THE ZENITH Le Misanthrope.—L'Amour Medecin was followed on June 4, i666, by Le Misanthrope, the greatest of the comedies of Moliere. His theme is no longer the special vice of a particular class or profession, but the whole attitude of the just man to a society necessarily founded on compromise. The antithesis from which the dramatic conflict arises is between virtue and con venience. Alceste, who can make no concessions, inflexible on the point of honour, over-sensitive in all his dealings, is contrasted with Celimene, who loves the frivolous world, and with Philinte, who represents a wise conformity with average conduct and opinion. The play was too subtle for the audiences of the Palais Royal, and after nine performances the receipts began to fall. The reception of the play by the court, of which inferentially it is a bold indictment, is not very clear. Le Misanthrope is undoubt edly a play which posterity has learned to appreciate more justly than any of its contemporary critics or admirers. The part of Alceste was played by Moliere and that of Celimene by his wife, and the comedy may justifiably be read as a reflection of their domestic relations. The whole play is at once intimate and de tached. It is a personal confession, but the comic genius of the author, serenely regarding his private woes, transforms this con fession into a sane, contemplative record that remains true for all mankind.
The year which followed was one of difficulty and discourage ment. In the early summer Moliere was ill, and after the festival at St. Germain he did not return to the theatre until June. He was then on a milk diet. Tartuffe, as we have seen, was suspended in August, and Moliere, who had threatened to retire if the Tar tuffes were allowed to have it their own way, abandoned his rooms in Paris for the villa at Auteuil. His relations with his wife were now at their worst, and for the next four years they were to remain unreconciled. The friends of his leisure at Auteuil, in addition to the faithful Chapelle, were Boileau and La Fontaine.
The fit of discouragement passed and in Jan. 1668 he returned to the Palais Royal with the comedy of Amphitryon, a master piece in the Latin tradition which pleased equally the town and the court. Moliere seems to have spent his leisure moments at Auteuil re-reading the classic authors, for L'Avare, produced on Sept. 9, was frankly derived from Plautus. Between these two productions in the classic mode, there intervened a summer fes tival at Versailles, for which Moliere wrote Georges Dandin, a farce in which husbands of low degree who marry into the county may find their woes embalmed for ever. Of the three master
pieces of 1668, L'Avare was the least successful. Avarice of the classic kind was not a vice of the period, and the subject was too sternly handled for the audiences who were still applauding Amphitryon.
Royal Festivals.—In the autumn of 1669 Moliere was on duty with the king at Chambord from Sept. 17 to Oct. 20, where. on Oct. 6, in collaboration with Lulli, who wrote the music, he produced Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. It was this play that gave rise to the observation of Voltaire that in all the farces of Moliere there were also scenes of high comedy. The high comedy is dis putable, but the high spirits are undoubted. The best of the scenes is one in which the doctors are again satirized. Moliere, on a milk diet, is clearly indisposed to be reconciled to the medical profession. Four months later Moliere was again called to St. Germain, where he remained at the king's disposal from Jan. 30 to Feb. 18. During this time he wrote and produced Les Amants Magnifiques, an allegorical ballet upon a theme suggested by the king. To cover the expenses of the festivals of Chambord and St. Germain the king granted the company an indemnity of 12,000 livres. In the autumn of 1670 Moliere is again at Chambord, where on Oct. 14 the most justly famous of all the comedy ballets, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme was produced. So greatly did it please the court that four performances were requested in eight days. The turqueries of the play, which a sensitive orientalist may deplore, were introduced at the special request of the king. The comedy itself was pure Moliere and subject to no inspiration but his own. Lulli contributed the music, and special attention was given to the costumes and staging. Moliere paid dearly for the royal favour. Since the production in i666 of Le Misanthrope most of his time and energy had been given to the royal festivals in which his genius was necessarily subordinated to the require ments of the court ; and in 1671 he was set a further task in the performance of which it was difficult for him to enrich his im mortality. The new spectacle, commanded for the Tuileries in January, was a tragedie-ballet on the theme of Psyche. Time was short and Moliere looking for a collaborator secured the great Corneille. The collaboration was surprisingly successful. Moliere sketched the plan of the ballet, but wrote only a small part of it. The spectacle itself was scenically so complicated that it was six months before it could be transferred from the Tuileries to the Palais Royal. In the meantime Moliere entertained the town with Les Fourberies de Scapin, the revised version of a play which seems to have been originally produced in 1661 under the title of Gorgibus dans le Sac. This was a return to his earliest manner of farce, probably based on one of his provincial sketches, and it drew from Boileau a vehement protest against such a wasting of the genius of his friend. Boileau was urging Moliere at this time to abandon the stage and devote himself to authorship, but Moliere made it a point of honour to remain faithful to his vocation. To the end he was resolved "a devouer son dos a toutes les bastonnades de la comedie." Boileau pleaded in vain.