pedant, who is passing by. This doctor cannot give advice. The Barbouillé says a few words, which is all our pedant requires to display his knowledge. Doctors have the reputation of presenting bills. At the end of Scene two, the Doctor therefore indulges in a long tirade aimed at showing that expense is no object. He does’nt take money. The tirade being too long, I will indicate that it is at the very end of Scene ii, p. 4, FR Scene 2, EN.
Gorgibus
In the meantime, Monsieur Gorgibus, Angélique’s father, walks on stage, accompanied by Villebrequin, his entourage. Gorgibus fears cuckoldry as much as the Barbouillé, if not more. Should his daughter commit adultery, which is almost unavoidable, Gorgibus’ reputation would suffer. He is forever visiting his daughter and her husband, begging them to stop quarrelling. They quarrel. (Sc. v, p. 5):
Hé quoi? toujours se quereller! vous n’aurez point la paix dans votre ménage? Gorgibus au Barbouillé (Sc. v)
[What! will you always be quarrelling! Will you never have peace at home?] Gorgibus to Barbouillé (Sc. 5)
An incoherent doctor butts in. For instance, he asks the Barbouillé not to use the word enrager: j’enrage [I am bursting with rage.], which is not the correct verb.[1]Whether the Barbouillé uses enrager or an another word is irrelevant. He is a nuisance. As the scene ends, the doctor is dragged away, a cord attached to his foot.
Au milieu de tout ce bruit, le Barbouillé attache le Docteur par le pied, et le fait tomber ; le Docteur se doit laisser sur le dos ; le barbouillé l’entraîne par la corde qu’il lui a attachée au pied, et, pendant qu’il l’entraîne, le Docteur doit toujours parler, et compter par ses doigts toutes ses raisons, comme s’il n’était point à terre. (Sc. vi, pp. 8-9) [In the midst of all this, Le Barbouillé ties the Doctor by the legs with a rope, throws him down on his back, and drags him away; the Doctor goes on talking all the time, and counts all his arguments on his fingers, as if he were not on the ground.]
(Sc. 6)
Cuckoldry
In La Jalousie du Barbouillé, Molière rehearses George Dandin ou le Mari confondu, performed in 1668. The two comedies share an episode. The Barbouillé’s Angélique is late returning home and finds herself locked out of the Barbouillé’s house. The Barbouillé will not open the door to let his wife enter.
Oui? Ah! ma foi, tu peux aller coucher d’où tu viens, ou, si tu l’aimes mieux, dans la rue, dans la rue : je n’ouvre point à une coureuse comme toi. Comment, diable! être toute seule à l’heure qu’il est! Je ne sais si c’est imagination, mais mon front m’en paraît plus rude de moitié. Barbouillé à Angélique (Sc. xi, p. 10)
[Yes, you catch me! You may go and sleep where you come from; I shall not open to a gad-about like you. What! alone at this time of night! I don’t know if it is fancy, but my forehead seems to me already rougher by half.] Barbouillé to Angélique (Sc. 11)
The Barbouillé so insists on keeping the door closed that Angélique says she will do something he will regret.
Sais-tu bien que si tu me pousses à bout, et que tu me mettes en colère, je ferai quelque chose dont tu te repentiras? Angélique au Barbouillé (Sc. xi, p. 11) [Do you know that if you push me too far, and put me in a passion, I may do something which will make you repent your unkindness.] Angélique to Barbouillé (Sc. 11)
Tiens, si tu ne m’ouvres, je m’en vais me tuer devant la porte ; mes parents, qui sans doute viendront ici auparavant de se coucher, pour savoir si nous sommes bien ensemble, me trouveront morte, et tu seras pendu. Angélique au Barbouillé (Sc. xi, p. 11)
[I declare that if you do not open to me, I will kill myself before the door; my parents will no doubt come here before going to bed, to see if we are all right together, and they will find me dead, and you will be hanged.] Angélique to Barbouillé (Sc. 11)
She then makes believe she’s killed herself. Frightened, he goes out of the house, allowing her to enter. It was a trick which George Dandin will play on his wife, in the hope he will be vindicated. He would have the upper hand from the point of you of the law. (Act III. final scenes)
Comments
Le jaloux is doomed, whether or not he is in the right. Courting, le Jaloux cannot make himself loved. He cannot be loved. Once he marries, Molière’s jaloux is cuckolded, un cocu and barbouillé, smeared. He is the laughing-stock of the play’s society and he shames his in-laws, however vigilant a Gorgibus or a Barbouillé. Gorgibus asks his daughter to kiss her “husband:”
Allons, ma fille, embrassez votre mari, et soyez bons amis. Gorgibus à Angélique (Sc. xii, p. 12) [Come, daughter, kiss your husband, and be friends.] Gorgibus to Angélique (Sc. 13)
One does not ask a woman to kiss her husband, nor does one ask a husband to apologize to his wife (George Dandin, p. 291). Angélique and Valère will become lovers. The Sotenville (George Dandin) are prosperous again, but they have sold a daughter and Dandin regrets marrying into the aristocracy. He blames himself.
As the curtain falls, Villebrequin, who has refused the hear sixty to eighty pages of instruction from a reappearing doctor, suggests all go to supper.
Allons-nous-en souper ensemble, nous autres. Villebrequin à tous(Sc. xiii, p. 13) Let us all go and have some supper together. Villebrequin to all (Sc. 13)
This invitation is formulaic and The Jealousy of the Barbouillé, an enigmatic comedy. “Nous autres” go to supper, but George Dandin, a second Barbouillé, feels he may as well drown (George Dandin, p. 291).
Croyez-moi, hâtons-nous, ma Sylvie, Believe me, let us hasten, my Sylvia, Usons bien des moments précieux; and profit well by the precious time ; Contentons ici notre envie, let us here satisfy our desires. De nos ans le feu nous y convie: The passions of our age invite us ; Nous ne saurions, vous et moi, faire mieux you and I could not do better.
Quand l’hiver a glacé nos guérets, Winter has covered our fields with ice, Le printemps vient reprendre sa place, Spring comes to take her place again, Et ramène à nos champs leurs attraits; and to our pastures gives their charms. Mais, hélas! quand l’âge nous glace, But when, alas ! old age has chilled our feelings, Nos beaux jours ne reviennent jamais. our happy days return no more.
Ne cherchons tous les jours qu’à nous plaire, Let us seek all day naught but what pleases us; Soyons-y l’un et l’autre empressés; let us both be earnest about it ; Du plaisir faisons notre affaire, let pleasures be our business ; Des chagrins songeons à nous défaire: let us get rid of all our troubles; Il vient un temps où l’on en prend assez. a time will come when we shall have enough ofthem. Quand l’hiver a glacé nos guérets, … La Pastorale comique, Sc xiii, p. 7. The Comic Pastoral, Sc 15, p. 51. (transl. Henri van Laun)
As you know, I hope to publish a book about Molière. I have not read all of Molière for decades. My PhD thesis was a discussion of six plays. The University of British Columbia’s Library has sent me a PDF copy, which I will convert into text I can edit.
Although I will seldom include the libretto in my little book, I am reading the plays of Molière in their entirety. The carpe diem located above is an “air.”
Molière drew his inspiration from an épisode in Le Grand Cyrus, a novel by Madeleine de Scudéry (Sapho) who had a salon. Guests visited on Saturday. It was laSociété du samedi, the Saturday Society.
Mélicerte was performed for the court on 2 December 1666, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a royal residence.
Myrtil and Mélicerte, (Documents iconographiques, BnF)
MYRTIL, in love with Melicerte. ACANTHE, in love with Daphne.
TYRONE, in love with Eroxene.
LYCARSIS, herdsman, supposed father to Myrtil?
NICANDRE, shepherd.
MOPSE, shepherd, supposed uncle to Melicerte. MELICERTE, shepherdess.
DAPHNE, shepherdess.
EROXENE, shepherdess.
CORINNE, confidante of Melicerte.
Scene. THESSALY, IN THE VALLEY OF TEMPE, the Vale of Tempe
Mélicerte
As noted above, Mélicerte is a pastorale comique héroïque, a heroic pastoral comedy. It is the third of thirteen entrées in Isaac de Benserade‘s Ballet des Muses. Mélicerte was well-received by the King, which suggests that it was performed in its entirety.
Molière wrote the first two acts of Mélicerte. No copy of a third act, written by Molière, was ever found. However, the events of the first two acts allow us to expect an anagnorisis, a scene during which a character’s real identity is revealed. In comedy, such revelations often allow the marriage of the young lovers. I am using the word anagnorisis in its broadest acceptation: recognition or a character’s real identity.
In Scene One, the shepherdesses and Nymphs, Daphné and Éroxène, are running away from Acante and Tyrène, two young men who seek the Nymphs’ love. In Scene Two, Daphné and Éroxène learn from one another, showing matching portraits, that they both love Myrtil. However, in Scene Three, the news is that the King has come to Tempe:
Le Roi vient d’honorer Tempé de sa présence[.] Lycarsis à Nicandre (I. iii, p. 10)
[You shall not know, then, that the King has come
to honour Tempe with his presence…] Lycarsis to Nicandre (I. 3, p. 26)
Tension is building. Why is the King in Tempe?
Daphné and Éroxène do not know that the King has travelled to Tempe. So they ask Lycarsis, Myrtil’s supposed father, to reveal to Myrtil that both are in love with him and that they would like Myrtil to choose which of the two Nymphs he will marry. Only in pastorals and “a long time ago,” would a woman accept to be rejected by Myrtil, who also happens to be of lower birth.
At first, Lycarsis believes the nymphs are revealing their love for him. This figure is a quiproquo, a misunderstanding, a device Molière uses frequently. When Lycarsis realises that the Nymphs love Myrtil, he says he is of the opinion that his son is too young for matrimony. However, Daphné has seen him following Mélicerte. Myrtil, she claims, is not a child:
Il [Myrtil] n’est point tant enfant, qu’à le voir chaque jour, Je ne le croie atteint déjà d’un peu d’amour, Et plus d’une aventure à mes yeux s’est offerte, Où j’ai connu qu’il suit la jeune Mélicerte. Daphné à Éroxène et Lycarsis (I. iv, p. 15)
[He is not such a child but that I, who see him every day, believe him somewhat love-sick already ; and I have noticed many a thing that shows that he is after young Melicerte.] Daphné to Éroxène and Lycarsis (I. 4, p. 29)
Lycarsis accepts to serve the two Nymphs and says the rejected one may marry him, if she wishes to:
Je consens que son choix règle votre dispute, Et celle qu’à l’écart laissera cet arrêt, Pourra pour son recours m’épouser, s’il lui plaît. Lycarsis aux deux nymphes (I. iv, p. 16)
[I consent that his choice shall adjust your dispute ; and she, whom his decree shall set aside, may marry me in compensation, if she likes.] Lycarsis to the two nymphs (I. 5, p. 29)
Scene Five
At the beginning of Scene Five, Myrtil is putting a sparrow in a cage intending to give it to Mélicerte. Scene Five is a lovely pastoral scene, but it is interrupted by Lycarsis, Daphné, and Éroxène. The Nymphs themselves ask Myrtle to wed one of them. He feels honoured because he is of lower birth, but he is in love. He wishes to marry Mélicerte.
Lycarsis is slighty miffed. It is for a father to decide whom a son marries:
Quoi? les pères n’ont pas des droits supérieurs? (I. vi, p. 20) What ! has not a father superior rights? (I. 5, p 32) Lycarsis
For her part, Daphné suggests inequality between the Nymphs and Mélicerte.
Le choix d’elle et de nous est assez inégal. (I. v, p. 21)
The choice between her and us is unequal enough. (I. 5, p. 32) Daphné
Nymphes, au nom des Dieux, n’en dites point de mal, Daignez considérer, de grâce, que je l’aime, …
[Nymphs, in Heaven’s name, do not say any ill of her. Pray consider that I love her, and do not upset my mind. If, by loving her, I outrage your heavenly charms, she has no part in that crime ; all the offence comes from me, if you please. It is true that I know the difference between you and her ; but we cannot escape our fate.] Myrtil to Daphné and Éroxène(I. v. p. 32)
Mélicerte is worried. She tells Corinne, her confidante, that her lower rank puts her at a disadvantage. Corinne, is of litte help. In a soliloquy, Mélicerte remembers her mother’s (Bélise) words:
“Ma fille, songe à toi: l’amour aux jeunes cœurs Se présente toujours entouré de douceurs. D’abord il n’offre aux yeux que choses agréables; Mais il traîne après lui des troubles effroyables. Et si tu veux passer tes jours dans quelque paix, Toujours comme d’un mal défends-toi de ses traits.” Mélicerte seule (II. ii, p. 25)
[“Beware, daughter ; Love always comes to young hearts surrounded by sweet guiles. At first it offers nought but what is agreeable ; but it drags horrible troubles after it ; and if you wish to pass your days in peace, ever defend yourself from its darts, as from an evil.”] Mélicerte alone (II. 2, p. 34)
Myrtil arrives carrying the sparrow, but Mélicerte is sad. She has learned that Daphné et Éroxène want to marry Myrtil. They belong to a higher class. Myrtle swears his love for Mélicerte:
Non, chère Mélicerte, il n’est père ni Dieux Qui me puissent forcer à quitter vos beaux yeux, Et toujours de mes vœux, reine comme vous êtes… Myrtil à Mélicerte (II. iii, p. 28)
[No, dear Melicerte, neither father nor gods shall force me to discard your lovely eyes ; for ever, queen of my heart, as you are . . .] Myrtil to Mélicerte (II. 3. p. 36)
Mélicerte is all too aware that sons and daughters are at the mercy of their parents. They have no liberty. At this point, Lycarsis enters finding Myrtil and Mélicerte speaking as lovers do. He condemns this outrage and wishes to speak to Mélicerte. Myrtil will not let him hurt Mélicerte. He has sought her love. She is innocent.
Je ne souffrirai point que vous la maltraitiez.
[I will not allow her to be abused.] Myrtil à Lycarsis (II. 4, p. 36)
Myrtil does not believe one can give life to only to take it. Myrtil cannot envisage life without Mélicerte.
Le jour est un présent que j’ai reçu de vous; Mais de quoi vous serai-je aujourd’hui redevable, Si vous me l’allez rendre, hélas! insupportable? Il est sans Mélicerte un supplice à mes yeux: Sans ses divins appas, rien ne m’est précieux, Ils font tout mon bonheur, et toute mon envie, Et si vous me l’ôtez, vous m’arrachez la vie. Myrtil à Lycarsis (II. v, p. 31)
[I owe my being to you ; but shall I be indebted to you this day if you render life unbearable to me ? Without Mélicerte, it becomes a torment ; nothing is of value to me without her divine charms. They contain all my happiness and all my desires, and if you take them away, you take life itself.] Myrtil to Lycarsis (II. 5, p. 37)
Myrtil’s supposed father did allow his son to marry Mélicerte earlier in the play. He does again. But will his father keep his promise?
Ah! que pour ses enfants un père a de faiblesse! Peut-on rien refuser à leurs mots de tendresse? Et ne se sent-on pas certains mouvements doux, Quand on vient à songer que cela sort de vous? Lycarsis, seul (II. v, p. 32)
[Ah ! how weak a father is for his children ! Can we refuse aught to their tender words ? Do we not feel some sweet emotions within us, when we reflect that they are part of ourselves?] Lycarsis, alone (ii. 5, p. 38)
Me tiendrez-vous au moins la parole avancée?
Ne changerez-vous point, dites-moi, de pensée? Myril à Lycarsis (II. v, p. 32) [But will you keep your given promise ? Tell me
that you will not change your mind.] Myrtil to Lycarsis (II. 5, p. 38)
Acante and Tyrène can breathe again. Myrtil has chosen Mélicerte. The shepherds are free to court Daphné and Éroxène (Scene 6).
However, Mélicerte has disappeared. Nicandre is looking for her.
Ce sont des incidents grands et mystérieux:
Oui, le Roi vient chercher Mélicerte en ces lieux;
Et l’on dit qu’autrefois feu Bélise, sa mère,
Dont tout Tempé croyait que Mopse était le frère…
Mais je me suis chargé de la chercher partout,
Vous saurez tout cela tantôt, de bout en bout. Nicandre à Myrtil (II. vii, p. 36)
[They are important and mysterious events. Yes, the King has come to seek Melicerte in these spots, and they say that formerly her mother Belise, of whom all Tempe believed Mopse to be the brother . . . But I have undertaken to look for her everywhere. You shall know all about it by and bye.] Nicandre to Myrtil (II. 7, p. 39)
Conclusion
According to the Molière21 research team, the toutmoliere.net, Mélicerte will find out that she is a princess and Myrtil will learn that he is the son of a great Lord. Mélicerte contains elements of fairy tales, which is not uncommon in comedies of intrigue. Henri van Laun, whose translation I have used (in PDF), was a Molière scholar. In his Prefatory Notice, Mr. van Laun writes that he wishes Molière had left us a written copy of the third act. Mélicerte is a lovely play, albeit incomplete.
“But the charm of his writing, the exquisite delicacy of the sentiment, and the freshness of the pastoral scenes, cause us to regret that Moliere wrote only the two first acts of this play, and never finished it.” (p. 17)
Mélicerte was published in the 1682 edition of Molière’s works. A third act, written by Molière, was never found.
I will conclude by mentioning that Mélicerte has inspired artists. The play is rather well known, incomplete as it is. More importantly, in Molière’s comedies, few young lovers so oppose parents choosing a spouse for their children as does Myrtil. We are in a distant land and “a long time ago” and the King is in Tempe looking for Mélicerte. The matter of rank plays an unusually important role in Mélicerte. It is as though one were reading a fairy tale. Cinderella has two sisters.
I agree with Mr. van Laun. Would that Molière had completed the play!
Love to everyone 💕
Ballet des Muses : “Trop indiscret Amour” [Euridice]
