Moliere

[dark desire]

The 17th century french playwright Moliere wrote comic plays. I recently read The Misanthrope and Tartuffe. The translations are supposed to be good enough. I can understand the comedy in them in two ways - one is the eccentric lead characters. I was baffled with how I felt about the lead characters. Alceste was still tolerable but the father in Tartuffe was just insufferable. While I was satisfied with the end of The Misanthrope, at the end of Tartuffe I wanted to see the father suffer, which did not happen. The other way of seeing the comic element is through the mockery of high moral ideals. I am trying to understand the deeper significance of the plays. The culture around me is still very moralistic and consequently the plays are relevant to present times.

My question is how french people back then saw or now see comedy in these plays. I think to appreciate the comic element of these plays one needs a good understanding of moral hypocrisy prevalent in certain sections of the society. Were these plays really about undoing morality or are there other undercurrent to these plays that I am missing? Were the lead characters too much for you too?

[cacian]

I have read Most of Moliere in French when I was in my teenage years and the only way I can translate Moliere now that I have been living in London for quite few years would be to compare them to the British Sitcoms.
There is that sense of satire comedy a tragedy within a tragedy combining poverty ingnorance and money at the expense of various social classes from poverty striken working class to middle class and upper.
If you are familiar with any of the British sitcoms you are then able to see a Moliere in each and one of them.
The ones I can think of right are the Green Green Grass and Fawlty Towers.
They very much reminds of Le Tartuffe.

[PeterL]

I agree. Moliere wrote social satire that was humorous. I think that he made his plays as funny as possible to cover the social satire, which was strongly anti-nobility.

[OrphanPip]

It is important to keep in mind that his audience was the court of Louis XIV and the aristocracy itself. One of the reasons the characters are all of the upper classes is because of the audience. The primary target of Tartuffe is religious devotion (it was well received by the King and court) and would have resulted in Moliere's excommunication without the protection of Louis XIV.

In theoretical terms, the play is a comedy of vice. The point is to represent and point out a vice in society, and the French theater of the time had a tendency to reflect its aristocratic audience. The same is true of English Restoration drama. So the abstract idea of hypocrisy is the main topic, to show how hypocrisy functions and make the audience reflect on their own relationship to hypocrisy the primary intent.

[Freudian Monkey]

Tartuffe portrays the hypocrisy in the French society in a brilliant way. I remember reading that Moliere allegedly directed Tartuffe's mockery also against the Jesuits, who he saw as the ones responsible for the widespread corruption in the Catholic Church. He had been raised by the Jesuits but he utterly hated their way of life.

[JBI]

Well if I recall he got into some major trouble with that one. My favorite must be the miser. The turn of phrase in that play is amazing.