The Cambridge Companion to Molière

A broad and detailed introduction to Molière and his plays, this Companion evokes his own theatrical career, his theatres and patrons, the performers and theatre staff with whom he worked and the various publics he and his troupes entertained with such success. It looks at his particular brands of comedy and satire. L’École des femmes, Le Tartuffe, Dom Juan, Le Misanthrope, L’Avare and Les Femmes savantes are examined from a variety of different viewpoints, and through the eyes of different ages and cultures. The comédies-ballets, a genre invented by Molière and his collaborators, are reinstated to the central position which they held in his œuvre in Molière’s own lifetime; his two masterpieces in this genre, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme and Le Malade imaginaire, have chapters to themselves. Finally, the Companion looks at modern directors' theatre, exploring the central role played by productions of his work in successive ‘revolutions’ in the dramatic arts in France.

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO
MOLIERE

EDITED BY

DAVID BRADBY

Royal Holloway, University of London

ANDREW CALDER

University College London

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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© Cambridge University Press 2006

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First published 2006

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The Cambridge companion to Molière / edited by David Bradby, Andrew Calder. 1st ed.
p.cm. – (Cambridge companions to literature)
Includes bibliographical references and Index.

1. Molière, 1622–1673 – Criticism and interpretation – Handbooks, manuals, etc.
I. Bradby, David. II. Calder, Andrew, 1942– III. Title. IV. Series.
PQ1860. C36 2006
842′.4–dc22

ISBN-13 978-0-521-83759-0 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-83759-6 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-54665-2 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-54665-6 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

RALPH ALBANESE, JR, is a Dunvavant Professor of French at the University of Memphis. He is the author of La Fontaine à l’École républicaine (2003), Molière à l’École républicaine (1992), Initiation aux problèmes socio-culturels de la France au XVIIème siècle (1977), Le Dynamisme de la peur chez Molière (1976) and of numerous articles on concepts of anomie, criminality, gambling, money, death, critical reception, classical discourse and ideological codes as reflected in the works of seventeenth-century French dramatists, novelists, and poets.

DAVID BRADBY is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is author of Modern French Drama 1940–1990 (1991), The Theater of Michel Vinaver (1993), Beckett: Waiting for Godot (2001) and (with Annie Sparks) Mise en Scène: French Theatre Now (1997). With Maria M. Delgado, he edits the Contemporary Theatre Review and he is general editor of ‘Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre’.

ANDREW CALDER was formerly Reader in French at University College London. He is author of Molière: The Theory and Practice of Comedy (1993), The Fables of La Fontaine: Wisdom Brought Down to Earth (2001) and of articles on the history of ideas in writing and painting in the seventeenth century.

MARIE-CLAUDE CANOVA-GREEN is Reader in French at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is author of La Politique-spectacle au grand siècle (1993), La Comédie (1993), Benserade. Ballets pour Louis XIV (1997), and co-author of Le Théâtre en France des origines à nos jours (1997), Spectaculum Europaeum (1999) and Europa triumphans (2004). She has just completed a monograph on Les Comédies-ballets de Molière et les débats du temps.

JIM CARMODY is Associate Professor of Theatre and Dance at the University of California-San Diego, where he was the founding head of the department’s doctoral program in theatre. He is the author of Rereading Molière (1993), articles on French and American theatre and translations of plays by Molière and Marivaux. He also serves as one of the editors of TheatreForum.

JAN CLARKE is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Durham and has written extensively on all aspects of seventeenth-century French theatre, including architecture, company organisation, the lives of women theatre professionals, and spectacle. She is currently completing the third volume of a series on the Hôtel Guénégaud (1673–80) in which she looks at all aspects of the company’s activity, including its establishment, theatre design, financial organisation and production policy, focusing particularly on its spectacular productions.

STEPHEN KNAPPER is Lecturer in Drama at Kingston University. He is author of three articles on the work of the British company Theatre de Complicite and has published three chapters from his doctoral thesis on the mask of Scaramouche. He is now working on a collaborative project with Royal Holloway, University of London exploring the relationships between carnival, mask and commedia.

ROXANNE LALANDE is Professor of French at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Her research interests lie in the fields of French literature of the Ancien Régime, comic and dramatic theory, pre-revolutionary women writers, and the epistolary novel. She is author of Intruders in the Play World: The Dynamics of Gender in Molière’s Comedies (1996) and editor of A Labor of Love: Critical Reflections on the Writings of Marie-Catherine Desjardins (2000); she has also translated Villedieu’s Love Notes and Letters and The Letter Case.

ROBERT MCBRIDE is Professor of French at the University of Ulster, author of The Sceptical Vision of Molière: A Study in Paradox (1977), Aspects of Seventeenth-Century French Drama and Thought (1979), The Triumph of Ballet in Molière’s Theatre (1992), Molière et son premier Tartuffe: genèse d’une pièce à scandale (2005), editor of La Mothe Le Vayer: Lettre sur la comédie de L’Imposteur (1994), L’Imposteur de 1667 prédécesseur du Tartuffe, and co-founder and co-editor with Noël Peacock of Le Nouveau Moliériste.

CHARLES MAZOUER is Professor of French Literature at the Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux III; his theatre history publications, some dozen studies and critical editions of texts, cover French theatre from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. They include Molière et ses comédies-ballets (1993), Trois comédies de Molière. Étude sur «Le Misanthrope», «George Dandin», «Le Bourgeois gentilhomme» (1999) and Le Théâtre d’Arlequin: Comédies et comédiens italiens en France au XVIIe siècle (2002). He is currently engaged on a major history of theatre in France.

LARRY F. NORMAN is Associate Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction (1999) and has edited three volumes on the relation between theatre, book history and the visual arts: The Theatrical