The Cambridge Companion to Molière (review)

This rich collection is aimed at that expiring species, the general literate reader — all quotations in French are translated into English — but with an eye for the specialist too. The first three articles concern Molière's life (creditably resumed by Marie-Claude Canova), the material conditions with which he worked (Jan Clarke, drawing on much of her own research), and the undeniable influence of Scaramouche on his acting and on the fate of his plays in France and Italy at the end of the twentieth century (Stephen Knapper).

Textual analysis characterizes the next set of contributions. Larry Norman gives a sophisticated demonstration of how Molière's stagecraft metamorphoses a static genre such as satire into the dynamic sweep of L'Ecole des femmes, Tartuffe, and Le Misanthrope, "a satire about satire" (67). Richard Parish in "How (and Why) Not to Take Molière Too Seriously" stimulates us to think about the nature of comedy and the (unexpectedly) complicated reactions it solicits. It is in Robert McBride's perceptive and detailed analysis of L'Avare that we reach the point in this companion (cum pane, copain), where an examination of the role of the bodily functions in Molière, such as eating, would have been most appropriate. Andrew Calder follows by bringing his deep knowledge of Greek and Roman classics and the Bible to bear on his study of Le Misanthrope.

In "Comédies-ballets," Charles Mazouer leads the incursion into the genre that constitutes forty percent of Molière's theatrical output, offering a lucid synthesis of his masterful work on the genre. This is followed by John S. Powell's insightful analysis of how the various elements join to support the theme of the fantasy of social climbing in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Julia Prest deftly demonstrates that Le Malade imaginaire breaks new ground by blending monomaniac and medicine in a joyful, healthy context. In a well-researched piece of sociocriticism, Ralph Albanese points out that the Republican regime of 1870 perceived Les Femmes savantes as a lesson in the dangers of specialization: that is, pedantry. Roxanne Lalande's revealing feminist study of the laws of chance in L'Ecole des femmes recalls ideas found in Albanese and Powell in this collection, and in Michael Koppisch's 2004 book, Rivalry and the Disruption of Order in Molière's Theater, on the role of the destabilizing of the social order in Molière.

Noel Peacock introduces us to the Companion's section on performance by invoking the penchant of post-World-War-II directors for exploring the function of illusion and mimesis in the plays, and for presenting the kind of intercultural experiments that Peacock had previously brought to light. Jim Carmody addresses the cultural and generational-specific nature of directing and acting, and stresses the growing importance of companies and festivals in the exchange of ideas about performing Molière, while David Whitton hails Dom Juan's widespread transnational success in modern times as a reflection of the ascendancy of the director as the major creative force. Finally, with a complicit wink at the other authors in this collection, David Bradby attributes the revival of classical comedy in our time principally to the influence of innovative directors seeking to ferret out the principles that underlie Molière's staging and performance. Irrespective of the new paths directors may have taken, a scrupulous respect for Molière's text is visible in all their approaches. Directors have much interpretational leeway because Molière's creations, and not only the late ones, are "textes ouverts," as Robert Garapon put it, which lend themselves particularly well to reinvention.

The highest compliment that one can pay this well-written, appropriately illustrated book is that it spurs us on to revisit Molière. These essays demonstrate the appropriateness of the focus on Molière in the past decade, first...