The ostensible subject [of LaHenriade] is the siege of Paris in 1589 by Henry III in concert with Henry of Navarre, soon to be Henry IV, but its themes are the twin evils of religious fanaticism and civil discord.
I think the above captures the spirit of Voltaire’s La Henriade. But it also describes Voltaire who spent a lifetime combating fanaticism, injustice and superstitions. Our subject is New France in its earliest days. We wish to know what happened during the half century separating Cartier’s attempt to found a settlement and Dugua de Mons’ similar endeavour. This period has not been chronicled, but Huguenots had been involved in the fur trade. Our King is no longer François Ier, but Henri IV.
The contents of this post may seem repetitive, but they sum up Cartier’s era and Henri IV’s brief reign. More importantly, although New France has Huguenot roots, I am portraying a good king who was attempting to put away a divided Kingdom. He was assassinated in 1610.
Many Huguenots (French Protestants) or former Huguenots, were the founders of what became Canada. Dugua de Mons converted to Catholicism in 1593, at approximately the same time Henri IV became a Catholic. As King of Navarre, he had been a Huguenot.
Charlesbourg-Royal
Nothing suggests that Jacques Cartier was a Huguenot, but he settled Charlesbourg-Royal in 1541, a settlement that ended in 1543. François Ier (Francis Ist), had commissioned Pierre de La Rocque, sieur de Roberval, known as Roberval, a nobleman, to build the first French settlement in North America, but Roberval did not set sail until 1542. Although sources differ, Charlesbourg-Royal was settled, almost undoubtedly, by Jacques Cartier, rather than Roberval.
Jacques Cartier left France in 1541, a year before Roberval sailed for the New World. Jacques Cartier met Roberval, near Newfoundland, but refused to turn around to assist Roberval, as the King had requested. Jacques Cartier was not a nobleman, but he is the explorer who discovered Canada and named it Canada, after Kanata, its Amerindian name.
Francis 1st, King of France, did not ask Jacques Cartier to build a settlement. As we know, the person he commissioned was Pierre de La Rocque, sieur de Roberval, a nobleman. This may have been an affront to Jacques Cartier who had discovered “Canada.” Jacques Cartier lost 35 men during the first winter he spent at Charlesbourg-Royal, pictured above. By 1543, the settlement was abandoned. Then came a seemingly inactive period spanning nearly a half-century, but was it?
Henri IV
The settlements that survive are Dugua de Mons’ Port-Royal and Quebec City. As a noted, Champlain founded Quebec City, as Dugua’s employee. In fact, he and Mathieu da Costa were Dugua’s employees. So, Mathieu da Costa, the first Black in Canada, may have co-founded Quebec City, as an employee of Dugua de Mons. Mathieu de Coste is also Canada’s first linguist and he died in the settlement he co-founded. He was a free Black.
Had he not been a fur-trader, it is very unlikely that Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit could have built a trading-post. The Huguenots had been fleeing the Wars of Religion. Henri IV reigned from 1589 to 14 May 1610, when he was assassinated, and events do not suggest that during his reign Henri IV encouraged the growth of Protestantism. As we know, he signed the Édit de Nantes promoting religions toleration.
When Henri IV died he had yet to finish unifying France and, given Richelieu’s concept of absolutism, Huguenots would have to convert. Richelieu’s notion of absolutism required that all French citizens practice the same religion. As conceived by Richelieu, absolutism consisted of one religion, one language, and one King. When the Siege of Larochelle began, so did the Anglo-French War of 1627-1629. England was defeated and the Edict of Nantes, revoked in 1685, unleashing a reign of terror a Voltaire could not accept.
Acadie had just begun, when Marc Lescarbot wrote and published his Histoire de la Nouvelle-France. He had been in Acadia for one year, 1607-1608. He also produced a play, leThéâtre de Neptune, in Port-Royal. His History of Nouvelle-France is not a bad history. On the contrary. It is a good story. But Nouvelle-France consisted of one settlement, or habitation: Port-Royal that was about to crumble to be reborn again. The picture above features Lescarbot reading his play. The artist is William Jefferys (photo-credit: wiki2.org).
Would there ever be a King of France so loved that a young Voltaire would praise him in long cantos, or “fictions” “drawn from the regions of the marvelous” (Voltaire, 1859)? There wouldn’t, except in “fictions.”
One of his recruits was Pierre-Charles L’Enfant (9 August 1754 – 14 June 1825), an architect and engineer who designed the Washington National Mall. L’Enfant was dismissed and replaced by Andrew Ellicott (24 January 1754 – 28 August 1820) who criticized L’Enfant Plan and Pierre-Charles L’Enfant. In 1902, the McMillan Commission did away with Andrew Ellicott’s revisions. The Washington Mall was redesigned using L’Enfant Plan.
The Figaro Trilogy
The Barber of Seville (1773; 1775)
The Marriage of Figaro (written in 1778, performed in 1784, published in 1785)
The Guilty Mother (1791; 1966[opera])
The Marriage of Figaro as the center-piece of Beaumarchais’ “Figaro trilogy”
Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (K. 492, 1786)
Le Mariage de Figaro, 1784
Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart, 1786
The Marriage of Figaro (1784)
At an early point in his life, Beaumarchais did recruit men willing to join the Americans in their struggle for independence, but he is known mainly as the author of the Figaro trilogy, which consists of three plays: The Barber of Seville (1775), The Marriage of Figaro (1784), and The Guilty Mother (1791).
A problematical comedy
the second installment in the Figaro trilogy
Accepted for production in 1778 (Comédie-Française)
Vilification of French aristocracy: condemned by Louis XVI
Revised: change of location
Performed in France in 1784
Published in France in 1785
The Marriage of Figaro is the second installment in Beaumarchais’ Figaro trilogy, but constitutes the centerpiece of Beaumarchais’ trilogy. It was written in 1778 and accepted for production by the Comédie-Française in 1781. However, as first written, it vilified French aristocracy and so shocked Louis XVI that he banned the production of the play.
The play was problematical because Count Almaviva, who marries Rosina in The Barber of Seville, or the Futile Precaution (1778), wants to consummate Figaro’s marriage to Susanna, Figaro’s bride. Beaumarchais revised the play and moved the action to Spain. Ironically, Count Almaviva wanted to avail himself of a right he had abolished: “the feudal droit du seigneur, the right of the lord of the manor to sleep with his servant’s bride on her wedding night.”[I]
The Marriage of Figaro is a comedy inspired by the commedia dell’arte. Given the conventions of comedy, the Count’s plans will therefore be foiled. The innmorati will be helped not only by clever zanni and other servants, but also by Rosina, Almaviva’s wife, whose marriage to the Count, a philanderer, did not end altogether “well.”The play also features a redeemingdiscovery. The Count wants Figaro to marry Marcellina, Bartolo’s housekeeper, but it turns out that Figaro is the love child of Marcellina and Bartolo. One does not marry one’s mother. Bartolo therefore proposes marriage to Marcellina. There will be two weddings, which is not uncommon in comedy.
Zanni
The Marriage of Figaro’s Cherubino,[II] a character reminiscent of Cupid, the mythological god of desire, could be called a zanni. He is forever in love and gets into trouble. However, he also provides comic relief as do zanni in the commedia dell’arte. Zanni are stand-up comics.In Passion Plays, comic interludes were inserted between the acts. The same stratagem can also be used inside comedy. Some “comic” is always at the ready not only to “fill in,” but also to support zanni (servants, one of whom is clever, but the second, clumsy).
As part of the props, we have incriminating letters and, in the case of the Barber of Seville, the Count, disguised as Lindoro, a name borrowed from the commedia dell’arte, we have musicians serenading Rosina. Guitars are inextricably linked with the commedia dell’arte. They are a prop that Watteau and Picasso, Picasso especially, depicted abundantly.
Moreover, to fool the Count, the Countess dresses as Susanna, Figaro’s bride-to-be, while Susanna dresses as the Countess. Therefore, when the Count court Susanna, he is in fact courting his wife. He reveals his plans to seduce Susanna, but find Rosina attractive. It is quite normal in comedies for the Alazṓn , the Count, to undo himself, except that comedy is kind. Cross-dressing is also a frequent device in the comic text and it is rooted in the topsy-turvy world of the Roman Saturnalia, not to mention the last days of l’ancien régime.
Beaumarchais and the Revolution
After Beaumarchais relocated The Marriage of Figaro, “[t]he feudal droit du seigneur” became a distant right and wrong. Louis XVI lifted the ban on the production of The Marriage of Figaro and the play was performed by the Comédiens français ordinaires du Roi, on Tuesday, 27 April 1784, and the text was published in 1785. Yet the play remained problematical. Although The Marriage of Figaro is a Shakespearean “all’s well that ends well,” the conventional ending, or dénouement, of comedies, in the Marriage of Figaro, this ending seems a little theatrical.
Beaumarchais or Pierre de Beaumarchais’ Marriage of Figaro was made famous by Mozart‘s (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) Nozze di Figaro, a four-act opera buffa, or comic opera composed in 1785 on a libretto (the text) by Lorenzo da Ponte (10 March 1749 – 17 August 1838). Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) premiered in Vienna at the Burgtheater,on 1 May 1786. It has remained a favourite opera often associated with Mozart only, not Pierre de Beaumarchais.
The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Barber of Seville(1775)
The Barber of Seville; or, the Useless Precaution[III] was performed and published in 1775 as Le Barbier de Séville; ou, la précaution inutile. It isthe first play in Beaumarchais Figaro’ trilogy. The play was written in 1773, but it was not performed until 23 February 1775, when it premiered at the Comédie-Française in the Tuileries. Although I have prepared a point by point description of the plot of The Barber of Seville, I am quoting Britannica’s summary. Simply add the name Lindoro, a guitar, and a few suspicious letters. The Count first dresses as a poor student named Lindoro.
“Rosine (known as Rosina in the opera), the ward of Dr. Bartholo, is kept locked in her room by Bartholo because he plans to marry her, though she despises him. Young Count Almaviva loves her from afar and uses various disguises, including one as Alonzo, a substitute music teacher, in his attempts to win her. Bartholo’s roguish barber Figaro is part of the plot against him. Indeed, it is Figaro who steals the key to Rosine’s room for Almaviva. Unfortunately, Almaviva is in his disguise as Alonzo when he meets Rosine. Though in love with “Alonzo,” Rosine is convinced by the suspicious Bartholo that Alonzo intends to steal her away and sell her to a wicked count. Disappointed, she agrees to wed Bartholo that very night. All of Figaro’s ingenuity is required to substitute Count Almaviva for Bartholo at the wedding ceremony.”[IV]
Portrait of Gioachino Rossini in 1820, International Museum and Library of Music, Bologna (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Guilty Mother, subtitled The other Tartuffe(La Mère coupable ou l’autre Tartuffe), a play in five acts,is the final part of the Figaro trilogy. Tartuffe is a play by Molière. The character Tartuffe feigns devotion. The Guilty Mother was completed in 1791, but not performed until 1792 at the Théâtre du Marais. The French Revolution had gained impetus, which made it necessary for Beaumarchais to take away his title from Count Almaviva. The Guilty Motherwill be discussed in a later post.
Figaro is heir to the commedia dell’arte‘s Brighella, a zanni. He joins Pedrolino-Pierrot, Harlequin, Scapino, and other zanni. In fact, Figaro himself joins the rank of the zanni. As portrayed above, he looks like Harlequin, but he may disguised as Harlequin. Figaro is an iconic figure in France. To be precise, Figaro is an institution: a newspaper, founded in 1826 and published in Paris. Le Figaro is the second-largest paper in France. It takes its motto from Beaumarchais’ Figaro trilogy:
“Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n’est point d’éloge flatteur.”
(“Without the freedom to criticise, there is no true praise.”)
The Commedia dell’arte
Bartolo is a dottore
Lindoro is one of the names innamorati used in the commedia dell’arte
Figaro is a Brighella,azanniin the commedia dell’arte, who helps the innamorati overcome obstacles to their marriage)
The guitar is an essential prop
Letters are used all the time: false, anonymous, incriminating…
Sources and Resources
Le Mariage de Figaro is a Gutenberg Project [EBook #20577] FR
Male innamoratiare called: Arsenio, Aurielo, Cinthio, Fabrizio, Flavio, Fedelindo, Florindo, Leandro, Lelio, Lindoro, Mario, Ortensio, Ottavio, Sireno, often the son of Pantalone, Silvio, Tristano
Femaleinnamoratiare called: Angelica, Aurelia, Beatrice, Bianchetta, Celia, Clarice, Clori, Cinzio, Emilia, Eularia, Flaminia, Florinda, Filesia, Filli, often the daughter of Pantalone, Isabella, Lavinia, Lidia, Orazio, Ortensia, Silvia, Turchetta, Vittoria
My doctor asked me to take one Aspirin tablet every morning, to avoid a cardiovascular accident. It was prescribed medication. However, I suffer from a very mild form of haemophilia, so I haemorrhaged. It happened during the night, when I was sound asleep. I did not notice I had bled until morning, when I saw dry blood on the bedclothes, all around my mouth, my teeth, my hands, my night gown. What a mess!
Les Femmes savantes (1672) is hilarious, but there are comments that could lead one to think that Molière was a misogynist. He wasn’t, but he featured pedants and women who opposed marriage, sexual intercourse, especially. The laws governing comedies demand a marriage, i.e. the perpetuation of life.
Molière features characters who cannot steer a middle-ground (called modération [restraint]) and threaten the marriage of comedy’s young lovers. Les Femmessavantes has affinities with LesPrécieuses ridicules (1659). Magdelon and Cathos are blinded by their wish to open a salon. They cannot tell that Mascarille and Jodelet are valets to La Grange and Du Croisy, fine young men they have rejected.
Henriette’s mother, Philaminte, her sister Armande and aunt, Bélise, are blinded not so much by genuine knowledge, but by pedantry. They want Henriette to marry Trissotin (sotmeans fool or idiot, and tri suggests trinity [three]). As for Henriette’s father, Chrysalde, although he wishes his daughter to marry Clitandre, he does as his wife dictates. Philaminte runs their household, their ménage.
The Cast
our femmes savantes are Philaminte, Chrysale’s wife, Bélise and Armande
the young lovers are Henriette (Armande’s sister) and Clitandre
our pedant is Trissotin (bel esprit)
Chrysale is Armande and Henriette’s father
Ariste is Chrysale’s brother, a helper, and the raisonneur
Vadius is a learned man
the play also features servants, Martine is the most important
I would like to provide you with an overview of the history of 19th-century France. It has several insurrections and coups d’état. The first coup d’état took place on 18 Brumaire Year VIII, or 9 November 1799. It therefore precedes the nineteenth century by about six weeks. On 19 Brumaire, Napoleon I became First Consul and his government was the French Consulate. However, in April 1804, the FrenchSénat named him Emperor of the French, and he was crowned Napoleon I, on 2 December 1804. Joséphine was crowned impératrice (Empress), by the new Emperor, her husband.
Events Preceding the First Republic
At the beginning of the 19th century, France was an unofficial Empire. As First Consul, Napoleon was the de facto ruler of France. He started rising to power during the National Convention (1792 – 1795) and continued empowering himself throughout the French Directory (1795 – 1799) as General Napoleon Bonaparte. The French Directory is identified as the third stage of the French Revolution.
The Directory: 2 November 1795 to 10 November 1799. There were five Directors and the Directory doubled up as a style (neoclassicism). Neoclassicism became a style. On 4 September 1797, Coup of 18 Fructidor Year V (4 September 1797) suppressed Royalists and nonjuring members of the clergy. The Coup of 18 Fructidor was a genuine coup d’état, involving the military.
The Coup of 18 Brumaire Year VIII (9 November 1799), created The Consulate, Napoleon I ruled unopposed as First Consul and would proclaim himself Emperor in 1804.
The First Empire
Although the French Sénat named Napoleon Emperor of the French, on 18 May 1804, Napoleon was a mostly self-proclaimed Emperor.He was crowned on 2 December 1804 and, as noted above, he then crowned his Créole wife Joséphineimpératrice. She kept that title when Napoleon married Marie-Louise of Austria.
Napoleon suffered severe losses during the French invasion of Russia (1812) and at the Battle of Leipzig, fought in October 1813. France was invaded and the First Empire, dissolved. In fact, the First Empire ended twice. It ended first on 4 April 1814,[i] when Napoleon I abdicated and was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany. Napoleon escaped and he returned to power. This period of the Napoleonic Wars (1803 – 1815) is called the Hundred Days (111 to be precise).
The First Empire ended a second time, when Napoleon I was defeated at Waterloo, on 18 June 1815. After Waterloo, Napoleon was exiled to a distant island, Saint Helena, where he died of stomach cancer in 1821.
The Congress of Vienna (1815)
The First Empire was followed by the Congress of Vienna, the foremost social and political event of the nineteenth century, conducted before and after Napoleon I’s Hundred Days.
The decisions made in Vienna laid the groundwork for various insurrections and, ultimately, World War I. However, the Congress of Vienna was the first meeting of a united Europe or European nations seeking peaceful coexistence. (See Concert of Europe, Wikipedia.)
The Two Monarchies and Three Monarchs
Napoleon’s Hundred Days, his return from Elba, complicated the installation of Louis XVIII, portrayed above. What a lovely child!
1830 – 1848: Louis-Philippe I (House of Orleans, elected King of the French), Louis- Philippe I is the son of Philippe Égalité, or Louis-Philippe II, who was guillotined on 6 November 1793; aged 46.
Comments on Charles X
Charles X undermined his reputation and popularity because of the Anti-Sacrilege Act (1825 – 1830) and because he proposed financial indemnities for properties confiscated during the 1789 Revolution (the French Revolution). His actions led to the JulyRevolution of 1830, when Louis-Philippe (House of Orleans) was elected King of the French.
Louis XVII, Titular, Louis-Charles de France Alexandre Kucharski (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Exclusions
Louis XVII became titular (having the title of) King of France on 21 January 1893, the day his father was executed. He died of a form of tuberculosis on 8 June 1895. He never reigned.
Louis-Philippe II, Duc d’Orléans or Philippe Égalité (13 April 1747 – 6 November 1793; by guillotine). Louis-Philippe II did not reign.
The 1848 Revolutions
King Louis-Philippe III was deposed during the 1848 Revolution. In 1848, there were revolutions in many European countries, including France. In France, certain matters had to be settled: suffrage (who votes?); the right to employment, etc.
The Second Republic & Second Empire
In 1848, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was the elected President of France, now a Republic. However, on 2 December 1851, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’état that transformed him into Napoleon III. He was the nephew of Emperor Napoleon I. Napoleon III and l’impératrice Eugénie, his wife, fled France after a Prussian victory at the Battle of Sedan, fought on 1 September 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War (19 July 1870 – 10 May 1871).
Famed French author Victor Hugo fled to Guernsey when Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte transformed himself into an Emperor. (See Sources, below.) Karl Marx wrote an analysis of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte’s 18 Brumaire. It can be read online. (See Sources, below.)
Napoleon II, Titular (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Exclusion
Napoleon II (b. Tuileries, 1811 – d. Vienna, 1832) was named Emperor by his father Emperor Napoleon I, on 4 September 1814, the day his father abdicated. He is titular (has the title of) Emperor, but never ruled France. He died at the age of 21, of tuberculosis.
Napoleon II in Literature
Napoleon II (the Duke of Reichstadt) was born in Paris, in 1811, and died in Vienna, in 1832. His mother was Marie-Louise of Austria. French playwright Edmond Rostand wrote a 6-act play entitled L’Aiglon (the eaglet), a Project Gutenberg Publication [EBook #30012], based on Napoleon II’s life. The very famous Sarah Bernhardt was l’aiglon (produced on 30 March 1900) and the play was a success, but not as great a success as Cyrano de Bergerac (1897). The real Napoleon II was:
King of Rome (1811 – 1814)
Prince of Parma (1814 – 1817)
Duke of Reichstadt (1818 – 1832)
Comments on Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte:
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is the same person as Napoleon III. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte organized the coup d’état of 2 December 1851, staged on the forty-eighth anniversary of his uncle’s, Napoleon I, coronation: 11 Frimaire XIII (2 December 1804).
Louis XVI (23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793; by guillotine) and Marie Antoinette (2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793; by guillotine) were married in 1870. They had four children:
The Nineteenth century in France was an experiment in democracy. It was also a period of drastic changes. Feudalism survived until the French Revolution, so the 19th century was France’s Industrial Revolution. Previous forms of government were revisited, revealing tentativeness on the part of the French nation.
Some idealized the Monarchy (Gustave Flaubert‘s Madame Bovary [EBook #2413]). However, in the 19th century, only Emperors resembled Absolute Monarchs; King Louis-Philippe I was elected King of the French. The Church of France had to rebuild. It’s wealth had been confiscated in the early days of the French Revolution, at the suggestion, on 10 October 1789, of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord,[ii] an ordained priest and a bishop.
Terms:
un fils de France: son of a reigning king (France)
Madame Royale: title sometimes given the eldest living unmarried daughter of a reigning monarch (France)
le Dauphin: the heir apparent (France)
un coup d’état: the overthrow of a government usually planned within a previous government (an “inside job,” close to treason)
The Congress of Vienna, (Photo credit: David King)
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine (1)
Et nos amours Faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine
Under Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine and our love. Need Iremember ? Joy always came after the pain.
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Let night come and the hour ring. Days go away, I remain.
Les mains dans les mainsrestons face à face (2) Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l’onde si lasse
Hand in hand, let us stay face to face. While, beneath (sous) the bridge of our arms, Tired of being stared at eternally, flow waves,so weary.
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Let night come and the hour ring. Days go away, I remain.
L’amour s’en va comme cette eau courante (3)
L’amour s’en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l’Espérance est violente
Love goes away as this water runs. Love goes away. How slow life is, and Hope, so pressing (violent).
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Let night come and the hour ring. Days go away, I remain.
Passent les jours et passent les semaines (4) Ni temps passé Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Days pass and weeks pass. Neither the past Nor love returns Under Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine.
Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure
Let night come and the hour ring. Days go away, I remain.
My translation is mostly literal. The following is more poetical:
Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away And lovers Must I be reminded Joy came always after pain The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I We’re face to face and hand in hand While under the bridges Of embrace expire Eternal tired tidal eyes The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I Love elapses like the river Love goes by Poor life is indolent And expectation always violent The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I The days and equally the weeks elapse The past remains the past Love remains lost Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away The night is a clock chiming The days go by not I…
Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki), 26 August 1880 – 9 November 1918, is a French writer, born in Rome. He is of Polish descent on his mother’s side. His father is unknown, but he may have been Francesco Costantino Camillo Flugi d’Aspermont (born 1835). Apollinaire learned French as a child, in Rome. His grandfather served in the Russian army and was killed during the Crimean War.
Apollinaire knew everyone, le Tout-Paris, including Gertrude Stein, a patron of the arts. She is pictured to his right in the painting featured at the top of this post. (See The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations, Wikipedia.) Apollinaire wrote poetry, plays, short stories, and he was an art critic. His poem, in the shape of a cat, is a collection of French expressions referring to cats, such as « La nuit tous les chats sont gris. » (At night, all cats are grey.) « Avoir d’autres chats à fouetter [to whip] » means: to have other fish to fry.
Apollinaire was in love with artist Marie Laurencin (« Marie » and, I believe, his amour in « Le pont Mirabeau »). He sustained a brain injury during World War I, and died, two year later, in 1918, of the Spanish Flu, a pandemic.
In 1450, legendary Briton William Caxton (c. 1422 – c. 1491), a merchant, a diplomat, a writer, a translator and Britain’s first printer, moved to Bruges, Belgium. At that time in history, the Franco-Flemish lands were very rich and, as I have stated several times, they were the cultural hub of Europe. As a merchant, Caxton had joined the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London of which he would become the governor.
Caxton was interested in literature. He learned Flemish and translated the very popular Roman de Renart from the Flemish into English. Caxton had set up a printing press in 1476, at Westminster, England, where, in 1481, he printed his translation of the Roman de Renart, which he entitled The History ofReynard the Fox. Caxton also printed Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and he is the translator, in collaboration with Colard Mansion, of Raoul Lefèvre‘s the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, or Recueil des Histoires de Troy, printed in Bruges and the first book to be printed in the English language.
Although Le Roman de Renart is a masterpiece of French literature, it has Flemish, German and other roots. Renart was born as Reinardus in Nivardus of Ghent’s Ysengrimus, a Latin fabliau and mock epic, and his adventures were told in several languages. Its earliest “branches” were published in c. 1171.
German Translations of the Roman de Renart
Renart was first translated by Alsatian Heinrich der Glïchezäre as “Reinhart Fuchs ” (1180) almost as soon as its first branches were published in France. Glïchezäre’s Reinhart Fuchs is the first Beast epic in the German language and “branches” of Reynard’s adventures would be retold in the German-speaking lands until Wolfgang von Goethe as Reinecke FuchsDE during the French Revolution. Goethe’s Reynard is rooted in Johann Christoph Gottsched‘s Reineke der Fuchs.
Caxton’s The History of Reynard the Fox (click) is an internet publication. It was digitized by Canadian University of Victoria professor David Badke in 2003. It is a treasure as is professor Badke’s Medieval Bestiary, which includes Reynard. David Badke used an edition published by George Routledge and Sons, in 1889. Henry Morley wrote the introduction to Caxton’s 1889 Reynard the Fox. It is a concise but very informative introduction.
I have already mentioned Joan Acocella‘s “Fox News: What the stories of Reynard tell us about ourselves.”Joan Acocella used Caxton’s translation. Le Roman de Renart is also a Wikisource publication, in French. However, Wikisource used a shorter but superior reworking of Le Roman de Renart. It was rewritten by celebrated medievalist Paulin Paris. (See Paulin Paris, Wikipedia.)
Reynard: an Incunabulum
As for Caxton’s Reynard the Fox, it is an incunable, or a book printed between Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and movable type, in c. 1439, and the year 1501. Incunables have also been called “fifteeners.” From time to time, patrons asked printers to leave blank areas so the book could be somewhat illuminated or rubricated, as shown below:
The above is not the article I wanted to post as Preface to Reynard the Fox: Motifs. That post was too long which required my dividing it into several more or less independent short posts. It may be published in its entirety, but I doubt it. It would be repetitive.
For instance, Rousseau criticized Molière’s Misanthrope, because the playwright had juxtaposed in one character, Alceste, “l’homme de bien” (the good man) and “l’homme emporté” (the angry man).Professor Jules Brody has described Alceste and Dom Juan as “morally” in the right but “esthetically” in the wrong.[2] Alceste is right when he says about courtiers that they are not necessarily sincere. However, we also know that an angry Alceste criticizes courtiers because he cannot tell whether or not they are sincere when they pay him a compliment. This is the reason why Rousseau called him “unhomme emporté [angry].” Alceste gets angry.
The faults Alceste found in courtiers were frequently very real, but a superficial reading of the Misanthrope or limited exposure to the play do not allow the reader or spectator to realize that Alceste himself needs to be validated to such an extent that genuine praise and compliments are as important to him as a seemingly devout Tartuffe is to Orgon (Tartuffe). Alceste threatens to leave Paris and live in a desert, a location outside Paris, and will not marry Célimène unless she follows him, which she cannot and will not do. After he has settled in a desert, Alceste will probably forever return to court, or, metaphorically, to Célimène. At the end of the Misanthrope, the curtain falls on an empty stage. Philinte, Le Misanthrope‘s raisonneur, and Éliante, a woman Alceste could have married but will marry Philinte, are leaving so they to can help Alceste.
François Boucher (dessins ) & Laurent Cars (gravures) Le Tartuffe; L’Avare L’École des femmes; La Critique de l’École des femmes
Le Tartuffe by François Boucher
L’Avare by François Boucher & Laurent Cars
L’École des femmes
La Critique de l’École des femmes
Children wishing their father were dead
In L’Avare, Molière also created characters wishing the death of Harpagon, a tyrannical miser. In the best of all possible worlds, children love their parents and parents love their children. Harpagon, however, loves his money more than he loves his children, Cléante and Élise. Before the anagnorisis, Mariane, who loves Cléante, Harpagon’s son, tells Frosine, a matchmaker, that she wishes Harpagon were dead, which she says is strange. Cléante also wishes his father were dead and tells his valet La Flèche. Yet, despite his cruelty, Harpagon remains a father and his children resent finding fault with him.
Mon Dieu, Frosine, c’est une étrange affaire, lorsque pour être heureuse, il faut souhaiter ou attendre le trépas de quelqu’un, et la mort ne suit pas tous les projets que nous faisons. (Mariane à Frosine, III. iv)
[Oh, Frosine! What a strange state of things that, in order to be happy, we must look forward to the death of another. Yet death will not fall in with all the projects we make.] [Mariane to Frosine, III. 8]
Que veux-tu que j’y fasse ? Voilà où les jeunes gens sont réduits par la maudite avarice des pères ; et on s’étonne après cela que les fils souhaitent qu’ils meurent. (Cléante à La Flèche, II. i)
[What would you have me do? It is to this that young men are reduced by the accursed avarice of their fathers; and people are astonished after that, that sons long for their death.] [Cléante to La Flèche, II. 1] [eBook #6923]
Rousseau is indignant:[3]
« C’est un grand vice assurément d’être avare et de prêter à usure, mais n’en est-ce pas un plus grand encore à un fils de voler son père, de lui manquer de respect, de lui faire les plus insultants reproches, et quand ce père irrité lui donne sa malédiction, de répondre d’un air goguenard, qu’il n’a que faire de ses dons ? Si la plaisanterie est excellente en est-elle moins punissable ? Et la pièce où l’on fait aimer le fils insolent qui l’a faite, en est-elle moins une école de mauvaises mœurs ? »
[It is no doubt a fault to be a miser and a usurer, but isn’t it a greater fault for a son to rob his father and to be disrespectful towards him, to heap upon him insulting blame and, when this irritated father curses him, to answer mockingly that he has no use for his gifts? If the joke is witty, is it less punishable? And is the play where the father is depicted as a loving father, any less a school for vice?]
Yet, after it is revealed that Anselme is Dom Thomas d’Alburcy, Valère and Mariane’s wealthy father, the miser is so happy to learn that his cassette will be returned to him that he abandons his project to remarry. His son Cléante will marry Mariane, Dom Thomas d’Alburcy’s daughter and the woman Harpagon wished to take as a wife.
Dom Juan: le Grand Seigneur méchant homme
Dom Juan is a Grand Seigneur méchant homme, a great lord and a bad man who is felled by heaven itself. In his duality, Dom Juan resembles Le Misanthrope‘s Alceste, homme de bien and homme emporté (Rousseau). In fact, in Dom Juan, a masterful Molière created a dark version of his apparently virtuous Alceste, the misanthrope. Célimène, whom Alceste wishes to marry, belongs not to a corrupt as much as a frivolous court. Molière will not condemn court altogether. The courtiers Célimène’s portraits amuse have read Charles Sorel‘s Lois de la galanterie. Moreover, she knows that when age has tarnished her charm, she may well be a prude, a role, or function, played by the Misanthrope‘s Arsinoé. The world Arsinoé criticizes is the very world that had been sustenance to her in earlier and better years.
Il est une saison pour la galanterie, Il en est une, aussi, propre à la pruderie ; On peut, par politique, en prendre le parti, Quand de nos jeunes ans, l’éclat est amorti ; Cela sert à couvrir de fâcheuses disgrâces. (Célimène à Arsinoé, III. iii, 975 – 79)
[There is an age for love-affairs, methinks,
And there’s an age that’s fit for prudery.
It may be policy to choose the second
When youth is gone and all its glamour faded,
For that may serve to hide a sorry downfall.] [Célimène to Arsinoé, III. 3]
As for Dom Juan himself, he has redeeming features. He is not the demonic figure his valet Sganarelle describes to Dom Gusman, Elvira’s horseman, in the first act of Dom Juan:
[m]ais par précaution, je t’apprends (inter nos,) que tu vois en Dom Juan, mon maître, le plus grand scélérat que la terre ait jamais porté, un enragé, un chien, un diable, un Turc, un hérétique, qui ne croit ni Ciel, ni Enfer, ni loup-garou, qui passe cette vie en véritable bête brute, en pourceau d’Epicure,en vrai Sardanapale, qui ferme l’oreille à toutes les remontrances qu’on lui peut faire, et traite de billevesées tout ce que nous croyons. (Sganarelle à Don Gusman, I. i)
[Still, as a warning, inter nos, I would teach you that you will find in Don Juan, my master, the greatest renegade that the earth has ever endured, a wild man, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic, who does not believe in Heaven, Hell, or the Wolf-man, who disports in this life as a thoroughly brute beast, a pig of Epicurus, a true Sardanapalus, who closes his ears to all Christian remonstrances that one could make to him, and treats all that we believe as empty words.] [Sganarelle to Don Gusman, I. 1, p. 3]
However when Dom Juan enters, he asks Sganarelle if perhaps the person who was speaking to him could have been Done Elvire’s “good” Gusman:
Quel homme te parlait là, Il a bien de l’air ce me semble du bon Gusman de Done Elvire ? (I. ii)
Who were you just speaking to? He looked a little like the good Gusman of Donna Elvira. [Dom Juan to Sganarelle, I. 2, p. 4]
According to Jules Brody, Molière’s Dom Juan has committed a “single crime,” so all is not lost:
His single crime, after all, consists not in having lured Done Elvire out of her convent, but, rather, in having married and abandoned her. (Brody, p. 568)
The difficulty would lie in the fact that Dom Juan cannot love a person who loves him.[4] He must feel jealous. If he does not fear losing a woman he loves, he cannot love. Molière’s Dom Juan is more of a jaloux than he is a seducer.
Mais lorsqu’on en est maître une fois, il n’y a plus rien à dire ni rien à souhaiter ; tout le beau de la passion est fini, et nous nous endormons dans la tranquillité d’un tel amour, si quelque objet nouveau ne vient réveiller nos désirs, et présenter à notre cœur les charmes. (I. ii) [But let us be master once, nothing more is left to say or to wish; the beautiful part of passion is done, and we would sink into the tranquility of such a love, if some new object did not come to awaken our desires, and present to our heart the alluring charms of another conquest.] [I. 2, p. 6]
However, Dom Juan has also trivialized God himself, which is not a mere detail. He will not repent.
Non, non, il ne sera pas dit, quoi qu’il arrive, que je sois capable de me repentir,
allons, suis-moi. (V. v)
[No, no, it will never be said, whatever happens, that I repented. Now, follow me.]
Dom Juan. [V.v, p. 61]
Conclusion
Rousseau questioned the morality of theatre and in particular Molière’s Misanthrope and Miser, L’Avare (1668). Rousseau wrote to d’Alembert when a theatre was under construction in Geneva. It was a private letter, but d’Alembert published it. As noted above, a first or superficial reading of Molière’s plays, Le Misanthrope in particular, may bring confusion as to the morality of his comedies. So could attending one performance of both Dom Juan (1665) and Le Misanthrope (1666). The rapidity inherent to performances may condition a text.
Reading plays and examining such elements as their structure is more likely tolead to a better grasp of their meaning. The doubling of functions,the intervention of a deus ex machina, ananagnorisis, the use of a pharmakos(a scapegoat), incongruities, and other factors may be extremely revealing.A title, such as Dom Juan, may also condition a play. Dom Juan is a reputed seducer, but Molière’s Dom Juan is unconvincing in this regard (see II. 1-5, pp. 12-28). He is not as Sganarelle depicts him. Returning home to his wife could rehabilitate him. However, he has killed the commandeur and his name is Dom Juan. He is therefore invited to a festin de pierre, a feast of stones. Led by the Statue, he is engulfed into an abyss.
In short, Molière’s plays may skirt what is deemed unacceptable. He did have to rewrite his Tartuffe twice because it was considered an attack on devotion, rather than an attack on hypocrisy. However, hypocrisy was attacked and the hypocrite, Tartuffe, used casuistry shortly after the publication of Blaise Pascal‘s Lettres provinciales, written in 1656-1657.
As for L’Avare, Harpagon is forcing his daughter Élise to marry Anselme while he, the miser, marries Mariane, who loves Cléante, Harpagon’s son. Were it not for an anagnorisis and the kindness of Dom Thomas d’Alburcy, Valère and Mariane’s reportedly lost father, Élise and Mariane may have had to enter a forced marriage.
Yet, Rousseau’s critique of Molière is not to be trivialized. It had the benefit of introducing a very long discussion on an enigmatic Molière. In Dom Juan, the jeune premier, the young man who wishes to marry, Dom Juan himself, marries and leaves his wife before the play begins. He will not give money to the poor unless he swears (III. ii) [III. 2, p. 34] and he challenges God Himself. He will settle his dues with God.
Va, va, c’est une affaire entre le Ciel et moi, et nous la démêlerons bien ensemble, sans que tu t’en mettes en peine. (Dom Juan à Sganarelle, I. ii)
[That’s enough. It’s an issue between Heaven and me, and we get along just fine without bothering yourself about it.] [Dom Juan to Sganarelle. I. 2, p. 7]
In remote antiquity, the old king may have been put to death leaving room for a new generation, a younger society. This happened on the day of the longest night, the winter Solstice. French 17th-century comedies kept alive the spirit of the Kōmos, a “drunken procession” and the Saturnalia, an equinoctial reversal of roles. (See Wikipedia.)
____________________ [1] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre à M. d’Alembert, in Du Contrat social (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 1962), p. 154. [2] Jules Brody, “Don Juan” and “Le Misanthrope,” or The Esthetics of Individualism in Molière, PMLA 84 (1969), pp. 559 -576. [3] See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, op. cit. [4]Madame de La Fayette‘s La Princesse de Clèves (1678), a novel, is the finest French 17th- century portrayal of jealous love. [5] Anne Ubersfeld, Lire le théâtre (Paris : Éditions sociales, 1978).
In Molière’s comedies, the one fault that dooms a marriage or a possible marriage is jealousy. In this regard, Molière’s École des femmes is our most celebrated example.It was first performed on 26 December 1662 at the Palais-Royal. Molière’s troupe was at the time la Troupe de Monsieur, frère unique du Roi, the company of the Duke of Orleans, the only brother of Louis XIV. It is une grande comédie and it created a controversy. Molière response was in the form of a short play entitled: La Critique de l’École des femmes.
In Molière’s theatre, jealousy affects most barbons, because its stems from the same flaw in character that blinds Orgon and allows Tartuffe to dispossess Orgon’s family. French scholarPaul Bénichou has labelled this flaw a vanité inquiète, vanity combined with insecurity.[1]Were it not for Tartuffe, it would be difficult for Orgon to force his daughter Mariane to marry Tartuffe. Yet, Orgon would not take Tartuffe into his home if he did not wish to be a tyrant with impunity.
In the case of Arnolphe, fear of being cuckoldedis an obsession and, as Chrysalde—the plays raisonneur—tells him, he should not laugh atthose whose wives are not faithful because humans are at the mercy of destiny. Molière lived in the century that opposed casuistes and Jansenists. In the eyes of Jansenists, humans could not ensure their salvation.
Another French scholar, René Bray[2] entitled one of the chapters of his Molière, homme de théâtre (1954) Molière pense-t-il ? Molière theatre is rooted, first and foremost, in comedy, including farces and his own comedies. In earlier days, biography was used to “explain” Molière’s plays.
We cannot dismiss Zeitgeist, but it is important to study Molière using other criteria such as the dramatic structure of his plays, its “types,” and other organizing principles. According to Northrop Frye, one should study a work of literature using a “conceptual framework.”[3] Moreover, there was a time when Molière’s plays were not read as plays but as texts. Molière thinks, but he does so within a genre, comedy, that constitutes, in and of itself, a “conceptual framework.”
The commedia dell’arte troupe of the Gelosi in a late 16th-century Flemish painting (Musée Carnavalet, Paris). The woman is usually identified as Isabella, after Isabella Andreini (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Arnolphe, or Monsieur de la Souche
Agnès,une ingénue, raised by Arnolphe
Horace, the jeune premier whose father is Oronte
Oronte, Horace’s father and a friend of Arnophe
Chrysalde, the raisonneur and Arnolphe’s friend
Enrique, Chrysalde’s brother-in-law
The dramatis personæ also includes a notary, a maid (Georgette), and a valet (Alain).
The Plot
At one level, the plot is that of farces: the trompeurtrompé. But, combined with the trompeur trompé, the plot of L’École des femmes is also the archetypal struggle between the eirôn(the young lovers) and the alazṓn (the blocking character or personnage-obstacle). Le blondin berne le barbon.
In this post, I am telling the plot of the School for Wives, l’École des femmes and write an analysis in a second post. The plot itself is significant. Genre is the starting-point.
Act I
Arnolphe adopted Agnès when she was four years old. He wants to marry her, but fearing he might be cuckolded, he had his ward raised in a convent where she was taught as little as possible about the ways of the world. He thinks that a wife who is sotte and bête, stupid or a beast, will be faithful. He is 42 years old and Agnès, 17.
As the curtain rises, Chrysalde is warning Arnolphe not to boast. Despite his precautions, he may be cocu and people would laugh at him outloud. A cocu is a man whose wife is unfaithful. It is best, expains Chrysalde not to make fun of others. If one does not laugh at others, their laughter will be hushed if destiny strikes a blow, which it often does (I. i)(I.1)
Arnophe returns from a trip (I. i)(I. 1). He tries to enter his house, but Georgette and Alain do not seem to know that they should open the door (I. ii).
Arnolphe talks to Agnès who has been sewing (I. iii). Arnolphe also meets Horace, the jeune premier, who tells Arnophe that his father will soon have a visitor, Enrique, and he asks for money which Arnolphe provides (I. iii)(I. 3).
Horace tells Arnolphe that he has met a lovely woman who is being kept in a house by some sort of senex iratus who is very jealous, Arnolphe is 42 (I. iv)(I. 4).
Horace does not know that Arnophe has changed his name to Monsieur de la Souche.
Act II
Arnolphe expresses his feelings. He is in pain (II. i)(II. 1). He talks with his valet and maid who let a man enter the house (II. ii). Alain explains that Arnolphe is jealous and that Georgette would also be jealous if someone took the soup she is eating (II. iii)(II. 3).
Our senex iratus confronts Agnès, thinking she can deny what Horace has said. She cannot. On the contrary, she has been polite, obedient and truthful, as she was taught. Horace waved at her and she waved back, not to be impolite. He waved again, and she waved back again. Agnès had been told not to see anyone, but she had also been taught civility. She did as she was taught.
Arnolphe is alarmed. He was to know if Horace touched Agnès. Again she tells the truth. He did. He caressed her hands and arms. Arnolphe wanders if he has caressed anything else. She hesitates, but says that she gave Horace the ribbon Arnolphe had given her (II. iii)(II.3).
Arnolphe says she will marry that very evening. She thinks her spouse will be Horace, but Arnolphe’s intentions are different. He will be the spouse.
Act II ends with a famous verse, borrowed from Corneille’s Sertorius(V. 1867-1868):
Je suis maître, je parle : allez obéissez. [I am the Master, I speak : go obey.]
Act III
In Act III, Arnolphe instructs Agnès on how to be a good wife: she must be docile because the husband is in charge, etc. L’une est moitié suprême, et l’autre subalterne[.](III. ii; III. 2) [The one half is supreme, and the other subordinate.] (The School for Wives) He describes the boiling cauldrons of hell.]
Et qu’il est aux enfers des chaudières bouillantes Où l’on plonge à jamais les femmes mal vivantes. (III. ii, 725. 3; III.2)
[There are boiling cauldrons in hell, into which wives who live wickedly are thrown for evermore.]
He then has her repeat:
« Les Maximes du Mariage ou les devoirs de la femme mariée, avec son exercice journalier. » [The Maxims of Marriage ; or the Duties of a Wife ; together with her Daily Exercise.] (III. ii; III. 2).
Arnolphe speaks alone, a soliloquy (III. iii; III. 3). Soliloquies are frequent in L’École des femmes.
Horace tells Arnolphe that Agnès has managed to attach a message to a rock she was to thrown at him. (III. iv; III, 4).
Arnolphe speaks alone (III. iv,[III. 4] a soliloquy).
Act IV
Arnolphe cannot believe that Horace should be confiding in him. Horace is doing very well. He tells Arnolphe that Agnès has seen him and let him into her room. When she heard Arnolphe, she put Horace in a closet. They will be meeting that evening (IV. vii).
Chrysalde visits. There will be no supper, i.e. no wedding (IV. viii; IV. 7).
Act V
In Act V, Arnolphe thinks that Georgette and Alain have killed Horace, but they haven’t. In fact, Horace is quite well and Agnès is with him. To protect her reputation, he wishes for Arnolphe to look after her. Agnès thinks he loves her less than she loves him (dépit amoureux).Ironically she is being returned to Arnolphe.
Anagnorisis
Enrique is Agnès’ father. Her real name is Angélique. He has made arrangements to marry her to Oronte’s son. Oronte’s reaction is the following:
(…) Si son cœur a quelque répugnance, Je tiens qu’on ne doit pas lui faire résistance. (V. vii, 1684-85; V. 7)
[If it is repugnant to him, I think we ought not to force him. I think my brother will be of my mind.]
Horace learns that Arnolphe is now called Monsieur de la Souche, which is why he told him about Agnès. It turns out, however, that Enrique would like Oronte’s son Horace to marry Agnès. Arnolphe leaves.
Nature claimed its “rights.” Horace intended to marry the woman who happens to be Enrique’s daughter. So, all’s well that ends well.
Conclusion
I will break here, without a conclusion. It is too long to be posted with the plot. Moreover, this play was controversial.
[1] Paul Bénichou, Morales du Grand Siècle (Paris : Gallimard, 1948), p. 295-296. [2] René Bray is the author of La Formation de la doctrine classique en France. [3] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971 [1957]), p. 6.
Étude pour La Critique de l’École des femmes by François Boucher, sanguine
“Tendre Amour” (Jean-Philippe Rameau) – YouTube
Jean-Philippe Rameau by Carmontelle(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
MADAME PERNELLE, mother of Orgon ORGON, husband of Elmire ELMIRE, wife of Orgon DAMIS, son of Orgon MARIANE, daughter of Orgon, in love with Valère CLÉANTE, brother-in-law (beau-frère) of Orgon TARTUFFE, a hypocrite DORINE, Mariane’s maid M. LOYAL, a bailiff (l’huissier) A Police Officer (l’Exempt) FLIPOTTE, Madame Pernelle’s servant
Le Tartuffe is a five-act comedy in verse. It was first performed in 1664 and banned. It was rewritten and performed in 1667, but remained banned until 1669.
In the Misanthrope, Molière combines in one character, Alceste, the blondin and the barbon, or the young man who wishes to marry and the person(s) who oppose(s) the blondin‘s marriage. In other words, in Le Tartuffe, the eirôn and the alazṓn, or the blondin andthe barbon,are separate characters, but Molière seems to have doubled his alazṓn, or barbon. Both Orgon and Tartuffe are blocking characters, or the alazṓn. They are so close to one another that one could suggest a symbiosis.
ORGON to CLÉANTE, Tartuffe (I, 5)
Dear brother, you’d be charmed to know him;
Your raptures over him would have no end.
He is a man … who … ah! … in fact … a man
Whoever does his will, knows perfect peace,
And counts the whole world else, as so much dung.
His converse has transformed me quite; he weans
My heart from every friendship, teaches me
To have no love for anything on earth;
And I could see my brother, children, mother,
And wife, all die, and never care—a snap.
CLÉANTE
Your feelings are humane, I must say, brother!
The Plot
This is how the plot unfolds. Orgon has taken into his home a man feigning devotion, Tartuffe. Tartuffe is also a casuiste, a person who can take sin out of sinning. Because Tartuffe is a deft casuiste, he allows Orgon to act as a tyrannical father, and to do so with impunity. Orgon is so delighted he cannot see that he is being fooled. Yet, without Tartuffe, Orgon could not be a tyrannical father. For instance, when Orgon’s daughter Mariane begs her father to be spared a marriage to Tartuffe, Orgon has to brace himself, because he is at heart a compassionate individual:
MARIANE to ORGON, Tartuffe (IV, 3)
(…) I beg you Upon my knees, oh, save me from the torment Of being possessed by one whom I abhor!
ORGON to himself, Tartuffe (IV, 3)
Allons, ferme, mon cœur point de faiblesse humaine !
[Come, come, my heart, be firm! no human weakness!]
Mariane then asks to be allowed to enter a convent
MARIANE, Tartuffe (IV, 3) Oh, rather let a convent’s rigid rule Wear out the wretched days that Heaven allots me.
But Orgon has a good directeur de conscience under whose guidance, he is learning to turn inhumanity into a virtue, which it is not. Knowing the role Tartuffe teaches, Orgon preaches mortification:
ORGON to MARIANE, Tartuffe (IV, 3) So, mortify your senses by this marriage, And don’t vex me about it anymore.
Orgon is therefore beguiled. With the exception of his mother, Madame Pernelle, Orgon is the only member of the society of the play not to see that Tartuffe is a faux dévot who does not mortify his senses. However, Orgon so needs Tartuffe, who fits him like a glove, that he cannot see what everyone sees, which is both a recipe for disaster (Orgon is blind) and a source of comic relief (everyone knows and laughs).
‘Gros et gras, le teint et la bouche vermeille’
[stout, fat, fair, rosy-lipped]
Gaston Hall writes that “‘Gros et gras, le teint et la bouche vermeille’ [stout, fat, fair, rosy-lipped], Tartuffe is quite unfitted to play the part of the saintly ascetic. No rascal with the slightest talent for hypocrisy would have dared sit down to dine upon ‘… deux perdrix Avec une moitié de gigot en hachis’ [two partridges, As well as half a leg o’ mutton, deviled]” (Gaston Hall, p. 14).[1]
For instance, in Act 1, Scene 4, Orgon has just returned from a trip to the country and wants to know what has happened during his absence. However, he is so “tartuffié” that he cannot hear that his wife Elmire has been sick. He asks “Et Tartuffe” [And what about Tartuffe?] four times, and says “Le pauvre homme” [The poor man] four times, whatever he hears.
This scene also contains a second source of comic relief: the word “tartuffié” instead of possessed. Given the devastation visited upon Orgon’s family, the word “tartuffié” is incongruous but it minimizes the degree to which Tartuffe has seduced Orgon. In fact, Orgon is besotted and has begun to twist reality as did 17th-century casuists. Casuistry constitutes a form of moral jurisprudence, a practice that led Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) to write his famous Lettres Provinciales (1656-57) and also exerted influence on Molière who mocked it in Tartuffe.
In short, in Molière’s Tartuffe, the character who opposes Mariane’s marriage to Valère is not Tartuffe, it is Orgon, the pater familias of most comedies.
However, as Orgon enjoys threatening his daughter into a mésalliance, which is the normal plot of comedies, Tartuffe is coveting Orgon’s wife and appropriating all of Orgon’s belongings, including a cassette containing incriminating documents. Tartuffe knows about the cassette and urges Orgon not to keep it in his, Orgon’s, possession. If Orgon gives the cassette to Tartuffe, he will be able to deny having this cassette if asked about it, which frees him. He would not have to sin. One of the methods of casuistry is restriction mentale. One says: “I don’t have it.” It may be an incomplete statement, but it isn’t an outright lie. Orgon does not want to sin.
CLÉANTE to ORGON, Tartuffe (V, 1) How could you trust them to another’s hands?
ORGON By reason of a conscientious scruple. I went straight to my traitor, to confide In him; his sophistry made me believe That I must give the box to him to keep, So that, in case of search, I might deny My having it at all, and still, by favour Of this evasion, keep my conscience clear Even in taking oath against the truth.
The above is information we are not given until late in the play, but Dorine mentions “late unpleasantness” at the very beginning of the play (I, 2). Dorine, Mariane’s maid, creates tension. Dorine is our zanni, the astute servant of thecommedia dell’arte.
DORINE to CLÉANTE, Tartuffe (I, 2) His conduct in our late unpleasantness Had won him much esteem, and proved his courage In service of his king; but now he’s like A man besotted, since he’s been so taken With this Tartuffe. He calls him brother, loves him A hundred times as much as mother, son, Daughter, and wife…
At any rate, it seems we have two alazṓn: a reticent pater familias and a man who can make arrangements with heaven.
Tartuffe’s Confession
The truth as lie
At this point, Act III, matters start to turn around. Molière however treats us to a confession that is a truth as lie.
Hidden in a closet (III, 3), Damis, Orgon’s son, has seen Tartuffe attempting to seduce Elmire, Orgon’s wife, and tells his father. Although he is “tartuffié,” Orgon nevertheless confronts Tartuffe, but no sooner does he address him than the faux dévot confesses. Il s’accuse pour s’excuser.
TARTUFFE to ORGON, Tartuffe (III, 6) Oui mon frère, je suis un méchant, un coupable, Un malheureux pécheur, tout pain d’iniquité, Le plus grand scélérat qui jamais ait été.
[Yes, brother, I am wicked, I am guilty,
A miserable sinner, steeped in evil,
The greatest criminal that ever lived.]
Such defence is consistent with devotion and it is, therefore, very effective. In the Catholic Church, the devout confess. After confession, the sinner may have to make amends, but he or she is absolved. However, blind as he is, Orgon does not see a swindler in Tartuffe, but a genuinely devout man. In fact, Orgon is the one who makes amends (penance). To show to what extent he believes him, Orgon asks Tartuffe to keep his wife company at all times (III, 7).
Consequences
However, the plot has thickened. Elmire had asked Damis not to tell Orgon (III, 5). This warming was prudent on her part as Tartuffe’s confession only serves to convince Orgon that Tartuffe is a holy man, which he isn’t. So the results are catastrophic. As quoted above (IV, 6), Orgon presses the marriage of Mariane to Tartuffe and he disinherits his son Damis.
All else having failed, members of Orgon’s family resort to a theatrical device: a-play-within-a-play. Elmire tells her husband to crouch underneath a table behind a tablecloth, a form of curtain (IV, 4). From an actor Orgon is transformed into a spectator. He will see and seeing is believing.
According to Molière scholar Georges Forestier, the play-within-a-play is not a mise en abyme (see Related Articles). It is part of the action dramatique, the plot.[2] In the present case, Professor Forestier is absolutely right. Orgon is a doubting Thomas and so tartuffié, possessed, that his family has little choice but to conceal him under a table, which may not be a play-within-a-play, but constitutes a theatrical recourse. Orgon is stunned and slow to come to Elmire’s rescue. She has coughed repeatedly, as arranged, without Orgon emerging from under the table.
Yet Tartuffe does not take from Orgon much more than Orgon gives him. However, there is a difference. Tartuffe is an extortionist and Orgon, a potential family tyrant, but un hommede bien (a good man) at heart. He has truly been besotted. Orgon so needs Tartuffe, a casuist, that not only does he give his daughter to Tartuffe, disinherit his son Damis, foolishly sign himself away to Tartuffe, but he also entrusts to Tartuffe a cassette that contains incriminating papers and which we do not hear about until Act V.
La Fronde: uprisings
We will not discuss la Fronde except to note that under Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, ChiefMinister of the French King from 1642 until his death, there were uprisings called La Fronde. These occurred between 1648 – 1653 and consisted in two campaigns: the Fronde of the parlementsand the Fronde of the nobles. Absolutism gave no voice to France’s parlements and it’s aristocrats, including princes of the blood, possible heirs to the Kingdom of France who played no role in governing France. Moreover, the nobles refused to pay a tax. The war against Spain was costing a fortune. In the end, peasants and members of the bourgeoisie had to foot the bill.
Both Orgon and Argas were involved in these uprisings. When finally, Orgon realizes that he’s been a fool, he tells Cléante, the raisonneur, and starts running upstairs in the hope of retrieving the cassette, but it’s too late. Monsieur Loyal, the bailiff, is already at the door to collect all of Orgon’s possessions. We soon learn from Valère, who must have friends in high places and is in love with Mariane, Orgon’s daughter, that Tartuffe has already used the cassette alleging, later, that his first duty is to serve the king: “Mais l’intérêt du Prince est mon premier devoir” (V, scène dernière).
ORGON to TARTUFFE, Tartuffe (V, scène dernière)
Ungrateful wretch, do you forget ’twas I
That rescued you from utter misery?
TARTUFFE
[I’ve not forgot some help you may have given;
But my first duty now is toward my prince.
The higher power of that most sacred claim
Must stifle in my heart all gratitude;
And to such puissant ties I’d sacrifice
My friend, my wife, my kindred, and myself.]
How ironic. However Valère has made arrangements for the family to flee (V, 6) because Orgon will be arrested, but in true comic fashion, Tartuffe is arrested.
The tendency of comedy is to include as many people as possible in its final society: the blocking characters are form often reconciled or converted than simply repudiated. (Frye, p. 165)
In Act V, scene 3, Cléante remains optimistic. Tartuffe may prove more merciful than we expect.
CLÉANTE to ORGON, Tartuffe(V, 3) Je voudrais de bon cœur, qu’on pût entre vous deux De quelque ombre de paix raccommoder les nœuds.
[I wish with all my heart that some pretence
Of peace could be patched up between you two.]
Yet, in both Dom Juan and Tartuffe, salvation does not come from a ruse on the part of the society of the play. In Dom Juan a machine engulfs le méchanthomme. In Tartuffe, unPrince ennemi de la fraude saves the family. Molière uses a deus ex machina. We have reached what Northrop Frye calls the “point of ritual death” (p. 179). The eirôn cannot recover.
As noted above, Tartuffe takes little more than what he has been given by Orgon, but Orgon has given everything, which was foolish. Moreover, Tartuffe does not have to accept marrying Mariane. Nor does he have to take possession of what Orgon has handed over to him. Moreover, were Tartuffe humane, he would not run to the Prince carrying the incriminating cassette.
Therefore, although Orgon is forcing Mariane to marry Tartuffe and gives all he has to Tartuffe, including the incriminating cassette, “[t]he pharmakós is neither innocent nor guilty,” writes Frye (p. 41). By doubling the alazṓn (the blocking character), Molière has allowed, on the one hand, greater vilification of Tartuffe, who becomes the pharmakós, and, on the other hand, he has facilitated Orgon’s rehabilitation, as comedy wills. Tartuffe is Molière’s most convincing pharmakós.
Moreover, Tartuffe is the classic alazṓn: a miles gloriosus (Plautus, c. 254–184 BCE; Latin comedy), in which he resembles Dom Juan. (See Alazṓn, Wikipedia.) Elmire resists Tartuffe’s advances by telling him that she may offend heaven: le Ciel. However,in Tartuffe’s eyes, the eyes of a casuist, it is possible to sin without sinning, which is preposterous and leads Tartuffe to hoist his own petard. There is a farcical element in Tartuffe, just as there is a farcical element in the Misanthrope. Let us hear Tartuffe impersonating God, which is casuistry.
TARTUFFE à ELMIRE, Tartuffe (IV, 4) Si ce n’est que le Ciel qu’à mes vœux on oppose, Lever un tel obstacle est à moi peu de chose, Et cela ne doit pas retenir votre cœur.
[If Heaven is all that stands now in my way,
I’ll easily remove that little hindrance;
Your heart need not hold back for such a trifle.]
Comedy is a forgiving. By virtue of comedy’s ancient laws, there will be a happy ending, which, in the case of Molière’s Tartuffe, is brought about by the timely intervention of “un Prince ennemi de la fraude,” a “deus ex machina.” At the end of the play, as we are sitting on the edge of our seats, expecting the Exempt (a police officer) to arrest Orgon, the Exempt arrests Tartuffe.
Tartuffe is made into the guilty and punished half, the scapegoat, or pharmakós, of a doubled alazṓn. Doubling the alazṓn benefits the play. Orgon is part of the play’s final society, which he must deserve, or Elmire would not be his wife and his family so loyal. Nor would a servant, Dorine, speak to Orgon so openly. Orgon cannot re-enter society without redeemable features. We are not in fairyland.
The Truth as Truth
As for Tartuffe, he is as he describes himself when Damis, Orgon’s son, tells his father that he saw Tartuffe trying to seduce Elmire. His confession “gets him off the hook:” il se tire d’affaire. As Will Moore writes, “Tartuffe is sure of Orgon, and Molière is sure of his public” (Will G. Moore, p. 64).[4] But the truth as lie is a reprieve. The truth as lie turns out to be the truth, which is comic irony.
TARTUFFE to ORGON, Tartuffe (III, 6) Non, non, vous vous laissez tromper à l’apparence, Et je ne suis rien moins, hélas, que ce qu’on pense. Tout le monde me prend pour un homme de bien; Mais la vérité pure est que je ne vaux rien.
[No, no; you let appearances deceive you;
I’m anything but what I’m thought to be,
Alas! and though all men believe me godly,
The simple truth is, I’m a worthless creature.]
As the curtain falls, all are on their way to the wedding of Valère and Mariane.
All’s well that ends well.
(Tout est bien qui finit bien.)
Love to everyone ♥
Gouache (XVIIIe siècle) de Fesch et Whirsker. (Photo credit: Larousse)
I have already written that Tartuffe is the punished half of a blocking character. In this post, I have taken this thought further by suggesting a doubling of the alazṓn.
Micheline Bourbeau-Walker, “Tartuffe: masques, machines et machinations,” in Clive Thomson (ed), Proceedings of the 1981 Meeting of the Canadian Association of University and College Teachers of French (Kingston: Signum, 1981), p. 491-509.
ISSN 0700-1525
My PhD dissertation was a study of the pharmakós in Molière:
Micheline Walker, “L’Impossible Entreprise : une étude sur le pharmakós dans le théâtre de Molière,” DAI, 36 (1976) 8103A (Université de la Colombie britannique).
[1] H. Gaston Hall, Tartuffe, Molière (W. G. Moore, General Editor, Barron’s Studies in French Literature: 1960). [2] Georges Forestier, Le Théâtre dans le théâtre (Genève: Droz, 1996). [3] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton University Press, 1973) (online) [4] W. G. Moore, Molière, A New Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949).
—ooo—
GEORG MATTHIAS MONN (1717-1750)
Concerto for cello, strings and basso continuo in G minor (2. Adagio)
Performed by the Freiburger Barockorchester
Featuring Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello
Conducted by Petra Mullejans
