The Hypochondriac E-Book

Moliere

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Drama Classi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 122

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Molière's classic farce, Le Malade Imaginaire, in a fresh and performable translation. The 'imaginary invalid' Argan is so obsessed with his health that he fails to notice what is happening around him in his own family. His scheming wife and loving daughter are finally revealed to him in their true light by Argan's brother, who poses as a quack doctor and suggests he feigns death to test their loyalty. This English version of Molière's The Hypochondriac, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Martin Sorrell.

Leseprobe

DRAMA CLASSICS

THEHYPOCHONDRIAC

byMolière

translated and introduced byMartin Sorrell

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Molière: Key Dates

Characters

The Hypochondriac

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Molière (1622-1673)

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (later known as Molière) was baptised in the St-Eustache church, Paris, on the 15 January 1622, but the precise date of his birth is not known. Both his parents were in the upholstery business, enjoying considerable success and wealth. Between 1633-1639 Molière was educated at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont, now the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. In 1642, he was a law student at Orléans, and in the following year he renounced his succession to his father as tapissier du Roi (upholsterer-royal) , preferring instead to join the newly-formed Illustre Théâtre company in Paris. In 1644, he adopted the name Molière, and this marks the beginning of his illustrious career as actor-manager-playwright. His first full-length play, The Scatterbrain, was put on in 1655.

The company at first toured the provinces, then returned to Paris in 1658 and shared the Petit-Bourbon theatre with the Italian commedia dell’arte players. Molière also received the patronage of the King’s brother, Philippe d’Orléans. 1659 saw the great success of The Pretentious Ladies. In 1661, the company was forced to move to a different theatre, the Palais-Royal. In 1662, Molière married Armande Béjart, then aged around 20. She was either the daughter or the sister of Madeleine Béjart, with whom Molière had set up the Illustre Théâtre some twenty years before. Molière’s acutely pertinent and highly successful The School for Wives was given later in 1662. The next year, he was granted a royal pension of 1,000 livres, and in February 1664 the King himself acted as godfather to his first child, Louis.

In 1665, Molière’s company became the Troupe du Roi and the annual royal pension was raised to 6,000 livres. In the early part of 1666, Molière became seriously ill with pneumonia and had to give up acting for many months. The summer of that year saw The Misanthrope and Doctor in Spite of Himself. Then, in 1667, Le Tartuffe, renamed The Imposter, was given a public performance. 1668 saw first productions of Amphitryon, George Dandin, The Miser, 1669 Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 1670 The Would-be Gentleman, 1671 Scapin’s Tricks, 1672 The Bluestockings. The Hupochondriac opened on 10 February 1673, and was instantly a success. By its fourth performance, on 17th February, Molière’s illness, probably tuberculosis, had become critical. He was performing the title role of Argan, the hypochondriac, and by all accounts doing so with great energy and gusto. Then, near the end of that performance, in the third interlude, the ‘coronation’ scene, he was taken violently and suddenly ill but managed to struggle through to the end of the performance. He was rushed back to his house in the rue de Richelieu where he died shortly after. He was buried on the 21st, in the St-Joseph cemetery, during the night – the penalty for not having made a last-minute denunciation of his actor’s life in the presence of a priest.

The Hypochondriac:What Happens in the Play

The play’s three Acts are surrounded by a prologue, interludes and a finale in musical, balletic style. All but the finale are often omitted in performance, though the interludes between the acts (if not the prologue) are integrated with the action. Argan is a rich man obsessed with his own health. His obsession puts him in the power of quack doctors, and of his second wife Béline, who is scheming to separate him from his wealth. As the first Act opens, we see him totting up his medical bills, then arguing with his servant Toinette, who has time neither for his fantasies nor for the quacks Florid and Purgeon who sponge on him.

Argan plans to marry his daughter Angélique to a doctor, the newly qualified Thomas Lillicrap, so ensuring himself ‘family’ medical care for life. But she is in love with Cléante, and refuses the suggestion. Toinette supports her, but Argan sends her away and proposes to alter his will in Béline’s favour. Béline protests that she doesn’t want his money – and then brings in Mr Goodfellow, her lawyer, to arrange the documents.

In the second Act, Toinette introduces Cléante into the house as Angélique’s new music teacher, and Cléante and Angélique improvise a song of frustrated yearning, to Argan’s bafflement. Dr Lillicrap arrives with his doltish son Thomas, who makes absurdly flattering, flowery speeches to all concerned. Béline tells Argan that Angélique and Cléante are planning to elope, and Argan (after finding that this is true by questioning his younger daughter, the child Louison), falls into his chair, bewildered beyond endurance. His brother, the sensible Béralde, brings dancers to divert him, then sets about trying to make him see sense.

Act Three begins with a long scene between Argan and Béralde, discussing the merits of doctors. Apothecary Florid arrives to give Argan ‘something for his bowels’, and Béralde sends him packing, together with his employer Dr Purgeon. Béralde and Toinette now hatch a plan: Toinette appears, disguised as a 90-year-old doctor, and ridicules every cure Purgeon has previously prescribed. Béralde suggests that Argan test the affections of his wife and daughter by feigning death – and, predictably, Béline is revealed as heartless, Angélique as truly loving. Argan agrees to let Angélique marry Cléante, and Béralde solves the problem of his brother’s obsession with medicine by arranging for him to be made a doctor himself, in the burlesque musical finale which ends the play.

The Hypochondriac:Origins and First Production

Molière’s last play owes its particular form as well as its existence in good part to Louis XIV. A few months before it opened, the Sun King had returned to France from his Dutch campaign, and Molière’s idea was to write a comédie-ballet – a blend of comedy, song and dance, one of the King’s favourite kinds of entertainment – as part of the entertainments which would be put on to celebrate the King’s safe return from the war. The prologue makes this intention clear. And the form was a well-tried one, successful in the past. All Molière’s previous twelve comédies-ballets had received their first staging in front of a private audience of Louis XIV and his Court. What characterised this type of play, from the first one, The Bores of 1661, onwards, was its mix of comedy, song and dance. Molière’s skill was to integrate the seemingly disparate elements into a unified entertainment, all of whose parts reflected and commented upon the others.

The plan to stage The Hypochondriac before the Court at Versailles was not realised, however. Ironically, the comédie-ballet form was the focus of bitterness between Molière and the composer, Lully. Up to this point, Lully had written the music for those plays of Molière which required it. The collaboration had started in 1664, but in 1672 Lully obtained from the King the monopoly for most of the entertainments which involved singing. He secured significant publication rights as well. Relations between Molière and Lully inevitably soured, so that the playwright had to turn to another composer, Charpentier, for the music to The Hypochondriac. In effect, Molière suffered a ban from the Court, where Lully was in artistic command.

Thus it was that the play received its first performance at the Palais-Royal theatre in Paris, and not at Versailles. On top of that, the opening was delayed until February 1673 apparently because some news reached Paris at the last moment of reverses suffered by Louis’s army in Holland. The original prologue also was replaced by a shorter ‘alternative’ version, better suited to a production in the capital rather than at Court.

The Household of the Rich Bourgeois

Unlike Molière’s earlier plays about medicine (The Flying Doctor, Doctor Love, Doctor in Spite of Himself), the focus in The Hypochondriac is on the patient and not the doctor. Argan is so locked into his range of imagined illnesses that his role and duties as the head of a household are seriously relegated and distorted.

Argan belongs to the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie. Both Toinette and Béralde refer to his wealth – as indeed he does himself, when he plans his will. His medical bills paint the same picture. His monthly outlay on his medical requirements puts him way above the level of the ordinary middle class. Even apart from his wealth, Argan’s social status must be high. Certain details indicate this, such as the type of chair he sits in as opposed to the sort he offers people in the room, and the way he is addressed as seigneur (‘Your Excellence’) and monsieur (‘Sir’).

After the loss of his first wife, Argan has been left with two daughters to bring up, and he has to confront the attendant problem of their dowries. This problem, as far as Angélique is concerned, should have been easily resolved. She has met and fallen for a perfectly acceptable suitor, Cléante, who, it is revealed, is an homme d’épée, a man carrying a sword and therefore a good deal of social status. Yet, of course, Argan turns away from the obvious and the satisfactory in his self-regarding, obsessive pursuit of physical health.

As elsewhere in Molière’s work, the socially dominant figure is surrounded by spongers and parasites. Argan is preyed upon by his second wife Béline, and by assorted doctors and an apothecary. They are united in their approach to Argan, the need to reinforce his belief that he is ill. They all stand to profit from this – the doctors by obvious means, the wife by some skilful manipulation of inheritance laws. Her exposure at the end of the play means that she has to give up any rights to Argan’s wealth. Indeed, he ends up wishing to divorce her.

The Medical Profession in Molière’s Time

Medicine in 17th century France was controlled by the Faculty of Medicine, and was rigidly hierarchical. There were three divisions in the profession: médecin (doctor), apothicaire (apothecary) and chirurgien-barbier (surgeon-barber). The first two are well represented in The Hypochondriac, but the third, the lowest of the three, does not feature at all.

The Doctor

The education (training hardly seems the word) of the médecin lasted for years. As in all education, Latin was the language used. Emphasis was placed on theory, and the doctor had to learn how to argue and pronounce in fine language and high style. But none of this was underpinned by any practical knowledge, any first-hand observation. The ‘first grade’ would be attained when the student had reached the minimum age of twenty-five. Then, the candidate would become bachelier (Bachelor as in B.A.) and go on to prepare a thesis, a short Latin dissertation on a subject chosen by the candidate. Some titles, at random: ‘From which part of Christ’s body did water originate when, after His death, a spear was plunged into His side?’; ‘Should the moon’s phases be taken into account when cutting hair?’; ‘Is woman more lascivious than man?’; ‘Is it the pressure of blood which causes the heart to beat?’

The candidate had to undergo an oral exam of his thesis, which could last six or seven hours. If successful, he would proceed to the next phase of his studies, which in turn would be followed by more exams. On condition that he passed, the candidate would obtain his licence to practise medicine. He would now be a doctor, and his success would be crowned with elaborate ceremonial. In the 1670s, the English philosopher John Locke witnessed one such occasion in Montpellier. In his Journal for 18 March 1676, Locke writes about the recipe for making a doctor: the grand procession of doctors dressed in red, with black bonnets on their heads, the orchestra playing Lully, the President who takes his seat and indicates that the music should stop so that he may speak, his eulogy of his colleagues and diatribe against new-fangled ideas and theories such as the circulation of the blood, the speech the doctor-elect makes in reply, complimenting those at the top of the medical Establishment, the professors, the academy, then more music, and the crowning moment when the President puts the bonnet on the new doctor’s head.

Molière copies these details faithfully in the closing interlude. Argan becomes both bachelier and licencié, that is, he becomes a fully-fledged doctor in a single operation. Dr Lillicrap (Diafoirus) is clearly a doctor of long standing. His son Thomas is a new bachelier. This is indicated by the fact that he has brought his thesis, the object of Toinette’s derision. Incidentally, she suggests papering the walls with it probably because it would have had an allegorical picture or engraving on its front cover. Thomas also wants Angélique to witness the dissection of a woman, as a special treat. In 1667, just such a dissection had caused a widespread scandal – and Molière would have known of this event when he came to write The Hypochondriac.

The Apothecary

The apothicaire was equal to the médecin neither professionally, intellectually nor socially. He was considered to belong to the artisan class, related to the grocer or the salesman. To become an apothecary, it was necessary to proceed via the stages of apprentice, then compagnon (companion), and finally, at the age of twenty-five, after an exam taken in the Faculty of Medicine, to maître (master). This exam was mainly on matters of chemistry and botany, the latter, at least, studied in a practical way in the Jardin des Plantes (Botanical Gardens) which all universities possessed.

The apothecary’s job was to prepare and administer medicines according to the doctor’s prescription. He gave the famous clystère (an early form of enema-syringe) and sent out patients’ bills, as in the play’s opening scene. As these bills tended to be high, the apothecary would couch and disguise them in fine, convoluted language. Bargaining often occurred, with the patient trying to get the prices down.

The Surgeon-barber

The rank of chirurgien-barbier was the lowest in the medical hierarchy. He was the doctor’s valet, who did only the tasks considered menial. So, he would bleed a patient, set fractured bones, perform dissections, etc. No surgeon-barber appears in The Hypochondriac, perhaps because his precise and limited work would have had no dramatic function. When Thomas says that he must be present at a dissection, it is to discuss and explain the phenomena revealed by the dissection – but as a doctor, he would not have touched the corpse, not even with a scalpel. The ‘surgeon’ dissects in silence, the doctor watches and pontificates in Latin.

The State of Medical Knowledge in Molière’s Time

It is a truism to say that medical knowledge and beliefs in Molière’s France were light years away from their present state. But the thermometer, for example, had not been invented at the time of