AFP
11 January 2022
A bust shows the famous French playwright, Molière. Today would
have been his 400th birthday. (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY / AFP)
Tuesday marks the 400th birthday Molière - a playwright who many consider as the French Shakespeare. Here's everything you need to know about the man who remains central to French culture today.
Today would have been the 400th birthday of one of the most celebrated French writers of all time.
When the French refer to their native tongue, it is the “language of Molière” – the name of a playwright who remains as central to their culture as Shakespeare in the English-speaking world.
Here’s what you need to know on the life and legacy of France’s most illustrious writer.
A little-known star
Molière, real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, left zero trace of his personal life: no journal, correspondence or even notes on his work. The only of his four children to survive to adulthood, lost his manuscripts.
We don’t know the source of his stage-name — which refers to a quarry — nor his date of birth (we have only a baptism certificate, dated January 15, 1622, that was discovered two centuries later in 1820).
As eldest son, he stood to inherit a comfortable living from his father as chief upholsterer and valet to the king, but gave it up to be an actor.
It caused his father much strife: he was forced to buy his son out of prison after his first company, The Illustrious Theatre, fell into debt.
Molière fled Paris at 23, spending the next 13 years with a travelling troupe.
Success on the road won him a return to Paris and a successful audience for the young king, Louis XIV, that earned him a powerful patron even though he faced constant battles with censors.
Despite the myth, he did not quite die on stage, but shortly after a performance — as the hypochondriac character Argan no less — at home on the Rue de Richelieu on February 17, 1673.
World’s oldest theatre company
La Comedie-Francaise was created by King Louis XIV in 1680, seven years after Molière’s death, as a merger between his troupe and another.
The longest-running theatre company in the world, it is known as “La Maison de Molière” and has performed his work every single year since its formation.
Based since 1799 on the Rue de Richelieu, close to the Louvre, it now employs 400 people, including 60 actors, and has a costume department comprising 50,000 items.
Memorable characters
Molière created characters who often take their foibles to extremes, but allow us to laugh at our universal human failings in the process.
Perhaps best-known is Tartuffe, from the play of the same name — a fraud who disguises himself as a priest to convince a naive, wealthy aristocrat into handing him his fortune and daughter’s hand in marriage, even as he chases after his wife.
The play is seen as practically inventing the “comedy of manners” that satirises the moral hypocrisies of high society.
Though Moliere is not thought to have been particularly anti-religious himself, “Tartuffe” scandalised the Catholic Church and became a key text in the anti-clerical movement of the following centuries.
Among other key characters is the money-obsessed Harpagnon, from “The Miser”, who exhorts his servants “not to rub the furniture too hard for fear of wearing it out”.
The hypochondriac Argan from “The Imaginary Invalid” is another eternal character that Moliere used to satirise quacks in the medical profession who exploited people’s fear of death.
Tuesday marks the 400th birthday Molière - a playwright who many consider as the French Shakespeare. Here's everything you need to know about the man who remains central to French culture today.
Today would have been the 400th birthday of one of the most celebrated French writers of all time.
When the French refer to their native tongue, it is the “language of Molière” – the name of a playwright who remains as central to their culture as Shakespeare in the English-speaking world.
Here’s what you need to know on the life and legacy of France’s most illustrious writer.
A little-known star
Molière, real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, left zero trace of his personal life: no journal, correspondence or even notes on his work. The only of his four children to survive to adulthood, lost his manuscripts.
We don’t know the source of his stage-name — which refers to a quarry — nor his date of birth (we have only a baptism certificate, dated January 15, 1622, that was discovered two centuries later in 1820).
As eldest son, he stood to inherit a comfortable living from his father as chief upholsterer and valet to the king, but gave it up to be an actor.
It caused his father much strife: he was forced to buy his son out of prison after his first company, The Illustrious Theatre, fell into debt.
Molière fled Paris at 23, spending the next 13 years with a travelling troupe.
Success on the road won him a return to Paris and a successful audience for the young king, Louis XIV, that earned him a powerful patron even though he faced constant battles with censors.
Despite the myth, he did not quite die on stage, but shortly after a performance — as the hypochondriac character Argan no less — at home on the Rue de Richelieu on February 17, 1673.
World’s oldest theatre company
La Comedie-Francaise was created by King Louis XIV in 1680, seven years after Molière’s death, as a merger between his troupe and another.
The longest-running theatre company in the world, it is known as “La Maison de Molière” and has performed his work every single year since its formation.
Based since 1799 on the Rue de Richelieu, close to the Louvre, it now employs 400 people, including 60 actors, and has a costume department comprising 50,000 items.
Memorable characters
Molière created characters who often take their foibles to extremes, but allow us to laugh at our universal human failings in the process.
Perhaps best-known is Tartuffe, from the play of the same name — a fraud who disguises himself as a priest to convince a naive, wealthy aristocrat into handing him his fortune and daughter’s hand in marriage, even as he chases after his wife.
The play is seen as practically inventing the “comedy of manners” that satirises the moral hypocrisies of high society.
Though Moliere is not thought to have been particularly anti-religious himself, “Tartuffe” scandalised the Catholic Church and became a key text in the anti-clerical movement of the following centuries.
Among other key characters is the money-obsessed Harpagnon, from “The Miser”, who exhorts his servants “not to rub the furniture too hard for fear of wearing it out”.
The hypochondriac Argan from “The Imaginary Invalid” is another eternal character that Moliere used to satirise quacks in the medical profession who exploited people’s fear of death.
Does the land of Shakespeare care for 400-year-old Moliere?
AFP-January 11, 2022
AFP-January 11, 2022
An anthology of French playwright Moliere’s plays in English and French dating from 1732. (AFP pic)
PARIS: American actor Denis O’Hare could sense the ghost of Moliere smiling as he rode his co-star Olivia Williams like a horse on stage at London’s National Theatre.
Usually a rather cerebral place, the National’s audience was in stitches as O’Hare’s character Tartuffe, from the classic 17th-century French play, tried to disguise his adulterous antics as a bit of horseplay.
“The comedy translates across the centuries if you know what you’re doing,” O’Hare told AFP.
“Some of the funny was based on language, and some of it on sheer idiocy… But there are also great moments of pathos and human emotion that make it all the richer.”
That hit production of “Tartuffe” in 2019 was a reminder that Moliere, France’s most celebrated playwright who turns 400 this week, can resonate in the land of Shakespeare.
It was not always the case.
“It used to be a box office manager’s nightmare to have a Moliere production. You often had more people on stage than in the theatre,” said Noel Peacock of the University of Glasgow, an expert on Moliere translations.
In the 1980s, one “Sunday Times” critic even feared that Moliere was an obstacle to a united Europe: “How can you trade freely with a nation whose best comedy does not travel?”
But since those times, there has been a “complete turnaround”, said Peacock.
There have been dozens of British productions in recent years, with three major versions of “Tartuffe” in London alone between 2016 and 2019.
He is attracting celebrities: Keira Knightly played in “The Misanthrope” in 2009 and David Tennant, of “Doctor Who” fame, in “Don Juan” in 2017.
Highly adaptable
Peacock credits fresh translations that worried less about linguistic accuracy than capturing Moliere’s spirit with helping to bring out the universal truths in his work.
“Tartuffe is a rogue, a rascal, a hustler,” O’Hare agrees. “But he’s also a truth-teller in the great tradition of the French clown. He upends society’s norms and conventions.”
That has made him highly adaptable to modern scenarios. The Royal Shakespeare Company recently relocated “Tartuffe” to a British-Pakistani family in Birmingham, where the commentary on religious hypocrisy found fresh relevance.
PARIS: American actor Denis O’Hare could sense the ghost of Moliere smiling as he rode his co-star Olivia Williams like a horse on stage at London’s National Theatre.
Usually a rather cerebral place, the National’s audience was in stitches as O’Hare’s character Tartuffe, from the classic 17th-century French play, tried to disguise his adulterous antics as a bit of horseplay.
“The comedy translates across the centuries if you know what you’re doing,” O’Hare told AFP.
“Some of the funny was based on language, and some of it on sheer idiocy… But there are also great moments of pathos and human emotion that make it all the richer.”
That hit production of “Tartuffe” in 2019 was a reminder that Moliere, France’s most celebrated playwright who turns 400 this week, can resonate in the land of Shakespeare.
It was not always the case.
“It used to be a box office manager’s nightmare to have a Moliere production. You often had more people on stage than in the theatre,” said Noel Peacock of the University of Glasgow, an expert on Moliere translations.
In the 1980s, one “Sunday Times” critic even feared that Moliere was an obstacle to a united Europe: “How can you trade freely with a nation whose best comedy does not travel?”
But since those times, there has been a “complete turnaround”, said Peacock.
There have been dozens of British productions in recent years, with three major versions of “Tartuffe” in London alone between 2016 and 2019.
He is attracting celebrities: Keira Knightly played in “The Misanthrope” in 2009 and David Tennant, of “Doctor Who” fame, in “Don Juan” in 2017.
Highly adaptable
Peacock credits fresh translations that worried less about linguistic accuracy than capturing Moliere’s spirit with helping to bring out the universal truths in his work.
“Tartuffe is a rogue, a rascal, a hustler,” O’Hare agrees. “But he’s also a truth-teller in the great tradition of the French clown. He upends society’s norms and conventions.”
That has made him highly adaptable to modern scenarios. The Royal Shakespeare Company recently relocated “Tartuffe” to a British-Pakistani family in Birmingham, where the commentary on religious hypocrisy found fresh relevance.
Denis O’Hare played a memorable Tartuffe in a version that shifted the action to Brexit-era London. (AFP pic)
But it’s not just the English-speaking world that has embraced Moliere, whose real name was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, of late: translations have proved popular in Germany, Russia, Japan and beyond.
A recent French book about Moliere in the Arabic world found he had been performed in the region since at least 1847 and had become the “godfather of theatre” in many countries.
“Moliere’s plays have been extremely important internationally. He even provided the foundation for some national theatres who adapted his plays to their local languages and cultures,” said Agathe Sanjuan, conservator of the Comedie-Francaise in Paris, the longest-running theatre company in the world that has performed Moliere’s work every year since its formation in 1680.
It was always a tougher sell in England, of course, where he had to compete with the Bard, though adaptations of Moliere were appearing there as early as the 1660s, according to Peacock.
However, he found more success in Scotland, Peacock added, which had a “Shakespeare-sized hole to fill” and where Moliere’s “biggest advantage was that he wasn’t English”.
But it’s not just the English-speaking world that has embraced Moliere, whose real name was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, of late: translations have proved popular in Germany, Russia, Japan and beyond.
A recent French book about Moliere in the Arabic world found he had been performed in the region since at least 1847 and had become the “godfather of theatre” in many countries.
“Moliere’s plays have been extremely important internationally. He even provided the foundation for some national theatres who adapted his plays to their local languages and cultures,” said Agathe Sanjuan, conservator of the Comedie-Francaise in Paris, the longest-running theatre company in the world that has performed Moliere’s work every year since its formation in 1680.
It was always a tougher sell in England, of course, where he had to compete with the Bard, though adaptations of Moliere were appearing there as early as the 1660s, according to Peacock.
However, he found more success in Scotland, Peacock added, which had a “Shakespeare-sized hole to fill” and where Moliere’s “biggest advantage was that he wasn’t English”.
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