Moliere Compared To Shakespeare
~ Moliére Compared to ~
~ Shakespeare ~
Moliére has been hailed as France's answer to Shakespeare. By comparing and contrasting their works and the influence that these playwrights had, it is possible to demonstrate how similar and different these two marvellous playwrights really are.
Moliére was the stage name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin. He was greatly influenced by French farces and the popular form of Italian theatre known as commedia dell' arte. He composed twelve of the most durable and penetratingly satirical full-length comedies of all time, some in rhyming verse, some in prose, as well as six shorter farces and comedies. His rhyming verse includes such lines as:
"The more one love, the more one should object
To every blemish, every least defect
Were I this lady, I would soon get rid
Of lovers who approved of all I did,
And by their slack indulgence and applause
Endorsed my follies and excused my flaws." #
Moliére affirmed the potency of comedy as a serious, flexible art form. He also wrote a number of pastorals and other indoor and outdoor divertissements( a brief entertainment between the acts of a play), such as his popular comedy ballets, which depended on the formidable array of stage machinery capable of swift and startling changes of scenic effects. Moliére was also the leading French comic actor, stage director, and dramatic theoretician of the 17 century. In 1643 Moliére and a group of friends founded the Illustre-Theatre.
Moliére had no real philosophy, and his plays contain relatively few ideas. But he had the knack of choosing controversial subjects that would attract public interest. His first masterpiece, The School for Wives (1662) was in verse and satirised the narrow education given to girls of the middle class. As a result he was attacked by extremist religious groups. Tartuffe or The Impostor (1664) was a...
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