The Theatres of Molière. By Gerry McCarthy. London and New York: Routledge, 2002; pp. 238. $30.95 paper.

Abstract

Gerry McCarthy’s intention in this book is to “re-examine Molière, the man of the theatre, in the context of his profession, his education and the views of behavior he might have held in common with his contemporaries” (xiv). At the center of this re-examination, McCarthy places Molière the actor, asserting that it was because he was an actor that he was able to “annex Corneille’s tragic scene to the popular stage of Sganarelle or Le Médecin volant” (61), that is, to develop a form of serious comedy that relied on the power of the actor to engage the audience. It was in the age of Molière that the French theatre began to turn toward the illusionistic stage, “asserting its potential to overwhelm the performer,” but Molière—though often involved in enormously spectacular court productions—remained faithful to the “experience of the actor, conceiving the means of imaginative life out of the bare skeleton of words and action which is the play” (4). In McCarthy’s view, Molière’s fidelity to actor and text must have arisen from his early experiences with popular theatre in Paris and his apprenticeship as a nomadic actor playing in assorted spaces before 1655.