[In this essay, Hartley argues that in Molière's plays a character's use of language reveals the reliability of his or her authority, and that Molière satirizes those who value language as a marker of status.]

In recent years, Molière criticism has tended to concentrate on the theatrical, rather than the literary side to his plays. Attention has focused on such topics as his debt to the commedia dell'arte, with whose performers he shared for some months the Petit-Bourbon,¹ the nature of the seventeenth-century theatre and the demands and tastes of the audiences of the time,² the importance of his role as theatre-manager.³ The change in approach brought about largely through the pioneering work of Moore, Bray, Jouvet and others⁴ has borne fruit. Bray, for example, makes the crucial point that, alone among French dramatists, Molière was a comédien, not an écrivain.⁵ A more balanced approach to the plays of Molière is now possible for students of literature.

However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the primary tool of the comédien was nevertheless language.⁶ The appeal of Molière's comedy was different from that of the commedia dell'arte precisely because his words could be understood by his audience. The language of comedy will always be a revealing subject for enquiry, if only because of the social dimension which is inevitably present in this form of drama. If language is one means by which social relationships are established and challenged, then the reflection of these processes in comedy is bound to repay study. It is this topic which will be studied here. In addition, insights into Molière's characters will be provided by an analysis of the way they themselves use and abuse language in their dealings and confrontations with each other. And finally, this investigation will help us to understand more fully the purpose of the many instances of literary satire which Molière includes in his comedies.

Molière's central comic figures are frequently in positions of authority.⁷ This may be a consequence of social status: Don Juan is a gentleman, Sganarelle his servant, Mathurine and Charlotte are peasant girls, and the pauvre clearly a social inferior; Arnolphe lords it over his ward and intended fiancée Agnès. The authority invested in the male head of household is perhaps that which is most frequently portrayed: Harpagon, Orgon, Argan, M. Jourdain, Chrysale, Argante and Géronte, among others, all possess, or would like to possess, the authority and respect due to a father. It is a measure of the extent to which Molière's theatre is a family-based form of writing that, of the central male characters in the best-known plays, only Alceste, Arnolphe and Don Juan are not fathers and husbands, and in the case of the first two they aspire to the married state, and presumably to fatherhood in the long run.

Molière's purpose is frequently to ridicule these figures of authority. One can argue about the satirical intention of the dramatist, about the extent to which his purpose is solely comic.⁸ What is undeniable is that laughter on stage is often most successful when it is aimed at a target, and when that target is a character who, theoretically at least, holds power over other characters, and who therefore represents a figure who may have power over us, the members of the audience. Laughter at the expense of a figure of authority can constitute a form of revenge, and thereby be therapeutic, even satirical; laughter at the expense of the underdog is an altogether more cruel affair.⁹

If Molière is to deflate these characters, he has a range of dramatic means which he can employ. The characters may be tricked, even by their social inferiors, as is Argan by his servant Toinette; their plans may be thwarted by the revelations of the true identities of those whose lives they seek to control, as, for example, in L'École des femmes and Les Fourberies de Scapin. Sometimes such dénouements appear weak. Le Tartuffe, where the knot is untied by the intervention of the King, has been criticised on these grounds.¹⁰ As well as dramatic means such as these, Molière has linguistic tools at his disposal, and his use of them, to bring about the downfall of his rogues and fools, is extremely effective.

At the end of L'École des femmes, Arnolphe is reduced to silence. For him this is the ultimate humiliation. The text of the play stresses this by means of a precise stage direction. Stage directions are relatively rare and brief in Molière's plays, and the instructions given here are therefore all the more telling:

Arnolphe, s'en allant tout transporté et ne
          pouvant parler: Oh!
Oronte: D'où vient qu'il s'enfuit sans rien dire?

(l.1764)

(Traditionally, this ‘Oh!’ is rendered ‘Ouf!’, which is even more expressive of confusion, of pain even,¹¹ certainly of a sudden loss of control over language: it sounds more like an involuntary exhalation than a conscious attempt to communicate through words.)

What must be borne in mind is that this linguistic deflation is affecting a character who has spoken about half of the play's lines, and who is only absent from one short scene (II,iii). No less than six scenes (II,i; III,iii and v; IV,i, v and vii) are soliloquies spoken by him. Arnolphe's dominant role no doubt has its roots in the background to the play: Molière, in his desire to exploit his growing reputation as an actor,¹² wrote for himself in 1662 a comic part far larger than that of any play he had composed previously. But even allowing for this, it is nevertheless true that there is a delicious irony in the loss of control experienced at the end of the play by a character who has spent so much time talking, and presumably feeling that he was in charge of the situation.¹³ Even when faced with Horace, Arnolphe liked to think that he controlled events. Arnolphe's authority has been shown to have no firm basis; the confidence which he possessed in his power over others (witness the scene of the maximes du mariage) was utterly misplaced. ‘Ouf!’ says it all.

The audience, of course, has known this all along. The actor will have made it clear that Arnolphe is an imaginaire, that he only thinks that he is in control, that his perception of what is happening around him is so much at odds with reality that his authority will founder in the end. What makes Arnolphe's linguistic conduct especially comic is the self-destructive element which it contains. In his interrogation of Agnès (II,v), the insistence with which he questions the girl, his obstinate pursuit of the truth about her meeting with Horace cause him more pain than he need feel:

Arnolphe, reprenant haleine: Passe pour le ruban.
          Mais je voulais apprendre
S'il ne vous a rien fait que vous baiser les bras.
Agnès: Comment! est-ce qu'on fait d'autres choses?
Arnolphe:                                                             Non pas.
Mais, pour guérir du mal qu'il dit qui le possède,
N'a-t-il point exigé de vous d'autre remède?

(ll.580-4)

Arnolphe should have stopped at ‘Non pas’, but he suffers from verbal haemorrhages. His inability to stop talking emerges again in act III, scene iv, when, once more confident that Agnès will be his, he encounters Horace and invites him to discuss his pursuit of the girl:

Hé bien! vos amourettes?
Puis-je, Seigneur Horace, apprendre où vous en êtes?
J'étais tant distrait par quelque vision;
Mais, depuis, là-dessus, j'ai fait réflexion:
De vos premiers progrès j'admire la vitesse,
Et dans l'événement mon âme s'interésse.

(ll.852-7)

The downfall of Arnolphe at the end of the play is thus brought about not only by the revelation of Agnès's true identity, but also by her would-be husband's garrulity. The dénouement, once we examine the interplay between the central character's misplaced sense of authority and his use of language, reveals itself to be more organic than it might have appeared.

Other comic characters fail to exert the command over language to which their status would seem to give them a right. This failure contributes to their comic discomfort. We might expect a misanthropist's low opinion of his fellow human beings to be reflected in calmly expressed views, in scorn for social chatter, in telling silences. Alceste's speech, in fact, is characterized by bluster, impatience, exasperation and, in his dealings with Célimène, a desire to be told falsehoods.

The first exchanges between Alceste and Philinte reveal the former's difficulties with language. He finds it hard to communicate his view, a fact which explains his friend's initial puzzlement and need to coax the cause of Alceste's rage out of him. Alceste does not even want to understand: ‘Moi, je veux me fâcher, et ne veux point entendre’ (l.5). During the course of the first scene of the play, Alceste interrupts Philinte on no fewer than eight occasions.

The scene of Oronte's sonnet again shows Alceste's failure to find the right formulae to convey his opinion. His evasive ‘Je ne dis pas cela’ (ll.352, 358, 362), his trite distinction between ‘ce style figuré’ and ‘la nature’ (ll.385-9), his clumsy rendering of an unimpressive ditty (we assume that Alceste does not sing well) all give the impression of someone whose passion cannot find adequate means of communicating itself to others. Alceste's speech, it seems, is incapable of conveying total honesty, despite his insistence to the contrary: ‘Je veux qu'on soit sincère, et qu'en homme d'honneur, / On ne lâche aucun mot qui ne parte du cœur’ (ll.35-6).¹⁴ It is Philinte who is, linguistically, in charge, who provokes Alceste with his complimentary remarks about Oronte's poem, comments made for Alceste's, rather than for Oronte's benefit.¹⁵

The tragi-comic encounter between Alceste and Célimène (IV,iii) provides further indications of Alceste's inability to translate his presumed superiority into effective discourse. The questions which he poses suggest that he is in control of the exchanges;¹⁶ Célimène shrewdly counters questions with questions until she is able to seize the initiative with her abrupt ‘Il ne me plaît pas, moi’ (l.1356), reducing her lover to pathetic requests to be told something (that the billet was addressed to a woman) which he knows would be an offence against linguistic propriety, as well as highly unlikely in terms of personal relationships. And at the end of the play, Alceste's desire to depart to his ‘endroit écarté’—an exit-line which, in its exasperation, echoes that of Arnolphe—is evidence not only that he is incapable of acceptable social intercourse, but also that he lacks the linguistic ability adequately to relate to others.

In Le Tartuffe, words are the means by which the hypocrite casts his spell over Orgon and Madame Pernelle, and the means by which the head of the household tries to exert his authority over wife, daughter, son and servant. Orgon shares with Alceste a certain incoherence at times of stress. The revelation by Damis of Tartuffe's first attempt at the seduction of Elmire produces in Orgon a series of exclamations: ‘Tais-toi, peste maudite. … Tais-toi, pendard … Infâme! … Tais-toi … Ingrat! … Paix … Paix, dis-je’ (ll.1090-1117). The father is thereby reduced to the son's level, matching Damis's hot-headedness with barely articulate exasperation, and abdicating the responsibility for investigating Damis's complaint.

We have already seen, during Orgon's first appearance on stage (I,iv), how his infatuation with Tartuffe has produced a mental blockage, reflected in a failure to communicate. The celebrated exchanges between Dorine and Orgon¹⁷ are a grotesque linguistic quadrille, performed four times. Orgon's enquiry ‘Et Tartuffe?’ produces a clear-cut answer from the servant, which ought to satisfy her interlocutor. But his rejoinder ‘Le pauvre homme!’ indicates that he has not listened. Neither has Dorine listened to Orgon, because she ignores the rejoinder, and proceeds to give details of Elmire's poor state of health. Whereas Dorine's decision not to pay attention to Orgon is conscious and well-intentioned (after all, Orgon ought to be more interested in his wife), Orgon's failure to listen is reprehensible and comic at the same time. Cléante loses no time in pointing out to the head of the household that his servant is mocking him (‘A votre nez, mon frère, elle se rit de vous’—l.259).¹⁸

Orgon, like so many of Molière's central characters, does not deserve the respect which he feels is his due, and this is conveyed by his use of language. He either talks too much, and unthinkingly, as in the scenes studied above (he has further outbursts of misdirected rage when Tartuffe's perfidy is finally revealed to him), or too little (when, despite Elmire's coughing, he remains silent under the table).

The attempted seduction which so angered Damis is a declaration by Tartuffe based on a corruption of Platonic notions.¹⁹ Tartuffe has produced a parody of Platonic love, which both Elmire and her stepson recognize for what it is: lust dressed up in spiritual language. It is the discrepancy between what Tartuffe says and what he means that is both shocking and funny. If, in his use of language, Orgon was a buffoon, Tartuffe is a cheat. His declaration is skilfully done, progressing from general to particular, from ideal and divine to human and specific.²⁰ But the attempt is a failure. Elmire is not swayed by the argument. Nor does she fall into the trap that will ensnare her husband, and lose control of herself in responding to the situation. She successfully bursts the linguistic bubble created by Tartuffe's hypocrisy, and the weapon she uses is irony: ‘Je vous écoute dire, et votre rhétorique / En termes assez forts à mon âme s'explique’ (ll.1001-1002).²¹

Further evidence of Tartuffe's apparent skill with words emerges from the second scene of seduction (IV,v). Tartuffe is a casuist, and casuistry is in part the abuse of language in the service of a corruption of theology and moral philosophy. You can do anything with words, it seems.²² A phrase such as ‘la direction de la pensée’, once coined, can be used to cover acts which are morally and theologically unacceptable. Tartuffe's assurances to Elmire (‘Je puis vous dissiper ces craintes ridicules’, ‘Je vous réponds de tout, et prends le mal sur moi’, (ll.1485, 1496)) are the words of someone deprived not only of moral but also of linguistic integrity: not only his actions, but also his words—or rather the meanings he attaches to his words—are base; he is a true hypocrite.

Tartuffe is an interloper in Orgon's household. In a comedy, where family relationships are central, any interloper will need to live on his wits. His ingenuity with words will be a part of his armoury. If he meets someone with a poor understanding of the relationship between what is said and what is meant, he has every chance of success, and if this person is in a position of authority, he can go far. But with those who have a better grasp of this relationship he will fail.

How then are the abuse of language, and the failures to communicate of Molière's fools and rogues, to be punished? Arnolphe and, to a lesser extent, Alceste are reduced to silence at the end. The ridiculing of Argan is completed when he willingly participates in the comic ritual which rounds off the play, and whose foolishness is obvious to everyone except him. His loss of face is less humiliating because we have never taken him as a serious threat to the well-being of his family. The comeuppance inflicted on Mascarille and Jodelet in Les Précieuses ridicules is crude and physical (beatings and undressings), as befits a farce. The précieuses themselves are lost for words:

Cathos: Ah! quelle confusion!
Magdelon:                                                             Je crève de dépit

(scène xv)

Trissotin, the bel esprit of Les Femmes savantes, is revealed at the end in his true mercenary colours.

We do not always have to wait for the dénouements, however, to find linguistic devices used to good effect by servants and the like. During the course of the plays, a range of such devices is employed to this end. Irony, in its various forms, enables the underdog to question the master's control, while reducing the risk of punishment, and simultaneously poking fun at the master.²³ Toinette, Argan's servant, turns the tables on her hypochondriac master, obeying his command to speak more quietly (‘il ne faut point parler si haut à des malades’) by not speaking at all (Elle fait semblant de parler), thus making Argan appear a fool, but without giving him reason to attack her for undermining his authority (Le Malade imaginaire, II,ii). She later uses sarcasm effectively:

Ma foi, Monsieur, je suis pour vous maintenant, et je me dédis de tout ce que je disais hier. […] Que vous serez bien engendré! Vous allez voir le garçon le mieux fait du monde, et le plus spirituel. Il n'a dit que deux mots, qui m'ont ravie, et votre fille va être charmée de lui.

(II,iv)

In her scenes with Angélique, Toinette's provocative taciturnity pokes gentle fun at the former's love-struck musings:

Angélique: Et qu'il n'est rien de plus fâcheux que la contrainte où l'on me tient, qui bouche tout commerce aux doux empressements de cette mutuelle ardeur que le ciel nous inspire?

Toinette: Vous avez raison.

(I,iv)

Her interventions in Thomas Diafoirus's wooing of Angélique (II,v) provide further examples of the way in which a subservient character can use language to add to the comedy of a scene, without getting herself into hot water:

Thomas Diafoirus: Avec la permission aussi de Monsieur, je vous invite à venir voir l'un de ces jours, pour vous divertir, la dissection d'une femme, sur quoi je dois raisonner.

Toinette: Le divertissement sera agréable. Il y en a qui donnent la comédie à leurs maîtresses, mais donner une dissection est quelque chose de plus galant.

Not only servants, but suitors too can attempt to undermine the authority of their intended's parents by linguistic means. Valère appears to accept that Harpagon cannot refuse Anselme's offer to marry Elise ‘sans dot’, but his ironical tone is clear to everyone except Harpagon:²⁴

Il est vrai: cela ferme la bouche à tout, sans dot.—Le moyen de résister à une raison comme celle-là?

(I,v)²⁵

The extent to which Molière's purpose was satirical is not something which can be investigated here.²⁶ What is worth noting in passing, however, is that the irony employed by a servant like Toinette enables Molière to ridicule human failings (hypochondria, stupidity, lack of social graces) without suggesting that the status quo should be overturned. Masters and servants should remain in their respective places. Indeed, those who try to change the social order (notably M. Jourdain, of course, but to a lesser extent characters such as Mascarille and Jodelet, Magdelon and Cathos, and the blue stockings with social aspirations in Les Femmes savantes) are themselves figures of fun. Molière's satire, such as it is, is socially conservative, not revolutionary.

Characters use asides as well as irony to annoy those in authority. Asides, as Conesa points out,²⁷ are beyond the control of the listener. La Flèche (L'Avare, I,iii) can in this way exert a degree of temporary control over his exchanges with Harpagon. Other, more direct, devices can be exploited by the socially disadvantaged character. Scapin's attempts to seize the initiative in his dealings with Argante and Géronte involve a straightforward rejection of statements made by the old men (‘Je le déshériterai’: ‘Vous ne le déshériterez point’).²⁸ In this unsubtle way—in an unsubtle play—the authority of the paterfamilias is called into question. Scenes in which Scapin is on stage with either one or the other, but in which cognisance is not taken of each other's presence (I,iv: Argante, se croyant seul; II,vii: Scapin, feignant de ne pas voir Géronte) have great potential for comic business, which is in part derived from the failure on the part of Argante and Géronte to communicate effectively. Once normal communication has broken down in this way, the old fools lose what little authority they had, and Scapin is able to use his wit and verbal dexterity to impose himself on the situation.

Consciously or unconsciously, many of Molière's characters abuse language. This is true of both fools and rogues. Among the former, the précieuses and their admirers shun perfectly acceptable items of vocabulary; the femmes savantes consider a servant's solecism grounds for dismissal; characters who do not possess Greek or Latin (classical or macaronic)—Philaminte, Armande, Bélise, M. Jourdain, Argan—revere those who make a show of possessing them. The fools are making the mistake of using language, not as a means to an end, but as end in itself. If everyone knows what a siège is, there is no need to talk about ‘les commodités de la conversation’; a servant whose command of French is less complete than that of her pseudo-intellectual mistress is no less competent a servant for that; and someone who, like Vadius, ‘sait du grec’, is not, for this reason, any more likely to be able to conduct a polite discussion on literary topics. The rogues deliberately misuse language.²⁹ Tartuffe twists words in his attempts at seduction; the professionals (lawyers, doctors) confuse their victims with jargon.

We can see a reflection of this attitude towards language in the style of acting associated with Molière and his players. Naturalness of diction was the hallmark of his troupe, in contrast to the style of his rivals at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. This naturalness is ironically condemned by Mascarille and Cathos, both abusers of language.³⁰ In his plays, Molière mocks those who abuse language; on stage, his players practised what he preached.

Those who are in authority are those who pass judgement. Characters such as Arnolphe, Alceste and Madame Pernelle have their misplaced confidence in their soundness of judgement eventually held up to ridicule. But judgements in Molière's plays are not only personal and social, they are also literary. Oronte's sonnet, Mascarille's impromptu, Trissotin's sonnet and epigram are all recited and analysed. That a man of letters like Molière, frequently involved in literary controversy, should include these scenes does not surprise us. However, we are better able to appreciate these items of literary satire if we place them within the context of the attitudes towards language displayed by those who compose, recite and comment. Molière seems not to be primarily concerned with demonstrating how bad the pieces are, although clearly we are meant to laugh at them.³¹ Our attention focuses more on the fatuous admiration expressed by the listeners, their comments often amounting to little more than paraphrase:

Mascarille: Avez-vous remarqué ce commencement: Oh, oh? Voilà qui est extraordinaire: oh, oh! Comme un homme qui s'avise tout d'un coup: oh, oh! La surprise: oh; oh!

(Les Précieuses ridicules, scène ix);

Philaminte Faites-la sortir, quoi qu'on die:
Ah! que ce quoi qu'on die est d'un goût admirable!
C'est, à mon sentiment, un endroit impayable.

(Les Femmes savantes, ll.782-3)

Alceste seems at first to possess better literary taste in his remarks about the artificiality of Oronte's sonnet, but the song which he offers himself fails to convince us that his judgment in literary matters is reliable.

The attitude towards language of which Molière seems to approve is a utilitarian one. When language does not, for whatever reason, communicate economically a message or convey honestly a state of mind it is faulty language, its practitioner to be ridiculed or condemned. To borrow the vocabulary of teachers of foreign languages, Molière places the emphasis on communicative competence. Molière's approach reflects the seventeenth-century notion of honnêteté. His scorn for ostentation—drawing attention to oneself by displays of learning, or by language which is different from normal usage—echoes the strictures of a writer like Méré, for whom rhetorical excess is something which will fool only the ignorant.³² The men of letters among Molière's fools fall into the same trap. Those like Oronte, Mascarille and Trissotin, whose enthusiasm and desire to be noticed leads them to make spectacles of themselves by reciting their works are not behaving like honnêtes gens.³³ They too have lost sight of the utilitarian nature of language, and have made the mistake of believing that social intercourse involves linguistic virtuosity. Their comic deflation is therefore to be seen as in part a result of their literary pretensions. By satirizing their offerings, Molière can show that their claims to superiority and to the praise and respect of others are unfounded.

Language is the means by which Molière's authority-figures reveal themselves in their true colours; it is also the means by which characters in positions of subservience revenge themselves on those in authority over them. We know that these authority-figures will be frustrated in the end, yet even before the dénouement part of our delight in watching the plot unfold comes from observing how the bubble of authority may be burst by the verbal skills of subservient characters. Molière's plays provide comic illustrations of the concept that language is the last refuge against the tyrant, against those who would lord it over us.³⁴

Notes

1. Philip A. Wadsworth, Molière and the Italian Theatrical Tradition, n.p., 1977.

2. J. Lough, Seventeenth-Century French Drama: The Background, Oxford, 1979, chapters III (‘Inside a Theatre’) and IV (‘Audiences’), pp. 58-98; W.D. Howarth, Molière, a Playwright and his Audience, Cambridge, 1982, pp. 33-47.

3. See, for example, Howarth, Playwright, pp. 18-26.

4. W. G. Moore, Molière, a New Criticism, Oxford, 1949, reprinted 1962; R. Bray, Molière homme de théâtre, Paris, 1954; Louis Jouvet, Molière et la comédie classique, extraits des cours de Louis Jouvet au conservatoire (1939-1940), Paris, 1965.

5. Bray, Molière homme de théâtre, pp. 38-41. Bray explains why, in his opinion, Molière nevertheless did have his plays printed: ‘… parce qu'il y avait là une source de bénéfices et aussi parce que la publication par l'imprimé consolidait la faveur dont il jouissait et assurait la fréquentation de la salle du Palais-Royal, ce qui était son premier souci’ (p. 44).

6. Bray, in making the crucial point about the primacy of the theatrical in Molière's plays, occasionally overstates his case: ‘C'est pourquoi il est absurde d'étudier son œuvre comme une œuvre littéraire’ (p. 40).

7. G. Conesa characterizes many of the confrontations in Molière's plays as taking place between a ‘sollicité’ and a ‘solliciteur’ (Le Dialogue moliéresque: étude stylistique et dramaturgique, Paris, 1983, p. 419).

8. See Moore, New Criticism, chapter VI (‘Scourge’, pp. 85-97) and Bray, Molière homme de théâtre, pp. 350-62.

9. There is an interesting discussion on this, drawing on Hobbes and Freud, in Matthew Hodgart, Satire, London, 1969, pp. 109-111.

10. See Jacques Scherer, Structures de ‘Tartuffe’, 2nd edition, Paris, 1974, pp. 190-207.

11. See the note to line 1764 in the Pléiade edition of Molière (œuvres complètes, textes établis, présentés et annotés par Georges Couton, 2 vols. Paris, 1971, I, p. 1282): ‘Il est certain pourtant qu'à la scène, dès 1663, Arnolphe criait “Ouf” et non “Oh!” … Ouf! n'exprime pas au XVIe siècle le soulagement, mais seulement la douleur’.

12. See Howarth, Playwright, pp. 9-18.

13. Conesa (Dialogue moliéresque, p. 433) discusses what the ‘taux de participation au dialogue’ can tell us about the way in which characters control situations, or think they do.

14. cf. ll.43-6:

    Je ne hais rien tant que les contorsions
    De tous ces grands faiseurs de protestations,
    Ces affables donneurs d'embrassades frivoles,
    Ces obligeants diseurs d'inutiles paroles.

    (my italics)

15. See Howarth, Playwright, p. 149, n. 36.

16. Conesa, Dialogue moliéresque, p. 423.

17. See Scherer, Structures de ‘Tartuffe’, pp. 150-1.

18. See Alvin Eustis, Molière as Ironic Contemplator, The Hague, 1973, p. 32.

19. See Scherer, Structures de Tartuffe, pp. 156-65.

20. Ibid., pp. 166-72.

21. See Eustis, Ironic Contemplator, p. 30.

22. There is a parallel with the activity and speech of Panurge in Rabelais's Tiers Livre. Panurge's praise of debts and debtors at the beginning of this book is another comic example of the way a clever man can twist words to suit his own reprehensible purposes. Interestingly, Molière, who clearly knows his Rabelais, quotes Pantagruel's condemnation of Panurge's misdirected verbal ingenuity in the first act of L'École des femmes:

    Arnolphe: A ce bel argument, à ce discours
              profond,
    Ce que Pantagruel à Panurge répond:
    Pressez-moi de me joindre à femme autre que sotte;
    Prêchez, patrocinez jusqu'à la Pentecôte;
    Vous serez ébahi, quand vous serez au bout,
    Que vous ne m'aurez rien persuadé du tout.

    (ll.117-22)

23. The introduction to Eustis's book provides ‘A Working Definition of Irony in Relation to the Comic’. The definition given on page 15 is a useful one: ‘All forms of irony in the theater rest on the assumption that one or several characters understand a remark or a situation in a sense different from some or all other characters and the audience’.

24. Or rather to everyone except Harpagon and Élise! Élise is too naive to understand Valère's game: see Eustis, Ironic Contemplator, p. 33.

25. See also Eustis, Ironic Contemplator, p. 36 (Harpagon's agreement with the outrageous views put forward ironically by Valère at the end of this scene), and p. 25 (more irony at Harpagon's expense, this time perpetrated by the femme d'intrigue, Frosine).

26. See above, n. 8.

27. Dialogue moliéresque, pp. 434-5.

28. Ibid., pp. 436-7.

29. See Moore, New Criticism, pp. 62-4.

30. See Bray, Molière homme de théâtre, pp. 80-86 and Howarth, Playwright, pp. 11-12.

31. Presumably we would criticise Mascarille's ‘Au voleur, au voleur, au voleur, au voleur!’ as being repetitious. Would we say the same of Lear's ‘Never, never, never, never, never!’?

32. See Michael Moriarty, Taste and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century France, Cambridge, 1988, p. 96. For La Bruyère, the language of a specialist like the Collector sets him apart from honnêtes gens; honnêteté is an ‘intersubjective and collective culture’; ‘linguistic consensualism’ should be the norm (ibid., p. 162). The highly personal use of language typical of many of Molière's characters puts them at odds with honnêtes gens.

33. See Howarth, Playwright, pp. 147-8.

34. I am grateful to a colleague, Jon King, for an anecdote which makes the point beautifully. Apparently, during the Occupation of Paris, a picture shop displayed two political portraits. One painting, of Pierre Laval, bore the legend ‘A vendre’; the other, of Marshal Pétain, was already ‘Vendu’. The joke was presumably lost on the occupying Germans.