Robert Browning (1812–1889). A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Introductory Note
J
The first of the greater works of Molière was “Les Précieuses Ridicules,” produced in 1659. In this brilliant piece Molière lifted French comedy to a new level and gave it a new purpose—the satirizing of contemporary manners and affectations by frank portrayal and criticism. In the great plays that followed, “The School for Husbands” and “The School for Wives,” “The Misanthrope” and “The Hypocrite” (Tartuffe), “The Miser” and “The Hypochondriac,” “The Learned Ladies,” “The Doctor in Spite of Himself,” “The Citizen Turned Gentleman,” and many others, he exposed mercilessly one after another the vices and foibles of the day.
His characteristic qualities are nowhere better exhibited than in “Tartuffe.” Compared with such characterization as Shakespeare’s, Molière’s method of portraying life may seem to be lacking in complexity; but it is precisely the simplicity with which creations like Tartuffe embody the weakness or vice they represent that has given them their place as universally types of human nature.