15 January: Boreham on Jean Baptiste Moliere

A Prince of the Proscenium
This is the anniversary of the baptism, in 1622, of Jean Baptiste Moliere. It is exactly 300 years since, employing a tennis court as a theatre, one of the greatest actors and playwrights of all time inaugurated his sensational career.[1] Anthony Trollope used to say that the comedies of Moliere should be placed in the hands of every boy and girl who was struggling with the subtleties and intricacies of the French language. The delicious humour of each paragraph would, Trollope argued, so intrigue them that they would make short shrift of the difficulties of translation in their anxiety to follow the swift variations of the amusing story.

Tall, well-proportioned, of raven-black hair and dark, striking complexion, Moliere was the contemporary of Milton. The two men died within a few months of each other. Though their names are seldom associated, they had a good deal in common. Each surmounted enormous obstacles. If Moliere became a great dramatist, he attained that eminence in defiance of circumstances that offered no encouragement to histrionic excellence. Three centuries ago there was only one theatre in Paris and that a miserable affair. In the provinces the position was even more desperate. The larger towns were visited by strolling players of a clownish type. A drummer promenaded the streets announcing the performance. A harlequin followed the drum and children poured from the highways and byways to see the fun. People sat pretty much where they liked and even mingled with the actors on the stage.

Boyish Infatuation Crowned By Royal Favour
Moliere came of a family of upholsterers and it was arranged that he should maintain that industrious tradition, but his grandfather's generosity in treating him to a night at the theatre drove the couches, the carpets, and the cushions, save as stage scenery, from his mind. It was a case of love at first sight. As soon as the candles were lit and the performance commenced, Moliere felt that he was breathing his native air. Until that night he had sometimes resigned himself to the idea of being an upholsterer, and had sometimes aspired to be, first a lawyer and then a judge, but from that moment he never wavered. He took to the stage as a duck takes to water. Though his career was a chequered one, with disappointments and discouragements that might have broken his heart, he always looked back upon that sudden decision with proud satisfaction.

His name was purely a pseudonym. His real name was Jean Baptiste Paquelin. In society he cut by no means an attractive figure. Despite his handsome form and stately carriage, his head was aggressively massive, his cheek bones defiantly prominent, his eyes small, his lips thick, and his nose and mouth repulsively large. He would probably never have found his feet in his profession but for the propitious accident that brought him under the notice of Louis the Fourteenth. That magnificent monarch was no connoisseur. He knew nothing of the technique of superb acting or of classical writing. He was, however, intensely human, revelled in the simplicities of life, and dearly loved a hearty laugh. It came to his knowledge that a travelling player of popular parts and a pretty wit was meeting with considerable success in the provinces, and he at once ordered his courtiers to bring Moliere to Paris and arrange for a performance. The function passed off happily, the king congratulated the comedian, and, in reply, Moliere craved permission to present to His Majesty a little farce of his own composition. This, too, won the royal approval and the king extended to the young actor a friendship which, in the years that followed, proved invaluable.

The Creation And Victim Of His Genius
Moliere wisely resolved to make hay while the sun shone. Feeling firm ground beneath his feet as an actor, he coveted new laurels. He was discerning enough to see that the triumphs of the stage are necessarily ephemeral. When an architect dies his plans remain; an artist bequeaths his paintings; an orator leaves his printed speeches; a statesman writes his autobiography on the Statute Book. But the telling gestures of the actor and the fine inflections and modulations of his voice pass like shadows, and, had Moliere contented himself with the transitory glories he won at the playhouse, we should not today be familiar with his name. Indeed, it would probably have been better if, on the establishment of his reputation as a dramatist, he had quitted the stage for ever. The lure of the footlights was, however, too compelling, and he could not tear himself from the scene of so many brilliant conquests.

The stage created him and the stage destroyed him. His dual life as an actor and an author quickly exhausted his energies and wore him down. There came a day when, at the age of 51, he was too ill to take his usual place. But he reflected that, if he were to cancel the performance, all the workpeople about the theatre would lose their day's pay. He therefore struggled through his part, pretending that his sepulchral cough was essential to the character he was endeavouring to portray. The artifice deceived nobody but himself. The audience left the building in horrified silence, shocked by the harrowing exhibition they had been compelled to witness. Moliere, pitifully cold, was carried on a chair to a friend's house, and, even before his wife could be summoned, he passed away. The soul of generosity, everybody loved him. He was the greatest French writer who was ever denied a place among the famous forty in the French Academy. He was scarcely buried, however, when the nation recognised that he had been unjustly excluded. A century later the Academy attempted an amende honorable by placing a bust of Moliere in its council chamber, while today, in every civilised country, he is saluted as one of the theatre's most shining ornaments and his works are studied as classic models by a new generation of dramatists.

F W Boreham

Image: Jean Baptiste Moliere

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on July 10, 1943.