The Complex Alceste of Molieres Misanthrope Essay -- Moliere Misanthr

The Complex Alceste of The misanthropeI cannot improve on it, and assuredly never shall, said Molire of his satire The misanthropist, 1 and the critic Nicholas Boileau-Despraux concurred by accounting it one of Molires outstrip plays.2 But the French public did not like it much, preferring the dramatists more farcical The Doctor in Spite of Himself--a play that, according to tradition, was indite two months after The Misanthropes premiere to acquit up for the latters lack of success.3 In fact, The Misanthrope horrified Rousseau, who thought that its aim was, in Donald Frames words, to make virtue ridiculous by pandering to the shallow and vicious tastes of the man of the world.4 Both he and Goethe after him regarded Alceste, the protagonist, as a tragic puzzle out rather than a comic one.5 It is evident from such a diversity of sentiments that the work before us is complex enough to harry a variety of reactions. On the one hand, Molire made The Misanthrope a comedy, not a trag edy. Alceste, despite his bold railings against the hypocrisy of society, very much finds it impossible to set a heroic example in await of his all-too-civilized circle. He is no lone upholder of a impressive creed forced to calvary for his beliefs in fact, his announcement, at the end of the play, of the martyrdom he is imposing upon himself--exile to some solitary place on world/Where one is free to be a man of worth6--makes him look less heroic than ridiculous. And yet, if we do not place our sympathies with Alceste, we assay this play in vain for another character worthy of them. The batty marquises do not command much respect. Arsino is conniving, spiteful, and a critic of everyone elses morals. Oronte is not only as vain a... ...f which is given in Brown and Kimmey, pp. 121-72), this is tag as V.viii, ll. 21-2. 7 Cf. John Dover Wilson, Introduction, in William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Wilson (Cambridge Cambridge UP, 1936), p. xlviii. 8 II.v, ll. 711-30 (ll. 153-72 in W ilbur). 9 I.i, contrast 118 (so also Wilbur). 10 Frame, Introduction to The Misanthrope, op. cit., p. 21. 11 Richard Wilbur, Introduction to The Misanthrope, in Brown & Kimmey, p. 360. 12 Ibid., p. 361. 13 V.iv, line 1782 (V.viii, line 50 in Wilbur). 14 I do not include Arsino in this, since in a sense she receives some sort of penalisation when in the last scene (V.iv V.vi in Wilbur) she is put to shame by Alcestes implication that he is fully aware of her true motives. Her discomfiture should be enough to satisfy a sense that poetic justice has been served in her case.