MOLIIIRE MALGRE LIII. 40
Ma. BRANDER MATTnEws' Moliere is not, on the whole, a satisfactory book. The author is at his best in criticising
the purely technical side of the plays, in showing Moliere's relation to his predecessors, and his influence upon those who came after him. Mr. Matthews' criticism of the plays as literature or as life is not illuminating ; and upon the biographical side his work seems to us cold and lifeless. He is equally at fault in his presentation of the age, which he would seem to imagine had no other qualities than those of brilliance and corruption. His portrait of Louis XIV. shows a lamentable want of historical tact. After quoting Lord
Morley's saying that "the best title of Louis XIV. to the recollection of posterity is the protection he extended to Molibre," he devotes four pages to what is not merely abuse, but silly and conceited abuse. Louis XIV. was not only one of the greatest administrators of France, he bad an unlimited capacity for work and an unrivalled knowledge of men. It was with reference to these qualities that Napoleon spoke of him as his only rival in the history of France.
Mr. Matthews is equally unhappy in his treatment of Corneille. The malice of Montfleury has left us the following portrait of Molibre as an actor of tragedy :— " Da hems de romans ! . . .Il vient, le nez an vent, Les pieds en parenthese et l'paule en avant,
Sa perruque, qui suit le coste qu'il avance, Plus pleine de lauriers qu'un jambon de Mayence.
Lea mains sur sea costes, d'un air peu neglige La testa sur le dos comma un mule charge, Les jeux fort 6gares, puis debitant son role,
D'un hoquet eternel separe ses paroles."
When Mr. Matthews speaks of Moliere's acting he says : " For the tragic parts, which he continued to impersonate to the
end of his life, he lacked certain physical qualifications. He could not fairly be called good-looking; he was short and yet long-legged ; his eyes were wide apart, his mouth was large with full lips." A moment later he finds another reason why Moliere failed to win popular approval as an actor of tragedy : " The simple sincerity, which was appropriate in the perform- ance of Shakespeare's tragedies and of Moliere's comedies, was not really appropriate in the performance of Corneille's tragedies, which were the chief vehicle for serious acting in
France in Moliere's early manhood. These loftilypitehed pieces, lyric and fiery, did not lend themselves to his severely natural method." We have heard Corneille's style blamed for many reasona,but never before for Moliere's stammer. Of Corneille's share in Psyche he writes : " Fundamentally, the whole play is Molibre's, the conduct of the story is entirely his ; and Corneille's sole duty was to clothe with words the action of the later acts. Most of the actual writing must be credited to the elder poet, but he was only expressing in words the plot planned by the younger poet." This is not only unfair but impertinent ; of the whole, Molibre contributed six hundred and fifty verses to Corneille's two thousand two hundred and twenty-six. The licence of a comedian enables Moliere to refer to this as " un peu de secours," but Mr. Matthews degrades Corneille to the position of a mere amanuensis. Scarron is another of Moliere's contemporaries to whom Mr.
Matthews does scant justice. He mentions Moliere's debt to Searron with reference to L'Ecole des Femmes; he does not mention the Nouvelles Tragi-ccnniques, from one of which, Les Hypocrites, Moliere drew Tartufe, and from another, Les Chdtimenta de L'Avarice, L'Avare. This omission is the more extraordinary since Mr. Matthews writes: " When he [Moliere] began to write, the comio drama of the French was unreal; it was under the in- fluence of Spanish extravagance; Scarron's free adaptations were almost unrelated to real life ; and if there was more observation and reflection in Corneille's comedies, there was still not a little superficiality." The Nouvelles Tragi-comiqtu3s were an imitation of Spanish models which Moliere found sufficiently related to real life for him to use them.
• Iliihers: HisLifs and His Works. By Brander Matthews. Loudon: Dongmane and Co. 1128. Cd. net.]
We need not say more of Mr. Matthews' book, except that bis comparison of Moliere with Shakespeare is pressed too far. When be says that Shakespeare never wrote a "comedy of manners," we think of The Merry Wives of Windsor, which the Vice-Chancellor of Dublin University has used with so great tact and charm in The Diary of Master William Silence; and when he says that " Shakespeare put his supreme comic creation, Falstaff, into a loosely-knit chronicle play in two parts," and that consequently he is inferior to Moliere, or that " the real distinction between Moliere and Shakespeare merely as playwrights is that Moliere is an artist always, and that Shakespeare is an artist only intermittently and when the spirit moves him," we think of what we wrote at the beginning of this notice : that Mr. Matthews is at his best in the criticism of technique.
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