The Misanthrope/ Tartuffe

Name: The Misanthrope/ Tartuffe
Rating: 1.5 (2 reviews)
Author: Molière
ISBN: 9780156605175

by Molière, Richard Wilbur

1.5

(2 ratings)

336 pages1666Harcourt, Brace & WorldISBN 9780156605175

Continental european drama (dramatic works by one author)French literature French drama French drama (Comedy)

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About this book

In brilliant rhymed couplets, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Wilbur renders two of seventeenth-century French playwright Moliere's comic masterpieces into English, capturing not only the form and spirit of the language but also its substance. The Misanthrope is a searching comic study of falsity, shallowness, and self-righteousness through the character of Alceste, a man whose conscience and sincerity are too rigorous for his time. In Tartuffe, a wily, opportunistic swindler manipulates a wealthy prude and bigot through his claims of piety. This latter translation earned Wilbur a share of the Bollingen Translation Prize for his critically-acclaimed work of this satiric take on religious hypocrisy. "Mr. Wilbur has given us a sound, modern, conversational poetry and has made Moliere's The Misanthrope brilliantly our own."--The New York Times Book Review

Publication Details

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World
Published: 1666
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780156605175
Language: en

About Molière

Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) was born in Paris on January 15, 1622. His father was one of eight valets de chambre tapissiers who tended the king's furniture and upholstery, so the young Poquelin received every advantage a boy could wish for. He was educated at the finest schools (the College de Clermont in Paris.) He had access to the king's court. But even as a child, Molière found it infinitely more pleasant to poke fun at the aristocracy than to associate with them. As a young boy, he learned that he could cause quite a stir by mimicking his mother's priest. His mother, a deeply religious woman, might have broken the young satirist of this habit had she not died before he was yet twelve-years-old. His father soon remarried, but in less than three years, this wife also passed away. At the age of fifteen, Jean-Baptiste was left alone with his father and was most likely apprenticed to his trade. The boy never showed much of an interest for the business of upholstering. Fortunately, his father's shop was located near two important theatrical sites: the Pont-Neuf and the Hôtel de Bourgogne. At the Pont-Neuf, comedians performed plays and farces in the street in order to sell patent medicines to the crowds. Although not traditional theatre in the strictest sense, the antics of these comic medicine-men brought a smile to Jean-Baptiste's face on many an afternoon. At the Hôtel de Bourgogne--which the boy attended with his grandfather--the King's Players performed more traditional romantic tragedies and broad farces. Apparently, these two theatrical venues had quite an impact on the young Poquelin, for in 1643, at the age of twenty-one, he decided to dedicate his life to the theatre. Jean-Baptiste had fallen in love with a beautiful red-headed actress named Madeleine Béjart. Along with Madeleine, her brother Joseph and sister Genevieve, and about a dozen other young well-to-do hopefuls, Jean-Baptiste founded a dramatic troupe called The Illustrious Theater. It w