[In the following essay, Shaw considers Molière's ambiguity towards the issues brought forth in Dom Juan.]

That Dom Juan is the most ‘difficult’ play in the whole Molière canon is something of a critical commonplace: fault has repeatedly been found with its alleged incoherence:

Its seemingly endless succession of ambiguities and false trails might indeed suggest, at first sight, a hastily composed baroque tangle of conflicting ideas, a confused answer to the ban on Tartuffe. On the other hand, is it not possible, without hurting one's back, to see in the play a paradoxical kind of order, even simplicity, which, in fact, probes many of the usual assumptions made about Molière?

Perhaps the most fundamental assumption questioned by the play is the famous theory of the ‘raisonneur’. The popular idea of ‘Molière's point of view’ being presented in each play by one character owes its respectability almost entirely to the wholly exceptional role of Cléante in Tartuffe. This character's function is almost entirely polemical: it was largely developed after the 1664 ban in order to underline the careful distinction between true and false piety. In the other major plays, however, the function of characters like Chrysalde, Ariste, Philinte, Béralde, etc., is primarily comic, intended to form the maximum comic contrast with the central character rather than to state an attitude identifiable beyond doubt as that of Molière.

If one thing is certain about Dom Juan, it is that it contains no single character likely to be taken for Molière's mouthpiece. The sympathy we undoubtedly feel, in varying degrees, for Elvire, Don Carlos and Don Louis is always contaminated by admiration of the way in which Don Juan outwits them. Given the size of his role and his constant willingness to give moral advice to his master, Sganarelle comes closest to the traditional concept of the ‘raisonneur’. But we are, surely not expected to identify Molière with such a pathetic buffoon. Indeed, in view of the evident link between the two plays, one might even have been tempted to suggest an angry parody of the clearly drawn factions in Tartuffe if it were possible to know more about the enigmatic 1664 version of this play.

In the absence of an obvious ‘spokesman’, the most contradictory interpretations of Dom Juan have been seriously put forward. Perhaps the standard reading is that the play is a furious reply to the critics of Tartuffe and that the key is the diatribe on hypocrisy at the beginning of the final act. Having seen his prudent condemnation of hypocrisy vilified and banned by clerics with vested interests, Molière is now, according to this theory, retaliating with an attack on the fundamental tenets of Christianity itself. As Don Juan is evidently Molière's mouthpiece on medicine and hypocrisy, might he not have the same function everywhere else in the play? He is therefore a witty, elegant, superior creature offered up for our admiration. His superiority is constantly underlined by the stupid credulity of Sganarelle, equally fearful of Devil, werewolf, ‘moine bourru’ and God, and in whose mouth even the most traditional proofs of the existence of God sound comically naive. We cannot admire Sganarelle: he is cowardly, gluttonous and more than a little cynical. ‘Il n'y a pas de mal’ he says [III,2] when inviting the hermit to blaspheme, and he resorts to crude violence in order to avoid paying his debts [IV,3] without even the excuse of his master's menacing presence.

The impression of parody is heightened by the nature of the two speeches from Sganarelle within which all the play's action is framed. From a strictly Christian point of view, the denouement would clearly have been more satisfactory if the play had ended at the very moment of Don Juan's death. But, with Sganarelle's final cry ‘Mes gages! mes gages!’, the comic perspective is fully restored. The play's final statement, far from underlining the demonstrated power of divine wrath suggests that heaven is rather irrelevant. At the moment Sganarelle discovers he has been right all along, he is shown unmoved by the fact and totally preoccupied with material values.

The curious tribute to tobacco, at the beginning of the play, is interesting for the same reason. At first sight it seems almost a parody of the conventional exposition of the time: it tells us little about Don Juan himself and seems to have no relevance to the ensuing action. However, for a seventeenth century spectator, the significance of the allusion would have been quite specific. Tobacco, which had been introduced into France in the sixteenth century as a treatment for migraine, was, in 1665, still sold only on prescription. The purely social use of tobacco had been expressly forbidden by the ecclesiastical authorities who feared, rightly or wrongly, that it increased the power of the Devil over the user. Both snuff takers and smokers thus officially faced excommunication. Nevertheless, the enormous popularity of tobacco was such that a flourishing black market was established and in 1674 its sale was finally legalised by a Colbert always quick to spot new sources of state revenue through taxation. To speak of tobacco in 1665 was therefore to speak of a popular but illegal physical indulgence totally opposed by the Church. To praise it in Sganarelle's glowing terms was therefore to cock an unmistakable snook at the parti des devots. The mention of Aristotle in the opening line and the link forged between tobacco and virtue constitute virtually a direct parody of the orthodox position concerning tobacco. Sganarelle's statements on Christianity are thus largely devalued in advance and all the play's action is framed between two expressions of downright materialism pronounced by heaven's principal spokesman.

However, in spite of all this, it is difficult to accept the play as nothing but an apology for atheism. In 1665, such an enterprise would still have been highly dangerous; for a theatre director with Molière's responsibilities it was more or less unthinkable. Indeed, it has been argued, by critics of the standing of Michaut and Jouvet, that Dom Juan should in fact be seen as a clumsy defence of Christianity with Sganarelle as a simple, but basically sympathetic, defender of heavenly interests. The original play on the Don Juan theme was, of course, a highly edifying work by an austere religious. The Don Juan in Tirso de Molina's El Burlador de Sevilla is a debauched, violent young man who never actually denies the existence of God: his sin is overconfidence: he tries to lead a totally immoral life with the intention of reforming at a later date. But he puts off his repentance too long and is finally carried off by the statue while calling for a priest. Our play is therefore basically similar to the original: Don Juan is visibly wrong and the Christians are finally vindicated by the action of the statue. Warnings of his impending fate rain down on Don Juan from beginning to end. He sometimes appears frankly odious, as when he needlessly curses his dignified old father. His marked lack of curiosity when confronted with supernatural phenomena could moreover be construed as fear and when he draws his sword to attack a ghost he comes close to ridicule.

In one sense, Molière's play is even more edifying than any of the Spanish, French or Italian versions. He adds symbolic characters: the veiled spectral lady and ‘le Temps avec sa faux à la main’ figure in no other version. Further, Don Juan's achievements are really very few in number: he seduces Elvire only by marrying her, fails to obtain even a kiss from Charlotte and does not succeed in persuading the hermit to blaspheme. His actual crimes are far less numerous than those of his predecessors: if he killed the commander, it was apparently in a duel (‘Ne l'ai-je pas bien tué?’ he asks in 1,2); if he persuaded Elvire to leave her convent, it seems as if she was a very willing party to the abduction. No question of the murder and rape of which earlier Don Juans were guilty; and no suggestion in the play that Elvire had actually taken vows or intended to become a nun. It is therefore arguable that, like Phèdre, Don Juan is condemned less for actual crimes than for sacrilegious attitudes.

But again, this is not a satisfactory explanation of the play's teasing complexity: too many important elements remain outside it. Any interpretation which attempts to reduce the play to the level of a simple religious treatise runs the risk of raising more problems than it solves. Unless the play is totally and obscurely ambiguous, there must be a third, less simplistic, interpretation.

One of the major preoccupations of the classical age was how to define the relationship between reason and passion. All the major writers are concerned with the problem. Corneille seems to feel that some men are capable of dominating their passions through the exercise of reason; in Racine's theatre, on the other hand, man is usually the rather pathetic plaything of his emotions. Molière's attitude in this debate seems to have been quite subtle. L'Ecole des Femmes (1662) demonstrates that reason alone can never suffice and that it is dangerously absurd to attempt to ignore the natural feelings that everyone experiences. Tartuffe and Dom Juan examine the other side of the problem, showing the fatal power that the passions can develop if they are not moderated by reason. In Tartuffe, the force of criminal desire is, perhaps a little arbitrarily, neutralised by excessive self-confidence. But in Dom Juan, which represents the ultimate development of this line of argument, we have a terrible combination of limitless desire and total cynicism in a character who is also powerfully intelligent.

Sganarelle's portrait of Don Juan, in the opening scene, is highly significant:

… un chien … qui passe cette vie en véritable bête brute … un grand seigneur méchant homme.

Don Juan's animality is indeed his most striking single characteristic. He acts as if nature is for him a kind of god, as if all desires may be realised if they derive from nature:

… je rends à chacune les hommages et les tributs où la nature nous oblige. [I,2]

And he pursues his desires with a kind of relentless, single minded intelligence which makes him a terrible adversary:

Il n'est rien qui puisse arrêter l'impétuosité de mes désirs … songeons seulement a ce qui nous peut donner du plaisir. [I,2]

It is therefore tempting to see in Don Juan the elemental force of egoism, a kind of incarnation of the most selfish facets of human nature liberated by his rank, his cynicism and his intelligence from all normal moral constraints. Instead of moderating his desires, his intelligence and judgement are placed squarely at their disposal.

At the same time, given his paradoxically total subservience to his physical desires and to his constant need to dominate, it is clear that Don Juan is not without his comic side. A tenuous kind of comedy, perhaps, but, as we have seen, there is certainly a duality about the character which sometimes makes him seem rather less independent than he claims to be. His need to dominate causes him to seek out a succession of difficult obstacles in order to prove again and again his own superiority. Hence the analogy with Alexander, the storming of a convent, the pursuit of the engaged girl, and so on. Worse than a sadist, he is totally indifferent to the feelings of other people who are to him mere objects to be exploited at his whim. His description of his attitude towards women is strikingly filled with military vocabulary:

On goûte une douceur extrême à réduire par cent hommages un coeur … à voir de jour en jour les petits progrès qu'on y fait, à combattre … l'innocente pudeur d'une âme qui a peine à rendre les armes, à forcer pied à pied toutes les petites résistances qu'elle nous oppose, à vaincre les scruples … [I,2] (my italics)

Women are mere objectives, adversaries to be conquered. He feels no affection: the only sentiment that he feels is the pleasure of triumph. The list of Don Juan's opponents is, in fact, bewilderingly varied: a man prepared to challenge, in quick succession, a noble woman, a hermit and a statue is evidently not following a carefully prepared plan. But it is clear that Don Juan derives a large part of his power precisely from the fact that he behaves in a totally unpredictable way. He is strong because, in a society based on codes and conventions of all kinds, he is the only one who respects none of them and because he is always prepared to pretend to accept any code of behaviour if it appears to offer him a new chance of conquest. Poor Gusman cannot believe that so visibly perfect a lover could fail to keep his word:

… et je ne comprends point comme après tant d'amour et tant d'impatience témoignée, tant d'hommages pressants, de voeux, de soupirs et de larmes, tant de lettres passionnées, de protestations ardentes, et de serments réitérés, tant de transports enfin et tant d'emportements qu'il a fait paraître … je ne comprends pas, dis-je, comme, après tout cela, il aurait le coeur de pouvoir manquer à sa parole. [I,1] (my italics)

Gusman's conventional mind is thus easily taken in by Don Juan's hypocrisy.

We know that seventeenth-century polite society attached great importance to questions of precedence, to elegance, to codes of etiquette in general. There was thus a very real danger of appearance being taken for reality, elegance for merit, hypocrisy for virtue. Many of Molière's major comedies satirise a tendency to attach undue importance to facades and codes: the code of romanesque love in Les Précieuses Ridicules, that of refined society in Le Misanthrope, the facade of religiosity in Tartuffe, medical mystique in Le Malade Imaginatre, etc. But only in Don Juan are all these themes brought together in the context of one cynical, chameleon-like figure, in order to demonstrate the dangers facing a superficial society in its entirety.

Just for a moment, Elvire, in her first appearance, seems to have Don Juan's measure. She is aware that he has been playing a part for her benefit:

Ah! que vous savez mal vous défendre pour un homme de cour … Que ne vous armez-vous le front d'une noble effronterie? Que ne me jurez-vous que vous êtes toujours dans les mêmes sentiments pour moi …? [I,3].

Her tone is that of the prompter reminding the actor of lines forgotten. But Don Juan is too clever to be neutralised in this way: one code having been declared inoperable by Elvire's irony, he simply switches to another, that of pious sincerity:

Je vous avoue, Madame, que je n'ai point le talent de dissimuler, et que je porte un coeur sincère. [I,3]

And there is even heavier irony in the unexpected concentration of religious terms with which he continues: within the space of eight lines or so he mentions concepts like conscience, belief, sin, scruples, soul, vows, divine anger. He thus pays her the compliment of tacitly revealing his virtuosity but without giving her another chance to outflank him. This little confrontation is a kind of ironic prefiguration of the scene in act V where Don Juan again puts on his mask of piety to outwit his father. It has been suggested that the show of hypocrisy in the final act destroys the unity of the character: given Don Juan's courage and spirit, he would surely never stoop to such an unworthy ploy:

Don Juan hypocrite, voila qui ne répond guere a l'idée que nous nous faisions de lui. [G. Michaut, op.cit. p. 150]

To argue thus is surely totally to misunderstand his nature; from one end of the play to the other he continually adopts whichever mask seems to him the most likely to have the effect he wants. That is the real source of his power.

The change of decor at the start of the second act represents a fairly violent visual shock. For the seventeenth century spectator, to pass from sumptuous palace to rustic sea coast was the greatest possible social contrast. But the dramatic parallel between the two settings is quickly obvious. The peasants of act II are far from being noble savages in the eighteenth-century sense: they are rather mean, petty people and are as preoccupied with formal codes of behaviour as are the courtiers. Like Harpagon, Pierrot believes that love can be bought: he cannot understand why his expressions of devotion, in the form of ribbons, blackbirds and hurdy-gurdy serenades, have not had a more tangible effect. His idea of how lovers should behave is simplistic and superficial: he is distressed because Charlotte does not imitate the dangerous horse-play of Thomasse, their lovelorn neighbour. He seems much more concerned that Charlotte should conform to this ideal than that she should actually have deep feelings. For her part, Charlotte feels her honour safe if she can make Don Juan marry her. The idea is traditional but clearly cannot be applied to Don Juan; he is ‘l'épouseur du genre humain’, for whom marriage is simply another convention which can sometimes be useful as a means to an end.

From act II onwards our attitude towards Don Juan becomes increasingly ambiguous. In spite of ourselves we admire his effortless superiority over the peasants; but, at the same time, he begins to demonstrate a kind of comic, and paradoxical, impotence. His plan to seduce the engaged girl was thwarted by the storm; he owes his life to a peasant. His reaction to the peasant girls is automatic: he desires them on seeing them. As we already know from Sganarelle, ‘Dame, demoiselle, bourgeoise, paysanne, il ne trouve rien de trop chaud ni de trop froid pour lui’ [I,1]. His sexual appetites ignore questions of rank or ‘qualité’, a lack of delicacy and taste which might have appeared faintly ridiculous to the seventeenth-century courtier. In scene 4, Don Juan's stylised confrontation with the two girls, Charlotte and Mathurine, conveys a clear image of how his own behaviour contains the seeds of his own defeat. He has made the same rash promises of marriage to both girls and now has to try, albeit brilliantly, to play them off against each other when they try to compare stories:

Mathurine.—Quoi! Charlotte …

Don Juan, bas à Mathurine.—Tout ce que vous lui direz sera inutile: elle s'est mis cela dans la tête.

Charlotte.—Quement donc! Mathurine …

Don Juan, bas à Charlotte.—C'est en vain que vous lui parlerez; vous ne lui ôterez point cette fantaisie. [II,4]

The scene is a masterly demonstration of virtuosity, but it only helps Don Juan evade exposure as a liar; ultimately, he seduces no-one, precisely because of the glib, automatic promises he has made to both. Don Juan, here on the defensive, is suddenly far removed from the lyrical disciple of Alexander of act I: we find him, not for the last time, having to use his considerable intelligence merely to extricate himself from embarrassing situations brought about by his own impetuous appetites. In a sense then, the fatal invitation made to the statue is already anticipated: like Tartuffe, Don Juan is incapable of profiting from his errors; like Tartuffe also, he finally tempts fortune once too often.

The discussion which opens the third act amply demonstrates the undogmatic nature of Don Juan's libertinage. The attack on medicine was, in itself, fairly predictable. Given the closeness of the links between the faculties of medicine and theology, it was normal for a libertine to mock the doctors. Indeed, part of the disapproval of Molière in pious circles stemmed from his tendency to see doctors as either fools or crooks. But Don Juan's very eloquence where medicine is concerned underlines his curious reticence on the subject of religion. His replies to Sganarelle's questions are suddenly evasive and monosyllabic:

Laissons cela … Eh! … Oui, oui … Ah! ah! ah! … La peste soit du fat! etc. [III,1]

There is clearly no suggestion of an unexpected show of respect for Christianity, but it is equally clear that, whatever he is, Don Juan is not a doctrinaire atheist. He seems, quite simply, reluctant to get involved in a debate on a difficult question with an unworthy opponent: Don Juan has no real interest in arguing the case for atheism except in so far as it gives him another chance to prove his own superiority. With the hapless Sganarelle, his usual tactic, as here, is simply to lapse into silence and to permit his opponent to lose himself in his own hilariously muddled reasoning.

The poor hermit in scene 2 evidently seems to him a more worthy opponent. He promptly attempts to reduce him to the level of a self-interested beggar by turning against him the sense of his simple words: when the poor man innocently says that he prays ‘pour la prospérité des gens de bien qui me donnent quelque chose’, Don Juan seizes on this to make it seem as if the hermit is, in fact, praying for his own prosperity. But he finds in the hermit an unexpected bedrock of faith which constitutes a kind of elemental force more powerful than Don Juan himself; the hermit is thus cushioned against the temptations raised by the outrageous offer of the Louis d'or. This might be regarded as the first positive demonstration of divine power, more tangible even than the storm. But Don Juan, as always, is impervious to the hint and is more concerned with finding a way out of a discussion which he is not quite managing to dominate. He gives the Louis d'or to save face and because it is easier to give it than to put it back in his purse. His ‘pour l'amour de l'humanité’, far from signifying some complex system of rational humanism, is simply a glib and apathetic formula, a convenient means of escape like his sudden interest in saving Don Carlos from his assailants.

Again, therefore, Don Juan shows no appetite for a philosophical debate on the subject of Christianity: he quickly loses interest if the expected victory does not materialise quickly. Rather than a militant, free-thinking philosopher, Don Juan begins to look like the slave of a nature which prevents him even from asking questions. The enigmatic declarations—such as ‘deux et deux sont quatre’ and ‘pour l'amour de l'humanité’—which have caused critics to find hidden depths in the character are, on the contrary, mere convenient clichés demonstrating a disturbingly total apathy in respect of everything but his own most immediate needs.

Elvire's brothers seem, at first, much less serious opponents. Don Carlos is hopelessly entangled in a complex code of honour of which he can see the shortcomings only too well. He is painfully conscious of being ‘asservi par les lois de l'honneur au dérèglement de la conduite d'autrui, et de voir sa vie, son repos et ses biens dépendre de la fantaisie du premier téméraire …’ [III,3]. He is a sensitive man and we sympathise with his attempt to reconcile his personal debt towards Don Juan with the demands of family honour. His is a subtle concept of honour worthy of the age of the ‘honnête homme’. But his urbanity is such that Don Juan is easily able to exploit this attitude towards honour both by unexpectedly rescuing his own mortal enemy and then, as always, by simply adopting the same language as his chivalrous opponent, winning his respect by claiming to be jealous of his ‘friend's' honour.

Alphonse is far less sympathetic: his conception of honour is much less subtle, much more brutally direct:

Tous les services que nous rend une main ennemie ne sont d'aucun mérite pour engager notre âme … l'honneur est infiniment plus précieux que la vie … [III,4]

Anyone capable of saying that in 1665 would have appeared quaintly anachronistic: the heroic days of Le Cid were already a very distant memory. The snag is that Alphonse's unpleasant brutality promises to be rather more effective in dealing with Don Juan than Carlos' gentlemanly good manners: Carlos mistakenly assumes that Don Juan respects the same code as he and, as we have seen, Don Juan always gets the better of respecters of codes. Alphonse's more primitive thirst for vengeance would have posed him far more serious problems: it is a narrow escape.

A progression is now evident in the order of Don Juan's adventures. At the beginning of the play, he is a handsome, predatory animal who seeks out his prey and then moves in, seemingly infallibly, for the kill. Gradually, however, the kill becomes increasingly difficult to execute as he finds his plans thwarted by the storm, the peasant girls' jealousy, the hermit's faith, etc. Then, from act III onwards, it is Don Juan himself who becomes the prey, hunted by forces set in motion by his own nature. It is quite logical, therefore, that, having narrowly escaped death at the hands of Elvire's brothers, Don Juan should immediately taunt the commander's statue. For the invitation issued to the statue is no more frivolous than his other challenges, his constant tactic having been to reduce his opponents to the level of mere playthings. There is thus a certain dramatic irony in the way in which Don Juan himself will be eliminated by the most elemental thing of all, a lump of stone. It is as if only such an adversary could have the brutal, single-minded simplicity required to crush Don Juan's constant diversity which is, in itself, merely a sophisticated mask disguising the naked force of instinct.

The fourth act opens with a brief pause in the downward course of Don Juan's fortunes. The entries of Monsieur Dimanche and of Don Louis have been criticised for being ill-prepared and largely gratuitous additions. On the other hand, given the nature of Don Juan as he has been presented to us, Molière really had little alternative. Don Juan exists only in the present. He faces up to problems as they occur but is quite unable to make long term plans; that he is good at forgetting unpleasant experiences is amply demonstrated by his lame, almost absent-minded, explanation of the moving statue:

… c'est une bagatelle, et nous pouvons avoir été trompés par un faux jour ou surpris de quelque vapeur qui nous ait troublé la vie. [IV,1]

Neither curiosity nor memory, it would seem, of the fact that two dangerous rendezvous now await him. M. Dimanche and Don Louis are characters trying not to suffer the same fate: they are more or less irksome figures from the past who insist on returning from the oblivion to which Don Juan has attempted to consign them. As we are seeing them largely through Don Juan's eyes, there was thus no other way to prepare for their appearance.

With M. Dimanche, Don Juan rediscovers his early panache in order to deny him the time to state his demand in any meaningful way. Again, he attempts to belittle his adversary by inviting him to supper and this time he is successful: in accordance with the rules of etiquette of the time, the tradesman has to refuse the aristocrat's invitation. Don Juan thus mockingly reminds Dimanche of the unbridgeable social gulf between them while, at the same time, effectively getting rid of him without paying him a sou. The contrast with the other supper invitation, so unexpectedly accepted by the statue, underlines the fact that Don Juan need only fear a supernatural which has as little respect as he has for man-made codes and conventions.

With his father, his reaction is quite different: panache gives way to unpleasant cynicism. It would, however, be wrong to see in this meeting a simple confrontation between good and evil: if the play is an allegory, it is a more complex allegory than that. Don Louis is certainly sympathetic but he is basically an anachronism: like Alphonse, he remains obsessed with simple, old-fashioned values, those of the past. His conception of virtue is very moving:

Nous n'avons part à la gloire de nos ancêtres qu'autant que nous nous efforçons de leur ressembler. [IV,4]

But it is precisely this preoccupation with his ancestors in an idealised and black-and-white past which makes it so easy for Don Juan to fool him at the beginning of the final act. For Don Louis represents, perhaps better than any other character, the society which has spawned Don Juan, a society dominated by convention and rules of all kinds. Confronted by his father's eloquence, Don Juan refuses to meet him head on: ‘Monsieur, si vous étiez assis, vous en seriez mieux pour parler.’ [IV,4] It is another attempt to ‘chosifier’ the opponent: the sudden reminder of the physical plane in the middle of the well-drawn moral tirade effectively deflates his father. The tradition was of course for actors in tragedy to remain standing, whereas those in comedy tended to be seated. Don Juan is thus, in a sense, attempting to reduce Don Louis to the level of a mere obstacle, a ‘père de comédie’ like Gorgibus or Géronte. And at the end of the scene, Don Louis’ impotent fury tends to conform to the role created for him by his son:

Mais sache, fils indigne, que la tendresse paternelle est poussée à bout par tes actions, que je saurai, plus tôt que tu ne penses, mettre une borne à tes dérèglements, prévenir sur toi le courroux du ciel … [IV,4]

Pure bluster of course, as we see by his overjoyed reaction to Don Juan's feigned conversion in act V; he has indeed degenerated into a noisy but innocuous obstacle. Given the absence of true danger, Don Juan's curse of his father is unpleasantly gratuitous:

Eh! mourez le plus tôt que vous pourrez, c'est le mieux que vous puissiez faire. [IV,5]

But he has been threatened and so his response is instinctive and brutal; the filial bond, more precious than life itself to Don Louis, is another value that means nothing at all to his son.

There then follows a series of return visits by characters that Don Juan would clearly rather not see again. They are all seeking Don Juan's salvation but the latter, obsessed as always by his pathetic desire to dominate, cannot appreciate this. No real communication is therefore possible. Elvire's sincere concern, in scene 6, serves only to stir up again Don Juan's old desire. When the statue is announced, we see again Don Juan's blinkered obstinacy: ‘Allons voir, et montrons que rien ne me saurait ébranler.’ [IV,7] And he greets the statue with another show of effusion, offering him wine and song and generally attempting, this time in vain, to reduce this new guest to the level of another M. Dimanche. Don Louis returns at the beginning of the final act and Don Juan, donning once more his mask of piety, makes the virtuous noises that are enough to send his father away happy.

The lyrical tirade which follows, extolling the benefits of hypocrisy, is clearly meant to balance the one in I,2 on the pleasures of amorous conquest. In both cases we have a description of the pleasure to be derived from a superior kind of trickery. The vocabulary is identical: the ‘transports’, ‘larmes’, and ‘soupirs’ of the first correspond exactly to the ‘grimaces’, ‘roulement d'yeux’ and ‘soupir mortifie’ of the second. And both culminate in a description of a kind of military campaign against conventional morality. The two main facets of Don Juan's libertinage, his sexual appetites and his religious scepticism, are thus highlighted in an almost self-consciously symmetrical way; far from being incoherent, the play in fact has a profound kind of order which transcends superficial questions of conventional neatness.

Moreover, the tirade on hypocrisy is framed between practical demonstrations of its possibilities and of its limits. If Don Louis, as we have seen, is just a passing irritation, Don Carlos, when he returns in V,3, is a much more difficult proposition. He is now obsessed, like his brother, by the idea of vengeance and Don Juan's hypocrisy immediately shows itself to be less effective against another obsession: Don Carlos refuses to recognise the particular mask that he is now wearing and so Don Juan has to agree to a dangerous duel.

The series of reappearances, which is becoming increasingly dangerous for Don Juan, is completed by that of the supernatural. Faced with the spectre, he again rejects the evidence of his eyes:

Si le Ciel me donne un avis, il faut qu'il parle un peu plus clairement, s'il veut que je l'entende. [V,4]

In view of the profusion and the variety of the warnings that he has received, this remark epitomises Don Juan's ultimate refusal of reality. He naturally seeks to reduce the significance of the spectre by claiming to recognise its voice and by drawing his sword against it. As we have seen, this is a tactic which works very well with human opponents and their relative values. But to go on using it in the face of the implacable supernatural is patently absurd. This pathetic response to heaven's final offer of mercy demonstrates that, ultimately, all his power was based on an illusion: he cannot adapt to a reality different from his own vision of the world. In this, he paradoxically comes to resemble the Arnolphes, the Alcestes, the Argans, the Orgons, all the other ‘inadaptés' who inhabit Molière's stage.

Society in Dom Juan is like an enormous stage production, with everyone accepting a particular role and a particular set of rules. Only Don Juan, good actor though he undoubtedly is, is incapable of accepting this discipline, but spends his time poking fun at, and exploiting for his own ends, the conventions which are visibly at the base of this society. As society is obviously imperfect, it might be argued that some of its conventional values could be usefully questioned. However, when these are merely replaced by cynical indifference towards the rights and feelings of others, the result is anarchy and chaos. Don Juan and the Christian ethic are clearly incompatible. A ray of hope may therefore be derived from the fact that the final victory is won by heaven and that Don Juan is destroyed. This was, after all, the main point of the original story. But the real conclusion of Molière's play is more complex than that: the effects of Don Juan's egoism are still appreciable even after his death. Sganarelle's very complacency about Don Juan's other victims demonstrates that the underlying danger has not been suppressed:

Voilà par sa mort un chacun satisfait: Ciel offensé, lois violées, filles séduites, familles déshonorées, parents outragés, femmes mises à mal, maris poussés à bout, tout le monde est content. Il n'y a que moi seul de malheureux.

Sganarelle's continuing credulity forcibly reminds us that, on the level of society, heaven's intervention has really achieved very little. The debts have not been paid, Elvire is still dishonoured, the peasants have not regained their tranquil mediocrity and Sganarelle has actually lost his job. The final lines of the play therefore bring us back to earth, where the real problems remain largely unsolved, even after Don Juan's death. Sganarelle is convinced that this event, for most of the victims, signals the end of the problem: he thus demonstrates the concern with appearances which allowed Don Juan to dominate a whole society. Don Juan could reappear in a different guise and no-one would notice. If the play does at any moment go beyond comedy it is surely in the implications of its ending.

The key to any interpretation of the play is one's reaction to Don Juan himself. Sganarelle, although the source of most of the laughter, really presents fewer problems than his master. His function is to strike the maximum comic contrast with Don Juan: total gullibility and fear in the company of total scepticism and bravado. The presence of a ‘raisonneur’ would inevitably have weakened the argument as well as the comedy. Molière is showing us a whole society in danger through its obsession with rules and codes: a single wise and superior character would therefore have seemed a rather arbitrary exception. Sganarelle is shown torn between terror of his master, almost, but not quite, equal terror of heaven and his own basically sensuous nature. Moreover, far from floundering itself in the disorder of which it has often been accused, the play follows a precise line, Don Juan's character is developed in a logical manner and, in view of the warnings and signs, his end has almost the inevitability of tragedy. Molière does not seem to be arguing strongly either for or against Christianity, in Dom Juan at least. The attitude that permeates the play is already that of Philinte: society consists essentially of a series of conventions and codes, religion among them. While it is important to bear in mind the perhaps sobering reality underlying the codes, it is also vital to resist the youthful temptation to debunk them all at once, for fear of having nothing but naked egoism to put in their place.