The Would-Be Gentleman—Molière
I don't get no respect around here!
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, struggled for a few years as an actor in Paris, before finally fleeing from creditors and the law to the southern provinces in 1646. His father had a comfortable living as a master merchant tapissier for the king, and planned to pass the title along to him. (The English language doesn’t have an equivalent word for tapissier, but we might call him an upholsterer or a tapestry maker.) In any event, such a comfortable, respectable career had no appeal for young Poquelin. He joined a troupe of actors and adopted the stage name of Molière. He spent the rest of his life developing his acting and writing skills with a marvelous dedication and optimism that sometimes verged on absurdity. Fancying himself a tragic actor, he often attempted serious roles, and his good looks, evident in many portraits, suited him well. But he had a noticeable stammer, making a brilliant career in drama difficult if not impossible. Nevertheless, he persisted, seeing comedy as a low art and himself as destined for something greater than that. It took many years for him to accept that audiences hated his death throes and loved his pratfalls, but he did eventually let the boos and the applause guide him. He clearly had a great talent just waiting to emerge, but it also took a better quality of comedy than the French theater had at the time. Molière changed all that.
In The Would-Be Gentleman, Monsieur Jourdain, a well-to-do middle-class citizen (a bourgeois), desires more than anything else to become a gentleman. Unfortunately, one cannot become a gentleman, as that status derives only from birth, not from effort. So the very title of the play contains its first joke: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, would convey to the French audience something impossible like “The Base Noble.” Monsieur Jourdain has more money than sense, so the self-help gurus swarm around him, offering to teach him all the skills he needs to achieve his rightful place in society. Masters of dance, music, fencing, philosophy, and the social arts willingly prepare him to mingle with kings and queens. Monsieur Jourdain, a few fries short of a Happy Meal, doesn’t actually learn anything, but he does bask in the praise his well-paid tutors shower upon him.
Although the main plot revolves around the aspirations of Jourdain, originally played by Molière himself, Jourdain does not get all the funny lines. In the first act, the tutors bicker among themselves as to whose art surpasses all others. The dispute descends stepwise from a dignified disagreement into an unseemly brawl. In the third act, Jourdain’s daughter and her maidservant pair up against their suitors as they try to straighten out an earlier misunderstanding. The young men think the women have slighted them in public, and decide to abandon their courtships. The two women chase after the two men, trying to explain what happened. Right when the women finally give up and turn away in a huff, the men relent and agree to listen. But now the women stomp away and the men tag along behind, begging to hear the explanation. Everyone gets a piece of the comic action without the furtherance of the plot slowing things down.
Pretentious people make for great comedy. Whenever a poor person acts rich or a lowborn person acts aristocratic, we laugh. We also laugh at ignorant people pretending to education, or crass people bragging about their refined taste. We laugh at cowards feigning bravery and idiots aping genius. But I suspect the laughter often comes with a little embarrassment. Many successful people suffer from impostor syndrome, convinced that they have had more success than they deserve. Perhaps for all of us, when we laugh at those who have no reservations about themselves, our own insecurity makes our laughter just a wee bit malicious. Nothing seems quite so ridiculous as an absolutely self-assured fool, and nothing disturbs our sleep more than remembering when we ourselves had played that very fool.
Molière had clearly achieved a mastery of the comic art when he wrote The Would-Be Gentleman—such a mastery that he could ridicule servants, the middle-class, and the nobility. He takes jabs at pretty much everyone in the audience, especially those who could best afford the tickets. Notably, though, he had the prudence this time to refrain from making fun of religious hypocrisy. And the King. One does not ridicule the King.
In my favorite scene, Monsieur Jourdain’s tailor has made a ridiculous and expensive suit and assures him that all the best people wear such clothes. So Jourdain prepares to go out and show off his new coat around town. He calls the maidservant, Nicole, to help him get ready.
Monsieur Jourdain: Nicole!
Nicole: What is it?
Monsieur Jourdain: Listen.
Nicole: Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee!
Monsieur Jourdain: What are you laughing at?
Nicole: Hee, hee, hee, hee, hee!
Monsieur Jourdain: What does that hussy mean?
Nicole: Hee, hee, hee! The way you’re dressed! Hee, hee, hee!
This goes on for several lines, until...
Monsieur Jourdain: Look here if you laugh the least bit more, I swear I’ll give you the biggest slap that ever was given.
Nicole: Well, sir, it’s all over, I won’t laugh any more.
Monsieur Jourdain: Take good care that you don’t. Now, to get ready, you must clean …
Nicole: Hee, hee!
One interesting passage in the third act involves Cléonte trying to think negative thoughts about Lucille. He has decided he must give up his pursuit of her, so he asks his valet, Covielle, to remind him of Lucille’s faults. As Covielle describes her, Cléonte turns every detail into praise. While funny as a set piece, the description contains some specifics that would not hold of just any actress. The tradition has it that Molière wrote the scene to describe his wife, who played the role of Lucille. That story and others like it show him as someone very much in touch with people. He wrote, not for some audience in the abstract, and not for any actors to perform, but for the people he knew and cared about. He created roles just for his team, and those roles displayed their particular strengths. Everyone shared the applause just as everyone shared the profits in the good years and as everyone had shared the debts in the lean years.
Not only had Molière mastered his art by this time, he had also gained a lavish production budget, thanks to the patronage of King Louis XIV. The Would-Be Gentleman debuted at the Chateau de Chambord in 1670, three years before Molière’s death. An extravaganza, compared to his early plays, this one called for a cast of many actors, a ballet troupe, and musicians. Ballets separated the acts, the music composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully who also had a performing role in the last act. Incidentally, in 1912, a German version of the play replaced the final ceremony with an opera by Richard Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos, a bizarre work in which the fictional worlds of high opera and commedia dell’arte intertwine. Cecily Carver, another substacker whom I recently discovered this month has coincidentally posted some nice reflections on the Strauss opera here:
In closing, I’ll share a picture of me standing on the roof of the Chateau de Chambord a few years ago, looking for home-improvement ideas.
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Again, I thank you for your support. If you’ve not yet subscribed, please consider doing so. Next week, I’ll read Molière’s final play, The Imaginary Invalid, translated by David M. Frame. The following week, I intend to read The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov.
Works mentioned in this reflection:
The Would-be Gentleman, by Molière, translated by Donald M. Frame
The Imaginary Invalid, by Molière, translated by Donald M. Frame
Ariadne auf Naxos, an opera by Richard Strauss
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Michael Glenny
I'm loving the turrets we had installed on the roof....:)
Love Moliere! Which translation do you use? It's amazing we have these verse translations from Richard Wilbur, a great poet in his own right.