Hankering for some good, old-fashioned baroque comédie-ballet circa 1670? Well, of course you are, and, fortunately for you, France Telecom has released on DVD an authentic recreation of the ninth and last collaboration between Molière and Jean-Baptiste, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, aka The Bourgeois Gentleman, or The Would-Be Gentleman, first performed back in the day for l’Homme himself, Louis XIV.
I’ll go out on a limb and say this package, which runs for over three hours, isn’t for everyone. This performance of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, created by Vincent Dumestre directing Le Poeme Harmonique and Musiciens de Musica Florea, (in French, with subtitles) is very probably as close as you will get to reliving an actual performance given at Versailles in its heyday, but I am, frankly, not really a Versailles guy. Lully is lauded and applauded as a “master” of the French Baroque, but he was early baroque—what I think of unkindly as the “lutes n’ flutes” baroque, music that, to my unwashed ears, floats aimlessly about, without energy, direction, or resolution. The “great” baroque composers, according to me, all flourished in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Lully’s contributions are not fitted into the plot in any manner, but function rather as musical interludes, with dancing. I’m guessing that the dances are as “original” as possible, which means that they are not at all demanding. At Versailles they were probably all performed by “young people” in the court—as a young man Louis XIV enjoyed dancing a great deal—rather than professionals, so that everyone in the audience knew the dancers. In such situations, half the pleasure comes from seeing your friends up there on stage. (Unless of course you feel that you should be the one up there. Life can be complicated.)
The play itself is rather unusual—rather as if Molière had fitted two plays together, although the standard Molière moral—don’t try to get above yourself—remains the same.1 The first half is a satire on pretension in the arts. M. Jourdain is a clumsy, earnest fellow who wishes to attain the graces of nobility, and enlists a variety of instructors, in fencing, dancing, music and philosophy, to polish his rough exterior. Each is an absurd poseur, of course, learned in no art but that of intimidation, and the poor monsieur, pathetically eager for class, proves the most pliant putty imaginable, achieving a certain dignity in his defeat and even humiliation—for example, when, upon learning that all speech is either poetry or prose, he exclaims, in one of Molière’s most famous tropes,
« Par ma foi ! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien, et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela. »
"My faith! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose while knowing nothing of it, and I am the most obliged person in the world to you for telling me so."
Teachers are all well and good, of course, but only a real gentleman can apply the final polish, and M. Jourdain has one on retainer, “Dorante”, who maintains the upper hand even though Jourdain pays his bills by claiming that he’s mentioned Jourdain at Court, even to the King himself, and also offers to introduce his new friend to the most aristocratic pursuit of all, adultery, with a titled lady, “Dorimène,”2 no less. Dorante has been plying Dorimène with gifts, to press his own suit for marriage, of course, since she is conveniently both wealthy and single, purchased with Jourdain’s money, telling Jourdain that Dorimène knows that Jourdain is the source of all the presents, which of course she doesn’t. He’s also promising a noble son in law for Jourdain’s daughter, rather than the “commoner” she fancies, and whom M. Jourdain has forbidden her to marry! Because what self-respecting Molière protagonist doesn’t compulsively try to control a young woman’s love life?
What follows strikes me as a bit thrown together. Dorante’s advice to Jourdain on the arts of high-born wooing ensures that Dorimène doesn’t even know she’s being wooed, and M. Jourdain doesn’t seem to very much care that he isn’t getting anywhere. Then Dorimène very gratuitously informs Dorante that she will be happy to marry him, though he certainly doesn’t deserve the favor. M. Jourdain is further deceived, this time by his daughter’s bourgeois boyfriend, who, with the assistance of his resourceful manservant, is presented as the son of the Great Turk, who of course is immediately accepted as son in law material. Hey, who wouldn’t want a Muslim in the family! The play then ends with a very extended musical finale, featuring “Spanish” dancers.3 French folk who can’t help wishing that they were living the high life in Versailles back in the day may find this entrancing, but I did not.
Afterwords
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme isn’t my favorite Molière.4 There is an irritating shortage of professional productions of his many plays on video, unless you speak French, but fortunately there are quite a few available on YouTube. Since these are all recorded versions of live productions, the sound quality is sometimes terrible, but there are quite a few good ones as well. Many feature Richard Wilbur’s verse translations, and it’s very nice to hear those heroic couplets clicking away with neo-Popeian if not quite Molièresque precision and wit. There is an excellent contemporary production and verse translation of Le Misanthrope, from the Borough of Manhattan Community College, “adapted” (I guess that means translated) by Liz Kash-Stoppel, in which Molière let slip his mask to reveal the bitterness beneath far more than usual, foregoing his standard happy ending, retaining and emphasizing his frequent moral that the “wise man” who sees through society’s hypocrisy and vanity has no reward other than isolation and despair. So don’t do it! As Melville’s laconic second mate “Stubb” explained it, “Never think” and “Sleep when you can.”
1. There are lots of “would bes” in Molière’s plays.
2. Wikipedia says the idea is that Jourdain will marry Dorimène, but since he’s already married, I’m not sure how that would work.
3. France enjoyed very good relations with the Ottoman Empire, though of course not to the extent of marrying each other’s offspring, as well as Spain, where there was a great deal of intermarriage, which probably “explains” the conclusion.
4. I'm far from an expert, but if I had to choose from the few I've seen it would be more or less a tie between Tartuffe and Le Misanthrope. Tartuffe doesn't seem to me to be as biting as its reputation would suggest. Tartuffe is a hypocrite. Yeah, so what? At one point, when Tartuffe is trying to seduce Orgon's wife, he does sound a bit Jesuitical in explaining away our little flaws, even though, as I understand it, it was the Jansenists who gave Molière the most trouble. But we're a long way from the sustained, high-end mockery of Pascal's Provincial Letters. Of course, theology was hardly what Molière was about in the first place. Anyway, his plays were being performed for the Court, so how biting could he be?
