'Ne puis-je pas en rire?': Onstage Laughter in L'École des femmes

Abstract

L'École des femmes offers one of Molière's most sustained and yet most ambiguous explorations of laughter. Problematically, the play constructs its protagonist Arnolphe's principal comic flaw as his unsympathetic laughter at others' marital misfortunes, at least as much as his cruel treatment of his intended bride. Arnolphe explicitly sets himself up as a spectator of others; this implicitly metatheatrical reworking of a traditional plot can, as this article demonstrates, pose complex questions of response for the actual spectators. After all, the audience is encouraged to laugh at a play which explicitly presents laughter as something essentially negative and (according to Arnolphe's friend Chrysalde in the first scene) which invariably invites punishment in the form of further laughter. As the play progresses, Arnolphe moves from laughing spectator to failed actor on the social stage — two roles starkly and comically juxtaposed when he is confronted by his unwitting rival with the collapse of his own marriage plans. This article traces the development of the theme of laughter through the play, reading specific textual examples of laughter and mockery in the light of both the play's crucial opening scene and more general currents of seventeenth-century thought.