If in previous chapters we may have seemed to stress similarities of method in Crispin rival de son maître and Turcaret, this should not lead us to forget that even plays using broadly similar structures and techniques can have quite different overall impacts. In general terms, the nature of the comic impact will initially depend on whether the laughter is felt to be more or less an end in itself or whether it is harnessed to other purposes, whether we simply delight in watching the comic sparks fly or whether, as in satire, we are called upon through the laughter to make a judgement of sorts on what we are shown. Our reaction to the classic comic incident involving someone slipping on a banana skin will depend on who falls, in what circumstances the fall takes place and whether the result is bruised buttocks and hurt dignity or a broken spine and total paralysis. In other words, the nature of the comic impact will depend on the nature of the characters involved and on the context, consequences and outcome of the comic action.

In Crispin rival de son maître there are some lines which assume the character of social satirical sallies of a rather general kind. This is the case when Crispin says to himself, 'Ah, Crispin … tu devrais présentement briller dans la finance. Avec l'esprit que j'ai, morbleu, j'aurais déjà fait plus d'une banqueroute' (2,1-5), when La Branche says of Damis, 'S'il est sage, Madame! Il a été élevé avec la plus brillante jeunesse de Paris' (8,18-19), or when he comments on Orgon's lawsuit with the remark that 'la justice est une si belle chose qu'on ne saurait trop l'acheter' (10,20-21). Such lines, which are fairly rare, are nevertheless for the most part incidental, and any attempt to give social satirical force to the play as a whole is certainly to distort its effect. Crispin rival de son maître is a relatively unalloyed comic piece, a version of farce even if the comic agilities are more intellectual than physical, more verbal than knockabout. This appears to have been the view of the contemporary audience, if we accept the (not always reliable) evidence provided by the Frères Parfaict's commentary on the play's reception in their Histoire du Théâtre Francais: 'la comédie de Crispin rival fut regardée comme une farce … Crispin rival ne présente qu'un petit évé ement, et qui ne peut intéresser que par la force du comique, qui règne dans cette pièce du commencement à la fin.' But its particular character can be judged if it is compared with another, more recent description of one of the fundamental forms taken by farce: 'The simplest kind of farce requires little more than a suitable victim, a practical joker and a good idea for a prank … one clown says to another, "Let's do the old man" or "Let's do the old man again" and the farce moves forward. At this level, farce is very little removed from ordinary circus clowning … without any particular purpose being served by his (i.e. the victim's) humiliation.'

Of course, Crispin and La Branche are more than mere pranksters, even if the former does have a bright idea and the latter's willingness to get involved stems in part from a kind of aesthetic appreciation of the 'beau coup à faire'. They are more p¯caros than practical jokers; they hope to get more than fun out of their trickery. And yet they do not represent any real threat or danger to the social fabric. The title of the play may be arresting; in genuine social terms its content is a good deal less daring. The two rogues, we might remember, have only re-entered service because they have come to grief in their criminal ventures, and Crispin's real complaint—one not shared by La Branche, notice—is that he happens to be serving a master whose lack of funds prevents him from enjoying the style of life to which he (and, no doubt, his master also) would like to become accustomed. So, in their scheming, these servants seek merely to profit, not to usurp. If they had succeeded in obtaining some ill-gotten gains from their schemes, they would have been content to skip the country, and they are more than happy when a 'legitimate' outlet can be found to satisfy their ambitions. There is nothing subversive in any of this.

Furthermore, neither the rogues' self-seeking nor the victim's potential loss have the stature and substance to warrant the kind of highly aggressive treatment which sets out to provoke outrage or indignation. The stakes are neither high enough nor made real enough for that. Combined with this is the fact that the outcome of the play is not disaster and the humiliation of persons, but an ironic happy ending which depends on the schemers' integration into society being viewed with wry worldly amusement, and certainly not with real concern or bitterness. Such an ending is merely the splendid, theatrically appropriate final twist given to this self-contained comic tale: it exploits the generally accepted view of the world of finance without constituting any serious or significant comment. For Lesage and his audience, if not for the rogues, fun is the major objective in Crispin rival de son maître.

If Crispin rival de son maître has been widely appreciated for the deftness of its comic structure and the slickness and humour of its dialogue, the range of critical opinion regarding the impact of Turcaret is broader and more varied, as the review of reactions given in Lawrenson's edition reveals. Opinions differ as to the overall character of the play and to the relative emphasis to be placed on the non-satiric and the satiric aspects. There is also disagreement about the scope and the tone of the satire. More recent descriptions of the play have tended, rightly in my view, to highlight the more frankly entertaining aspects, that is, the wit and irony of the dialogue, the essentially comic nature of the characterisation and the structural fun provided by the action. Nevertheless, many critics would still wish to stress the boldness and bitterness of Lesage's attack on the financier, or to point to the absence of sympathetic characters—a feature of the play which has clearly disturbed a lot of people from the period of its first performances onwards—in order to underline the somewhat grim, even pessimistic view of social life which, it is claimed, underpins the play and gives it a rather unattractive atmosphere.

There can be no doubting the particular pointedness of Turcaret in its own day. The play's power to offend financial circles has been cited as the cause of the difficulties Lesage had getting it performed and, if we are to believe the Critique, led to presence of cabals at its first performances. No wonder then that the author felt obliged to defend his play against charges that it discredited all financiers. The arguments he used to do so are deliberately related to what Lesage clearly regarded as the respectable and successful precedent set by Molière when he was called upon to defend one of his 'dangerous' plays, Le Tartuffe:

ASMODEE. … c'est aujourd'hui la première représentation d'une comédie où l'on joue un homme d'affaires. Le public aime à rire aux dépens de ceux qui le font pleurer.

DON CLEOFAS. C'est-à-dire que les gens d'affaires sont tous des …

ASMODEE. C'est ce qui vous trompe; il y a de fort honnêtes gens dans les affaires; j'avoue qu'il n'y en a pas un très grand nombre; mais il y en a qui, sans s'écarter des principes de l'honneur et de la probité, ont fait ou font actuellement leur chemin, et dont la Robe et l'Epée ne dédaignent pas l'alliance. L'Auteur respecte ceux-là. Effectivement il aurait tort de les confondre avec les autres. Je connais même des commissaires et des greffiers qui ont de la conscience.

DON CLEOFAS. Sur ce pied-là, cette comédie n'offense point les honnêtes gens qui sont dans les affaires.

ASMODEE. Comme Le Tartufe [sic] que vous avez lu, n'offense point les vrais dévots. Eh! pourquoi les gens d'affaires s'offenseraient-ils de voir sur la scène un sot, un fripon de leur corps? Cela ne tombe pas sur le général. Ils seraient donc plus délicats que les courtisans et les gens de robes, qui voient tous les jours avec plaisir représenter des marquis fats et des juges ignorants et corruptibles. (29-51)

In such a defence, depending as it does on claiming that only the offensive could feel offended, there is, to be sure, a healthy measure of the tongue-in-cheek, as is shown by the ironic touches (e.g. 'j'avoue qu'il n'y en a pas un très grand nombre', je connais même des commissaires et des greffiers qui ont de la conscience'). It was no doubt true that financiers were in reality as mixed a bunch as the merchants, who, as Niklaus has shown, would in a few decades' time become mythologised as figures embodying all the finest qualities of the 'enlightened' hero. Nevertheless, the vulgar, the crooked and the heartless had sufficient reality to make them serious targets, especially in times of economic hardship, even if one might suspect that Lesage's initial conception did not owe too much to the spirit of daring originality and downright denunciation.

Be that as it may, Turcaret does, of course, involve the exposure and downfall of a financier; for him the outcome is but the culmination of the whole series of humiliations and embarrassing revelations to which he is subjected throughout the play, and there is for him a real disaster to cap it all. Moreover, unlike Crispin and La Branche, Turcaret is a worthy subject for such an attack because he has no redeeming features and, more important, he has the power to affect people's lives for good or ill. His wealth gives him an authority and influence which are respected even by those who otherwise despise him: he remains Monsieur Turcaret until the end. Although we do not see anyone suffering at his hands on stage, we learn enough about his treatment of others not to treat him as an inconsequential figure. He is indeed knavish enough to warrant being made a fool of. But because the principal methods used against him by Lesage are ridicule and discomfiture, it is natural that Turcaret is made to appear more emphatically a fool than a knave in his behaviour. Indeed, … the attack is carried out by giving Turcaret a number of those general characteristics (vanity, self-importance, pretentiousness, gullibility, etc.) which comic characters often have. Yet a number of critics have been unhappy with what they see as an unsatisfactory contradiction between his success as a financier and his obvious foolishness. While this criticism is perhaps based on rather dubious 'realistic' grounds, it must also be said that within the play Turcaret himself admits, not without a touch of typical boastfulness, that, in financial circles,

un bel esprit n'est pas nécessaire pour faire son chemin. Hors moi et deux ou trois autres, il n'y a parmi nous que des génies assez communs. Il suffit d'un certain usage, d'une routine que l'on ne manque guère d'attraper. Nous voyons tant de gens! Nous nous étudions à prendre ce que le monde a de meilleur; voilà toute notre science.

(II,4,29-35)

Moreover, it is very much part and parcel of the irony involved in the attack that the failings and limitations of his own character should help to ensure his disgrace. As we are constantly reminded during the course of the play, his use of power and influence is strictly related to his own personal needs and desires, that is, to his need to appear to be what he is not (well-bred, cultured, tasteful, perceptive, etc.), but most especially to satisfying his sexual desires. As Flamand reveals to the Baronne,

le commis que l'on révoque aujourd'hui pour me mettre à sa place, a eu cet emploi-là par le moyen d'une certaine dame que M. Turcaret a aimée et qu'il n'aime plus.

(V,3,42-45)

Rather than the emphasis being put on the grim unpleasantness of such self-centredness, this is shown to be the source of the character's foolishness, as his own sister points out,

c'est un vieux fou qui a toujours aimé toutes les femmes, hors la sienne. Il jette tout par les fenêtres dès qu'il est amoureux: c'est un panier percé … il a toujours quelque demoiselle qui le plume, qui l'attrape.

(IV,10,95-102)

This kind of concentration on the inherent comedy of Turcaret's character clearly focuses the attack on the personal nature of the corruption and abuse. There is no radical political edge to it. Even if some of the social consequences of the economic system in force in the France of the day (including an impoverished nobility and a good deal of social mobility due to the importance given to money) are present as part of the general atmosphere of the play, the targets are not tax-farming as such, or the wider economic system which could allow such a figure as Turcaret to prosper. It is for this reason, indeed, that Turcaret is not so tied to contemporary issues that it remains fixed in its own time. Turcaret's foolishness and its consequences survive and retain their comic form as does the whole pattern of the action in which the satirical elements are integrated.

For it would be wrong to reduce the whole play to being an attack on Turcaret alone. It if were, his downfall alone would be enough to complete the pattern. But his exposure is largely conducted by people whose own behaviour does not leave them immune from attack or, like Madame Turcaret, are his match when it comes to foolishness. The other principal characters may show some degree of intelligence and certain verbal skills lacking in Turcaret, but they too are (comically) hampered by their own passions and over-confidence. Indeed, they form with Turcaret a continuous chain of intertwined knavery and foolishness, thereby giving the play its particular consistency. This is also helped by the concentrated setting admitting no intrusions from, or excursions to, a wider outside world. There are no truly innocent victims in Turcaret, but neither are there completely unblinkered rogues. All the characters inhabit the same comic world where lack of total awareness and a greater or lesser degree of credulity lightens the unpleasantness. Here too the structure and outcome of the play are informative. As we saw, characters other than Turcaret are exposed and their purposes frustrated, even if the collapse of their schemes does not take the conclusive form that Turcaret's downfall does. The complete failure of the Baronne and the Chevalier depends not only on Turcaret's fate, but upon Frontin's seeming success. But by getting the money and seeing himself as a replacement for Turcaret, Frontin hints at a continuity, even a recurrent cycle of events, with all that that implies for his future in turn.

It is for such reasons also that it would be unwise to jump too readily to the conclusion that the absence of 'good' characters reflected a pessimistic view of life or even a cynical acceptance of the way of the world. Although the ending of the play may not point to any major correction of the world which is represented, it does not mean that the writer endorses, or even tolerates, the rogues' view which dominates the action. It is not Frontin who has the last laugh, it is Lesage, if we respect the final irony. And if Frontin believes that cheating and being cheated adds up to a complete picture of 'le train de la vie humaine' and that you can only 'beat them by joining them', we do not have to share that opinion. Indeed, only those who do not share it can appreciate the full ridiculousness of a world based on such views. Here again, the absence of moral characters within the play does not mean the absence of values and countervailing assumptions about the necessary basis of true social behaviour. If the cynical viewpoint is the one which underlies the conduct of the characters, the writer nevertheless relies on the audience being aware of other values and assumptions. Even if they have no clear spokesman or spokeswoman in the play, these values and assumptions are indirectly, and sometimes comically, alluded to. For instance, in her complaints about her brother's fraternal and marital behaviour, Madame Jacob refers us to a quite different emotional world of human relationships. Indeed, Turcaret's callousness can only be properly registered by the implied allusion to other, opposite qualities.

However, it is perhaps the Marquis who, in his own frivolous way, is the most interesting figure in this context. He has a certain attractiveness which the others do not have. This is in part due to the fact that he does not stand to benefit from the financier's ruin, in part from the detached amusement with which he seems to view himself and others. To this extent he offers a standpoint from which to judge the other characters. Of course, the detachment is still only partial in his case. His cruel treatment of the Turcarets, for example, is clearly inspired by a need to avenge himself. Nevertheless, when, in a parody of the strong-willed hero of Corneille's tragedies, he encourages the Chevalier to give up all claims on Madame Turcaret by commenting that 'il est beau de se vaincre soi-même' (V,11,15), he unwittingly points to what is indeed the only real possibility of salvation or reform for all the characters in this grasping, hedonistic world.

What leads the characters to 'defeat themselves' in the comic sense is the fact that they cannot overcome their own desires. Their failure to do so is the source of both their perversity and their absurdity. In Turcaret we are shown how self-centred materialism and pleasure-seeking lead people to prey upon one another and turn them into victims of each other. In such a world 'fourberies' will inevitably ricochet. Abusers attract abusers, and thus viciousness becomes a sort of self-defeating folly. It is a farcical form of social life which has no true social relationships, no social cement. It is the ironic concentration on the ludicrous consequences of such an unstable world which prevents the excesses of selfishness and hedonism from being merely disgusting or dispiriting.

This is not to claim that in Turcaret Lesage is necessarily saying that the whole of his contemporary society is like that, or that the play's value lies in its 'presentation of a vast and corrupt society': the range of characters and the scope of their activities would seem to be rather too narrow for that. What the play does show, in its unmoralistic way, is that if and when social behaviour follows such lines, it becomes ridiculous. This comic insight will remind us that the play is informed by a set of humane values, based partly on the classical virtue of lucidity, about oneself and others, of which irony is the natural expression, partly on the bourgeois certainty of the need for selflessness in private relationships and probity in public ones. If these values remain outside the world represented in Turcaret, their absence highlights the unsavoury follies which result. In the end, this is what takes Turcaret beyond the entertainment of Crispin rival de son maître and beyond dated topical attacks on tax-farmers and a section of early eighteenth-century society, so that it becomes an ironic comedy about social life which can still speak to us.