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Not Just the Tudors
Molière: Satire, Scandal & the Stage
00:49:38
How did his biting satire, court politics, and understanding of human nature turn Molière into a foundational figure in French literature?
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
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- [01:52]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from and Berlin to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Arguably the most influential writer of 17th century France, Moliere was a man whose life, like his work, was a story of radical invention. Born Jean Pequilin, the son of a wealthy merchant in Paris, Moliere escud the tradition of his class for life as an actor. With Madeleine Beijer, he formed the Illustre Theatre, touring the provinces of France before securing the royal patronage of Philippe d', Orleans, the king's brother, and settling in Paris, as interested in physical comedy as he was in political and social commentary, Moliere's plays courted controversy almost as quickly as they did favor. Disruptive too, but still firmly part of the establishment, Moliere pushed against the boundaries of a fiercely protected elite, not least of which the Catholic Church banned on two separate occasions. His most famous play, Tartuffe, was rescued by royal intervention to become one of his most lauded and is still widely performed today. I'm joined by Professor Jan Clark, who is director of Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Culture at Durham University, with a specialism in 17th century theatre. She edited Moliere in Context for Cambridge University Press, which appeared in 2022, as did her author's book written with Sabine Moliere and aspects of the theatrical enterprise in 17th and 18th century France. From Professor Clark, I'll learn how this famed dramatist and actor came to be described by Stendahl as the great painter of man. A writer whose talent for uncompromising, often savage satire transformed the landscape of art and language forever. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and this is not just the Tudors from history hit. Professor Clarke, welcome to the podcast.
- [04:22]
Professor Jan Clark
Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be here.
- [04:25]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
For those who are listening who find the name Moliere ringing a rather distant bell, could you start with a little quick overview?
- [04:33]
Professor Jan Clark
Who was he, as you said in your introduction, began life as a member of the bourgeoisie. His father was a tapestry maker. He was father firmly Parisian, educated at what is now the Lyce Lieu le Grand, at that time the College de Clermont. And he had a very kind of traditional bourgeois upbringing, educated, as I said, in Paris and with the full assumption that he would follow his father into his profession. He may well have studied law at Orleans. That is the kind of general belief there are a lot of myths about Moliere or kind of accepted beliefs that we don't necessarily know whether they' they're true or not. There isn't always the evidence to support them. So he may have studied law at Orleans, but in any case, he never practiced as a lawyer. He at some point met members of the Beija family and basically went on the stage. I mean, the romantic notion is that he fell in love with Madeleine Beja, who was to become one of the leading actresses, tragic actresses actually, of the time and the together they set up the company that you mentioned, the illustrate along with other members of her family. And that was Moliere kind of started in the theatrical profession. The Illustra Theatre started off quite successfully. There were at that time only two other companies in Paris, at the Marais and at the Hotel de Bourgogne throughout this period. It's actually quite interesting just how few theatre companies there were in Paris in particular at any one time. And at the time when the Illustra Theatre was starting up, the Marais had just burned down. And so there was a kind of gap in the market which the Illustra Theatre filled. But it was a young company, they weren't necessarily very savvy in the ways of the professional theatre. And in building their theatre, constructing their theatre, they got themselves terribly into debt, which they weren't able to get out of. They tried to shift premises, thinking that a new site, they would maybe do better. That didn't work as well. And in the end they were so much in debt they had to fold. Which is when Moliere kind of went off to the provinces and spent 10 years touring the provinces. He came back to Paris in 1658, under the patronage of Monsieur, the King's brother, as you mentioned, and he performed before the King as a kind of tryout organized by Monsieur. And the King liked what he saw so much that he gave them Moliere permission to occupy a theater in the Petit Bourbon Palace. And Moliere's kind of Parisian career was launched from that point. And I think it's fair to say that, I mean, he was the defining theatrical figure from that point on, from 1658 onwards. The other great dramatist, notably a trajeegic, an author of tragedies, was Pierre Corneille. And Pierre Corneille was in decline at that time. And Jean Racine, who was the other great 17th century French playwright, hadn't really started. He wasn't kind of going to come along until the kind of mid-1660s. So again, there was a kind of gap in the market that Moliere filled and he went on to be extremely successful.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
That's an amazing introduction. Thank you. So maybe we can drill down into some of that and then we'll obviously talk a bit.
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Professor Jan Clark
Sorry, there's rather a lot all at once. We'll.
- [08:34]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
We'll talk a bit more about his work as well as his life. But if we start by thinking more about his biography that you've just outlined for us there, what's the sort of evidence that we have? I mean, what do we know of him? Not just. Not as a figure of art or intellectualism, but as a man. And how tricky is that?
- [08:53]
Professor Jan Clark
We know very, very little. His great biographer, Georges Forestier, actually says in his introduction to his biography that we have not one single line, manuscript line written by Moliere. So there are no letters, there is nothing, there are no manuscripts. We have the published works and that is basically it. And what Other people have written about him, and in a way, an awful lot has been written about him. So he's kind of the enigma at the center of this huge kind of Moliere industry. And in some ways, it's almost because there is this kind of gap at the heart, this void, that so much can be written. So Moliere is kind and picked up at various times are made to. So there's a kind of republican Moliere. There is a nationalistic Moliere. Moliere features from his death almost onwards in all sorts of different guises.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
That's interesting. And is that the case with other writers of this period, or is Moliere uniquely enigmatic?
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Professor Jan Clark
I think he's uniquely enigmatic. We have Racine's correspondence, for example. I'm not quite so sure about Corneille, but Corneille wrote at great length. He wrote endless prefaces and commentaries on his own works, telling us how he wanted them to be interpreted. Whereas for Moliere, there are some prefaces, there are the plassees that he wrote to the king during the Tartuffe controversy. But he's very often being ironic, even when he's writing in his own voice. He adopts a Persona, in a way, and is very. Even with the king, he's very kind of ironic and kind of performing the role of the courtier, but in a very humoristic kind of way.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And you mentioned that there are quite a few myths around him. How much does what we think we know about him actually come from, I don't know, anecdotes or early biographies that perhaps tended to invention.
- [11:04]
Professor Jan Clark
His first biographer was somebody called Grimaret, who was writing in the 1720s, I think, and he did create this kind of the figure of Moliere. A lot of people who've written about it, particularly Georges Forestier, who I just mentioned, who wrote this kind of massive revisionist biography, spent a lot of time saying, you know, Grima Rais got it all wrong. And, you know, there is no evidence to support these views. I think with Moliere, as with so many other 17th century figures, we are kind of handicapped because we're looking back through the prism of the 19th century. And there was so much commentary in the 19th century about French history and French literary figures, and they came at Moliere and in particular at his poor wife, with a very much a kind of their own particular prejudices. And so, I mean. And so it's not so much that. And Moliere's wife, Armande Bajard, was basically vilified for all sorts of reasons, not least because she remarried after Moliere's death, which I think was the thing that particularly got up the noses of 19th century critics. And also there were kind of contemporary jibes. So I think there's a poem saying, she had a husband of intellect that she liked little, she took one of flesh and blood that she liked more.
- [12:31]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So perhaps we need to understand then, his context, as the title of your edited book suggests. So could you give me a bit of a sense of the artistic and the political environment of France? What do we need to know to understand the man that Moliere would become?
- [12:47]
Professor Jan Clark
There are two aspects to Moliere. He's a theatre professional, he is a company leader, he's a playwright, he's an actor. So he's fully immersed in the theatrical context of his time. So that is absolutely one side of him. He's also a courtier, and he was a courtier, both by virtue of his father's trade, his profession, because Moliere's father had been tapissier du roi, actually responsible for making the king's bed. Moliere would have assisted his father in these functions. So he was a courtier kind of right from his very earliest days, but he was also purveyor of entertainment to the court. And this is the period of the young Louis xiv, who is kind of beginning to assert himself as he kind of emerges from childhood. He's been king since he was an infant, but now he's kind of coming into his own 1661, I think, isn't it what's referred to as La prise de pouvoir de Louis Quatorze, when he kind of starts to assert his authority and. And starts to gather the court around him. And so Moliere was very much involved in entertaining the king and providing the king with the form of theatre that he wanted. And very often these two were in contradiction. So, you know, he was performing in Paris, but at the same time he was having to go and participate in court entertainment, sometimes for weeks on end, which prevented him from performing in Paris. So there is a kind of contradiction between the two. But I think the other thing is that his service to the court actually affected his output. So he's having to produce. Well, he begins by producing one type of play for the town, his comedies, what you could describe as his social comedies, really. But the most popular form of entertainment at court was ballet. And so Moliere evolved this particular art form called comedie ballet, where the acts of the play are interspersed between the entree of the ballet. And so because he couldn't just write things for the court, he then had to produce those in town as well. Had to is maybe not the right word, but he did. And obviously the Paris audience was also curious to see what was entertaining the king. It was like a kind of a mark of quality. You know, this play was performed before the king, and now it's going to be performed in Paris in almost exactly the same form. So you've got, you know, the two going on, kind of in contradiction, but also complementary.
- [15:42]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And of course, by this point in time, he's called Moliere. When did he adopt that name, and what was the purpose of doing so? Was he trying to separate himself from his family, or was he trying to protect the family?
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Professor Jan Clark
I don't think it has anything to do with that. It was fairly common for actors to have kind of stage names. So, you know, Floridor Rosimond, you know. So I think he was just assuming a stage name, as so many other actors did. He did it. I think the first time that he signs as Moliere is in the days of the Illustrate Arte. So he had that name kind of right from the very beginning.
- [16:26]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Okay. And I was just thinking about the etymology of Moliere and what it could possibly mean. So many of the people I work on, who are very ordinary people in the 16th century, have monikers that tend to be quite negative, you know, or they tend to be like this person who likes to eat a lot or drunk a lot. And Moliere, isn't it like a bog or.
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Professor Jan Clark
I honestly don't know. The. There's a lot that's been written about this, as you can probably imagine. People have said that he was touring the provinces, and there's a village near Pezenas or somewhere that is called Moliere, but there's a musician of the time called Molier, but maybe a little bit later, but I don't think anybody actually knows. It's another of those kind of Moliere enigmas, really.
- [17:16]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Now, you mentioned that Corneille, who was the playwright who was most successful before Moliere, was writing tragedy. So why did Moliere choose comedy rather than tragedy?
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Professor Jan Clark
It is curious because Madeleine Bejart, who was the lead actress with the Illustre Theatre, was a great tragic actress. She also performed in comedy, but certainly the Illustra Theatre performed a lot of tragedy. And Moliere had a particular kind of predilection for the plays of Corneille early in his career. Career Even when he came back to Paris in the 1650s, he was still performing a lot of Pierre Corneille. And there wasn't this kind of division in many ways. I mean, Moliere's company, even almost well into the 1670s, was still performing tragedies. So there's not a clear distinction between the two. There is. One of the Moliere myths is that he really wanted to be a tragic actor. He wanted to be a tragic actor, he wanted to be a tragic playwright, but he just wasn't good enough. I mean, particularly in terms of the acting. Tragic acting at the time was very stylized and almost actors would stand at the front of the stage and basically just recite. It was very static and the language was all important. Whereas certainly Molire's troupe, particularly later on, was known for being more. I'm going to use the word natural, but in terms of theatre history, that is a huge kind of trap is the word, because every generation always says they're more natural than the generation before. It's just one of those kind of recurring tropes. But Moliere's company was supposedly more natural. He actually, in one of his plays, l' Impemptu de Versailles, parodies himself, parodies tragic actors from the Hotel de Bourgogne, which was the company that specialized in tragedy, and says, why are they talking like that? This is a king talking to his servant in his chambers. Why is he talking as if he's addressing a huge room full of people? So he consciously parodies it. But that might be him making a virtue out of something that he was obliged to do because people wouldn't accept him as a tragic actor. In terms of writing comedies, Moliere's kind of known for having resurrected the farce form, and even what we now term his more serious comedies, his social kind of comedies, Laval Tartuffe and so on, who contain a strong farce element. But it's a myth, really, or one of the stories that he wanted to write tragedy. He wrote a play called Don Garci de Navarre, which is a comedie heroic, which is kind of midway between a comedy and a tragedy. And it was a huge failure. And kind of, again, a commonly held view is that he tried to write a serious play. It didn't work. And it's kind of this view of Moliere as the tortured artist. You know, he wanted to write tragedies and, you know, it was dreadful because he was only ever allowed to write comedies and he kind of despised himself before that. There is no evidence to support that.
- [20:54]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
View would a more positive spin, and you can tell me how accurate or not this is, be that writing comedy allowed him to be subversive, particularly politically subversive in a way that tragedy might not have done.
- [21:09]
Professor Jan Clark
Certainly it's quite hard. I mean, Mollya could never really be totally subversive because he was utterly dependent on the king and the king's patronage. So he could only be subversive insofar as the king allowed him to be. And it's when the king, for whatever reason, was not able to allow him to be subversive that Tartuffe got banned, because the king probably came under other influences that worked against Moliere. So he can't really be that subversive. I think Moliere built his career on being controversial, which is probably slightly different. So he was addressing topics that were current. In French, they say feliboze. You know, he's trying to create a stir so that people will want to go and see his plays. So he's often provocative, he's often controversial. But at the same time, you've got to remember that there are certain topics that have been common in comedy from the dawn of time, basically. So people will talk about Moliere's satire of doctors, for example, but then there's comic doctors, you know, right the way back to kind of Roman comedy and Comme di dell' Arte was very significant. In Paris at this time, there was an Italian troupe performing Molies, shared a theater with the Italian Commedia del Arte troupe that was operating in Paris. So he's picking up a lot of commedia themes as well. And a lot of the kind of the satire of women, the satire of doctors and so on is there. It's intrinsic to comedy as a genre.
- [23:02]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So was there a line to be walked then between royal favor and public scandal?
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Professor Jan Clark
When Moliere's kind of starting out, the king is a young man, and he's in the process of asserting himself as well. And he's in particular, he's coming out from under the influence of his mother, Anne of Austria, who was herself very devout. And he's also, you know, he's living at large. He's having a wonderful time, you know, at court, with all these parties and balls and theater and mistresses and whatever. And so he's kind of encouraging Moliere up to a certain extent. A lot of his audience kind of like what he's giving them, otherwise he wouldn't be so popular. But at the same time, there are factions both at court. The devout faction at court around Anne of Austria. There's factions in, in town, there are people who are offended. So there are, you know, kind of different currents going on. But I don't. But as I said, he's fine as long as the King will support it. Also, Moliere ridicules excess always. And so take his first great success in Paris, which is Les Presieuses Ridicul, which is a satire of two young women who've come to Paris. They're provincial girls. They want to live like the women in salon society that they've read about. And Moliere presents them as being so silly and idiotic and have their heads turned by literature that they can't recognize that the two men paying court to them are actually valet in disguise. So some people would see that as a satire of salon society. Other people would see that as a satire of people imitating salon society and people trying to get above themselves. And it's quite interesting that Moliere kind of constantly displaces the satire. So the girls in Les Pressieuses ridicules are provincial. So they're not the women who would have been in the audience, because this is a play that was written to be performed in Paris. He actually says in his preface, I'm not making fun of the real thing because everybody knows that they're wonderful and they do good things in the salon. What I'm making fun of are provincial women who are imitating them, knowing that these women wouldn't be in the audience. And he does that over and over again. You always find that the satire is displaced onto somebody who isn't there. But the connection is close enough for anybody who wants to to actually make the link with people who are in the audience.
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- [28:18]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes, indeed. I suppose if it were played in the provinces, it does look like it's satirizing Paris. It has that duality to it.
- [28:27]
Professor Jan Clark
Yeah, exactly. That is an interesting point, actually, the extent to which. And again, I don't really know the answer to this question, but is Moliere being performed in the provinces at the same time as he's being performed in Paris? I mean, there's very little evidence because obviously plays were published. I mean, they could be performed by touring companies. I personally don't know whether that was the case or not. There is one instance of a company trying to. A provincial company trying to perform a pirated version of Le Malade des Maginaire before it had been published. And the king stopped them. But that is to do with copyright, because plays belonged to the company that had first produced them until they were published. After that they were fair game. But again, I don't think we have the evidence necessarily.
- [29:22]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's certainly this very carefully managed ridicule of various people happening in these plays, these satires. What did that mean when it came to religious authority? Was there a risk in mocking Religious authority in 17th century France? Did he face a backlash?
- [29:45]
Professor Jan Clark
He faced a backlash. I mean, how serious it was is a different matter. For example, somebody, I think it's probably during the case surrounding Le Festin de Pierre, his Don Juan play, somebody said that he should be burned at the stake. But how serious? I mean, people aren't going to go out and start burning kind of well known playwrights at the stake in 17th century France. But there certainly was a backlash, particularly around Tartu Tartuffe, of course, because Tartuffe was banned. It was banned for five years. And it was banned even though the King said in the document, kind of banning it. He said, I really enjoyed this, but I've been persuaded that it is not for the good of the French people for it to be performed publicly. And so he banned it even though he said he'd liked it. Which kind of explains to you the King's position in all this quite clearly.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Can you explain a bit more about that? You know, why then Tartuffe came to be banned? What's the controversy around it?
- [30:49]
Professor Jan Clark
The plot of Tartuffe, which is, I think where you need to start, is that a very devout man has received this man, has taken this man into his household in order to act as a directeur de conscience, a kind of private spiritual advisor. And apparently this was quite common. It was advocated. St Francois de Sales actually advocated the use of directeur de conscience as a kind of way of assisting people, you know, in their kind of on their spiritual journey. The thing is that Tartuffe, who is the spiritual advisor in question, is a fraud, is a total lech. He's in love with. In lust with the. Here at Orgon, the head of the household, his wife Elmire and Hogan and his mother are so totally besotted with Tartuffe, they can't see the fact that everybody else in the household has seen through him and hates him and kind of knows what he's up to. So first of all, it's showing somebody who is supposedly a spiritual person, kind of being lustful and deceitful and lying and cheating and so on. And it's only a kind of short step. There's a kind of blur. And also Orgon, who is the person who's taking him into the house, is religious and truly devout, but stupid. And so it's kind of blurred. It's saying, are all religious people stupid because they trust directeur de conscience and are able to be exploited? Is Tartuffe really religious or is he faking religion in order to get what he wants? And there are lots of kind of blurred edges all around the play, you know, And Moliere tries to make it explicit. Repeatedly. He writes two petitions to the king, kind of against the bannings, and he rewrites the play. He starts off in the first version. There is a possibility of confusing Tartuffe with somebody in religious orders. And so Moliere rewrites the play to make it clear that he's wearing regular clothes, he's not a priest. And to kind of reduce that, the kind of. The potential of a satire of genuine religion. It's actually interesting that it's. I think it's only in the 18th century that you get priests on stage. I mean, the mere fact of putting a priest on stage would be extremely controversial at the time, because the Church hated theatre and there were lots of kind of diatribes against theatre from religious people. So, anyway, so Moliere tries to reduce the satire, but it's still banned. At one point, people could be excommunicated for even reading it. So going to see it, staging it, assisting in the staging, reading it. They're all banned and they're all kind of subject to excommunication until finally the king. Five years later, the king relents for all sorts of reasons that are more to do with Church history than they are to do with theatre history. It's kind of the. He's been struggling with the Jansenists. Louis hated the Jansenists. And so he finally they come to. It's called the peace of the Church, when things are settled with the Jansenists, and it's almost immediately after the peace of the Church that Tartuffe is kind of unbanned and is produced for the first time. But it's also indicative of Moliere's kind of power in a way that he goes on strike. Having said that, Moliere owes everything to the king, and one of his main functions in life is to entertain the king. He actually stops. There is a period when Moliere's troupe goes to court and Moliere himself does not go, doesn't perform. And Moliere's own plays aren't performed during a series of court performances.
- [34:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And the Jansenists, I suppose we ought to give a bit of a gloss for those listening, it would be fair to say, are, I suppose, a bit like the Puritans, who they strongly believe in. In predestination. They believe in the sort of the original sin of humans and the inability of humans to choose God's grace freely. So they're very much influenced by St. Augustine and therefore, quite likely, just perhaps, one could say, to see the theatre as inherently dangerous, even sinful. Is that fair?
- [35:22]
Professor Jan Clark
Absolutely. I mean, Racine was raised by the Jansenists and actually had to eschew his kind of Jansenist connections during the whole of his period of writing for the stage. And then he's reconciled to them and gives up writing for the stage. But, I mean, there was a lot of Jansenist sympathy in France at the time that Moliere was working. You know, people like Madame de Sevigne were very, very sympathetic to the Jansenists. So but Louis. Louis XIV had a real thing. Again, I think he saw them as being, obviously, his own kind of personal religious entourage was drawn mainly from the Jesuits. And there was a kind of conflict between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, but he did, in effect, kind of persecute the Jansenists.
- [36:13]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Let's think a little bit about Moliere and women, because some of his plays portray active female resistance to the conventions of the time. How would that have been viewed? And, you know, would it be fair to call Moliere a feminist?
- [36:34]
Professor Jan Clark
It is obviously a key question. I've spent decades teaching, you know, Moliere's plays about women. The problem is, it's always impossible to pin Moliere down because for every play that appears to be sympathetic to women, there's another one that isn't. So, for example, which I just talked about in many ways, is critical of women aspiring to education, aspiring to better themselves and to enjoy things like literature. And the kind of the fundamental message of that play is that women should be content to stay at home and marry good bourgeois men and have babies. You know, and it's their failure to recognize the good bourgeois men in front of them that kind of leads to the entire plot. I think it's a lot of women in Molire's plays, obviously, a game that this is a topic. This is comedy. They seek to choose their own husbands. But that's always the case in comedy, isn't it? You know, it's the tyrannical father who's trying to marry off the daughter against her will, which Moliere actually subverts in Les Femmes Savants. Because in Les Femmes Savant, it's the mother who wants to marry the daughter off the daughter to suit her. And again, Les Femmes Savantes is like an echo of Les Pressieuses ridicule, because Moliere is mocking women for having set up their own academy, wanting to be learned, being taken in by bad poets. And I mean, the play, which is kind of one of the set pieces. In the play, the poet is called Triseultin. For a long time, Les Femmes Savant was known as trissautain, because that's the kind of the key episode. And there in Les Femmes Savants, you have a dialogue between two daughters, one of whom wants to Be like her mother and be educated and refuses to marry. And the other one who says, I'm in love with this guy, I want to marry, I want to have babies, our mother had babies. Can't I be like her in that? In the same way as you're like her and in wanting to be educated. The girl who wants to get married, Henriette, who's played by Moliere's wife, her husband has the wonderful line which says, I'll paraphrase. He says, I want my wife to know everything, but I want her to be able to hide the fact that she knows everything. Which again, is quite hard to swallow in some ways. So there are very anti, what we would call feminist plays. But at the same time, there are plays in particular Les Les cole des Femmes, where the central character in Les cole des femmes is a girl, Agnes, who has been brought up in total ignorance because her husband to be thinks that the way to ensure that she's faithful in marriage is to keep her stupid and to have her surrounded by people as stupid as she is. And so obviously what happens is that she falls in love with the first man that she sees and he loves her. And so. But what is really moving in Les colde Femmes is Agnes awareness of her own ignorance. And she says, you know, she says to Arnolf, I understand that you have kept me stupid and that you have made me suffer. And so there is a really genuine kind of appreciation of a woman's desire for education and to have a place in the world. There's a play which is very little performed, but I think it's one of Moliere's best, which is called Georges Dandin, where the girl in Georges Dandin has been married to a peasant. Peasant, a rich peasant. She's a member of the kind of country nobility, and she's been married to a rich peasant to suit her parents so that she can bring, you know, they're impoverished, she can bring money by marrying this peasant. And she is kind of flirting with being unfaithful to him, and he basically threatens to beat her. And again, this is kind of farce, but I mean it. So there's a lot of. Of beating and slapstick and so on in farce. But he says, I'm going to reduce your face to compote, to a jelly or something. And she says, you don't talk to me, talk to my parents. You married them, not me. And has a very impassioned speech about how she was married off against her will. And you can imagine in the audience an awful lot of the people in a 70 19th century theater would have been married against their will. They would not necessarily have married, you know, have chosen their own partners. And so you can see that there would have been a lot of sympathy for this point of view. It's almost impossible to pin down, but you can see sympathy and mockery and everything all kind of going on at the same time.
- [42:03]
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- [43:44]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And it's so interesting to think about the nature of the audience because given that you were saying earlier about Les Pers that we have there characters who wouldn't have been in the audience by comparison. If we look at Le Mi Saintrop, we've got independent widows who could of course become incredibly powerful in Paris at this time. And potentially some of them might have been in the audience, but we see their portrayal in that play. I mean, do you have a sense that the variety and diversity, the whole range of ways in which women and indeed all other characters are portrayed is partly because Moliere is playing on the expectations of those watching at the time?
- [44:31]
Professor Jan Clark
Oh absolutely. There's a really important book about Moliere by Larry Norman called Public Mirror, and it's all about the extent to which people go to the theatre, particularly at this time, in order to see themselves reflected. And so Moliere is having to kind of do that reflection, but at the same time not reflect too much, as I said before, with his kind of. So reflection and deflection, if you like. But I mean, Celly, Maine in l'mis Hoppe is a truly wonderful character. I mean, Moliere is very kind of true to life in his depiction of society at the same time as he's exaggerating certain aspects of him. And it's true. I mean, being a widow in 17th century France was about the best possible state you could be because, you know, you're not going to have that horrible, dangerous, messy childbirth where, I mean, Moliere's own mother died in childbirth and his father remarried Elmire in Tartuffe, the character that Tartuffe is after, she's a second wife, presumably because Orgon's first wife has died. I mean, these are kind of constants in society. So being a widow really does give you power. And Celimane absolutely enjoys it to the full in Le Mise en Trop. So. Yes, you do. People do want to see themselves in the theatre, don't they? They want that sense of identification. But at the. Because these are comedies, they also want somebody to laugh at, which is where you get the kind of. The comic exaggeration coming in. And also they all want a kind of good love plot as well. So you've got to have that kind of coming into the mix.
- [46:23]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I'd like to ask you a bit about that idea of comic exaggeration, because it seems that Moliere's plays, particularly because they continue to be produced more than those of any other contemporary playwright, have become, for some, a reflection of reality. And you talked about this idea about women's learning, the depiction of the Salon as the kind of place of artistic conversation and critical discussion in this period and women as being integral to that culture. In terms of how Moliere has been used since he wrote, do you think that his depiction of women in the Salon has helped or hindered the legacy of their real counterparts?
- [47:17]
Professor Jan Clark
Oh, that's a really interesting question. I think it's probably helped in the sense that, that we talk about women in 17th century society, French society, a great deal, precisely because of Moliere. It's the fact that he depicted Celimane's Salon in Le Misantrop, which has been picked up by other adapters. I'm thinking of Tony Harrison in particular, whose version of Le Misantrop is. Is an absolute triumph. And so the fact of Moliere continuing to be current, I mean, Moliere is still produced a lot and he's produced and adapted. And in some ways, I think the adaptations are more interesting than the kind of period recreations of Moliere as it was performed in the 17th century, because it allows Moliere to kind of project forwards more into our own time. But at the same time, because Moliere is projecting forwards, we also are encouraged to look back. And so we think, what are women's lives like today? For example, if you think about the rsc, Tartuffe that was. Can't remember how long ago, five years ago, something like that, that was set in Birmingham and it said a great deal about the position of women in Pakistani. A Pakistani family that was used to kind of recreate the situation of Tartuf in Birmingham. And so it says a lot about Islam. The servant in that version of Tartuf is Bosnian, but is also Muslim again, which is quite an interesting comment. But because of that, we're kind of looking. We're looking at ourselves, but also looking back to Moliere, which I think is really interesting. And you get that. Sometimes it works, in my opinion, sometimes it doesn't. But I'm sure that it's because Moliere wrote so much for. And I think that's an important point, he had lots of women in his company and he was writing for specific actresses because he wrote for and about women. Not just for that, but he's still topical today and saying. Telling us things about 17th century society.
- [50:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I suppose it's that blend of particularity and universality that keeps a playwright being relevant over time, isn't it?
- [50:11]
Professor Jan Clark
Absolutely. They can't be too general. They can't be too general. But then they can't be too specific, because if it's too specific, then it's only about 17, 19th century society and can't, you know, say anything about anything else. But at the same time, it can't be too general because then it's too vague.
- [50:29]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes. And I suppose with someone like Tartuffe you get an archetype of a hypocrite or you're getting these characters that can then be applied. We find human nature being quite similar over time.
- [50:41]
Professor Jan Clark
Exactly. Or lava, for example. I mean, which again, is a kind of. Of the standard, you know, social commentary plays.
- [50:50]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Finally, then, let's talk about his influence on comedy in French theatre, perhaps more generally. He wrote that the job of comedy was to correct men while entertaining them. You said that he was provocative. Was he, do you think, attempting to disrupt society, or have we overstated his transgressiveness? Did he succeed if he was attempting it? And what effect has he had on comedy since?
- [51:18]
Professor Jan Clark
I think he was being provocative, As I said, I don't think he is attempting. He's not a revolutionary. He's not trying to kind of do anything to society, change society in any way. I think if he's pointing out people's flaws, and again, a lot of what he says is because he's having to justify himself, because people are attacking him. Ever since Horace, isn't it instruct and entertain? That's always been. That's what everybody always cites as the dual purpose of theatre. And it really is, you know, and the purpose of theatre is bums on seats, basically. And I think if Moliere's provocative, that's why he's doing it. So I don't think he's being a revolutionary. He does, yeah, he does change theatre, but then he's kind of starting from a. Starting from a fairly low base in terms of comedy. Well, I suppose Pierre Corneille's early comedies are quite good. He does bring in a kind of a social dimension to comedy and develops that social dimension. The particularity that we were just talking about, I think, comes in with Moliere is quite interesting in the 18th century, when you get Moliere's successors who become much more particular and also society changes. So Moliere society is not quite as bitter and cynical as the 18th century is going to get. 18th century is all about money, and money's important in Moliere, but it's not the be all and end all, Whereas in the 18th century you get the kind of the final financier. And all those plays about money, Le legate universelle and money and its influence on society is kind of key, and things get a lot more cynical. So I think Moliere is still in the kind of classical glory days, if you like. And also his influence on spectacular theatre, I think, is something that we've not talked about at all in this conversation. But remember, Moliere is kind of writing at the point where French opera is being developed and is collaborating with Lully on court entertainments. And I think that the part that Moliere plays on the development of spectacular theatre is absolutely key. I mean, he's writing musicals in the 17th century, you know, kind of comic play or plays with music that, you know, and in terms of their staging would rival anything that you know, Andrew Lloyd Webber could produce.
- [54:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
That's such a helpful note to finish on because it really does kind of translate for us what Moliere is doing and why they're so popular.
- [54:22]
Professor Jan Clark
Well, yes. And long may it continue.
- [54:24]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And long may it continue. Professor Jan Clarke, this has been a really fascinating introduction to Moliere. Thank you so much for your time.
- [54:30]
Professor Jan Clark
Thank you for inviting me.
- [54:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit. Thank you also to my researcher Max Wintool, my producer Rob Weinberg, and to Amy Haddow, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line and not just the tutors, but@historyhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tutors From History Hit.
- [55:11]
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