You’re a servant wench, my girl, and much Too full of gab, and too impertinentĪnd free with your advice on all occasions. You’ve no respect for anything each one Must have his say it’s perfect pandemonium. I leave your house, I tell you, quite disgusted You do the opposite of my instructions Why must you go away in such a hurry?īecause I can’t endure your carryings-on, And no one takes the slightest pains to please me. We’re only paying what is due you, mother. I can dispense with your polite attentions. MADAME PERNELLE and FLIPOTTE, her servant ELMIRE, MARIANE, CLEANTE, DAMIS, DORINEĬome, come, Flipotte, and let me get away. MARIANE, daughter of Orgon, in love with Valere CLEANTE, brother-in-law of Orgon His characteristic qualities are nowhere better exhibited than in “Tartuffe.” Compared with such characterization as Shakespeare’s, Moliere’s method of portraying life may seem to be lacking in complexity but it is precisely the simplicity with which creations like Tartuffe embody the weakness or vice they represent that has given them their place as universally recognized types of human nature. In the great plays that followed, “The School for Husbands” and “The School for Wives,” “The Misanthrope” and “The Hypocrite” (Tartuffe), “The Miser” and “The Hypochondriac,” “The Learned Ladies,” “The Doctor in Spite of Himself,” “The Citizen Turned Gentleman,” and many others, he exposed mercilessly one after another the vices and foibles of the day.

In this brilliant piece Moliere lifted French comedy to a new level and gave it a new purpose–the satirizing of contemporary manners and affectations by frank portrayal and criticism. The first of the greater works of Moliere was “Les Precieuses Ridicules,” produced in 1659. On February 17, 1673, while acting in “La Malade Imaginaire,” the last of his masterpieces, he was seized with illness and died a few hours later. Nor did he find much solace at home for he married unfortunately, and the unhappiness that followed increased the bitterness that public hostility had brought into his life. He had his share of applause from the king and from the public but the satire in his comedies made him many enemies, and he was the object of the most venomous attacks and the most impossible slanders. His life was spent in Paris and in the provinces, acting, directing performances, managing theaters, and writing plays. Born at Paris in January, 1622, where his father held a position in the royal household, he was educated at the Jesuit College de Clermont, and for some time studied law, which he soon abandoned for the stage. Jean Baptiste Poquelin, better known by his stage name of Moliere, stands without a rival at the head of French comedy. Etext prepared by Dagny, and John Bickers, OR THE HYPOCRITE

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