Plays From Moliere
In English Dramatists (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Plays From Moliere: In English Dramatists

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, upholsterer to King Louis XIII., gave his name, Jean-Baptiste, to a son born at Paris in January, 1622. That son, when he became player and dramatist, assumed the name of Moliere. Until he was fourteen years old his education was neglected. His father sought to direct his mind to upholstery, and secured for him succession to his own Court office of valet de chambre tapissier. The boy had a grandfather who liked comedy, and who took him sometimes to the plays at the Hotel de Bourgogne.

In 1543, when Francis I. ordered the sale and demolition of the Hotel de Bourgogne, and other houses, the players bought it, to build, at their own cost, a theatre upon its site. They opened it in 1548, but were no longer allowed to act plays on the mysteries of religion. They had among their farces Patelin, born in the fifteenth century, forefather of Tartufe. Translations from Plautus and Terence, from Seneca and from the first plays of the Italians, then enlarged the conception of dramatic art. Jodelle and Garnier, before 1580, laid the foundation of French classical tragedy. Pierre de Larivey, of whose comedies, all adapted from Italian writers, six were published in 1579 and three in 1611, wrote in prose and justified abandonment of verse by arguments like those in Cardinal Bibbiena's prologue to Calandra. His example was little followed - even farce held to its octosyllabics - and it remained for Moliere not only to perfect the form of comic dialogue in verse, but also to show how wit and wisdom could point every phrase in lightest dialogue of prose. The plays seen at the Hotel de Bourgogne by Molire in his boyhood were of all kinds, and most of them were loosely and carelessly constructed. Hardy and others, by their want of art, aided those tendencies of the times which were provoking a new plea for classical rule. Pierre Corneille, who was fourteen years older than Moliere, produced his Cid when Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, not yet Moliere, was a boy of fourteen. Mademoiselle Beaupr, one of the actresses at the Hotel de Bourgogne, said of Corneille, in those days, that he had done the actors a great wrong. Before his coming they could play pieces that cost but three dollars, and were written in one night; the public was used to them, and they brought much profit to the house; but now the pieces of M. Corneille cost them much more and brought in little gain.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin had more mind for the theatre than for the shop. He had a mind for it, but a mind untrained, till his father was persuaded to ruin his chance of success as a Court upholsterer, by sending him to school.

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