[In the following essay, Trethewey examines the influence of the commedia dell'arte on Molière's comedies.]

The nine early Molière plays I want to discuss here are very varied, comprising the two prose scenarios, La Jalousie du Barbouillé and Le Médecin volant, which are the only remaining complete canevas (out of thirteen for which we have names) associated with Molière and his troupe, two one-act comedies, Les Précieuses ridicules and Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire (the first in prose, the second in verse), two three-act verse comedies, L'Ecole des maris and Les Fâcheux, and three five-act verse comedies, L'Etourdi, Dépit amoureux and L'Ecole des femmes. The two scenarios cannot be dated. The earliest firm date we have for a Molière play is the year 1655 when, according to the Registre of La Grange, L'Etourdi was premièred in Lyon.¹ The influence of the commedia dell'arte on Molière does not end with L'Ecole des femmes, the last, the most successful and most important play with which I deal in this essay. But limitations of time and space prevent me from advancing any further into the playwright's career, even in a restricted topic like that of use by characters of audience address and audience awareness.² I am therefore covering roughly seven or eight years of Molière's career, of which the last five were the beginning of his success in Paris, culminating in L'Ecole des femmes, first performed in December 1662.³

The published literary or dramatic sources of these various plays have been studied exhaustively. A couple of them are from prose stories—La Jalousie du Barbouillé (Decameron, seventh day, fourth story) and L'Ecole des femmes (Maria de Zayas via Scarron, and Straparola). Others have Italian commedie erudite for sources (Le Médecin volant, L'Etourdi and Dépit amoureux⁴), one, L'Ecole des maris, owes much to a Spanish comedia (Hurtado de Mendoza, El marido hace mujer, 1643), and finally three seem to owe nothing to printed sources (Les Précieuses ridicules, Sganarelle and Les Fâcheux). Molière, then, to the extent that he relies on the published work of others, does not, as we shall see, differ greatly, in his choice of subject matter and source material, from the inventors of commedia dell'arte scenarios.

His short preface to L'Amour médecin (1666) is often quoted as a professional's sound advice to the lay reader: ‘on sait bien que les comédies ne sont faites que pour être jouées; et je ne conseille de lire celle-ci qu'aux personnes qui ont des yeux pour découvrir dans la lecture tout le jeu du théâtre’ (‘everyone knows that plays are only written to be performed; and I suggest that this one should be read only by those with eyes to discover in the text all the action which takes place on stage’). Playtexts exist to be acted, and to be bedecked with all the finery that designers, choreographers, musicians and other theatrical professionals can bestow on them, ‘des grâces dont ils ont toutes les peines du monde à se passer’ (‘charms which they would have all the trouble in the world to do without’).⁵ What is more the reader, whether layperson, would-be interpreter or scholar, must have the imagination to supply tones of voice, accompanying gestures and unspoken reactions. However where, as in commedia dell'arte, there is no ‘text’ in the accepted sense, where there is only the experienced professional actor's memory, ‘stored with phrases, concetti, declarations of love, reproaches, deliriums, and despairs’,⁶ evolved and perfected over the years, then the reader/interpreter/scholar is often compelled to work backwards, as it were, from the texts and interpretations of a Molière, in the hope of reconstructing the traditions and conventions of performance evolved by the entertainers. This is certainly true where the relationship between stage and audience is concerned, for Molière's texts, though short on stage directions, give us more clues than the brief descriptions of sketches that the commedia dell'arte has bequeathed to us. The professional aims of the latter were perhaps rather different from those of Molière, but the techniques and experience of the Italian troupes were undoubtedly an inspiring example for one who was not initially a writer but ‘un comédien qui peu à peu [allait] se mettre à écrire’ (‘An actor who bit by bit [was] to begin writing’).⁷

Not that records are completely lacking. It is well known that the commedia dell'arte regards speech as only one ingredient in a theatrical entertainment, sometimes dispensable, sometimes endowed with more—or less—or another—meaning than that which the words alone suggest. Flaminio Scala, publishing fifty of his sketches in Il Teatro delle favole rappresentative (1611), provides summaries indicating hardly any dialogue, preferring ‘to present to the world his plays in their scenario form, leaving to the beauty of the imagination (which thrives on the excellence of its own language) the creation of its speeches.’⁸ At other times, plays were ‘“comédies mixtes”, in which certain written passages were bound together by scenes of pure improvisation’.⁹ Whatever the case, it is plain that neo-classical vraisemblance (verisimilitude), or any other ideal of realism, was completely disregarded by troupes of the commedia dell'arte whose memorized and oft-repeated material included not only set speeches for all occasions but also lazzi (literally ‘clowning’, ‘gags’—a very necessary ingredient to fill in gaps, especially between improvised episodes where a familiar piece of ‘business’ would provide a welcome relief from the strain of adlibbing), mime, juggling, acrobatics, animal acts, dancing, and vocal and instrumental music. Theatrical illusion in the neo-classical sense was unimportant to them, even when, patronized by the rich and the high-born, they were given the use of elaborate stages and machinery like Palladio's Theatre at Vicenza used by Flaminio Scala.¹⁰ Machines and elaborate perspective scenery were not to be scorned, of course, when available, but the basic patterns of plot, lazzi and stock characters—many wearing masks—remained the same, even in grand surroundings.

The varied list of performance and entertainment ingredients given above indicates that commedia dell'arte owed little to classical theory governing tragedy and comedy (apart perhaps from the unities of time and place, vaguely observed). In addition, the attitude of these players to their spectators was not that of classical theatre where actors play characters living in a universe of their own, ignoring the audience. Despite the use of a stage generally built high, so that the feet of the performers were at eye level to a standing spectator, audience address, and even mingling with the audience, were common. Duchartre tells us that ‘as a rule, there were two ladders placed at either side from the ground to the stage, and on the rungs of these one or two players … would perch after having finished their turns in the performance.’¹¹ Certain lazzi required actors to mix with the audience or acknowledge their presence. Sometimes this mixing called for agility. In the ‘Lazzo of Running along the Balcony Rail’ (obviously devised for a theatre), Arlecchino ‘leaps from the stage to the first spectator box and runs around the outer railings of three sets of balconies’. Or an absurd attempt at imitating reality is made which soon breaks down, as in the ‘Lazzo of the Chase’ where, ‘with a drawn sword the Captain chases Coviello. They remain on the stage in a stationary position as they mime running, each slightly out of reach of the other. As they run, each begins to acknowledge the audience's response.’ And a frank, mocking destruction of theatrical illusion is undertaken in the ‘Lazzo of the Interruption’ in which, ‘in the middle of the performance, actors walk into the audience while other actors are speaking on the stage. The off-stage actors begin to shout ridiculous and irrelevant phrases.’¹² There are many such routines involving actors talking to spectators, mingling or sitting with them, recognizing them as old friends, taking a dislike to individuals and insulting them. They are familiar routines to anyone who has frequented modern companies who keep up the traditions, including that of ‘working an audience’, or British pantomime or music hall where many of the traditions of commedia dell'arte live on.

Yet despite these displays of agility and skill and these mockeries of dramatic convention, one element of drama is never abandoned, and that is the thread of narrative. However often it is interrupted, and however thoroughly it is mocked or subverted, the story-line—again, as in British pantomime—always survives. The spectators are never fobbed off with a series of ‘turns’. Furthermore, the stories chosen for these scenarios can be remarkably complex ones, sometimes of very respectable provenance, to judge by the examples provided by Flaminio Scala's collection. As these companies wandered further and further afield, from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, enhancing their reputation, particularly in France, their basic material and their techniques did not appear to change—not, at all events, until after the period with which we are concerned.¹³ Classical ‘new comedy’ and commedie erudite are plundered or adapted, as are, above all, Renaissance romances with all their complexities of plot, sub-plot, disguise, misunderstanding, kidnappings, shipwrecks, substitutions and mistaken identities. Of course, these stories cannot be staged in their entirety, after the manner of Shakespeare's comedies, nor are they taken as seriously as were their romance sources. We are witnesses, usually, to the final hours before a complicated dénouement, full of remarkable coincidences and revelations, our understanding of which is ensured by a series of narrations, in the form perhaps of a prologue, expository dialogues or soliloquies. The amount of dramatic action devoted to developing the plot is usually minimal. Consequently, the characters who would appear as serious and central in the original romances are now upstaged by the comic stock characters, and can in any case no longer be taken very seriously, since their heroic or courtly attitudes and aspirations, their transports and posturings, are openly derided or parodied. We are enjoying a form of theatre, therefore, which cheerfully undermines the conventions of romance while clinging to the very necessary narrative framework that they provide.

Molière's personal experience of the commedia dell'arte, and his debt to it, have been much studied and commented upon,¹⁴ and yet no one has been able to define exactly where the line runs which divides this Italian influence from that of native French farce, with its simpler, more homespun plots recalling fabliaux rather than romances. Undoubtedly, sketches and plays like La Jalousie du Barbouillé, Sganarelle, L'Etourdi, Le Mariage forcé, Le Médecin malgré lui and George Dandin owe not a little to native French tradition which preferred to exploit a rustic or a petty bourgeois setting and the comic potential of the husband-wife relationship—‘la farce conjugale’, as Raymond Lebègue calls it.¹⁵ The two traditions have in any case much in common, and by the early seventeenth century, the merging of Italian practices with French was so far advanced that only by naming actors, companies and nationalities can one make any sure distinction. The famous French farceurs of the first half of the century, Tabarin, Gaultier-Garguille, Bruscambille, Turlupin, Guillot-Gorju and Jodelet, whether street entertainers or attached to one or other of the established theatres of the time, all owed much to the Italians as far as dress, make-up and routines were concerned, but in general (though not always) preferred to be enfarinés rather than to wear masks, and, naturally, used only French instead of a mixture of languages.¹⁶

As for Molière, when one attempts to separate the influences of the two traditions in his theatre, one is quickly confused. The sketch, La Jalousie du Barbouillé, would seem to be typically French in that it has a simple plot and is concerned with the quarrels of a husband and wife. Yet that simple plot has been borrowed, as I have already noted, from a Renaissance Italian novella—admittedly more akin to a fabliau than to romance.¹⁷ As for the mask tradition,¹⁸ the extent of Molière's debt to it has recently been brought into question. It has been accepted, from Molière's own day, that the French actor learned much of his comic technique by sharing theatres—first the Petit-Bourbon and then the Palais-Royal—with a troupe of Italians including Tiberio Fiorilli who played Scaramouche. But it has been pointed out that these theatres were of quite modest size, which may have suggested, first to the Italian and subsequently to the Frenchman, that facial expression could be effectively used there for refining and enlarging the range of emotions that could be conveyed to the audience. Thus it could be argued that a famous actor in a tradition noted for its use of masks taught another famous actor how to do without them. It may have been the influence of Fiorilli which caused Molière to evolve from the masked Mascarille to the bare-faced Sganarelle.¹⁹

Caution is necessary, however, as far as the period which I am covering is concerned. Molière and his troupe returned to Paris, after a thirteen-year sojourn in the provinces, in October 1658, and began officially to share the Petit-Bourbon with the Italians from the beginning of November. From that date the apprenticeship (such as it was) of Molière to Fiorilli begins: ‘Scaramouche enseignant, Elomire estudiant’, as the caption to the frontispiece of the hostile Elomire hypocondre (1670)²⁰ puts it. Molière, a thorough professional, would be able to absorb quickly anything of a technical theatrical nature. He would need to. By 11 July 1659, Fiorilli and the Italians had left for Italy on ‘sabbatical leave’, and did not return until January 1662.²¹ Molière's character Sganarelle appeared in Paris for the first time shortly before that ‘sabbatical’ period began—in Le Médecin volant which was played at the Petit-Bourbon on 18 April 1659. That sketch, it is generally agreed, was inspired by one of many possible Italian sources. We have, however, no means of knowing when or under what circumstances Molière's version was first devised, and scholars surmise that it may well date from his period in the provinces.²² The question of the extent and nature of Molière's debt to Fiorilli, and whether the Italian's influence played any part in the creation of the character Sganarelle, must therefore remain open.

The further, equally germane question of who or what provided Molière with inspiration in the matter of character-audience relations is just as hard to answer. It goes almost without saying that such a relationship must, in large measure, have been the product of personal experience, of an individual coming to appreciate his own strengths and weaknesses as well as ‘learning a trade’ from others. The relationship must also have varied from production to production, even from performance to performance. As a young actor, and then as a touring actor-manager, Molière was perforce made familiar with drama of every sort, from farce to classical tragedy,²³ acquiring knowledge of a wide range of techniques and conventions, and performing in many venues, from tripots to noble households. Only with the success of L'Ecole des femmes did works of his own begin to predominate in the repertoire instead of those of Corneille and other contemporaries.

It is evident, from what is known of Molière's repertoire in the provinces and during his first four years in Paris, that the troupe preferred more complex, more calculated, more controlled forms of theatre than those associated with the Italians. Even in the two scenarios there is evidence, not yet of loftier preoccupations, but certainly of a desire to define beforehand the shape of an entertainment, to establish more or less clearly what is to be said and when. The words are nearly all provided in these little comedies: there is certainly room for ad-libbing or prearranged unwritten dialogue, but (provided there is plenty of non-verbal inventiveness) little needs to be added in the form of spoken exchanges. In Le Médecin volant, for instance, speeches occasionally suggest quite precise actions and movements and need to be spoken as written, as when, in scene iv, Sganarelle disguised as a physician, announced by Sabine, makes a belated entry, so that Gorgibus must ask her: ‘Où est-il donc?’ (‘Where is he then?’) and Sabine must reply in three stages: ‘le voilà qui me suit; tenez, le voilà.’ (‘There he is, following me; look, there he is.’) As far as improvisation is concerned, in La Jalousie du Barbouillé apparently only the chaotic ending of scene vi is left entirely to the actors' ingenuity, and in Le Médecin volant, only Gros-René's galimatias in scene iii obviously remains untranscribed, for the actor René Berthelot (alias Du Parc) to fill out with material from stock (Gros-René being his role in this and other sketches and plays).²⁴

Fraternization with the audience, or acknowledgement of its presence, varies in quantity or in potential in Molière's plays according to the amount of comedy or farce in the text. One can well imagine that in a commedia dell'arte sketch the audience is constantly solicited for applause or reactions, when some acrobatic feat has been accomplished, or when a character confides his schemes to the spectators, or seeks their sympathy, or approbation. Sometimes it is just as overt in a Molière sketch, as when in La Jalousie du Barbouillé the hero points to the audience as witnesses of his innocence: ‘Demandez plutôt à ces Messieurs qui sont là-bas dans le parterre.’ (‘Ask rather those gentlemen there in the pit.’) At other times, it is, as it were, optional, as in a soliloquy, where—so long as the text does not decree that absent characters, personified objects or abstractions be addressed—classical conventions may be observed, or not, according to the decision of actor or director.²⁵

In addition to such obvious exchanges between stage and audience, there are also in Molière (as there must also have been in commedia dell'arte) instances of passive audience collusion furnished by dramatic irony. Where a character shares (or thinks he shares) with the spectators, knowledge which is hidden from other characters, then he may, for dramatic or comic effect, invest his speeches with double meaning for their benefit. Under such circumstances, an audience is given a sense of superiority by knowing itself to be addressed, even when the character ‘in the know’ is ostensibly speaking to another. Instances of this sort of irony would not be easy to pinpoint in commedia dell'arte, but can be found without difficulty (as I hope to show) in the dialogues of Molière.

Now, as I have said, Molière must have learned his trade, not only by experience and trial-and-error, but also from the Italians and from traditional French farce. Undoubtedly the relationship between stage and audience in the native sketches was one in which collusion with the spectators, addresses to them, various forms of exploitation of them or of individuals for comic purposes, were a common part of the tradition, perhaps more so than in the commedia dell'arte. At the same time features such as the wearing of masks, their association with stereotypes used many times over in many sketches, improvization, the mingling of dramatic action with byplay of various sorts and with displays of theatrical skills, all that belongs to the world of Italian comedy which, as we have seen, was also not averse to fostering and exploiting a relationship with the audience.

Classicism, however, the other great formative influence on Molière, abhors farce, and in the interest of preserving the ‘dramatic illusion’ not only banishes open, direct audience address, but even looks critically upon any stage practice or convention which might endanger the spectator's ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. To quote the intelligent, if dogmatic Abbé d'Aubignac's Pratique du Théâtre of 1657: ‘La partie de l'Hôtel de Bourgogne élevée et environnée de toile peinte, où se joue la Tragédie, est le lieu représentant et l'image d'un autre, et celui qui y est représenté par cet espace, soit la salle du Palais d'Horace, ou de celui d'Auguste, est dans la Tragédie le lieu véritable, ou du moins qu'il faut regarder comme véritable.’ (‘The part of the Hôtel de Bourgogne which is raised and surrounded with painted canvas, where the Tragedy is played, is the place which represents and is the image of another place, and that which is represented there by this space, whether it be a room in the palace of the Horace family, or that of Augustus, is, in the Tragedy, the real place, or at least one must regard it as such.’) But d'Aubignac is not here making a rule exclusively for tragedy. Let me quote him again: ‘Il [the character] fait tout comme s'il n'y avait point de spectateurs, c'est-à-dire tous les personnages doivent agir et parler comme s'ils étaient véritablement roi, et non pas comme étant Bellerose, ou Mondory, comme s'ils étaient dans le palais d'Horace à Rome, et non pas dans l'Hôtel de Bourgogne à Paris; et comme si personne ne les voyait et ne les entendait que ceux qui sont sur le théâtre agissants et comme dans le lieu représenté.’²⁶ (‘The character does everything as if there were no audience: that is to say that all the characters must act and speak as if they were truly kings, and not Bellerose or Mondory; as if they were in the Horaces' palace in Rome, and not in the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris; and as if no one could see or hear them except those who are on the stage, and as if in the place which is being represented.’) In other words, ‘the dramatic action, in all its aspects, must be represented as an image of reality’,²⁷ and the job of dramatist and actors is to do their best to persuade the audience to accept that. Such an influence obviously runs counter to that of the farce traditions. At the same time, it would be possible for a dramatist to keep the two worlds separate, by distinguishing fairly rigorously between genres, keeping one law for tragedy and for polite comedy, and another for farce and ‘low’ comedy. Not so Molière: it was Boileau's complaint, for instance, that he could not keep farce out of his plays, so that the only one the satirical poet admired unreservedly was Le Misanthrope.²⁸ As far as the theatrical illusion is concerned, therefore, one can expect Molière to do undogmatically whatever he thought was appropriate to a particular subject and occasion, and even to a particular moment or character in a play.

As a generalization, one can say that certain Molière characters are ‘privileged’ by being aware of audience and by being therefore able to address it. The central comic character is frequently thus privileged. Le Barbouillé in La Jalousie du Barbouillé is such a one, opening the play with a monologue, largely—not wholly—addressed to us, in which he sets out his complaints against his unfaithful wife, and in general when something upsets him he expresses his frustration to us, as when he is enraged by the pedantic, loquacious Docteur (scenes ii, vi). But he by no means has the audience to himself in this most invraisemblable of scenarios. All the characters may speak to us and be aware of us: Angélique the wife of Le Barbouillé, for instance, alone on stage in scenes viii and x; and Le Docteur, whose feverish speeches in the above-mentioned scenes are more than just pedantry and garrulity: they are an act, performed in direct competition with Le Barbouillé, an act for which he openly solicits audience appreciation and applause.

Les Précieuses ridicules is perhaps a special case in that the characters taking part are all named after the actors of Molière's troupe who originally appeared in it under their stage or even their personal names, as was frequently the case in farce. Thus the actors La Grange and Du Croisy were the ‘amants rebutés’, the familiar names Magdelon, Cathos and Marotte thinly disguised the forenames of the actresses Madeleine Béjart, Catherine de Brie and Marie Ragueneau, while Gorgibus, Mascarille and Jodelet were already well-known stage personalities about whom I have more to say below. Obviously, under these circumstances, firmly delineated characters were not what Molière had in mind. The absurd pretensions, the mock-précieux language and the extravagant dress of the young ladies and the fake nobles add up to a tableau which must have the air of being enjoyed as much by the actors as by the audience, and which cannot be regarded as a true reflection of any sort of reality. Caricature is plainly the weapon in use here: every absurdity must be clearly recognizable. The accumulated features are more important than character portrayal. La Grange in scene i suggests that his valet Mascarille is a self-deceiving fool but nevertheless provides him, in ways which are left unexplained, with the clothing and the opportunity to display his ‘bel esprit’. They are therefore working together (with Jodelet as a knowing third party) in a conspiracy of which the play's dénouement must be a part. Mascarille's folly is also belied by his and Jodelet's sly, ironic references in scene xi to their real stations in life, to ‘des lieux où il faisait fort chaud’ (kitchens) and ‘gens de service’ (servants). These inconsistencies do not matter, however. What is important is the virtuoso display of comic extravagance by all the actors, and the allusions to identifiable people, manners, language and literature, all of which elements are too outrageous, too exaggerated, too obviously without bitterness, to cause offence to the supposed victims of the attack—the habituées of the Hôtel de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry and her friends and admirers. Molière's play may suggest satire, it may foreshadow comedy of manners, but it is essentially a good-natured piece of entertainment within the traditions of farce.

Another point worth making about this play and the others by Molière of this period is the, by now, obvious one that they have characters in common. The seventeenth-century audience therefore, if it knew Molière's troupe and the theatre, recognized these familiar types, and was aware of a continuity, not only in the characters, but also in the actors who habitually played them, making them more ‘real’ in their way than the plays or playlets in which they were acting. Le Barbouillé, for instance, is the aforementioned Gros-René. La Grange, in his Registre, actually calls the sketch La Jalousie du Gros-René. He is a fat man, noted for drunkenness and gluttony. He turns up as a valet in Le Médecin volant, in Dépit amoureux and again in Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire. He is also obviously the central character of the lost scenario, Gros-René Escolier, recorded by La Grange as having been played on various occasions between 1659 and 1664. Gros-René is capable of self-advertising and making jokes and puns about his features, as in the opening scene of Dépit amoureux: ‘Je … suis homme fort rond de toutes les manières’ (lines 13-14).

Gorgibus is another familiar name in the cast list of La Jalousie du Barbouillé. This foolish-old-man role was that of François Bedeau, known as L'Espy, brother of the more famous Jodelet (Julien Bedeau).²⁹ Both brothers, already old (their appearance on the professional stage is first recorded at Angers in 1603), joined Molière in 1659. The role of Gorgibus may well have existed before that year (there is a lost scenario entitled Gorgibus dans le sac recorded by La Grange in his Registre as having been played six times between January 1661 and July 1664), but L'Espy made it his own until his retirement in 1663, playing that part, not only in La Jalousie, but also in Le Médecin volant, Les Précieuses ridicules and finally in Sganarelle. Throughout these plays, Gorgibus is frequently left alone with the audience, and expresses to them his curiosity, his anger or frustration, his over-bearing self-confidence, or reveals his plans before going on to fail to realize them. His brother Jodelet had been playing similar games with audiences for years as a foolish, cowardly valet, and parts—indeed plays—had been specially written for him by a variety of dramatists including Scarron, d'Ouville and both Pierre and Thomas Corneille. It is noticeable that when Molière's troupe acquired him, at Easter 1659, a number of these plays were immediately revived, including Corneille's Le Menteur, Thomas Corneille's Le Geôlier de soi-même, and Scarron's Jodelet ou le maître-valet. The one part that Molière wrote for him, that of the Vicomte de Jodelet in Les Précieuses ridicules, is not a taxing one, comprising relatively few lines and an indication towards the end, where dancing is called for, that this vicomte is not very agile (end of scene xii). It obviously takes accout of Jodelet's age. But the part also has that element of self-advertising which I have already mentioned, reminding the audience that here is a character who transcends any given dramatic role, who therefore is closer to them, in a way, than is the action of which he is condescending to be part. His famous appearance, with a face made pallid by the application of make-up (he is an enfariné), has to be accounted for to the two ignorant young précieuses—the only persons on or off stage who do not recognize him—by the pretence that ‘il ne fait que sortir d'une maladie qui lui a rendu le visage pâle comme vous le voyez’ (sc. xi, p. 280), (‘he has just got over an illness which made his face pale, as you see’). And his lack of agility is also accounted for by this same ‘maladie’, an ironic explanation which gives the explainer Mascarille and the audience the chance to collude in further deception of the foolish young ladies.

The two remaining repeated roles I have to deal with are those that Molière created for himself: Mascarille and Sganarelle. Mascarille in fact wore a mask, enabling Molière to stay young, and to play this lively, disabused, resourceful, Scapino-like valet until as late as 1670, when the last revivals of L'Etourdi during Molière's lifetime are recorded by La Grange (Scapin himself went on until July 1671). He turns up in only three published texts: L'Etourdi, Dépit amoureux and Les Précieuses ridicules. His part as the Marquis de Mascarille in Les Précieuses is his most famous, but he is just as much to the fore, initiating all the action, in the full-length, five-act L'Etourdi as sharp valet to a dull young master, the étourdi of the title. Like Gorgibus and others, he is given the privilege of addressing us, of taking us into his confidence, of tipping us the wink as he deceives or mocks someone. His exchanges with the foolish old man Anselme in Act I, scene v, can be taken as an example, not only of his confidences to the audience (Anselme too, in fact, has this very privilege in this very scene), but also of yet another situation in which the audience is in the know and in collusion with one character while a second is, ironically, ignorant of what is really going on and of what is really being said. Anselme tells us that he has just received a purse containing two thousand francs, and he rashly displays it. Mascarille resolves to steal it from him, and tells us how he proposes to go about it.

                                                                                          O Dieu! la belle proie
A tirer en volant! chut: il faut que je voie
Si je pourrais un peu de près le caresser,
Je sais bien les discours dont il le faut bercer.
(And then, to Anselme:)
Je viens de voir, Anselme, … votre Nérine.

(215-19)

Oh God! What a prey to take in flight! Hush! I must see if I can get close to him and flatter him. I well know what sort of speeches to lull him with … Anselme, I've just seen your girl-friend Nérine.

We then watch Mascarille as he flatters and distracts the old man and waits for his chance to remove the purse, watch him deliberately almost give the game away as he does so, and then drop his booty in a corner ready to be picked up later. At the same time, the flattery which Mascarille metes out to the old man is to some extent double-edged, dangerously close to mockery; in fact he likes to live a dangerous life in order to show off his dexterity to us. He pretends to Anselme that the lady Nérine loves him, and underlines the folly of this senex with plays on words which could give the game away if Anselme were only a little brighter; mocking him, therefore, and at the same time flattering us, the audience. That is how the valet proceeds throughout the play. Again, in II, ii, having put about the lie that Pandolfe is dead, Mascarille speaks to Anselme about it with an irony which is all for the audience and not at all for the distracted old man:

ANSELME
Etre mort de la sorte!
MASCARILLE
                                                                      Il a certes grand tort:
Je lui sais mauvais gré d'une telle incartade.
ANSELME
N'avoir pas seulement le temps d'être malade!
MASCARILLE
Non, jamais homme n'eut si hâte de mourir.

(500-3)

ANSELME
To die like that!
MASCARILLE
It is certainly very wrong of him. I'm annoyed with him for playing such a prank.
ANSELME
Not even having time to be ill!
MASCARILLE
No, never did a man make such haste to die.

His stupid master, the étourdi Lélie, on whose behalf these tricks are played, manages every time to undo all the good work that is being done for him, exasperating Mascarille more and more, so that he must find an outlet for his frustration. We thus become his confidents, the only persons privileged to see the true extent of his rage and scorn, or savour the full flavour of his mockery. In III. iv, for instance, when Lélie is failing to hide from Léandre the fact that Mascarille is his servant, the latter's exclamations, in the course of a disastrous three-way conversation, are all addressed exclusively to us:

Fut-il jamais au monde un esprit moins sensé? …
                                                            Encore! il va tout découvrir …
Ah! le double bourreau, qui me va tout gâter,
Et qui ne comprend rien, quelque signe qu'on donne!

(1053-63)

Was there ever in the world a less sensible mind? … Again! He'll give everything away … Ah, the double hangman, who's going to spoil everything for me, and who understands nothing, whatever sign one makes!

In Dépit amoureux, he is rather less self-confident,³⁰ displaying a Sganarelle-like cowardice, but he still has his relationship with us, planning future moves in III, i, failing to carry them out according to plan, and complaining to us, as in III, ii, lines 794-5, and III, x, line 1116, because his privileged knowledge, concerning the marriage of Valère and Lucile, turns out to be false. He is also capable, in moments of extreme distress, of assuming a mock-tragic air, as at the end of Act IV:

Malheureux Mascarille! à quels maux aujourd'hui
Te vois-tu condamné pour le péché d'autrui!

(1135-6)

Unhappy Mascarille! To what pains are you to be condemned today for another's sin!

Inappropriate registers, ‘putting on airs’, self-pity and self-deception are characteristics rather of Sganarelle than of Mascarille whose more normal features are collusion with the audience, sharing its superior awareness, at the expense of employers or of other social superiors whose foolishness he underlines for our amusement. He has learned his attitudes from the commedia dell'arte servants in Flaminio Scala's sketches, who similarly exploit their masters and mistresses to amuse themselves and their audiences.³¹

Not so Sganarelle: he is without a mask, older, bewildered, truculent, frequently and incurably in the grip of some absurd obsession. He more rarely conspires with us against his fellow characters, or if he does, his plans go awry and leave us laughing at him instead of with him. And when we laugh at him, for whatever reason, he is hurt or indignant. This may happen when his obsession or some other pretext causes him to dress extravagantly. In scene iv of Le Médecin volant he appears for the first time dressed as a doctor. Sabine tries to introduce him here to Gorgibus (scene iv), but loses him as he wanders off, preoccupied with his dress and with our laughter at it. In L'Ecole des maris, his defiant desire to make ‘le bon vieux temps’ (‘the good old days’) live on in his person leads to his attiring himself in a fashion which is two generations out of date, eliciting laughter from the audience when he first appears in Act I, scene i; to which his indignant reaction is: ‘Qui me trouve mal n'a qu'à fermer les yeux’ (line 74), (‘Anyone who doesn't like the look of me has only to close his eyes.’)

Perhaps the most impressive example of this extension and complication of dramatic irony is to be found in L'Ecole des femmes, where the central character, Arnolphe, is a derivative of the Sganarelle role. L'Ecole des femmes is a full-length five-act comedy which manages quite comfortably to obey the three classical unities. At the same time, however, it contrives to ignore almost completely the dictates of vraisemblance (verisimilitude) and bienséance (decorum). Molière's character Arnolphe has to speak over 600 of the play's 1,779 lines, a third of which are either soliloquies or asides of various sorts, containing few indications that they should be addressed anywhere but to the audience. He is also given the sometimes dubious privilege of sharing knowledge or understanding with them, to the exclusion especially of Agnès and Horace. Let us look at some examples.

Act I, scene i is, as you would expect, an exposition scene, a dialogue about principles between Arnolphe and his friend and neighbour Chrysalde. By the end of it, each has become persuaded that the other is mad. Charysalde finds absurd Arnolphe's hobby of collecting and retailing anecdotes about female infidelity and male gullibility, as well as his intention to marry a sixteen-year-old untutored fool to protect himself from cuckoldry, while Arnolphe finds Chrysalde altogether too tolerant—someone to add to his collection. Molière makes the dialogue biased: we must take sides with Chrysalde because Arnolphe is too unpleasant, too anti-feminine, and cruel to his friend who nevertheless takes the cruelty tolerantly and with good humour. Moreover Arnolphe's attitude towards his young ward is repulsive to us, so that it would be difficult indeed for an audience to sympathize or side with him.

When Chrysalde and Arnolphe get to the end of their conversation and go their separate ways, each speaks his thoughts, as an aside to the audience (195-8):

CHRYSALDE
Ma foi, je le tiens fou de toutes les manières.
ARNOLPHE
Il est un peu blessé sur certaines matières.
CHRYSALDE
Good Lord, I think he's absolutely mad
ARNOLPHE
He's a bit unhinged about certain things.

Addressing both these speeches to the audience enhances the humour and irony of them. They express successively, in confidence, almost identical opinions, but with in addition, from Arnolphe, the aphorism:

Chose étrange de voir comme avec passion
Un chacun est chaussé de son opinion!

It's strange to see how passionately everyone clings to his opinion

as he smugly assumes that we side with him against Chrysalde. We do not, of course: the irony goes against Arnolphe. Unlike a scenario character or one in a prose comedy, he does not have the right or the freedom to react to our reaction. But he can, all the same, assume that he has our complicity, at least for so long as all is going well for him. And he can address characters with words which he deliberately intends for our ears as well as theirs, as when he suggests, inviting us to laugh with him, that Chrysalde's marital affairs are not all in order:

                                                  … peut-être que chez vous
Vous trouvez des sujets de craindre pour chez nous;
Et votre front, je crois, veut que du mariage
Les cornes soient partout l'infaillible apanage.

(9-12)

Perhaps at home you've got a situation which makes you worry about us; and I believe that your forehead wants horns to be the unfailing privilege of marriage.

Chrysalde can look after himself, of course, but when Arnolphe plays on the innocence of Agnès, his sixteen-year-old ward and potential wife, then our laughter of complicity feels a little uneasy. He digs us in the ribs, as it were, and, for instance, in Act I, scene iii, while underlining Agnès's simplicity, he reveals to us his own lustful intentions regarding this beautiful young person. When Agnès complains of ‘les puces, qui m'ont la nuit inquiétée’ (‘the fleas that have bothered me during the night’), his double-edged ‘Ah! vous aurez dans peu quelqu'un pour les chasser’ (‘Oh! You'll soon have someone to hunt them out for you’) has a meaning for her and an extra one for us. Her innocent reply: ‘Vous me ferez plaisir’ (‘You will give me great pleasure’) is seized upon joyfully by him to carry on the process: ‘Je le puis bien penser’ (236-8), (‘I can well believe it’). Unless we are misogynists, while laughing at her, we feel sorry for her, and dislike him.

At the end of that scene there is a typical confident Arnolphe monologue (of the sort that he is capable of uttering during the first three acts) addressed to the audience. But it is in fact addressed to only a section of the audience—the ladies. That is to say, he goes over the heads of the parterre (the pit), which in seventeenth-century France was populated exclusively by men, and defiantly addresses those ladies who are seated in the loges (the boxes) at the back or the sides of the auditorium:

Héroïnes du temps, Mesdames les savantes,
Pousseuses de tendresses et de beaux sentiments,
Je défie à la fois tous vos vers, vos romans,
Vos lettres, billets doux, toute votre science,
De valoir cette honnête et pudique ignorance

(244-8)

Heroines of the hour, learned ladies, who utter fond sentiments and beautiful thoughts, I challenge all your poetry, your novels, your letters and love notes, all your knowledge, to equal in value this honest, modest ignorance.

The speech acknowledges that he does have enemies in the audience, that not everyone out front is his ally, but that he can defy the world, having (he feels) the parterre with him, and traditional male-defined morality.

Arnolphe is not always cheerful and confident, however. It is his privilege always to possess knowledge which his young rival Horace does not have, and to share that knowledge with the audience. He is able therefore, in Act I, scene iv, and in subsequent similar scenes which give the play its rhythm, to react to the naïve young man with ironic replies for our benefit. Yet it is in the course of each of these scenes that Arnolphe discovers the progress which Horace is unstoppably making in his seduction of Agnès. We remain privileged with our knowledge, as does Arnolphe, and Horace remains foolishly ignorant, but we are at these moments released from our uncomfortable feelings of helpless complicity, despite the fact that Arnolphe continues from time to time to confide in us, for we also have ironic knowledge at his expense which he cannot possess: that the plot will obey the laws of comedy, and that he will be defeated. We are glad to know that we are his false confidents.

As the play progresses, then, events and Agnès gradually turn against him, and as this happens, the tone of his monologues changes. They become more Cornelian, more classical. Mock-Cornelian, I should perhaps say, because Arnolphe is no classical hero and, try as he may, does not have a firm grasp of classical eloquence any more than did Mascarille in Dépit amoureux. He ceases to address us, and begins instead to introduce into his discourse certain features of classical soliloquy, apostrophizing absent characters, personified objects or abstractions, the heavens, or even parts of his own anatomy (‘Patience mon coeur, doucement, doucement’, 410—‘Be patient, my heart, gently, gently’). Thus the role of Arnolphe is a strange mixture: he is able to communicate directly with us, know of our existence when he is confidently believing that he is in charge of events, but cuts himself off from us when anguished and at a loss. And of course, when finally defeated, he is unable to talk at all.

Molière never gave up audience address. It is always there, or available, in his broadest comedies, up to the end of his life. It is available to comic characters who are, or think they are, in charge of events, like Scapin, for instance; or who have, or think they have, right and morality on their side, as does Argan in Le Malade imaginaire. But Molière also knows, or learns to appreciate, when and where it is not appropriate. One finds none in Le Misanthrope or in Tartuffe (except perhaps for the Exempt's speech). There are times when Molière prefers to create a universe as recommended by d'Aubignac, because direct communication with the audience has its limitations. It destroys the theatrical illusion, and can also devalue those characters who are not privileged so to communicate, along with their opinions and what they stand for. Where a serious moral point has to be made seriously, as in Le Misanthrope and Tartuffe, then audience address is out: classical conventions prevail.

One might go so far as to say that the phenomenon of a character showing familiarity towards an audience is not merely, in Molière's age, unclassical, it is anti-classical. It exists, less as a theatrical technique in its own right (as it later does in epic theatre), than as a token sort of defiance of authority, of the authority of the doctes (scholars), of Court taste and the Académie Française. At the same time it is a licensed form of defiance, like the antics of the court fool, or the rites of reversal of carnival. It is tolerated in forms of theatre which can safely be regarded in the seventeenth century as ‘mere’ entertainment, in commedia dell'arte sketches and in farces, where it could be said to ‘know its place’, be as much bound in its own way by convention as the more serious theatre it pretends to subvert. Molière learned this rule the hard way with the ‘Querelle de L'Ecole des femmes’. He transgressed it once again with the notorious comic double act of Sganarelle and Dom Juan, but, knowing how far to push his luck, made no overt protests when ordered to drop that play for ever. Fraternization between stage and audience remained, during the classical period, a potent source of good-humoured mockery of theatre itself, in the same way that burlesque mocked epic poetry, but somehow it remained compartmentalized. The power and prestige of classicism represented by Corneille and Racine were too strong for it.

Dramatic irony is a rather different matter, of course. It can (it must!) be tolerated in any form of drama, and in fact can only break the illusion when used in conjunction with other meta-theatrical effects. In Act IV, scene v of Tartuffe, we have with Elmire the knowledge which Tartuffe does not have, that Orgon is concealed underneath the table. But Elmire speaks with double meaning for Orgon's benefit alone and, being a classical heroine, shares no confidence with us.³² Context, and the right theatrical conventions which the knowing audience quickly learns to recognize as being appropriate to any given performance, these govern our attitude to dramatic irony, and indeed to soliloquies and to all aspects of the relationship between stage and audience. The ‘esprit de géométrie’ is at a decided disadvantage in the theatre.

Notes

1. See L'Etourdi, ed. P. Mélèse (Geneva, Droz, 1951), vii-viii.

2. The varieties of ‘mediating communication systems’ between stage and audience existing in drama in general are enumerated and illustrated in Manfred Pfister's The Theory and Analysis of Drama (Cambridge University Press, 1988), section 3.6, 69-84. A less formal approach to the same theme is to be found in Bernard Beckerman, Theatrical Presentation: Performer, Audience and Act (New York and London, Routledge, 1990), 110-27.

3. The only play of the period that I have ignored is Dom Garcie de Navarre of 1661, labelled a comedy by Molière but, like the play by G.-A. Cicognini of which it is an adaptation, having the characteristics of a tragi-comedy, and containing nothing that remotely resembles a borrowing from the commedia dell'arte.

4. On this last play, and on Molière's debt to Nicolo Secchi's L'Interesse, see Dépit amoureux, ed. Noël Peacock (University of Durham, 1989), Introduction, pp. 13-15, and Appendix II, 144-50.

5. Molière, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton (Paris, Gallimard, 1971, 2 volumes), II, 95. It is to this edition that I refer throughout. Cf. Gianfranco Folena, ‘Les langues de la comédie et la comédie des langues’, Le Théâtre italien et l'Europe: XVe-XVIIe siècles, ed. Christian Bec and Irène Mamczarz (Paris, PUF, 1983), 23-51.

6. Niccolo Barbieri, quoted by P. Duchartre in The Italian Comedy, translated by R. T. Weaver (New York, Dover Publications, 1966), 34.

7. Jacques Copeau, Registres II: Molière (Paris, Gallimard, 1976), 77.

8. Francesco Andreini's introductory note, addressed to the ‘Gentle Reader’, given in Scenarios of the Commedia dell'arte: Flaminio Scala's ‘Il Teatro delle favole rappresentative’, translated by Henry F. Salerno, foreword by Kenneth McKee (New York University Press, 1967), xxxi. See also, particularly on ‘elastic dialogue’ in the commedia dell'arte and Molière, ‘Arte dialogue structures in the comedies of Molière’, The Commedia dell'arte from the Renaissance to Dario Fo, ed. Christopher Cairns (Lewiston-Queenston-Lampeter, The Edward Mellen Press, 1989), 142-76.

9. Duchartre, op. cit., 57-8.

10. Ibid, 58-62.

11. Ibid, 58.

12. These examples are all drawn from Mel Gordon, Lazzi: the comic routines of the Commedia dell'Arte (New York, Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983), 13, 41.

13. For a detailed history of the Italian comedy in seventeenth-century France, see Virginia Scott, The Commedia dell'arte in Paris 1644-1697 (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1990). See also Viaggi teatrali dall'Italia a Parigi fra Cinque e Seicento (Atti del convegno Internazionale Torino 6/8 aprile 1987, Genoa, Costa & Nolan, 1989).

14. Notably by W. G. Moore, Molière, a New Criticism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1949); Gustave Attinger, L'Esprit de la Commedia dell'arte dans le théâtre français (Paris/Neuchâtel, Librairie théâtrale/La Baconnière, 1950); René Bray, Molière homme de théâtre (Paris, Mercure de France, 1954); Jean Emelina, Les Valets et les servantes dans le théâtre de Molière (Aix-en-Provence, La Pensée Universitaire, 1958); Marcel Gutwirth, Molière ou l'invention comique (Paris, Minard, 1966); Cordelia Gundolf, ‘Molière and the Commedia dell'arte’, Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, 39 (1973), 22-34; Philip A. Wadsworth, Molière and the Italian Theatrical Tradition (n.p. [Columbia, S. C.], French Literature Publication Company, 1977); David Shaw. ‘Theatrical Self-Consciousness in Molière’; Nottingham French Studies, Spring, 1991, 1-12

15. Etudes sur le théâtre français, II (Paris, Nizet, 1978), 52.

16. See G. Doutrepont, Les Acteurs masqués et enfarinés du XVIe au XVIIe siècle en France, Publications de l'Académie royale de Belgique, no. 385 (Brussels, Lamertin, 1928); also C. Cosnier, ‘Jodelet: un acteur du XVII^e siècle devenu un type’, Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France, 62 (1962), 329-52; and Raymond Lebègue, op. cit., II, 50-68.

17. For a discussion of the complex borrowings made by Molière for La Jalousie du Barbouillé, of its relation to his later comedies, and a demonstration that it is by Molière, see A. Gill, ‘“The Doctor in the Farce” and Molière’, French Studies, 2 (1948), 101-28.

18. W. G. Moore, op. cit.; see Ch. iii, ‘Mask’.

19. See ‘Ce que Molière doit à Scaramouche’, by H. G. Hall in his Comedy in Context: essays on Molière (Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1984), 36-55. It should nevertheless be pointed out that playing unmasked does not of itself guarantee a wider range of expression. Jacques Copeau, writing in 1926 (op. cit., 295), protested: ‘les écrivains, les érudits et les critiques condamnent le masque comme un instrument sans expression. Ils lui reprochent avec assurance l'immobilité de ses traits. C'est qu'ils ne l'ont jamais vu jouer.’ It should also be borne in mind that the mask generally only covered the upper part of the face, leaving the mouth exposed. Not all commentators close to the profession have liked masks, however. Goldoni was not enthusiastic. See, on him and on the views of other writers, Duchartre, op. cit., 46-9. See also W. D. Howarth, Molière: a Playwright and his Audience (Cambridge University Press, 1982), 87-105. For a history of the mask, see Arte della Maschera nella Commedia dell'Arte, ed. Donato Sartori and Bruno Lanata (Florence, SES, 1983).

20. For a reproduction of the frontispiece, see H. G. Hall, op. cit., 37.

21. See Scott, op. cit., 30 and 81.

22. See G. Couton's summary of arguments concerning origins and sources in the Notice to the sketch in his ed. cit., I, 29-30.

23. One of the most famous portraits of Molière is that by Mignard, dating from 1656-7, showing him as César in La Mort de Pompée (Musée de la Comédie Française). Corneille was certainly a firm favourite with the troupe which, once established in Paris, regularly played Le Cid, Horace, Cinna, Rodogune, Héraclius and Nicomède as well as Pompée. The extremely popular Sertorius joined the repertoire on 23 June, 1662, and contributed a famous line to L'Ecole des femmes, certainly recognized by the Parisian audiences.

24. Gros René was associated with Molière from 1647 until his death in 1664.

25. Or mocked, as when in III, i of L'Etourdi Mascarille delivers a 36-line comic parody of a tragic soliloquy which begins:

    Taisez-vous, ma bonté, cessez votre entretien:
    Vous êtes une sotte, et je n'en ferai rien.

    (901-2)

    (Be quiet, my kindness, and cease your talk: you're a fool, and I'll do no such thing.)

26. See the edition of Pierre Martino (Algiers-Paris, Carbonel-Champion, 1927), 44 and 140.

27. See H. T. Barnwell's Introduction to Pierre Corneille, Writings on the Theatre (Oxford, Blackwell, 1965), xxvi.

28. L'Art poétique, Chant III, lines 399-400.

29. See G. Mongrédien, Dictionnaire biographique des comédiens français du XVIIe siècle (Paris, CNRS, 1961); on Du Parc, 70; L'Espy, 116-17; Jodelet, p. 93; and, again on the latter, C. Cosnier, art. cit.

30. There is doubt as to whether Molière played the part of Mascarille in the original production of Dépit amoureux. See N. Peacock's discussion of the problem in his ed. cit., 125-6.

31. On Molière's first two full-length comedies, see K. Bech, ‘Le jeune Molière et la commedia dell'arte. Thèmes et aspects scéniques dans L'Etourdi et Le Dépit amoureux’, Revue Romane, 5 (1970), 1-16. See also Claudia Buratelli, ‘L'emigrazione di un testo dell'Arte: da L'Inavertito di Barbieri a L'Etourdi di Molière’, in Viaggi teatrali …, 182-99.

32. Note, however, Jupiter's address to Alcmène in I, iii of Amphitryon, when, in reaction to her protests at the absurdity of trying to distinguish between Amphitryon the husband and Amphitryon the lover, he says:

    Ce discours est plus raisonnable,
    Alcmène, que vous ne pensez.

    (lines 612-13)

    (There is more reason in that remark, Alcmène, than you realize.) Although addressed to her, these words are meaningless to her. Only the audience knows what they mean, and were there no tacit collusion with it on the part of Jupiter, they would not be spoken.