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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2022
In this issue TDR celebrates Molière the farceur. Lest we seem in this to be claiming credit for original insight, we are also printing the essay which “started the trend“—that is, the trend away from the nineteenth-century view of Molière as a writer of drames and towards a view which recognizes the key role of farce even in Molière's most serious plays. This is Gustave Lanson's essay “Molière et la farce,” which first appeared in the Revue de Paris in May, 1901. Lanson also helps us to distinguish farce from the comic tradition generally, and particularly from the tradition of Roman comedy. Molière was most decisively influenced, not by literature in the tradition of Rome, but by theatre in the tradition of France.
1 The phrase in French is “le premier farceur de France.” It is difficult to translate, meaning at once “the greatest creator of farce in France” and “the greatest farce actor in France.”—Translator's note.
2 “If comedy were not seasoned with this accessory (farce), it would be a meat without sauce, and a bread without flour.” (Guilot-Gorju, Apology, 1634).
3 For convenience, I shall designate as masks stock types of the commedia dell'arte and their French counterparts. In italics, mask will have this meaning; in Roman type, mask will have its usual meaning of face covering.
4 In one farce Francisquine is Lucas’ wife. She is a vigorous gossip of the people, but honest.
5 The Italian provenance is evident in the fact that the old Parisian does business with India, and intends to leave on one of his ships; here we can recognize the Venetian Pantaloon.
6 In The Testament that humorous author makes him write, Gaultier Garguille wills his dagger with his game-pouch: in the drawing of Guillaumot, it is impossible to see in this “dagger” anything but a writer's inkstand.
7 Clémont Marot, Epitaph for Jean de Serres, excellent actor in farce: ”… When he came on stage, with a dirty shirt, and his forehead, cheek, and nostril covered with flour …”
8 La Grange, in his preface to the 1682 edition of Molière. But La Grange was mistaken; there was still Jodelet, but Jodelet alone.
9 Mile. Desjardins, Story of the Farce of the Precieuses. Nor was she an enemy; on the contrary.
10 Le Metamore and Jodelet are taken from contemporary French farce. Scarron, Thomas Corneille, and others draw upon the Spanish genre called comedia de figuron, and these figurones seem to be stock types transplanted from popular comedy to literary comedy. In the works of Tristan, his parasite, aside from being a personal satire, is merely a mold for tirades, a theme with variations in the manner of farce. I would say the same about Desmarets’ Visionaries; its characters are mere labels tacked on to several kinds of literary amplification.
11 Of these two masks, only Mascarille is masked. From School for Husbands on, Sganarelle is not masked. In various documents of the time, he has exaggerated, pencilled (or perhaps inked) eyebrows and moustache; Ronsard in The Royal Grove speaks of “A Janin whose face is marked with flour or ink.” This actor without a mask, whose face is made up but not in white-face, belongs more than the masked actor to the French tradition.
12 Similarly, in his last years, Molière changed Mascarille from his Italian original; the frontispiece of the 1682 edition shows Mascarille of The High-Browed Ladies, recognizable in wig and costume, but without a mask; he no longer has one, but shows his face, that of Molière as Sganarelle.
13 As everyone knows, The Misanthrope borrows its strongest scene and its finest lines from Don Garcie. But the development of the feeling of jealousy is subordinated to the comic caricature of the man who would speak openly.
Please note a has been issued for this article.