SOURCE: “Language for Money: the Patron and the Servant,” in Pistoles/Paroles: Money and Language in Seventeenth-Century French Comedy, Rookwood Press, 1996, pp. 151-70.

During his Parisian career, Molière was a servant of the king. He shared the obligation of all subjects to use his talents for the monarch, and as a comédien du roi, he provided the king with entertainment at court. Molière also worked for the king in his performances in the Paris theater, for here, too, he offered pleasure on Louis' behalf. In examining the ways in which Molière's comedies base their value on the authority of the monarch, I shall show how the playwright contributes to the image of the king as bestower of prosperity and peace and at the same time constructs a new role for himself as a royal agent.

Hopes for prosperity had some justification at this time. 1659 had brought an end to the long war with Spain. When Louis began his personal rule in 1661, he presided over a much desired period of peace which would last, without serious interruption, until 1672, the date of the war with Holland. Direct taxes, namely the various forms of the taille, diminished during the first twelve years of his personal reign (Villers 184). While the receipts from indirect taxes increased, this came in part from better management of the fermes and from growing consumption of taxed goods. The fiscal burden remained heavy but also relatively stable. The rapidly rising taxes caused by the Thirty Years War had ceased (Le Roy Ladurie 240-42).

During these first years of his ministry, years which largely coincide with Molière's work, Colbert could strive to apply the economic theories which he believed would lead to greater industrial productivity, to a greater share in overseas trade, and to a stronger France (Bluche 217).¹ Colbert formed trading companies, among others La Compagnie des Indes orientales and La Compagnie des Indes occidentales, in a largely unsuccessful attempt to take trade from the groups already formed by the Dutch and the English. Government money found its way into the silk, soap, and glass industries among others (Léon, “Réponse” 223). Much of the minister's efforts went into making luxury products made in France competitive with those from abroad.² High tariffs on imports and the imposition of quality standards on French manufacturers were intended both to discourage the purchase of foreign goods and to make French goods attractive to foreign customers. Since the minister regarded the population as the country's greatest wealth, skilled laborers found it impossible to emigrate, while their counterparts from other countries were encouraged to make their home in France (Bluche 208). All the minister's trading and industrial policies aimed at controlling the circulation of gold in Europe and at stimulating the exchange of goods and of wealth within French borders.

The success of these policies was limited, at best. The tendency to remove precious metals from circulation, to hoard them so as to make their market value rise continued (Dessert, Argent 180). Money was scarce, and most of the money used in daily transactions was not gold or silver at all, but copper (Vilar 298). Traditional and secure forms of investment, such as rentes, proved more attractive to the affluent than the minister's initiatives for economic expansion. Efforts to attract funds for the Compagnie des Indes orientales had to be seconded by a royal lettre de cachet in order to force wealthy parties to contribute (Bluche 220-21). The companies met with little success in their efforts to wrest trade from foreign competitors. Numerous barriers to trade within France remained, such as tolls and taxes on goods imported from other regions as well as inadequate roadways.³

From a twentieth-century perspective, it is easy to dismiss Colbert's protectionism and the regulations placed on industry as unproductive hamperings of free trade. His policy of favoring the production of luxury items seems shortsighted given that three-fourths of the country's revenue depended on agriculture, a domain in which Colbert did little and in which French techniques and practices lagged far behind those of Holland and England (Goubert, “Tragique XVII^e siècle” 356; “Le Paysan et la terre” 158). Yet, peacetime did diminish the dangers of travel and commerce and meant that the countryside was less troubled by the movement of troops, by pillaging and by requisitions (Goubert, “Tragique XVII^e siècle” 353). In comparison with the years immediately preceding the personal reign of Louis XIV, this period of stable monetary rates and initial tentatives to strengthen industry appears as a time when hopes for prosperity were high.

Colbert's economic policy was part and parcel of the political policy of bolstering the gloire of the monarch. The extensive building program sponsored by the king and Colbert brought visual evidence of France's growing wealth and of the king's power.⁴ Colonial expansion and a growing navy served a similar purpose, as did the patronage given new industries and given the sciences and the arts. The monarch's subjects needed to recognize his power and to cooperate with it if the king and his minister were to achieve their goals. In their efforts to make nobles, judges, and administrators proud of playing a role in the work of the crown, the king and his advisers enjoyed considerable success. In the provinces as well as in the capital, to cooperate with the crown in the administration of state affairs could prove profitable, whether because of gratifications granted by the king or because portions of tax revenues were allocated for the households of provincial officials (Le Roy Ladurie, 233-36). The spectacle of the court became an object of fascination for the nobility and for the townspeople who read of the king's activities in the Gazette, in Robinet's Lettres à Madame et à Monsieur and in the Mercure Galant. In an age when king and country appeared as inseparable, Louis XIV was able to help nurture, in nobles and bourgeois alike, an interest in accruing glory for France.

That glory differed from the gloire of the individual, for it was to be won and used according to the monarch's rules. Industry and commerce were not the only areas which became the object of the king's regulations. The civil code elaborated at this time showed a desire to make France conform to the order envisaged by the king and his ministers, and to recast even the customs which Louis ratified as the products of his good will and judgment.⁵ New academies, such as the Académie des Sciences and the Petite Académie, provided further evidence of the centralist drive to regulation. To make a given domain the object of the king's attention was both to demonstrate his power and to make the products of that domain his work. Since the monarch claimed to involve himself in all areas of the government, he could make all the decisions of his agents pass in the public imagination as his own acts. Deviation from the norms which he had established or ratified became unacceptable whether such deviations involved family life, language or money.

Molière has his part in praising the king's ability to repair the harm caused by deviant behavior. The comedies work to disseminate an image of a magnificent sovereign. Theater becomes the monarch's agent, for the artist and the plays which he creates belong to the king. The public knows that Louis XIV is Molière's benefactor, but they must also come to recognize him as their own and remember that the peace and relative prosperity which they enjoy are his work.

THE POLITICAL USES OF THEATER

Even as Molière's plays depict and praise the practice of profitable investment, they belong to a gift economy as well as an economy of exchange. A helpful illustration of a comedy's function as a gift comes in 1682, several years after the death of Molière. The birth of the duc de Bourgogne, the king's grandson, provided an occasion for public celebration, and the actors of La Comédie-Française performed Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, gratis, before the Parisian crowd. The Mercure galant recounts that the troupe made this choice because of the expense which the play entailed—the actors were thus intent upon making an obviously generous gift to their public. The public thanked them at the end of the performance with cries of “Vive le roi!”⁶ Such a cry befitted the occasion, but also points to the relationship between king and comédiens in the public imagination. The actors gave their own time and effort, yet the crowd's thanks praised the troupe's master.

The exchanges between the patron and his artists, discussed at the beginning of this study, thus fit into an economy which placed the public in the monarch's debt. While the king figured as the first consumer, the official destinataire, of many plays, he also offered the diversions of the theater to his Parisian subjects.⁷ When the production of Molière's plays involved, or seemed to involve, lavish expense on the part of the monarch, these comedies became proof of the king's liberality. The sums which spectators paid the troupe for admission to the theater rewarded the actors but could not pay the king for making theater possible. Molière's plays demystify noble expenditure, but royal expenditure retained its mystique and fascination for the public.

Even when specific plays and art works did not originate from royal commands, they served as evidence of the benefits which the public derived from the king. The plays showed, as Chappuzeau maintains, that while “les plaisirs” might be “fades” in republics, art prospered under the monarchy (100-01). The haste with which the public bought the accounts of court performances and the livres de ballet which described not merely the comedies but the dance and music which framed them testifies to the acute curiosity in regard to the king's own divertissements.⁸ One of Furetière's examples of the use of the word appartement also suggests this interest and the awe inspired by the monarch's magnificence:

On a dit ces dernières années, qu'on tenait appartement chez le Roi, d'une fête ou réjouissance, en laquelle le Roy régalait sa Cour pendant quelques soirées dans ses appartements qui étaient superbement meublés, et éclairés avec musique, bals, danse, collations, jeux, et autres divertissements magnifiques.

(Dictionnaire, “appartement”)

Of the shows prepared for the king's festivities, only the plays presented, with or without ballet, regularly became accessible to all.⁹ Comedies which returned to Paris became in a sense crumbs from the royal banquet table.

The plays thus functioned as a bond between the king and the audience. Even persons who normally did not belong in the “corps symbolique du roi,” a body which included courtiers and royal officers, temporarily became part of the mechanism run by the monarch whom Apostolidès has described as a “roi-machiniste” (Le Roi-machine 7-8). As noble and bourgeois alike watched plays which they knew to have been created for the monarch, and as they imitated the sovereign by supporting theater, the complicity of the audience with Molière became complicity with the crown. This cooperation with the crown fights breaches of social codes and usurpation of royal authority.

Because Molière's plays figured as royal gifts, the audience which applauded them found itself admiring the king's agents in their efforts to support norms of behavior and of verbal and monetary practice. Through the theater, the monarch shows each group its proper place in the world. With the help of his artists, the king isolates and contains destructive manias. The plays make explicit references to the curative properties of theater as characters try to use comedy and dance to modify the eccentric behavior of the central figures in such texts as Le Misanthrope and Le Malade imaginaire. Philinte evokes L'École des maris as he tries to make Alceste see his own foolishness. In Le Malade imaginaire, Béralde arrives in his brother's house with entertainment which he claims will do the invalid good: “Ce sont des Égyptiens, vêtus en Mores, qui font des danses mêlées de chansons, où je suis sûr que vous prendrez plaisir; et cela vaudra bien une ordonnance de Monsieur Purgon.”¹⁰ Since Béralde recognizes Argan's illness as hypochondria, he suggests that another type of performance might cure his brother of illusions concerning medicine and at the same time amuse him: “j'aurais souhaité de pouvoir un peu vous tirer de l'erreur où vous êtes, et, pour vous divertir, vous mener voir sur ce chapitre quelqu'une des comédies de Molière” (MI.III.iii). Neither Alceste nor Argan accepts the challenge to learn from such entertainments, but the suggestion that the plays offer benefits to attentive spectators remains.

Any calming of social and domestic unrest by the king's actors suggests Louis' power to police his society and to give his subjects the wealth which accompanies order. Some texts make this power more visible than others. The most obvious example of an invocation of royal authority arises in Le Tartuffe. The exempt who arrests the villain and returns Orgon's property to him praises the monarch's discernment: “Nous vivons sous un Prince ennemi de la fraude” (Tart.V.vi.1906). Albeit in a less overt fashion, the same authority which upholds the dénouement of Le Tartuffe guarantees the conclusions of plays such as Le Bourgeois gentilhomme and Les Femmes savantes. Conflicts between different types of language and the use of different theatrical forms affirm the king's ability to dispense justice and harmony.

Royal discourse gains credit for overcoming barriers to happiness and peace. To talk of the king's discourse in the comedies, however, raises two objections. First, the monarch does not normally have a clear representative on the comic stage. He is never a physically present character. In only two instances of the Molière corpus, in the Impromptu de Versailles and in the dénouement of the Tartuffe, do characters speak directly for the king. Some of the figures who evoke the king and who use him to guarantee the worth of their own words, are, like Dorante in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme or the marquis in Le Misanthrope, fops or demeaned nobles. No character appears as an infallible figure worthy of representing the monarch's will. As to the second objection, Charles Perrault writes that “il en est dans un royaume du langage comme de la monnaie; il faut que tous les deux, pour être de mise, soient marqués au coin du Prince” (Parallèle 312). This would suggest that royal discourse should be recognizably superior to other paroles and that it should provide a constant standard. Servants such as Covielle, who speaks of the “bourle” planned for Jourdain, work for order but do not provide a standard of speech (BG.III.xiii). Nowhere in Molière's work do we find one type of speech, one parole, which has consistent power to defeat all others.

These two objections, nonetheless, both explain and cancel each other. The absence of the king, “the principal poet of his country and the unique sovereign, the ideal Cartesian self,” makes a uniformly victorious parole impossible (Reiss, Meaning of Literature 82-83). Earlier dramatists could and did use the interplay of paroles and pistoles to underwrite the value of the discourse of one group, whether the honnêtes gens or the nobility, and could show representatives of such a group on stage. It is in Molière's interest and in that of his patron to subordinate all segments of society to the crown. The king's authority depends not upon one parole but upon the langue, the system of conventions which bind members of a linguistic community together and which allow them to understand each other. The langue, rather than a parole, functions as the linguistic equivalent of the king's symbolic body.

Thus, the comedies refuse to praise any one parole and appear to work for linguistic diversity.¹¹ Servants such as the Marotte of Les Précieuses ridicules and the Martine of Les Femmes savantes claim the right to speak as they wish rather than as their mistresses would have them speak. In Marotte's case this means that she insists that “il faut parler chrétien” when her mistresses' discourse mystifies her.¹² Martine, with her “je n'avons pas étugué” and “je parlons tout droit comme on parle cheux nous,” insists upon speaking patois rather than the French approved by Vaugelas.¹³ Elsewhere as well, Molière makes ample use of dialects, accents, and jargon. In Le Bourgeois gentilhomme and the subsequent “Ballet des nations,” the spectators hear false Turkish, Gascon and Swiss accents, as well as authentic Spanish and Italian. Le Malade imaginaire makes use of Italian and bastardized Latin. These examples and others like them seem to support Larry Riggs' assertion that

The tendency to define ‘legitimate’ or ‘educated’ speech as the oral reproduction of authorized modes of written discourse, as increasingly codified in literature, is a target of Molière's cultural critique.

(Molière and Plurality 24)

Yet, the diverse paroles in the plays strengthen royal authority over language.

The affronts to the unifying langue come not from ignorance of grammar but rather from misguided efforts to codify speech, or in the case of the précieuses, from individuals or groups who seek to deny that language loses all value when it ceases to be a common tool of communication. It is this commonality that, to return to Perrault's comparison, allows language to become the currency of the realm. While Molière often engages in a type of linguistic carnival, this carnival, like those described by Bakhtin, does eventually serve to support the dominant power in society.¹⁴ Dialects and jargon are comic languages which incite laughter rather than real threats to order. No spectator or reader would take the speech of a servant like Martine as a model, nor would one try to codify and to imitate the Turkish of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. When the wielders of such obviously comic paroles achieve their ends, they do not make their own speech authoritative. Instead, they combat the pretension behind other forms of speech.

To the extent that patois and jargon represent rebellions against authority, this rebellion is aimed at authorities other than the king's. In Les Précieuses ridicules, Cathos and Magdelon try to replace the accepted language of the realm with précieux speech. Philaminte and her followers in Les Femmes savantes view Vaugelas, rather than the crown or the court, as the guarantor of acceptable language. The women of Les Femmes savantes attempt to refuse the coin of the realm, at least verbally, when the notary draws up Henriette's marriage contract:

Mais au moins, en faveur, Monsieur, de la science,
Veuillez, au lieu d'écus, de livres et de francs,
Nous exprimer la dot en mines et talents,
Et dater par les mots d'ides et de calendes.

(FSvV.III.1606-09)

This suggestion, if followed, would infringe on royal power in three domains: that of the law, which governs contracts, of financial administration, which requires that one type of currency circulate as legal tender throughout the realm, and that of language.¹⁵ The doctors of Le Malade imaginaire also usurp royal authority as they pretend to have power over life and death, as they curse their supposedly rebellious patient with various diseases, and as they call Argan's offense a “crime de lèse-Faculté”—a formula which plays on “lèse-Majesté” (MI.III.v). The jargon attributed to doctors becomes a way of undermining a group whose power does not derive directly from the crown, while the patois of Martine combats the ridiculous linguistic absolutism of the women in Les Femmes savantes who wish to replace the authority of the king's own academy. Deviations from the verbal norm fight other deviations either from that norm or from social rules. The limited verbal freedom shown here eventually recalls that one authority—verbal, artistic, and social—governs France.

By refusing to privilege any one parole, the texts uphold the system of conventions which makes the diversity of paroles possible. This system leaves room for differences of class and dialect. Such differences, by signaling the speaker's place in the social hierarchy, conform to the ideology which claims that each person's station is immediately obvious, that everyone “sur son front porte écrit ce qu'il est” (Suite du Menteur III.i.807). The grammatical mistakes of a servant such as Martine therefore should at most cause good-natured laughter, not the reformist and pedantic zeal of Philaminte and Bélise. The regulation of speech and efforts to define common norms of grammar were viewed as a project worthy of royal sponsorship. Such definition was neither intended to be mandated for all classes of society nor was it to be the project of all parties who believed themselves to speak well.¹⁶ While recognition of discursive standards can improve communication and bolster unity, misguided regulation—in other words regulation by someone other than the king and his agents—combats the wealth and the utility of the langue.

Just as linguistic diversity ultimately supports central authority, the hybrid form of the comédie-ballet works to show the crown's power to triumph over disruptive folly. When the Turkish masquerade and ballet make Jourdain believe he is a “mamamouchi” whose daughter will marry the “fils du Grand Turc,” or when dancers pester the title character of Monsieur de Pourceaugnac and aid the tricksters who prevent this rich Limousin from marrying Julie, the favored art form at court triumphs over the power of money and restores harmony.¹⁷

Ballet appears as a form of royal entertainment in which kings of France of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took part.¹⁸ Molière's contemporaries knew that the king enjoyed ballet and that Molière contributed to many royal entertainments which involved dance. Louis XIV danced in the comic poet's Le Mariage forcé in 1664 and in the Ballet des Muses, given at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1665. The plays framed by this last ballet included three of Molière's, La Pastorale comique, Mélicerte, and Le Sicilien. All the comédies-ballets of Molière, with the exception of Le Malade imaginaire, were performed for the first time before the king. Ballet thus evokes courtly fêtes and royal expenditure.

The ability of the ballet to become a kind of formal deus ex machina does not invite questioning. If the comedies show that ballet ensures the order and prosperity of society, the spectators who concede the possibility of such a solution find themselves in excellent company. This is certainly not to say that the spectators believe or pretend to believe that in daily life ballet can solve difficulties. Instead, the triumph of ballet reinforces the image of the king as the restorer of harmony.

Whenever the aristocratic art, ballet, resolves the problems of comedy, the plays evoke the superiority of a courtly world over the realities with which roturiers must deal. This formal evocation of authority works chiefly for the monarch and only incidentally for his courtiers—or only for his courtiers as reflections of his own prestige. The nobles' pretensions of gloire and liberality now read as obsolete, and Molière's plays show the interdependence of noble and roturier elites. Commoners joined nobles in financial schemes and could, especially if they found their way into Colbert's bureaucracy, find themselves with more political influence than members of the Second Estate. The monarch had reason to approve both the superficial superiority which the plays attributed to the aristocracy and the common bonds of exchange which reduced nobles to the level of other subjects. The triumph of ballet at first appears to work toward the first effect rather than toward the second. The mixture of genres becomes, nonetheless, the formal parallel of the cooperation between bourgeois and noble discussed in the last chapter. Ballet figures as a noble genre, but the characters who benefit from ballet's curative properties—Jourdain's family and Argan's—are generally bourgeois. The bourgeois comedy and noble dance alike have their place in creating social harmony. Both make contributions toward the success of the art work.

It is worth recalling that such success had to be considerable if the comédies-ballets were to bring profits in the theater. Although the plays became part of a gift economy because of their association with the monarch, they also had to function—as the products of one of three permanent troupes in Paris—in a competitive market. Adding music and ballet to a comedy entailed extra expenses, as can be seen not only from La Grange but also from a list of expenses for Le Bourgeois gentilhomme kept by one of Louis' officers (La Grange 102-12; Clarétie). A highly successful play would eventually compensate for the additional costs which accompanied ballet. Les Fâcheux and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme were, in the end, profitable. Other comédies-ballets, or comedies originally presented with ballets, did less well. Le Sicilien gained little money. Le Mariage forcé, though it earned what would normally have been large receipts for its first five performances, earned far less afterwards, was too expensive to produce and therefore was withdrawn from the stage after twelve performances. Though the dénouements of the comédies-ballets reminded the audience that the king was the author and giver of order, the king alone did not give enough to Molière to make such a genre lucrative for the artist.

While royal patronage for the comédies-ballets added to the overall value of Molière's works, the relative lack of success of some plays originally created for the court recalls that Molière, like his royal patron, had to court the noblesse and the bourgeoisie. Though the nobility furnished most of the money from theater receipts, the roturiers had a numerical majority. Either group could make its lack of interest in a production seen and heard. Neither group could suffice to turn a profit for the actors. Only the approval of the audience as a whole could make a theatrical venture a solid investment.

Louis' favor could not depend on the king's personal taste alone. The comedies could not function as useful political tools unless they were viable commodities in Paris. Part of Molière's task as a servant of the king consisted in winning the cooperation of the spectators in the king's projects. Nobles and commoners alike had to believe that the France of Louis XIV would avoid the troubles of the past and would allow them to realize their own aspirations. For his own prosperity as well as for the benefit of his master, the playwright needed to encourage the audience to take advantage of the gifts which the sovereign offered and to continue to spend on the pleasures of Paris.

THE PROFITS OF ART

These texts demonstrate art's value in a basic way as they show the material profits which gifted speakers and actors could win for themselves and their sponsors. The same possibilities of expansion and enrichment shaped Molière's plays that gave rise to Colbert's policy, thus it is not surprising that the characters repeatedly find themselves facing problems paralleling those which confronted the contrôleur des finances. The lovers and their allies in these plays generally work against those who let money stagnate or who invest it—as do the learned women who support Trissotin or the hypochondriac who enriches his doctors—in a non-productive fashion.

The Molière corpus is far too varied to conform to any single formula, but in numerous plays money moves from the old to the young, from those who desire it for themselves to those who wish to found families, from individuals who will spend as little as possible to couples who want the liberty of buying the goods and pleasures which society offers. Octave and Léandre of the Fourberies de Scapin both show their readiness to spend money for the women they love. Cléandre, of Les Femmes savantes, has little wealth, but since the pedant Trissotin accuses him of frequenting the court, we may assume that he does spend in a way that makes him presentable there. The young lovers of Le Malade imaginaire obviously enjoy the pleasures of the city, for their first encounter takes place at the theater, during a rare outing for Angélique, whose father does not offer her such diversions. Money in these plays goes to those who can appreciate the luxuries which misers decry.

Lies and masquerades allow such characters, whatever their rank, either to gain wealth or to see their wealth protected. After Scapin's escapades and the surprises of the final revelations, Les Fourberies de Scapin ends with the union of two affluent merchant families. As Ariste, the uncle in Les Femmes savantes, pretends that his brother and sister-in-law have been ruined, he unmasks the greed of Trissotin and allows Cléandre, a courtier, to enrich himself with Henriette's dowry. When a character's mania cannot be cured, benign deception can accommodate folly and limit its power to harm others, as Defaux has shown.¹⁹ In Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Covielle's scheme prevents Jourdain from carrying out his professed intention of marrying his daughter into the nobility: the only noble husband who could be expected to accept such a match would no doubt be a penniless one who, like the Sotenvilles of George Dandin, would live from the wealth of his in-laws. The comedies which Toinette and Béralde stage in Le Malade imaginaire guarantee that Argan will both give his daughter's dowry to an appropriate person and beware of the greed of his wife. In the movement of wealth which accompanies marriages, even the bourgeois fathers whom many of the young lovers deceive cannot really be said to lose their riches: Harpagon keeps his wealth, and Argan, as he becomes a doctor himself, avoids the futile expenses entailed in hiring the charlatans who treat imaginary diseases and who vaunt their ability to win “Salus, honor, et argentum” (MI.3^ème intermède). To the extent that the spectators and readers engage in identification with the sympathetic characters of the comedies, the audience vicariously enjoys their wealth. The material benefits of the plays within the plays increase the attractiveness of social harmony for all the spectators.

The implication that theatrical entertainments help to win women and their dowries has some weight as explicit propaganda. In listing examples of the use of the words divertir and divertissement, Furetière writes that “Il n'y a rien qui divertisse plus que la Comédie” and that “On gagne les femmes en leur donnant toute sorte de divertissement” (Dictionnaire, “divertir,” “divertissement”). This last assertion parallels one of Dorante's: “les femmes aiment surtout les dépenses qu'on fait pour elles” (BG.III.vi). The suitor who takes his intended bride to the theater or who pays for private performances increases his chances of success as well as the prosperity of actors.²⁰ Other uses of theater translate less directly into daily life but still encourage patronage.

As theater works to form the myth of a prosperous and orderly society where the wise provide funding for the arts, spectators are invited to insert themselves in that myth. If they do so, they will see paying for the theater as a result of—or condition for—the benefits enjoyed at the end of each play. The audience which funds the theater thus believes that it experiences the prosperity of the society seen on stage. Spectators' anxieties concerning shortages of money or the uncertain return on investments are temporarily soothed as the play reaffirms the collective good fortune and promising future of Louis' subjects.

Not all profits to be gained from the theater are monetary: the theater also contributes to the image which the spectators have of themselves and of those around them. The plays work for cooperation between the audience and the monarch as they stress the honorific gains of supporting the arts.²¹ Jourdain of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme does not gain the prestige which he desires from patronage of music and dance, but in the context of the plays his association of art and aristocracy must be considered valid. Patronage of the arts appears throughout the Molière corpus as an essentially noble activity. Nobles like Dorante find in the theater a new place to assert their own power. Mascarille of Les Précieuses ridicules reveals this when he claims that he and those like him decide the fate of new plays:

C'est la coutume ici qu'à nous autres gens de condition les auteurs viennent lire leurs pièces nouvelles, pour nous engager à les trouver belles, et leur donner de la réputation; et je vous laisse à penser si, quand nous disons quelque chose, le parterre ose nous contredire.

(PR.ix)

Acaste, another ridiculous marquis, though one who probably is an authentic noble, makes a similar boast in Le Misanthrope:

Pour de l'esprit, j'en ai sans doute, et du bon goût
À juger sans étude et raisonner de tout,
À faire aux nouveautés, dont je suis idolâtre,
Figure de savant sur les bancs du théâtre,
Y décider en chef, et faire du fracas
À tous les beaux endroits qui méritent des has.

(Mis.III.i.791-96)

Both of the quotes above make the dilettantism of the ridiculous marquis and those who imitate them laughable. Both passages speak against the cabals which could plague playwrights and actors. At the same time, they recognize that “les gens de condition” have or pretend to have a leading role in judging drama. Moreover, as the opening scene of Les Fâcheux reminds us when Éraste complains of his experience in the theater, many nobles judge drama in a highly conspicuous fashion as they buy seats on the stage itself and link the spectacle of the theater with that of the court.²² Patronage of the arts echoes the king's own generosity. People who express opinions on the arts, who support or actively undermine artistic success, can claim to belong to society's higher circles.

Just as Molière demystified noble expenditure, however, he weakens any exclusivity in the Second Estate's role as judges of the theater. Since aristocrats consume art, the bourgeois who wish to present themselves as aristocrats must not remain indifferent to music, dance, and theater. The plays urge the roturier spectators to become “bourgeois gentilhommes” in this regard if in no other.²³ Molière's comedies encourage spectators of all ranks and of all incomes to frequent the theater and to follow their own judgment when they applaud. Both “hommes et femmes du bel air” and a bourgeois family demanding “livres de ballet” are presented as spectators of the “Ballet des nations” which closes Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Les Précieuses ridicules, with its parody of the foolish marquis, indicates that the control which “gens de condition” exercise on theater is at times detrimental. In La Critique de l'École des femmes, Dorante mocks the pretensions of a marquis who places himself above the opinions of the parterre:

Apprends, Marquis, je te prie, et les autres aussi, que le bon sens n'a point de place déterminée à la comédie; que la différence du demi-louis d'or et de la pièce de quinze sols ne fait rien du tout au bon goût; que debout et assis, on peut donner un mauvais jugement; et qu'enfin, à le prendre en général, je me fierais assez à l'approbation du parterre, par la raison qu'entre ceux qui le composent, il y en a plusieurs qui sont capables de juger d'une pièce selon les règles, et que les autres en jugent par la bonne façon d'en juger, qui est de se laisser prendre aux choses, et de n'avoir ni prévention aveugle, ni complaisance affectée, ni délicatesse ridicule.²⁴

As John Lough has shown, the parterre would have been occupied mainly by roturiers, merchants, a few shopkeepers, established bourgeois de Paris, some poets, and by a smattering of young nobles (Paris Theater Audiences 81). Texts such as La Critique de l'École des femmes and Les Précieuses ridicules imply that sensible spectators ought to weaken any hold which ridiculous marquis have on art. Molière's plays point to a way in which roturiers, usually wealthy bourgeois, may behave as an elite without falling into the possibly undesirable habits of the noblesse.

Again we see the strategy of simultaneously affirming the worth of noble activities and reducing distances between elites. Just as no expenditure except the king's can be presented as boundless, no hold on art other than the monarch's goes uncontested. The plays invite noble and bourgeois alike to consume and to fund the products which the monarch and Molière offer to the public, and to assume the image of order which the comedies represent. General enjoyment of the artistic pleasures of the realm and willingness to support the same artists whom the king favors do not signify decentralization of the court's hold on art but rather acceptance of that hold. In giving money to the theater, subjects could enjoy the honor of imitating Louis. Royal mimesis thus becomes operative in ville and cour alike.

THE ARTIST AS SERVANT

While theater makes all of the king's subjects the recipients of his generosity, the most apparent beneficiary of Louis' love of theater is, of course, the artist himself. Although the sovereign's appearance of generosity toward Molière and his troupe did not always correspond to monetary support, the public knew that the king rewarded the actor's services. When the theater becomes the monarch's gift to his subjects, what happens to the image of the artist?

The link between the troupe and the patron works to reduce the self-importance of the artist. The king, not the artist, gives wealth and pleasure to his subjects. Just as Molière surrenders a portion of the gloire accompanying the success of Les Fâcheux as he attributes that success to the collaboration of his patron, the artist who composes on command loses some credit for his creations. Examination of the theatrics within the texts shows that this role as the monarch's agent makes the poet redefine his own place in society and relocate the worth of his creations. Corneille's artist figures—the Clindor of L'Illusion comique and the Dorante of Le Menteur—were the heroes of his plays. In Molière's works, characters of all ranks become actors and directors as they participate in plays within plays. The characters who are most conscious of their deceptions as art, however, are servants.²⁵

Of the three servants whom I choose as examples of artist figures, two, Covielle and Scapin, figure as habitual fourbes. These tricksters resemble professional actors and directors. The third, a gifted amateur, shows the quality of her work as she outwits another actress, Argan's wife Béline. In all three cases, the speech of the servants and of those who praise their work acknowledges the likeness between the servant's wit and that of the artist.

Covielle's turquerie is not his first venture into the world of acting and trickery. When he conceives the plan of deceiving Jourdain, he tells his master that a recent masquerade will prove useful to them:

Il s'est fait depuis peu une certaine masque qui vient le mieux du monde ici, et que je prétends faire entrer dans une bourle que je veux faire à notre ridicule. Tout cela sent un peu sa comédie; mais avec lui on peut hasarder toute chose, il n'y faut point chercher tant de façons, et il est homme à y jouer son rôle à merveille, à donner aisément dans toutes les fariboles qu'on s'avisera de lui dire. J'ai les acteurs, j'ai les habits tout prêts.

(BG.III.xiii)

The references to roles and to comedies as well as Covielle's ability to call upon the services of these actors at short notice underscore the near professional character of his deception. Similarly, Dorante will indicate in a later scene that he has already seen such exploits on Covielle's part. When Covielle challenges him to guess at his plan for tricking Jourdain, Dorante expresses his admiration for Covielle's work: “Je ne devine point le stratagème; mais je devine qu'il ne manquera pas de faire son effet, puisque tu l'entreprends” (BG.IV.v). Jourdain becomes one in a series of victims. The recognition of Covielle's professionalism and the success with which he leads the false Turks who make Jourdain a mamamouchi accentuate the likeness between his work in restoring familial harmony and the actor's trade.

Scapin takes an even greater pride in his profession as fourbe than does Covielle. He impresses Octave and Silvestre when he claims that he hesitates to help the young man because his daring has recently gotten him into trouble “avec la justice” (FS.I.ii).²⁶ The fashion in which he brags indicates, nonetheless, that he could easily be persuaded to show off his talents again:

J'ai sans doute reçu du Ciel un génie assez beau pour toutes les fabriques de ces gentillesses d'esprit, de ces galanteries ingénieuses à qui le vulgaire ignorant donne le nom de fourberies; et je puis dire, sans vanité, qu'on n'a guère vu d'homme qui fût plus habile ouvrier de ressorts et d'intrigues, qui ait acquis plus de gloire que moi dans ce noble métier.

(FS.I.ii)

The resemblance between Scapin and the writer, director and actor who originally played him is in my opinion inescapable. Poets, too, win fame for their “gentillesses d'esprit” and must work upon the “ressorts” and the “intrigues” of their plays. When Scapin exacts 200 pistoles from Octave's father, the spectators see that the fourbe has created a good comedy. He plays his own role with skill and has coached Silvestre well in the part of a braggart soldier. As Scapin relates the story of Léandre's unlucky visit to a Turkish galère and succeeds in making an extremely reluctant Géronte turn over 1,500 livres in ransom money, the audience witnesses an act that only the second trick played on Géronte can equal. Pretending to protect Géronte from imaginary enemies, Scapin persuades his master to hide in a sack, creates the roles of the diverse enemies with their many accents even while continuing to play himself, and takes the opportunity to give Géronte a sound beating. Scapin's versatility, like his pride in his work, calls the audience's attention to his decidedly theatrical talents.

Though Toinette of Le Malade imaginaire does not necessarily figure as a professional actress, she invents a preposterous disguise for herself and suggests a useful strategy for curing Argan of his delusions concerning Béline. Her disguise as a doctor causes no movement of money, as do Scapin's first two tricks, but this masquerade does underscore the servant's theatrical gifts. The plays which Toinette directs, as Argan pretends to be dead first in front of his wife and then in front of Angélique, affect the allocation of the hypochondriac's wealth. These tricks, while the most theatrical of her efforts, read as the culmination of a strategy of deceit which Toinette has followed throughout.

Toinette deploys her talents in order to frustrate Béline's greed, for Argan's wife is one of those women

qui font du mariage un commerce de pur intérêt, qui ne se marient que pour gagner des douaires, que pour s'enrichir par la mort de ceux qu'elles épousent, et courent sans scrupule de mari en mari, pour s'approprier leurs dépouilles.

(MI.II.vi)

To keep Béline from gaining all of Argan's money with her protestations of love and concern for him, Toinette must pretend to be the stepmother's accomplice. Though both women create masks for themselves, Béline figures as a clumsy actress whose words and actions fool no one but her husband. The servant, in contrast, uses her gifts to combat the destitution of Angélique and her younger sister. Toinette's art is more effective than Béline's and works for the preservation of harmony.

The lowly place of servants in the social hierarchy, like the actor's place outside the normal hierarchy, affords them a certain freedom. Since the servants do not find themselves restricted by any code of honnêteté, they can proudly make acting and deception a career without fear of shaming their station. This liberty allows them to carry out plans which their masters and mistresses would hesitate to put into action.²⁷ The servants find themselves not only free to boast of their talents as deceivers, but also to give themselves the occasional luxury of deceiving others simply for pleasure. Scapin with his bastonnade for Géronte and Toinette with her doctor disguise both show such self-indulgence. The likeness between the servant characters and professional actors is easier to perceive than the one between actors and their social superiors.

Rank also allows the servants a degree of freedom in their attitude toward wealth. Like Molière, who boasts that the king gives money for his speech and talents, the artists in the plays offer their abilities as commodities which merit a patron's money. The servants do not keep the money which they win, and they never speak of monetary payment for the specific pranks seen on stage.²⁸ They are, nonetheless, valuable employees. Scapin can relish the pistoles won by his paroles, and the strategies which he must use to procure the money of Argante and Géronte increase his pride in his own cleverness. Here the artist figure who gloats over his winnings comes to resemble Robinet's image of Molière himself, “ce rare pantomine” who “du jaune métal gagnait à pleines mains.”²⁹ While gold passes through the hands of Scapin or through those of his creator, these servants justify whatever they earn by striving for the happiness and prosperity of those who employ them.³⁰ Money and other goods which tricks win provide inescapable measures of art's effect, although the aim of words and tricks may be to please, and the payment for artistic talent need not always take a monetary form.

Neither the artist nor other members of society should reject monetary proof of their work's effectiveness. Payment for actions marks the receiver as the agent or the employee of another. No one except the king himself could, at this time, avoid such a mark. Louis XIV called upon his subjects to serve, whether in trade, in courts, or in the military. Even nobles, if they wished to maintain their rights, were expected to find suitable means to prove that they had indeed inherited the virtues of their ancestors (Bluche 173). Those who took their place as part of the royal machine could, like Molière, expect rewards, not because the king was obliged to pay subjects who did their duty, but because he chose to do so.³¹ In an age when all parties find themselves expected to serve the crown, the pride and independence of those who act for themselves alone has little place. Just as Molière's plays show that noble expenditure, unrestrained by bourgeois prudence, has become outdated, disdain for the coinage regulated by the king is obsolete.³²

This is not to say that Molière and the artists whom he and his troupe portray on stage take only a mercenary interest in their own talents. Scapin rebels against performance on demand and engages in theater for the sake of theater when he performs one last trick against Géronte. Silvestre may ask why his companion seeks to “[s]'attirer de méchantes affaires,” but the beating of Géronte will not only avenge Scapin, it will also allow him one chance to use his wit for his own pleasure. Even as a servant, the artist boasts of his prowess.

Ultimate credit for artistry goes neither to Scapin nor to Molière. While these plays, like many which preceded them, dramatize the possibility of using language to gain wealth, the movement of money does not guarantee the value of the speech of any one class. The king governs all sign systems. The language and money deployed by his subjects are judged according to their ability to contribute to the harmony and the circulation of goods which he mandates. Language, with the help of other components of theater, continues to act as the agent of order while money is the reward of those who serve order. Money and language figure less as rival sign systems here than as ones which complement each other in proclaiming the value of Louis' gifts to his subjects.

As Molière sells his language to and for the king, the two men increase each other's honorific and material profits from the plays. By debunking foolish speech and actions, the servants in the plays advocate and support a kind of central minting of language and of art. With their ability to manipulate and at times to undermine the paroles of different groups, these texts claim to be part of the king's own official discourse. The king, assumed to be the most stable source of the actors' pistoles, also comes to be the guarantor of their paroles. The authority behind the plays eclipses the author of the plays. The plays become gifts which the king, not the actor, offers the public as entertainment. Molière, as a servant of the crown, makes the gesture of effacing the individual or personal nature of his discourse in order to bolster the authority of the langue, the system of laws which governs speech and unifies a national linguistic entity. While such a gesture is not always convincing, it allows the artist a certain degree of freedom: his escapades, like Scapin's, are tolerated because he furthers his master's goals.

The image of the artist who not only claims to serve the king's discourse but who celebrates the monetary profit which such discourse can win proves the generosity of the patron and the prosperity that comes with his reign. As the plays provide public as well as private entertainment, the spectators in the Parisian audience find themselves invited to make their own contributions toward the wealth of the nation which the monarch embodies. The various strategies which the comedies employ to enhance their own worth suggest that private individuals, as well as kings, reap the benefits brought by supporting theater. The chief claim made for theater's value, nevertheless, is that it serves the monarch. Art must bear the seal of royal approval. Molière does not enjoy the type of autonomy for which a poet like Corneille strives, nor does art, at this point, apologize for any monetary profits which may come to the artist. The king's favor proves the worth of discourse, but money, like language, has a value guaranteed by the sovereign.

Notes

1. Colbert was largely unable to act on another important aspect of his policy, the improvement of the roads and canals within France, until the 1680s (Bluche 217).

2. An account of the relative success of the French in selling their luxury products, particularly textiles, abroad may be found in Léon, “Réponse” 229.

3. On Colbert's later efforts to improve roadways and waterways, see Léon and Carrière, “L'Appel des marchés” 166-73.

4. On the program of construction in and around Paris, see Le Roy Ladurie 272.

5. On new codes and regulations, see Bluche 201-206, and Boulet-Sautel.

6. Donneau de Visé, Mercure galant août 1682, 110; qtd. in Mongrédien, Recueil des textes et des documents du XVII^e siècle relatifs à Molière 2:573.

7. Cf. Duvignaud on the “spectacle illusionniste”: “Le souverain n'est pas seulement le premier destinataire du spectacle illusionniste, il en est aussi le dispensateur et l'auteur secret” (293).

8. See Couton's “Notice” on the Princesse d'Élide and the Plaisirs de l'Ile enchantée as well as the official relation of this fête, 1:739-767, and the “Notice” on Le Grand divertissement royal de Versailles, 2:445-49.

9. There were, of course, official relations of the fêtes, with illustrations, which the public could also buy. See Couton, “Notice” to La Princesse d'Élide, 1:740-41. Only the comedies, however, were actually recreated for the public.

10. Le Malade imaginaire (2:1091-1178), II.ix. I refer to this play henceforth as MI.

11. For studies of Molière's use of comic language, see, among others, Ciccone, and Garapon, Fantaisie verbale 221-69.

12. Les Précieuses ridicules (1:265-87) scene vi. This play will be cited henceforth as PR.

13. Les Femmes savantes (2:985-1072) II.vi. This play will be cited henceforth as FSv. The use which these learned women make of Vaugelas when they treat his remarks on language as law runs against his own recognition that current use decides what constitutes correct diction and that language is changeable. See Vaugelas 1:17.

14. On carnival, see Bakhtin 10.

15. Riggs has also noted in his perspicacious study of Les Femmes savantes that Philaminte is “an absurd and illegitimate imitator of the one true sovereign” (Molière and Plurality 207). Riggs, however, contends that Molière's texts speak not only against illegitimate monarchs but also against all attempts to wield absolutist power. Here I disagree, for although the plurality of Molière's texts manifests itself in their ability to appeal to readers and spectators with different interests, the king remains the most necessary of all spectators. He must be able to see support for his power in these plays, even if his subjects can also find here vindication of their own roles in society.

16. Royal sponsorship of efforts to regulate speech and writing predate Louis XIV. As Reiss reminds us, the two original charges given to the Académie Française by Richelieu were the creation of a dictionary and of a normative grammar (Meaning of Literature 70).

17. The triumph of ballet and of music may be seen in other plays besides Monsieur de Pourceaugnac and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. When Le Grand Divertissement royal de Versailles frames George Dandin, for instance, a friend prevents the despairing peasant from drowning himself and leads him instead to join the troupe of Bacchus, which sings of the virtues of that god.

18. On court ballets, see McGowan. For discussion of Molière's comédies-ballets, see Abraham, On the Structure of Molière's “comédies-ballets,” Defaux 239-52, and Kapp.

19. Defaux demonstrates that Molière's later comedies, those which follow the disappointments of the dispute over the Tartuffe, recognize the impossibility of correcting vice and the need for comedy to accommodate itself to the world's faults. Hence Jourdain and Argan remain uncured of their obsessions, and their families and friends must join in their madness, if only temporarily, in order to achieve their ends (292).

20. An analysis of such an attempt to win a bride through entertainments may be found in Zanger, though in the Molière text which she treats, Les Amants magnifiques, the princes who offer such entertainments do not win their princess.

21. Cf. Ranum, Paris in the Age of Absolutism 139 and Viala 54-57, 74.

22. On the noble presence on stage as a reflection of royal power, see Duvignaud 356-57, 292, and Chapter 2 of this study.

23. In claiming that spectators are invited to become “bourgeois gentilhommes,” I am extending Tobin's remarks on the “Ballet des Nations” and applying them to the entire Molière corpus (120).

24. La Critique de l'École des femmes (1:643-68), scene v.

25. See Hubert, “Molière Playwright,” for a discussion of the activity of Molière's characters as actors, directors, and playwrights.

26. Les Fourberies de Scapin (2:897-945), I.ii. I refer to this play henceforth as FS.

27. Defaux discusses the questionable means employed in these plays in order to bring about the desired endings (292)

28. In this, Molière's servants contrast with many who come after them, for instance the Crispin of Regnard's Légataire universel and the Frontin of Le Sage's Turcaret.

29. Charles Robinet, Lettres en vers à Monsieur (Paris, 1665-1673), letter of February 25, 1673. Included in Recueil faisant suite à la Muse historique de Loret and in Mongrédien, Recueil des textes et des documents du XVII^e siècle relatifs à Molière 2:445.

30. The servants in Molière's work, their various functions in the plays, their wit, and their loyalty to their masters have been discussed in many critical works and articles. See, among others, Emelina; Knutson, The Triumph of Wit 78; and Schoell.

31. It is worth remembering that nobles often received pensions from the crown. Even their service had a monetary component (Elias 155).

32. This is not to say that no one continued to voice disdain for monetary gains. Some authors, particularly nobles who did not consider themselves professional writers, continued to refuse the profits from their works. Given that the king himself displayed concern with commerce and industry, however, the social injunction to show indifference to profits was weakened.

Bibliography

Primary Texts

Chappuzeau, Samuel. Le Théâtre Français. Ed. Georges Monval. Paris, 1875.

Furetière, Antoine. Dictionnaire universel, contenant generalement tous les Mots Français tant vieux que modernes, & les Termes de toutes les Sciences et des Arts. Rotterdam, 1690.

La Grange, Charles de. Le Registre de La Grange, 1659-1685. Ed. Bert Edward Young and Grace Philpott Young. Paris: Droz, 1947.

Molière [Jean-Baptiste Poquelin]. Œuvres complètes. Ed. Georges Couton. 2 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.

Perrault, Charles. Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes. 1692. Munich: Eidos, 1964.

Secondary Texts

Apostolidès, Jean-Marie. Le Roi-machine: spectacle et politique au temps de Louis XIV. Paris: Minuit, 1981.

Bluche, François. Louis XIV. Paris: Fayard, 1986.

Clarétie, Jules. “Un document inédit sur Molière.” Le Temps. 31 août, 1880.

Dessert, Daniel. Argent, pouvoir et société au Grand Siècle. Paris: Fayard, 1984.

Goubert, Pierre. “Le Paysan et la terre: seigneurie, tenure, exploitation.” Labrousse 119-60.

———. “Le ‘Tragique’ XVII^e siècle.” Labrousse 329-66.

Léon, Pierre. “La Réponse de l'industrie.” Labrousse 217-66.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. L'Absolutisme en vraie grandeur (1610-1715). Tome 1 of L'Ancien Régime. 2 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1991.

Lough, John. Paris Theater Audiences in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: Oxford UP, 1957.

Reiss, Timothy J. The Meaning of Literature. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1992.

Riggs, Larry W. Molière and Plurality: Decomposition of the Classicist Self. New York: Peter Lang, 1989.

Vilar, Pierre, Or et monnaie dans l'histoire. Paris: Flammarion, 1974.

Villers, Robert. “Colbert et les finances publiques. L'ordre, la prévision. Proportion respective des impôts directs et des impôts indirects.” Mousnier, Colbert 177-88.