[In the following essay, Peacock examines the ending of Molière's Le Misanthrope, contending that its paradoxical nature is representative of the comic, and not the tragic, dramatic genre.]

‘Le dénouement, quel qu'il soit, ne peut être que tragique’.¹ Horville's dark interpretation of the ending of Le Misanthrope is representative of a tradition in Molière criticism which is still widely accepted despite persuasive attempts to correct it.² Evidence, however meagre, from Molière's contemporaries indicates a comic ending. Montausier, who was thought at the time to have been a prototype of Alceste, claimed that he had become the butt of everyone's laughter. The first performance of the play provoked what Donneau de Visé termed ‘rire dans l'âme’. The tragic lighting seems to have been introduced in productions after Molière's death featuring Baron in the title role. Baron's interpretation gained critical support in the eighteenth century from German classicists, particularly from Goethe, who viewed the play as a societal tragedy in which the noble Alceste is defeated in his struggle against the world.³ The Romantics turned Alceste's separation from Célimène into a moment of supreme pathos. This interpretation was maintained in influential criticism in the early part of the twentieth century.⁴ Over the last thirty years the ending has often been regarded as generically different from the rest of the play.⁵ It has sometimes been considered to be unequivocally tragic and comparable with Racine's dénouements.⁶

The aim of this [essay] is to reaffirm the comic status of the dénouement. To do so, I shall attempt to define the ‘action’ of the play, and within the framework of that definition, examine those aspects of the ending which have given rise to a tragic interpretation—the main theme, the construction and the extent to which the characters experience ‘enlightenment’.

The word ‘action’ has been the subject of much terminological confusion. It tends to be treated as a synonym of ‘plot’. It does sometimes take on this meaning in seventeenth-century dramatic theory, for example, ‘unity of action’ signifies ‘unification of plot’.⁷ The restricted sense in which I am using the term is found, however, in some of the prefatory material and discussions on tragedy by Corneille and Racine. Here ‘action’, which is sometimes synonymous with ‘subject’, may be understood as the general concept in the mind of the dramatist; ‘plot’ is the external means at his disposal to convey this general concept to the audience.

In his first Discours, Corneille argued that the distinctions between tragedy and comedy were found in the different types of ‘action’:

La comédie diffère donc en cela de la tragédie, que celle-ci veut pour son sujet une action illustre, extraordinaire, sérieuse: celle-là s'arrête à une action commune et enjouée (italics mine).⁸

In his preface to Bérénice, Racine stressed the magnitude of the ‘action’ in tragedy:

Ce n'est point une nécessité qu'il y ait du sang et des morts dans une tragédie: il suffit que l'action en soit grande, que les acteurs en soient héroïques, que les passions y soient excitées, et que tout s'y ressente de cette tristesse majestueuse qui fait tout le plaisir de la tragédie (italics mine).⁹

The types of action chosen by Corneille were generally ones which would provoke admiration on the part of the audience; those chosen by Racine were of a kind which would arouse the emotions of pity and fear. For both dramatists, the ‘action’ of the play raised important moral issues: for example, in Horace, the ‘action’ concerns the dangers of excessive patriotism; in Cinna, the nature of power, the consequences of responsibility, the question of moral salvation. In Andromaque and Phèdre, matters of international significance provide the backcloth against which the private struggles of the characters are set. In both Corneille and Racine, the principal characters face ‘grands périls’ whereas in Le Misanthrope, Alceste and Célimène experience ‘inquiétude’ and ‘déplaisirs’.¹⁰

The ‘action’ of Le Misanthrope is of two kinds: for most of the characters, it concerns the ‘discovery’ of Célimène's duplicity and their ultimate discomfiture; for the spectator, the ‘action’ is perceived through the characters' enactment, but issues in his or her perception of Alceste's and Célimène's inability to accept the lessons of experience. This ‘action’ is purely domestic: the public dimension, the prerequisite for tragic effect in Corneille and Racine, is missing. Alceste believes it is present. He elevates his lawsuit to a phenomenon of universal interest:

Je verrai, dans cette plaiderie,

Si les hommes auront assez d'effronterie,

Seront assez méchants, scélérats et pervers,

Pour me faire injustice aux yeux de l'univers (…)

Et je veux qu'il demeure à la postérité,

Comme une marque insigne, un fameux témoignage

De la méchanceté des hommes de notre âge.

(197-200, 1544-46)¹¹

Alceste's love for Célimène is deemed by him to be a fatal attraction: ‘(…) ce fatal amour né de vos traîtres yeux! (…) il faut suivre ma destinée’ (1384, 1417). The consequences of Alceste's legal setback and of his separation from Célimène do not, however, go beyond the confines of his own inner circle. The destiny of nations will not be affected by his decision to leave for his ‘désert’! Critics have sometimes taken Alceste's self-assessment literally. The character behaves and talks as if he is in an ‘action illustre’. Alceste thinks that his situation is tragic. But, as we shall see, it is the character, and not the author, who has misunderstood the genre.

The high social rank of the characters has also led critics to distinguish Le Misanthrope from most of Molière's plays. Some seventeenth-century dramatists and theoreticians suggested that the comic hero was of a lower status than his tragic counterpart:

(…) la comédie ne parle que des [personnes] mediocres (…)¹²

Dans la comédie, il [le poète] imite les actions des personnes de petite condition, ou tout au plus de médiocre (…)¹³

(…) dans la Comédie, dont les Personnages sont pris du menu peuple, tous jeunes Débauchez, Esclaves fort empressez, Femmes étourdies, ou Vieillars fort affairez (…)¹⁴

Corneille, however, did not think high rank in itself indicative of a tragic ‘action’:

Lorsqu'on met sur la scène un simple intrigue d'amour entre des rois, et qu'ils ne courent aucun péril, ni de leur vie, ni de leur État, je ne crois pas que, bien que les personnes soient illustres, l'action le soit assez pour s'élever jusqu'à la tragédie. Sa dignité demande quelque grand intérêt d'État, ou quelque passion plus noble et plus mâle que l'amour (…) et veut donner à craindre des malheurs plus grands que la perte d'une maîtresse (…) s'il ne s'y rencontre point de péril de vie, de pertes d'États, ou de bannissement, je ne pense pas que [le poème] ait droit de prendre un nom plus relevé que celui de comédie.¹⁵

For Molière and Corneille, the ‘action’ was more important than the social status of the characters in determining the genre. We shall see that in Le Misanthrope the characters' elevated social status does not prevent them from behaving like some of the self-deluded heroes in Molière's bourgeois comedies or even like the naïve protagonists of the farce tradition.

The dominant theme emerging from the ‘action’ is that of incompatibility. The ending of Le Misanthrope reveals a break with the convention of literary comedy. Normally a five-act literary comedy ended in the celebration of marriages:

Le dénouement traditionnel de la comédie est un mariage, et même, de préférence, plusieurs mariages (…) Il semble que le double mariage soit le minimum acceptable pour un dénouement heureux et qu'on doive y arriver à tout prix.¹⁶

In the comédie d'intrigue, obstacles to the union of the main characters are removed and there is an atmosphere of reconciliation and of reunion. Molière had scope for such an ending to Le Misanthrope: three potential couples are announced in the opening scenes. The only marriage to take place (between Philinte and Éliante) has been regarded as highly unsatisfactory:

(…) le mariage plus ou moins ‘bâclé’ de Philinte et d'Éliante ne peut faire oublier la rupture survenue entre Alceste et Célimène.¹⁷

But such criticism ignores the comic ‘action’ of the play: Philinte and Éliante provide a yardstick against which we can evaluate the inability of others (particularly of Alceste and Célimène) to learn the lessons of experience.

The theme of incompatibility, which has been thought to contain tragic overtones in this play, may be viewed however as a subtle variation on one of the central themes of Old French Farce—that of the mal-marié. The theme is also prominent in a number of Molière's plays from La Jalousie du Barbouillé to Amphitryon.¹⁸ The badin's defeat in the conjugal struggle was a traditional comic closure in Native French Farce. Farcical echoes in the ending of Le Misanthrope have not been explored by critics. Admittedly, Alceste's marital status is different from that of the mari confondu. The role of Alceste is also much more complex than that of the naïve husband. Yet Alceste's oft-frustrated attempts to come to an understanding with Célimène evoke the cuckolded husband's futile quest to prove his shrewish wife's infidelity. Alceste is spared the beating usually meted out to the lourdaud. The physical expressiveness of the farce endings is reproduced (appropriately enough for the more sophisticated play) in the verbal fisticuffs of the final scene.

The topsy-turvy world of farce is also recalled in the numerous proposals of marriage. The fact that the initiative is taken by women further reverses the literary convention. The first two overtures are met with brusque refusals. Arsinoé's proposal, thinly veiled as a means of allowing Alceste revenge on Célimène, is brutally anticipated by the titular hero:

Ce n'est pas à vous que je pourrai songer,

Si par un autre choix je cherche à me venger.

(1721-22)

Célimène's offer, in response to Alceste's request to accompany him to his ‘désert’ (‘Si le don de ma main peut contenter vos voeux, / Je pourrai me résoudre à serrer de tels noeuds; / Et l'hymen …’ (1777-79)) provokes an even more categorical rejection: ‘Non, mon coeur, à présent, vous déteste’ (1779).

The final overture contrasts with the previous female demonstrations on the art of proposal. Éliante's subtle hypothesis feeds Philinte his cue:

Et voilà votre ami, sans trop m'inquiéter,

Qui, si je l'en priais, la pourrait accepter.

(1797-98 italics mine)

Philinte's very positive acceptance couplet provides retrospectively an ironic focus on Alceste's failure. Their union is a counterpoint to the incompatibility of the Alceste/Arsinoé and Alceste/Célimène relationships.

The comic ‘action’ is also conveyed by the repetitive structure of the play. The fact that the dénouement derives closely from the preceding episodes has increased speculation as to the play's tragic qualities. In many of his five-act comedies, Molière has recourse to an outside agency to untie the complications of the plot: (see, for example, the patres, rex and deus ex machina endings of L'École des femmes, L'Avare, Tartuffe and Dom Juan). In such plays, the seemingly fortuitous introduction of characters unfamiliar to the audience creates discontinuity and an atmosphere of fantasy. The structure of Le Misanthrope is, on the other hand, quite coherent. Even the two episodes which have been thought to be digressive provide an ironic anticipation of the dénouement. In Act I, scene 2, Molière suggests two potentially tragic endings to the play: the persona of Oronte's sonnet, tired of waiting in hope, contemplates suicide: ‘S'il faut qu'une attente éternelle/Pousse à bout l'ardeur de mon zèle,/Le trépas sera mon recours’ (327-29). This is a far cry from Oronte's verbal bravura at the end of the play: ‘J'y profite d'un coeur qu'ainsi vous me rendez,/Et trouve ma vengeance en ce que vous perdez’ (1705-06). The heroic ending envisaged by the persona of Alceste's chanson contrasts with the latter's flight to his ‘désert’, unaccompanied by ‘ma mie’ but pursued by the happy couple, Philinte and Éliante. Similarly, the mutual self-congratulation of the marquis, in Act III, scene 1 is based on false premises. The pact they make to keep each other informed, which lessens the fortuitous nature of the letter-reading ceremony,¹⁹ will ironically burst the bubble of their illusions.

The tight construction of Le Misanthrope has been equated with the linear progression of the tragic plot. The structure of Molière's play is nearer, however, to the symmetrical rhythm of farce. Comparison with the circular structure of George Dandin, which itself derives from Native French Farce,²⁰ would seem more appropriate. The ending of Le Misanthrope brings us full circle, back to the point of departure. Alceste's entrance in a state of high dudgeon parallels his exit; on both occasions he is pursued by the unrelenting Philinte. Alceste's final exit is merely the fifth of a series of departures which occur at the end of each act: at the end of Act I he storms off with Philinte in pursuit; at the end of Act III he leaves with Arsinoé in search of proof of Célimène's infidelity; at the end of Acts II and IV he is summoned to appear before the maréchaux. In addition, Alceste's repeated threats to leave (95-96; 143-44; 1486; 1521-24; 1573; 1762) give to his final gesture a certain theatricality which distances the audience from the interpretation Alceste places on his departure.

The repetitive, circular pattern conveys in the central character the rigidity and inelasticity which, for Bergson, was the hallmark of the comic hero.²¹ Apart from the change in the relationship between Philinte and Éliante, any sixth Act could well be a repetition of the first Act. The fact that there have been a number of sequels to Le Misanthrope indicates how far we are from the closed world of Racine in which heroes and heroines are irrevocably separated, usually by death.

The comic ‘action’ of Le Misanthrope also implies a lack of ‘recognition’ on the part of the main characters. The extent to which the characters are ‘enlightened’ has been a contentious issue. Critics have tended to find the ‘discovery’ of Célimène's duplicity pathetic. In most Racinian plays, the principal source of pathos is the character's apprehension of a tragic destiny:²² in Bérénice, the titular heroine is brought to a realization that she has misunderstood the situation Titus was in, and ultimately perceives the futility of her projected suicide; in Phèdre, Thésée is forced to recognize the folly of his hasty judgement (sending Hippolyte to his death on false circumstantial evidence); in Mithridate, the eponymous hero's discoveries are equally poignant: that Monime is in love with his son, Xipharès, that the latter has been disloyal to him in the avowal of his love for Monime and that the invasion of Italy has had disastrous consequences. However, both the device used to bring about ‘recognition’ in Le Misanthrope and the primarily intellectual nature of the ‘discovery’ made by most of the characters preserve the comic register.

The means used to bring about ‘discovery’, the exchange of letters, is found more frequently in comedy than in tragedy. The establishment of true identity by means of material objects was used by tragic dramatists like Quinault and Boyer. Corneille and Racine, however, rejected this kind of ‘material discovery’.²³ Molière explored the comic possibilities afforded by the reading of letters on stage (there are fifteen instances in nine of his plays²⁴). Six years after the creation of Le Misanthrope, he was to parody the device of ‘material discovery’ in Ariste's ‘false letters’ which serve to bring about a satisfying comic closure in Les Femmes savantes.

The ‘discovery’ made by most of the characters in Le Misanthrope is primarily intellectual. The moral and psychological self-appraisal conducted by many Racinian heroes and heroines is absent. Some of the sequels to the play have tried to fill this lacuna. In Fabre d'Eglantine's Le Philinte de Molière ou la suite du Misanthrope, Alceste benefits from his solitude and becomes a virtuous provincial landowner, filled with a love of humanity. In his conte, Le Misanthrope corrigé, Marmontel draws a moral lesson from Alceste's discomfiture. Courteline's La Conversion d'Alceste focuses on the reformed misanthrope's return from self-exile. In Molière's text, there is no indication of any conversion. On the contrary, Molière emphasises the characters' self-delusion. This is rendered comic by the incongruity between the language they use and the situation in which the author has placed them. The mental blindness of Acaste, Clitandre, Oronte and Arsinoé anticipates in varying degrees that of Alceste and Célimène.

There is a disparity between Acaste's uncritical self-portrait in Act III, scene 1 and the disparaging sketch of him by Célimène: ‘je trouve qu'il n'y a rien de si mince que toute sa personne; et ce sont de ces mérites qui n'ont que la cape et l'épée’ (Act V, scene 4). Acaste's use of familiar expressions (‘A vous le dé, Monsieur’ and ‘Voici votre paquet’ are, as Rudler has pointed out,²⁵ not recorded in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie) and of mercenary language (‘des coeurs du plus haut prix’) contradicts his earlier claim to good taste, which had already been called into question by his extended mercantile imagery in Act III, scene 1. His minatory tone and use of the word ‘se consoler’ belie his contention that he is not piqued by his ‘discovery’: ‘Mais je ne vous tiens pas digne de ma colère’ (1696). Clitandre shows no self-awareness in his juvenile threats of revenge on the portrait artist: ‘Il suffit, nous allons, l'un, et l'autre, en tous lieux, / Montrer de votre coeur le portrait glorieux’ (1693-94). The petits marquis's complete about-turn (cf. their adulation of Célimène in the scène des portraits) shows their distorted optic.

Oronte, imitating the tragic hero, bemoans his lack of foresight and professes to have learned from his experience:

Allez, j'étais trop dupe, et je vais ne plus l'être.

Vous me faites un bien, me faisant vous connaître:

J'y profite d'un coeur qu'ainsi vous me rendez (…)

(1703-05)

Oronte's closing remarks reveal, however, the obliquity of his vision. He does not take cognizance of the corrections made of his style by both Alceste and Célimène: note his exaggeratedly precious: ‘votre coeur, paré de beaux semblants d'amour, / A tout le genre humain se promet tour à tour!’ his mercenary imagery: ‘un bien’, ‘profite’, ‘conclure affaire’; the inadequate formulation ‘je vous ai vu écrire’ (Oronte has not actually seen Célimène writing the letters).²⁶ Moreover, Oronte's confession of his error of judgement is itself hybristic: note his conviction that Célimène will be the loser; that he himself has regained his freedom; and that he is the obstacle to the relationship between Alceste and Célimène.

Arsinoé, who seeks to ‘enlighten’ others regarding Célimène's duplicity, is paradoxically the least ‘enlightened’ from a moral or psychological standpoint. Her response to the disclosure of Célimène's double-dealing is pharisaical: note the comic irony of her quasi-exclamatory statement and rhetorical question: ‘Certes, voilà le trait du monde le plus noir (…) Voit-on des procédés qui soient pareils aux vôtres?’ Fired by jealousy, Arsinoé fails to perceive how Alceste has behaved towards Célimène: ‘Un homme comme lui, de mérite et d'honneur, / Et qui vous chérissait avec idolâtrie (…)’; ‘idolâtrie’ (‘adoration des faux Dieux’ (Richelet)) can hardly be applied to Alceste's method of wooing! Alceste's brusque contradiction of Arsinoé's thumbnail sketch of him produces a volte-face. Arsinoé's eulogy gives way to vituperation (1725); elevated abstractions are replaced by vulgar expressions: ‘avoir’, ‘rebut’, ‘marchandise’ (1724, 1727). Her exhortation to Alceste to undeceive himself and to recognize his pride (1729) gives further comic irony to her lack of self-awareness (note the unconscious irony of ‘émouvoir’ (1710) and the double irony of: ‘Et je brûle de voir une union si belle’ (1732)).

Alceste comes nearest to the tragic hero's confession of human limitation. On three occasions he lays claim to ‘enlightenment’. On the first occasion he declares his ‘faiblesse’ and his humanity:

Et je vous fais, tous deux, témoins de ma faiblesse. Mais, à vous dire vrai, ce n'est pas encor tout,

Et vous allez me voir la pousser jusqu'au bout,

Montrer que c'est à tort que sages on nous nomme,

Et que, dans tous les coeurs, il est toujours de l'homme.

(1752-56)

His confession, however, does not have any humbling effect or lead to any reevaluation of his conduct. His humanity is illustrated ironically in his detailed elaboration: he apportions all the blame to Célimène and offers the paradoxical solution of ‘fuir tous les humains’ (1762). Alceste's ‘discovery’ of his weakness emerges from his imitation of the tragic hero's classical dilemma:

Hé! le puis-je, traîtresse?

Puis-je ainsi triompher de toute ma tendresse?

Et quoique avec ardeur je veuille vous haïr,

Trouvé-je un coeur en moi tout prêt à m'obéir?

(1747-1750)

Alceste's dilemma is, however, a false one based on a misapprehension of his ‘tendresse’ and on a rationalisation of his temperamental peculiarity (as the subtitle suggests Alceste is an atrabilaire). His offer of clemency (‘oublier vos forfaits (…) excuser tous les traits’) is in no way magnanimous. It is undermined by the intransigence of his terms (‘Pourvu que (…) c'est par là seulement’) and by the brutal language in which he formulates his final rejection of Célimène: ‘Non, mon coeur, à présent, vous déteste (…)’ (1779). Such categorical expression jars with the idealised portrayal of his love for her:

Puisque vous n'êtes point, en des liens si doux,

Pour trouver tout en moi, comme moi tout en vous (…)

(1781-82)

Alceste's casting of himself in the role of a seventeenth-century Tristan or Lancelot gives further emphasis to his blindness.

Alceste's second claim to ‘enlightenment’ is again expressed in the diction of the tragic hero:

Je m'en sens trop indigne, et commence à connaître Que le Ciel, pour ce noeud, ne m'avait point fait naître.

(1791-92)

The context makes this ‘discovery’ heavily ironic. Alceste's self-deprecatory tone is both a rationalisation of his failure with Célimène and a means of extricating himself from the extravagant proposal he had made to Éliante in Act IV, scene 2. His tragic diction is unnecessary as Éliante no longer wanted to marry him. (Alceste's lengthy justification of his rejection of Éliante is punctured by her laconic interruption: ‘Vous pouvez suivre cette pensée’ (1795).) A further irony arises from the timing of Alceste's diplomacy: if he had used such expression to Célimène the situation might well have been different.

Alceste's third ‘discovery’—of the restorative properties of the ‘désert’—is equally ironic. His moment of ‘recognition’ has been compared to a conversion to Jansenism.²⁷ His ‘désert’ would become a kind of religious retreat where he can find serenity. But Alceste has not suddenly seen the light: the structure of the play suggests that the ‘désert’ is for Alceste a kind of idée fixe. Moreover, Alceste's contemptus mundi lacks the self-abasement of the solitaires. The religious language, ‘le désert ou j'ai fait voeu de vivre’, is for Alceste merely a vehicle for self-martyrdom. Mortification and penitence would have been inflicted on Célimène and not on himself: ‘C'est par là seulement que (…) Vous pouvez réparer le mal de vos écrits,’ (1765-66). Alceste's vision of the ‘désert’ has also been situated within the pastoral tradition.²⁸ Alceste's retreat from Paris is not however in pursuit of the rustic simplicity and purity of an earlier age. Alceste is no pastoralist: he retires to his country house, not to kill venison for his beloved or to cultivate gallantry. Alceste has not the humour of the countryman; in addition, Célimène will be left behind. A third interpretation turns Alceste's final speech into a quasi-phenomenological, quasi-Sartrian discovery of the ‘liberté de la conscience de l'identité’.²⁹ This anachronistic reading fails to take account of the context of Alceste's declaration of triumph.

Alceste's parting lines confirm that, like other monomaniacs, he has not evolved emotionally or morally, despite all his protestations of lucidity. His benediction of the marriage of Philinte and Éliante (1801-02) contains negative undertones: the emphasis on ‘vrais contentements’ and on ‘garder’ shows that he sees their marriage through the prism of his own disappointment. Heralded by the empty hyperbole to which we have become accustomed (1803-06), Alceste's exit is mock-tragic. His self-delusion is reflected in the final paradox: his search for freedom in separation from the rest of humanity. The root causes of Alceste's failure lie not in the ‘gouffre où triomphent les vices’ but primarily in himself: his extremism (both in language and in behaviour) in the polite society founded on principles of moderation and of tolerance; his self-righteousness, in his clearsightedness with regard to the sins of others, but cecity with regard to his own; his self-absorption in, as Guicharnaud has suggested,³⁰ Alceste's wish to make Célimène a female version of himself.

Molière dispels any doubt concerning the comic status of Alceste's final ‘discovery’ with Philinte's curtain line. Producers who have given a dark interpretation of the hero have generally omitted Philinte's couplet in order to give to Alceste the isolation appropriate to a tragic hero. But as Hope has observed, it is essential that Philinte should have the last word to remind us of the circularity of the play.³¹

Modern interpretations of Le Misanthrope have sometimes found ‘tragic discovery’ in Célimène. Her exit in Dux's influential production ‘left not a dry eye in the house’.³² Guicharnaud's magisterial study has given weight to the notion of a tragic Célimène:

le personnage ‘tragique’ dans Le Misanthrope, ce n'est peut-être pas Alceste, c'est Célimène, car c'est vraiment elle qui tombe de haut (…) Au centre de la pièce, la compréhension dans la haine annonçait ce morceau de la fin où s'exprime la compréhension dans l'amour. Il n'empêche qu'une illumination de ce genre est unique dans le théâtre de Molière, elle se situe bien au-delà de la comédie dont le finale a été escamoté.³³

Célimène does acknowledge her mistakes: ‘Vous en êtes en droit (…) J'ai tort, je le confesse (…) je tombe d'accord de mon crime envers vous (…) vous avez sujet de me haïr’ (1737-1746). But her expression of guilt is attenuated by the use of modal verbs: ‘je dois vous paraître coupable (…) j'ai pu vous trahir’. Nowhere does she give unequivocal expression to the fact of her deception. Célimène chooses a form of words which she thinks will be acceptable to Alceste. Her muted confession can therefore be seen as an attempt to pacify him. In believing that a marriage with Alceste can be contracted with merely the mildest expression of contrition on her part she betrays a naïvety rarely perceived in the role by critics.

Any ‘enlightenment’ on the stage is experienced by Philinte and Éliante, who, we have seen, demonstrate a willingness to learn from the experience of others. Yet even they are not possessed of all knowledge. Philinte's final couplet shows a degree of ingenuousness in his determination to bring back to Paris Éliante's ‘first love’ and in his belief that he will be able to achieve this feat—a more probable scenario is that Alceste will return of his own accord to give full vent to his misanthropy.

I have tried to show that the dénouement completes the comic ‘action’. Lessons go unheeded by all but Philinte and Éliante, and even they are not free from error. Apart from their wedding, nothing is resolved. The problems of character remain: the misanthropication of Alceste is more extreme; Célimène's duplicity has been temporarily checked but uncorrected; the marquis set off to air their grievances elsewhere; Oronte will seek a ‘superior’ audience to listen to his inept poetry. The characters are locked in circularity, not unlike the protagonists of the farce tradition. In one sense, the ending of Le Misanthrope is more pessimistic than that of any Racinian tragedy.³⁴ The underlying pessimism, however, does not call into question the comic status of the play: it merely illustrates the central paradox of the comic genre.

Notes

1. R. Horville, Le Misanthrope de Molière (Paris: Hatier: Profil d'une oeuvre, 1981), p. 70.

2. Notably by J. D. Hubert, Molière and the Comedy of Intellect (California: University of California Press, 1962); F. L. Lawrence, ‘Our Alceste or Nature's? A Problem of Interpretation’, Revue des langues vivantes, 38 (1972); A. Eustis, Molière as Ironic Contemplator (The Hague: Mouton, 1973); R. McBride, The Sceptical Vision of Molière (London: Macmillan, 1977); W. D. Howarth, Molière: A Playwright and his Audience (C.U.P., 1982). These interpretations have not gone unchallenged: see, for example, M. Gutwirth's refutation of Hubert's view that Alceste is a ‘héros burlesque’ (‘Visages d'Alceste’, Oeuvres et critiques, 6, i (1981), p. 80).

3. Goethe asks: ‘Ob jemals ein Dichter sein Inneres vollkommener und liebenswürdiger dargestellt habe’ (see H. R. Jauss, ‘The Paradox of the Misanthrope’, Comparative Literature, 35 (1983), p. 318).

4. For A. Thibaudet (‘Le Rire de Molière’, Revue de Paris, 29 (1922), 99-125), once the marquis have left ‘on ne rit ni d'Alceste ni de Célimène, et la scène n'a plus rien de comique, elle est simplement humaine’; for J. Arnavon (Le Misanthrope de Molière (Paris: 1930), especially pp. 272-73) Alceste's exit is profoundly moving.

5. E.g. A. Adam, Histoire de la littérature française (Paris: Éditions mondiales, 1962), III, p. 343: ‘la comédie tend vers le drame’; P. J. Yarrow, ‘A Reconsideration of Alceste’, French Studies, 13 (1959), 314-331, p. 328: ‘Molière appears to have begun by intending Alceste to be a comic figure, but, in the heat of the composition, his original conception developed and broke through the bounds of comedy; the creature took hold of the creator, and Molière came to sympathize more and more with Alceste, to make him more complex and human, possibly to put more and more of himself into him’; J. Guicharnaud, Molière: une aventure théâtrale (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), p. 483: ‘En guise de finale, théâtralement satisfaisante, la pièce nous offre le spectacle tout humain d'une véritable agonie’; Simone Dosmond, ‘Le Dénouement du Misanthrope: Une “source” méconnue?’, La Licorne, VII (1983), 25-40, p. 25: ‘L'exil de “l'homme aux rubans verts”, l'humiliation publique infligée à la coquette qui demeure seule au milieu de son salon (presque) désert sont loin, en effet, d'engendrer l'euphorie qui caractérise, en principe, les dénouements de comédies. Ne pourrait-on pas, dès lors, considérer Molière comme le créateur d'un genre hybride: la comédie à fin malheureuse?’

6. E.g. J. Morel compares the ending of Le Misanthrope with that of Bérénice (see J. Dubu, ‘Molière et le tragique’, XVII^eSiècle, 98-99 (1973), p. 53); J. Cairncross, Molière bourgeois et libertin (Paris: Nizet, 1963), p. 84: ‘Au cinquième acte, le doute ne subsiste ni sur la situation elle-même, ni sur l'angle sous lequel Molière présente l'amour d'Alceste. Nous voilà dans le monde fermé et sombre de Racine, de la tragédie la plus émouvante’; A. Szogyi, Molière abstrait (Paris: Nizet, 1985), p. 108: ‘Nulle part ailleurs la planète moliéresque n'est aussi tragiquement dénudée, livrée sans espoir au désaccord, au gaspillage tragique (…) Le Misanthrope est un duel à mort, un combat sans merci avant l'halali de sa coquette proie’.

7. See H. T. Barnwell, The Tragic Drama of Corneille and Racine: An Old Parallel Revisited (O.U.P., 1982), p. 168. For an illuminating analysis of the significance of ‘action’ in Corneille and Racine see in particular pp. 1-31.

8. P. Corneille, Writings on the Theatre, ed. H. T. Barnwell (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), p. 9.

9. J. Racine, Preface to Bérénice in Oeuvres, ed. P. Mesnard (Paris: Hachette, 1865), II, p. 366.

10. See Corneille, op. cit., p. 10.

11. All quotations from Le Misanthrope are taken from G. Rudler's edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972). References are to line numbers.

12. J. Mairet, Préface de La Silvanire ou La Morte—vive, Oeuvres (Paris: Rocolet, 1631), vol. II.

13. J. Chapelain, Opuscules critiques, ed. A. C. Hunter (Paris: Droz, 1936), p. 130.

14. F. H. abbé d'Aubignac, La Pratique du théâtre, ed. P. Martino (Paris: Champion, 1927), p. 276.

15. Corneille, op. cit., pp. 8-9.

16. J. Scherer, La Dramaturgie classique en France (Paris: Nizet, 1950), pp. 139-40.

17. Dosmond, op. cit., p. 25.

18. See also for example: Les Précieuses ridicules, Le Mariage forcé, Dom Juan, George Dandin.

19. See J. L. Shepherd, III, ‘Arsinoé as Puppeteer’, French Review, 42 (1968-69), 262-71.

20. See my edition: La Jalousie du Barbouillé et George Dandin (Exeter: Textes littéraires, LV), 1984.

21. H. Bergson, Le Rire (Paris: Alcan, 1900).

22. See Barnwell, op. cit., pp. 159-78. I am using ‘recognition’, ‘discovery’, ‘enlightenment’ as synonymous and as an equivalent of Aristotle's anagorisis.

23. Ibid., pp. 164-66.

24. See R. Duchêne, ‘Molière et la lettre’, Travaux de linguistique et de littérature, XIII, 2 (1975), pp. 261-73.

25. See Rudler, ed. cit., p. 139.

26. Ibid.

27. Cf. Robinet, Lettres en vers, 12 juin 1666:

    Et ce Misanthrope est si sage,
    En frondant les moeurs de notre âge,
    Que l'on dirait, benoît lecteur,
    Qu'on entend un prédicateur.
    Aucune morale chrétienne
    N'est plus louable que la sienne (…)

    See G. Mongrédien, Recueil des textes et des documents du XVII^csièle relatifs à Molière (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1965), I, p. 266. Modern criticism has revived this notion: see in particular M. Deutsch, ‘Le vertige Alceste’, in J. P. Vincent et al., Alceste et l'Absolutisme: essais de dramaturgie sur Le Misanthrope (Paris: Galilée, 1977), pp. 85-103; Dosmond (op. cit), who pictures Alceste as ‘le nouveau compagnon de Nicole et de Lancelot’.

28. For further discussion of Christian and pastoral interpretations see L. Lerner, The Literary Imagination (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1982), pp. 24-38.

29. G. A. Goldschmidt, Molière ou la liberté mise à nu (Paris: Julliard, 1973), p. 93.

30. Op. cit., p. 485.

31. Q. Hope, ‘Molière's Curtain Lines’, French Studies, 26 (1972), p. 148.

32. For a review of the production see R. W. Herzel, ‘Much Depends on the Acting: the Original Cast of Le Misanthrope’, PMLA, 95 (1980), 348-66 (especially 348-51).

33. Op. cit., pp. 473, 485.

34. See Barnwell's application of the paradox to tragedy (op. cit., particularly, pp. 249-50): ‘Tragedy disturbs the order of the moral universe, but it also restores it’.