Molière : a biography

Contents

Page

Author's Preface xi

Introduction xvii

Author's Preface

In writing this biography the aim has been to tell the story of Moliere's life for English readers. With this in view, I have translated all the quoted passages, whether in prose or verse, using English heroic measure for the excerpts from Moliere's versified plays. The French classic form is the Alexandrine rhymed couplet, a metre ill according with the genius of our language ; hence it has seemed wiser to employ the blank verse measure of our own dramatic poetry rather than to attempt a rendering of Moliere's rhymed hexameters in English. Manifestly it is impossible for such translations to retain the melodious rhythm of the original. My sole aim has been to suggest rather than convey the charm of Moliere's imagery, and to embody the spirit rather than the letter of his verse. The student may find in the Appendix the quoted poetical passages in the original French.

As the intention has been to interpret Moliere's life by his plays and his plays by his life, rather than to write an exhaustive criticism of his dramatic works, in the chapters devoted to the comedies more attention has been given to those concerned with his life than to pieces written mainly for stage purposes or to adorn some court festivity.

The titles of Moliere's plays, as well as those by other authors of the period, have been translated, except when xii a title is etymologically the same in both languages; as in the case of Corneille's Andromede or Moliere's Le Misanthrope^ in which instances the English equivalent alone has been used. The first time a play is mentioned, however, or when it becomes the subject of special comment, the French title is given in parenthesis. In all other cases the English translation is preferred, save in the rare instances when a title such as L.es Precieuses ridicules is translatable only in a circumlocutory way. French rules of capitalisation differing from our own, the method adopted by MM. Despois and Mesnard in their edition of Moliere's works has been used in the printing of French titles.

The bibliography contains the titles, authors, and, whenever possible, the original date of publication of the works consulted or quoted in the preparation of this volume. The authorities for important passages are given in the footnotes.

In nearly every case it has been possible to examine and compare the passages cited with the original authorities ; but, being compelled by illness to leave France before the work was completed, here and there reliance has been placed upon the readings in the definitive edition of Moliere's plays {CEuvres de Moliere^ Collection des Grands Ecrivains de la France^, the earlier volumes of which appeared under the editorship of M. Eugene Despois, the work after his death being carried to superb completion by M. Paul Mesnard.

The reader seeking original sources will find the principal of these in La Grange's famous Registre ; in the preface to the edition of Moliere's works edited by La Grange and Vinot and published in 1682 ; in Moliere's biography by J.-L. le Gallois, known more generally as the xiii

" Sieur de Grimarest"; in the biography attributed to Bruzen de la Martiniere, and in the biographical sketches made by Perrault and Bayle. To these should be added the gossipy chronicles of Tallemant des Reaux, De Vize, Loret, Robinet, Brossette, and other contemporaries of Moliere, as well as two scurrilous libels written by the poet's enemies, details of which are fully set forth in Chapter II. When a few historical works, such as the histories of the French stage of the period by Chappuzeau and the Brothers Parfaict have been added, together with the invaluable documentary discoveries of BefFara, Jal, and Soulie, a fairly complete repository of knowledge regarding Moliere has been catalogued.

Although there have been many modern French biographers of the poet since Taschereau, the first of them, the Notice biographique of M. Paul Mesnard (Vol. X, CEuvres de Moliere) is by far the most scholarly and trustworthy ; next in accuracy is M. Louis Moland's La Vie de J.-B. P. Moliere^ while from the human point of view M. Gustave Larroumet's La Comedie de Moliere is decidedly the most interesting. Mention should be made, too, of the Molieriste magazine, so ably edited for ten years (i 879-1 889) by M. Georges Monval, the distinguished archivist of the Comedie Franpise and this same writer's Chronologie Molieresque. Le Theatre francais sous Louis XIV by Eugene Despois is another work invaluable to students.

The reader wishing to pursue further the study of Moliere in English will find Mr. Henry M. Trollope's The Life of Moliere a painstaking and accurate work, and Moliere and his Times by the Danish writer Karl Mantzius (English translation by Louise von Cossel), a pleasing and scholarly treatise upon the French stage of xiv the seventeenth century. A charming and accurate picture of the theatrical life of the period may be found in Shakespeare in France by his Excellency J. J. Jusserand, the present ambassador of France to the United States. Although no edition of Moliere's plays at once satisfactory and complete has yet appeared in English, the translation by Miss Katherine Prescott Wormeley is decidedly the best.

A word upon the illustrations. Aided by M. Georges Monval, the artist, M. Jacques Onfroy de Breville (JoB), has examined the original documents and plates contained in the archives of the Comedie Franc:aise, the Bibliotheque nationale, etc. Moreover, the costumes of the Comedie Fran9aise and the Theatre de I'Odeon have been placed at his disposal. The famous arm-chair from Gely's barber shop at Pezenas, known as the fauteuil de Moliere^ and the interior of the shop have been reproduced in the illustration representing Moliere in the role of amateur barber; while for the drawing in which he and the poet Bellocq are making the King's bed, the room of Louis XIV in the palace at Versailles having been altered considerably in 1701, the original architect's drawing in the Estampes nationales was used for the decorative features. In the sketch depicting Armande Bejart in Moliere's room, the furniture and effects have been reproduced from the description given in the inventory of the poet's property made a few weeks after his death ; in fact in every instance the artist has used the utmost care in making his illustrations historically exact.

Having been aided in the gathering of my material by the invaluable assistance of M. Jules Claretie, director of the Comedie Francaise, M. Leopold Mabilleau, director

XV of the Musee Social, M. Georges Monval, archivist of the Comedie Fran^aise and M. Truffier, a notable societaire, I wish to take this opportunity of thanking these distinguished Frenchmen for their courtesy. To Mr. Wallace Rice I am indebted for technical suggestions regarding the metrical translations ; to Professor Crane I wish to express my gratitude for the encouragement and help he has extended me throughout the preparation of this work.

H. C. CHATFIELD-TAYLOR.

Lake Forest, Illinois, July first, 1906.

The Age of Louis the Fourteenth is attracting just now the attention of the " general reader " through the translation of memoirs and such brilliant historical monographs as Madame Barine's Youth of la Grande Mademoiselle and Louis XIV. and la Grande Mademoiselle. Society at Versailles and in the salon of the Hotel de Rambouillet is fairly well known, and the visits of French actors to this country maintain a certain degree of acquaintance with the classical drama of the seventeenth century.

^ Interesting as is the political history of that period, its social and literary history is even more attractive and instructive. It was during this time that modern polite society was constituted and conversation raised to the level of an art. Literature, abandoning the slavish imitation of antiquity which characterised the sixteenth century, followed the models of Greece and Rome in a free and independent manner, and no matter how classical may be the form of this literature it is the exact reflection of the national spirit.

To understand this literature, then, we must bear in mind some of the characteristics of the monarchy under Louis the Fourteenth. That king, it is true, has quite erroneously received the entire credit for the literature and art developed in the previous reign under the enlightened patronage of Richelieu. Still, no great injus-

XVlll tice is done to Louis the Thirteenth or to Richelieu in attributing the glory of Corneille to the Age of Louis the Fourteenth. It was the latter monarch who settled the political and religious quarrels which had come down from his father's reign, and established the most absolute and unquestioned regime of modern times. Some of the results of this regime are the absence, until late in the reign, of political and religious discussion, and an attitude toward the person of the monarch little short of adoration. As society is excluded from intellectual activity involving politics and religious controversy, it is forced to direct its attention to itself and to examine its constituent parts. Never have there been such absorbing study of mankind and such profound knowledge of the human heart. The maxims of La Rochefoucauld resume the interminable discussions of the drawing-room upon the mainsprings of human action, and the interest of Corneille's dramas is largely an ethical one arising from the conflict of duty and inclination. The large and varied literature representing this tendency of the age will always preserve its universal interest, and Pascal, La Bruyere, and La Rochefoucauld belong to the literature of the world.

Next in interest is the dramatic literature of the period, which, with the exception of one author, finds with difficulty appreciation among English readers. It is usual to attribute the fact to the form of the French classical drama and to the failure of the attempt to naturalise this form in England. A French classical tragedy represents one action which takes place vithin twenty-four hours in one locality. The result of the compression of the action is that the French tragedy begins with the denouement of the Shakespearean tragedy, for example ; the result of the rule of the one locality is that

XIX all events which do not occur in the prescribed spot, and there must necessarily be many such, have to be narrated and not represented. For this reason, and from the French fondness for declamation, monologues abound and check the feeble current of action. The outward form of the play, the Alexandrine verse of twelve syllables, with its obligatory pause at the sixth, and the couplets rhyming alternately in masculine and feminine rhyme (that is, with rhymes containing an e mute, and those which do not) seems monotonous and sing-song. In addition to all this, for reasons which cannot be given here, the subjects of French tragedy were, in the seventeenth century, taken exclusively from Bible (Old Testament) history or from Greek and Roman history and legend.

We often wonder how plays so artificial could have interested (and we know that they did) French audiences for so long a period. It must, however, always be remembered that, artificial as these plays were, they were instinct with the spirit of the times. The grandiose reign of Louis the Fourteenth found its expression in the sonorous verse and lofty sentiments of Corneille's heroes, while Racine reflected the gallantry of the age in his somewhat languishing Greeks and Romans. In the tragedies of both the characters spoke the artificial language of the day, and Moliere himself, even when he was ridiculing this affectation, could not escape from it.

The limitations of French classical tragedy apply equally to the comedy of the seventeenth century, but not with the same injurious effects. The author is not confined to historical or quasi-historical, plots, but may invent or borrow plots to suit his purpose. He may also abandon the form of verse and employ prose, but he

XX will run the risk of offending the taste of his audience if he uses prose for anything but farce. Comedy, then, is a freer form, and, as it deals with ordinary mortals and not with kings or heroes, is of more universal interest than tragedy. Then, too, French comedy is not an exotic plant like classical tragedy, but is the regular development of elements as old as French literature itself. Between French classical tragedy and the serious drama of the middle ages lies the gulf of the Renaissance: the comic drama has an unbroken history. It required, however, a long series of efforts to raise the mediaeval farce to the dignity of comedy and to free it from the influence of Italy. Here, again, the genius of Corneille made itself felt, and Le Menteur (1642) is as epoch-making as the Cid (1636).

For these and other reasons French comedy is more intelligible and attractive to the foreign reader than French tragedy, and the one great writer of comedy, Moliere, has peculiar claims to his interest.

The fame of Moliere, even in France, has overshadowed the glory of Corneille and Racine, and out of France Moliere is now the only one of the great triumvirate familiar to those who are not students of French literature. There is in France and out of France a cult of Moliere, just as there is a cult of Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Browning. The cause of this pre-eminence of Moliere must be sought not only in his works but in his life.

The greatest dramatist of the modern world and the one whom the French would willingly place at his side were both actors as well as writers of plays, and so great is the glamour of the stage that Shakespeare and Moliere arerfar more mteresting characters to us than Marlowe or

XXI

Webster or Corneille or Racine. Of the two, Moliere is in oun minds the p^ne^mDr-eJntinialely__a^s^ with the 'stage J From the time he was twenty-one to the very d[ay of his death in his fifty-first year he was acting constantly, and for nine years he was the husband of an actress. Of Shakespeare's career as an actor we know almost nothing, but from 1658 to 1673 follow Moliere almost from day to day in his theatrical roles. We have the description of his acting by his contemporaries and his own defence of his method. We possess even portraits of him in his serious and comic parts. Indeed, the story of Moliere's life is largely the history of his company, and his comedies, on which his fame rests, were due to the exigencies of his position as manager. The publicity of the actor's profession is the greatest of its many disadvantages, and the man is usually lost in the player. This is the case with Moliere, and we catch glimpses only of his prizatf rh^nrter

But from whatever standpoint we regard it, the life of Moliere was singularly interesting, and for fifteen years belongs almost to the public history of France. This life falls under three divisions : the first twenty-one years (1622-1643) general education, and it is always well to remember that Moliere enjoyed the best training of his times; the fifteen years (1643-1658) of apprenticeship to his profession, twelve of them spent as a wandering actor in the provinces ; and the last fifteen years (165 8-1 673) of managerial success and literaryglory in Paris. It is these fifty-one years of toil, discouragement, and fame which Mr. Chatfield-Taylor has undertaken to depict in the following work, and I may say, since these lines will not meet his eye until after publication, that 1 think he has accomplished his diffixxii cult task with singular success, and has given a vivid and correct picture of Moliere the Man, the Actor, and the Dramatist,

The materials for these three phases of Moliere's life are not equally profuse or important. There are gaps that we can fill only by the exercise of our imagination, — a dangerous factor in biography. We often lament our limited knowledge of Shakespeare's private life and character, although the materials for forming an impression of them are not so scanty as is generally supposed. We must remember that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the actor's profession was under a social ban, and it did not occur to Shakespeare's or Moliere's contemporaries to preserve their memories as they did those of statesmen and warriors. Grimarest, the author of the first independent biography of Moliere (1705), was criticised because " he had taken as much pains with his work as if it had been the life of a hero," and was taxed with ignorance of etiquette in calling Moliere Monsieur, " a title which did not at all belong to him, as he was an actor, that is to say, a man of an ignoble profession." It is unfortunate that most of the personal details concerning Moliere are due to his enemies, i)ut when used with proper care they tell us much that is valuable and interesting about Moliere's appearance and manner of acting, and even contain historical information which we should seek in vain elsewherei

Still, as has already been said, there are ITTTVIoliere's history unfortunate gaps that we cannot fill. We are not acquainted with the particulars of his early life and education ; his first theatrical ventures are obscure ; the long years spent in the provinces are known largely by civil and notarial documents establishing the presence of xxiii

Moliere and his company in a certain locality at a certain date. After the final return to Paris in 1658 we are embarrassed by the profusion of materials, dealing, it is true, almost exclusively with the management of the company and the literary life so inseparably connected with it. With Monval's convenient chronology of Moliere iChronologie Molieresque^ Paris, 1897) in his hand, the reader can follow year by year the life of the great dramatist from his birth to his death, and woven in with it the synchrongy.s social, political, and literary events of the period. (jTo the student who knows thoroughly these three phases of the age such a chronological table might well be the most satisfactory life of Moliere, but the " general reader " must have this knowledge supplied to him in a judicious form, and, above all, must have Moliere brought for him into proper relations with liis, times.

This is no easy task for the biographer. He must retrace the history of the drama in order that we may understand the peculiar forms of Moliere's plays and the milieu in which the actor lived. He must depict the society which Moliere satirised and describe the literary movements of the day. '^The biographer will be tempted to lay undue stress upon some one of the phases of Moliere's life according to his own tastes and interests. Moliere the Man and Actor wilfbe lost in the DramaTist^ or will appear only as a figure m the iTiStory af-~*l=te' French stage, j These seem to me the faults of the two most recent works devoted to Moliere. One is overloaded with literary and financial details concerning the separate plays, the other conveys no idea of the personality of Moliere.

The author of the present life of Moliere has long xxiv been a serious student of the French drama, and it is pleasant for the writer of these lines to recall the time when Mr. Chatfield- Taylor was his pupil at Cornell University in classes devoted to the study of French society and literature in the seventeenth century. Our biographer has been able to pursue this study since in the home of Moliere and to collect everything of value relating to his subject. The result is a life of Moliere both scholarly and popular, in which the man stands out vividly in the midst of his managerial and literary labours.

Mr. Chatfield-Taylor's book cannot fail to interest even the reader who knows no French, and should be an incentive to acquiring a knowledge at first hand of plays which are not particularly difficult to read in the original. This is certainly true of the plays in prose ; the plays in verse are naturally more difficult, but they, or similar plays, are read by pupils in our schools after a year's study of French.

Prolonged study of the seventeenth century in France has impressed me more and more with its extraordinary social and literary interest, to say nothing of its picturesque political history. A great mass of memoirs and letters, many of them of the highest literary value, enable the reader to form a vivid idea of the period. Moliere, above all, presents the most perfect picture of the society of the Age of Louis the Fourteenth in its various aspects. And this picture is ever fresh and attractive because its interest depends on the portrayal of the immutable passions of the human heart. The Miser, the Misanthrope, the Hypocrite, the Coxcomb, the Pedant, the Quack, the Parvenu, the Bore, the Coquette, are the same in all ages, and live in Moliere's comedies

XXV with a real personality that seems almost historical. Every form of society from the court to the cabin is unrolled before us on Moliere's stage, and in the Impromptu of Versailles we are admitted behind the scenes of his theatre. By the performance of Les Facheux before the King and Fouquet at Vaux-le-Vicomte (August 15, 1 661) Moliere is connected with one of the most picturesque events of the reign, — the fall of the great superintendent. That Moliere's comedies are of present interest has lately been shown by Mr. Mansfield's fine performance of the Misanthrope, May we not hope to see him revive those characters which are so much in evidence at the present day. The Nouveau Riche [Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) and The Club-Women {^Les Femmes savantes).

From every point of view, then, Moliere is worthy of our attention, and any work which will attract readers to him should be welcomed, especially if it is a readable and accurate account of the Man, his Times and his Work. Such, I am confident, is Mr. Chatfield-Taylor's book, and I am glad that the honour of producing such a work has fallen to an American writer.

T. F. CRANE.

Ithaca, New York, July 20, 1906.

I

" What great writer has most honoured my reign ? " Louis XIV asked Boileau one day. " Moliere, sire," the critic answered ; but the King could not believe that a comedian who blackened his face daily to produce the moustache of Sganarelle was greater than Pascal, La Bruyere, La Fontaine, or La Rochefoucauld ; greater than Bourdaloue, Fenelon, or Bossuet ; greater, even, than Corneille, or Racine.

Others besides Louis XIV may take issue with Boileau, but none will deny Moliere a place among the great writers of France of every age ; and surely no one has arisen to challenge his supremacy in the sphere of comedy. To make a nation laugh through centuries is renown enough for any man.

No mere comic writer could have called forth Boileau's tribute. To be great in literature, a man must have a heart capable of intense joy and infinite sorrow, and from its depths must come thoughts shared by all mankind. Sympathy is a quality conferred by suffering ; and because Moliere suffered bitterly, his characters are living men and women, as true to-day as when they were drawn. To quote Voltaire : "He possessed a quality apart from Corneille, Racine, Boileau, and La

/Fontaine. He was a philosopher in both theory and / practice." The charm of his plays lies in their humanity ; but to appreciate them fully, one must understand the man himself and the times in which he lived.

He was born somewhere in the heart of Paris in 1622. On the fifteenth of January of that year he was baptised in the parish church of St. Eustache, under the name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Moliere being a pseudonym), and since it was customary to baptise children on the day of their coming into the world, this may have been the date of his birth as well. All his early life, however, is much shrouded in obscurity ; and a wanderer in the streets of Paris may see two houses each bearing a tablet stating that it was built upon the site of the poet's birth. One is in the rue du Pont-Neuf (No. 31), and the misguided enthusiasts who placed a bust of Moliere above its door in 1799, chose a spot where he never even dwelt and a date for his birth two years amiss (1620). The other, at the corner of the rue St. Honore and the rue Sauval, formerly called the rue des Vieilles-fituves, unquestionably stands upon the site of the house where he spent the years of his childhood. That he was born there is probable, but not certain. In 1633 Moliere's father purchased another house under the arcades of the market-place. It was situated opposite the pillory, which stood a few steps from the church of St. Eustache; but this second house is of far less interest than the one in which the poet passed his childhood.

Of more importance, however, than his birthplace, are the times in which he lived and the influences surrounding him in his early years. He was Parisian born and bred, and he grew to manhood in the centre of the life of Paris — the Paris of Richelieu, a city of about five hundred thousand souls huddled within walls which stood where the boulevards now teem with life. France, welded to a state by Henry IV, was being drilled in nationality by its cardinal martinet ; religious wars had already rent the land, and the bickerings of the Fronde were to follow, before the monarch destined to be called grand should rule.

Moliere's father, Jean Poquelin by name, and a scion of a family established at Beauvais as early as the fourteenth century, was a respectable upholsterer by royal appointment to the King [valet de chamhre tapissier du roi). His shop in the rue St. Honore, near the market-place, was within a stone's throw of the seats of the mighty. Standing in the doorway, young Jean-Baptiste might almost see Madame de Rambouillet in the window of her famous blue salon, or hear the fish-wives hawk their wares ; and there, in middle class Paris, half-way between the great and the despised, he passed his boyhood among men and women whose types he was destined to immortalise.

Jean Poquelin, the elder, was a man of importance in the shopkeeping world. His father had likewise been an upholsterer, and his wife's father as well ; so his business, as was customary in shopkeeping families, was inherited. His wife, Marie Cresse by name, brought him a comfortable dowry, and, being also a tapissier du roi, he had a certain function to fulfil at court. His younger brother, Nicolas, had held this appointment, but in 1 63 1 resigned it in favour of the poet's father. Six years later, on December eighteenth, 1637, the reversion of the office was settled upon the future dramatist. There were eight of these royal upholsterers among the domestic officers of the King's household, each receiving a salary of three hundred livres, for three months annual service at court ; and it is easy to see that such an appointment would be sought by all well-to-do burghers of the upholsterer's craft.

Jean-Baptiste, the future Moliere, was the first fruit of the marriage of Poquelin the upholsterer with Marie Cresse. Five other children followed, with the usual middle class regularity, and when the mother died in May, 1632, at the age of thirty-one, Jean-Baptiste, aged ten, Jean, aged eight, Nicolas, aged six, and Madeleine, aged five, survived her. His brothers and sisters had small part in Moliere's life, and need no further mention ; but it may be said, in passing, that Marie Cresse left an inheritance of five thousand livres to each of her children, and that, a year after her death (May 30, 1633), her husband married Catherine Fleurette, daughter of a bourgeois merchant. She died three years later, leaving two children — half sisters of Moliere. So much for the bare family facts.

The Poquelin house in the rue St. Honore, called the monkey pavilion {le pavilion des singes)^ was a bit of old Paris made curious, even in those times, by a cornerpost carved to represent a band of pilfering monkeys climbing an orange tree to pluck the fruit ; and by a suggestive coincidence, monkeys have occasionally appeared from very ancient times as symbols of comedy. The shop was on the ground floor, and behind it the kitchen, serving, probably, for a dining-room as well. Above was a loft, and over the shop an entresol in which were a bedroom and a closet. The first floor was used for storage ; the room over the shop, looking out on the rue St. Honore, was evidently the bedroom of Poquelin and his wife, and, possibly, the room in which Moliere was born.

M. Eudore Soulie * gives a description of this apartment which deserves translation :

To see how this room looked and to form an idea of its occupants, one should visit the Hotel de Cluny and the Louvre, and then read the inventory of Marie Cresse's effects, made at the time of her death. On each side of the fireplace with its brass andirons, were two small wooden seats called by the worthy housewives of the seventeenth century caquetoires. They were well worn by frequent use — there the women sat to gossip near the fire. In the centre of the room reposed a seven-legged walnut table, covered with green tapestry, a rosette de Tournay ; and against the wall stood one of those old cabinets, now so rare, in which the most cherished bric-a-brac was kept. That of Marie Cresse was of walnut, with a marble top ; it had four doors with lock and key, and was lined with Bruges satin. Against another wall lay a huge chest, covered with flowered silk tapestry and used to hold the family valuables. Along the walls were six high-backed upholstered chairs, and the bed, with its valance of lace-fringed Mouy serge and silk testers, was covered with a counterpane of ceremony. In the ruellcy or space beside the bed, was an armchair, kept for guests of honour — the doctor or the father confessor. Five pictures and a Venetian glass mirror hung against the walls, and the drapings of the Poquelin room were of Rouen tapestry.