The Theatres of Moliere (review)

Some time in the middle of the twentieth century, a sea change occurred in Molière studies. Scholars woke up to the fact that Molière was an actor. Decades of literary criticism that had ignored the implications of his profession or, worse, had negated it by depicting him as a kind of actor in spite of himself, were challenged by a new appreciation of Molière as a consummate homme de théâtre. Gerry McCarthy's The Theatres of Molière is a notable contribution to this important trend in Molière scholarship. In a study that is part biography, part script analysis, and part acting theory, McCarthy examines Molière's plays and the different theatrical contexts in which they were created with the aim of revealing performance as it was learned and practiced by Molière. McCarthy seeks to uncover the "opportunities for playing that the surviving texts reveal" and proposes that the comedies, "carefully studied, may afford us insights into the nature of acting itself" (xv). The plural "theatres" of the title refers to the different performance occasions, spaces, and spectators of Molière's career. Accordingly, the study is organized into three parts corresponding to three theatrical environments that shaped Molière as an actor and dramatist: street performance, court festival, and city playhouse.

In part 1, "Le premier farceur de France," McCarthy discusses the street entertainers ubiquitous in the Paris into which Molière was born, the comic actors popular in the theatres he likely frequented as a child, and the Italian commedia players dominating the theatre scene by the time he returned to the capital to produce his first plays. McCarthy illustrates the influence of popular performance on three of Molière's early comedies: La Jalousie du Barbouillé (The Jealous Husband), Le Médecin volant (The Flying Doctor), and Les Précieuses ridicules (Two Precious Maidens Ridiculed). He brings a fresh perspective to the history of Molière's Jesuit education at the Collège de Clermont by focusing on its teaching of rhetoric, vocal skill, and physical comportment. Through this education, he posits, Molière learned that "meanings are embodied in physical performances" (20). McCarthy argues that Molière's deep knowledge of physical expression and his awareness of its disruptive potential vis-à-vis verbal expression became the foundation of his innovative approach to comedy—something we can see most clearly in his creation of Arnolphe in L'Ecole des femmes (The School for Wives).

Part 2, "A celebratory theatre," examines Molière's involvement in the theatrical culture of the court of Louis XIV and the elaborate entertainments that served as the symbolic face of absolutism. McCarthy's performance-focused contribution to this vast subject is to consider pragmatic questions of staging, scenic design, costume, and acting. He is careful to emphasize that court performances took place on different stages, ranging from modest scaffolds in a palace antechamberto magnificent open-air spectacle environments. In intimate spaces, Molière exploited the proximity between performer and spectator; outdoor locations offered him an arena in which "the participants beheld each other as if on a stage, caught up in the singular theatricality of the occasion" (107). The author's reading of L'Impromptu de Versailles (The Rehearsal at Versailles), Les Fâcheux (The Nuisances),and Le Tartuffe are especially attentive to the spatial relationships between characters and between actors and audiences indicated by the texts. A chapter on acting historicizes Molière's performance style as one acutely aware that "knowledge lies in bodily forms, and that the moral world can be apprehended through the physical forms of action" (142).

McCarthy's final section considers Molière's town playhouse, the Palais-Royal. Following a detailed discussion of the interior arrangement of this theatre, McCarthy concludes that this space united actor and spectator in a shared illusion. Molière's audience—urbane, of financial means, and deeply...