Volume 24, Number 20 · December 8, 1977
Molière in New York
By Michael Wood
Tartuffe
by Molière, translated by Richard Wilbur, directed by Stephen Porter
Circle in the Square, New York City
The Misanthrope
by Molière, translated by Richard Wilbur, directed by Bill Gile
Public/Anspacher Theater, New York City
The Learned Ladies
by Molière, translated by Richard Wilbur
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 160 pp., $3.95 (to be published February 13, 1978) (paper)
A book called Molière notre contemporain was published in 1929, and of course in one sense Molière will always be everyone's contemporary. Not so much, I think, because he portrayed timeless types—because misers, misanthropes, hypocrites, hypochondriacs, and pretentious poets are always with us—as because he understood so well the intricate and multiple connections that link such types to their societies. Alceste, for example, Molière's misanthrope, rails against the insincerity of a world which he loves in the person of Célimène, a flirtatious widow. Tartuffe, a religious hypocrite, requires, and finds, a religious fool to exploit. Trissotin, in The Learned Ladies, is a trivial and flat-footed poet who is admired by a whole ecstatic, fawning salon.
Review, 3984 words
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