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They lean too much to the side of farce; they have none of the tragic salt which gives a dignity to Tartuffe. They are, in a word, almost too enethistically comic. The contrast between these authors might lead us to raise the question long ago discussed by Socrates at Agathon's banquet Can the same man write both comedies and tragedies?
Louis did not resent this interference, and two compositions of Molière were interposed betwixt the date of the suspension which we have noticed, and the final permission to bring "Tartuffe" on the stage.
Several of his pieces had recently met with great success: Zopf und Schwert, Das Urbild des Tartuffe, and Uriel Acosta, shed an unexpected lustre on the latest dramatic repertoire, and it seemed as though the advent of Gutzkow would inaugurate a new era of glory for the Dresden theatre, where my operas had also been first produced. The good intentions of the management were certainly undeniable.
Ninon de Lenclos was a woman of the most brilliant mind and exquisite taste, and it was at her hôtel that Molière first read his Tartuffe before Condé, La Fontaine, Boileau, Lulli, Racine, and Chapelle, and it was there that he received the principal ideas for his drama. Ninon became famous for making staunch friends of her former lovers, in which connection some interesting tales are told.
Never did man wield so shrieking a scourge upon vice, but his consummate self-mastery is not shaken while administering it. Tartuffe and Harpagon, in fact, are made each to whip himself and his class, the false pietists, and the insanely covetous. Moliere has only set them in motion.
The French bourgeoisie of Paris were sufficiently quick-witted and enlightened by education to welcome great works like Le Tartuffe, Les Femmes Savantes, and Le Misanthrope, works that were perilous ventures on the popular intelligence, big vessels to launch on streams running to shallows.
In the evening of the same day which saw his next comedy, "Le Mariage Forcé," there came out as a part of the royal fête, the three first acts, or rough sketch, of the celebrated satire, entitled "Tartuffe," one of the most powerful of Molière's compositions.
The Idealist is to them, if not a hypocrite, at least a visionary, if not a Tartuffe, at least a Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Yet even for poor Don Quixote, with all his blindness and his follies, the world retains a sneaking admiration. It can spare a few or a good many of its worldly-wisdoms, rather than lose altogether its enthusiasms and its dreams.
After this masterstroke of the Comic, you not only put faith in Orgon's roseate prepossession, you share it with him by comic sympathy, and can listen with no more than a tremble of the laughing muscles to the instance he gives of the sublime humanity of Tartuffe: 'Un rien presque suffit pour le scandaliser, Jusque-la, qu'il se vint l'autre jour accuser D'avoir pris une puce en faisant sa priere, Et de l'avoir tuee avec trop de colere.
The Misanthrope and the Tartuffe have no audible laughter; but the characters are steeped in the comic spirit. Between these two stand Shakespeare and Cervantes, with the richer laugh of heart and mind in one; with much of the Aristophanic robustness, something of Moliere's delicacy.
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