Volume 1, Number 3 · September 26, 1963
A New Tartuffe
By Jackson Mathews
Moliere's Tartuffe
translated by Richard Wilbur
Harcourt, Brace, 106 pp., $3.95
When Richard Wilbur's translation of The Misanthrope appeared in 1955, a reviewer wrote: 'For the first time in 300 years, a play by Moliere has the English translation it deserves.' The odd thing is that this was not only praise but plain fact. Though Moliere's plays have been, from the time he wrote them, repeatedly 'adapted' or turned more or less literally into English prose or blank verse, they have never before been faithfully translated into rhymed English verse by a poet who knew how to write for the theater.
Review, 1653 words
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