Moliere's high comedy theme and problem. The importance of Moliere in the development of French drama, the formation of the genre of “high comedy” in his work. Misanthrope" by Moliere as an example of "high comedy" of classicism

Despite the success of "Funny Primroses", Molière's troupe still often plays tragedies, although still without much success. After a series of failures, Moliere comes to a remarkably bold idea. Tragedy attracts with the opportunity to raise large social and moral problems, but it does not bring success and is not close to the audience of the Palais Royal. The comedy attracts the widest audience, but it does not have much content. This means that it is necessary to transfer moral issues from tragedy with its conventional ancient characters to a comedy depicting the modern life of ordinary people. This idea was first implemented in the comedy “The School for Husbands” (1661), which was followed by the even brighter comedy “The School for Wives” (1662). They pose the problem of education. To reveal it, Moliere combines the plots of French farce and Italian comedy of masks: he portrays guardians who raise girls left without parents in order to subsequently marry them.

Moliere's mature work. For 1664-1670 marks the peak of the great playwright's creativity. It was during these years that he created his best comedies: “Tartuffe”, “Don Juan”, “The Misanthrope”, “The Miser”, “The Bourgeois in the Nobility”.

The greatest comedy of Moliere "Tartuffe, or the Deceiver""(1664-1669) had the most difficult fate. It was first staged in 1664 during a grand celebration organized by the king in honor of his wife and his mother. Moliere wrote a satirical play in which he exposed the “Society of the Holy Sacrament” - a secret religious institution that sought to subordinate all spheres of life in the country to its power. The king liked the comedy, as he feared the strengthening of the power of the clergy. But Queen Mother Anne of Austria was deeply outraged by the satire: after all, she was the unofficial patron of the “Society of the Holy Sacrament.” The clergy demanded that Moliere be severely tortured and burned at the stake for insulting the church. Comedy was banned. But Moliere continued to work on it, he adds two new actions to the original version, improves the characterization of the characters, and moves from criticism of fairly specific phenomena to more generalized issues. "Tartuffe" takes on the features of "high comedy".

In 1666, Anna of Austria died. Moliere took advantage of this and in 1667 presented the second version of Tartuffe on the stage of the Palais Royal. He renamed the hero Panyulf, called the comedy “The Deceiver,” and threw out especially harsh satirical passages or softened them. The comedy was a great success, but was again banned after the first performance. The playwright did not give up. Finally, in 1669, he staged the third version of Tartuffe. This time Moliere strengthened the satirical sound of the play and brought its artistic form to perfection. It was this third version of Tartuffe that was published and has been read and performed on stage for more than three hundred years.

Moliere focused his main attention on creating the character of Tartuffe and exposing his vile activities. Tartuffe (his name, coined by Molière, comes from the word “deception”) is a terrible hypocrite. He hides behind religion, pretends to be a saint, but he himself does not believe in anything, and secretly carries out his affairs. A. S. Pushkin wrote about Tartuffe: “In Moliere, the hypocrite drags after the wife of his benefactor, the hypocrite; asks for a glass of water, a hypocrite.” For Tartuffe, hypocrisy is not at all a dominant character trait, it is character itself. This character of Tartuffe does not change during the course of the play. But it is revealed gradually. When creating the role of Tartuffe, Moliere was unusually laconic. Of the 1962 lines of the comedy, Tartuffe owns 272 complete and 19 incomplete lines (less than 15% of the text). For comparison, Hamlet's role is five times larger. And in Moliere’s comedy itself, the role of Tartuffe is almost 100 lines less than the role of Orgon. The distribution of the text by act is unexpected: completely absent from the stage in acts I and II, Tartuffe dominates only in act III (166 complete and 13 incomplete lines), his role is noticeably reduced in act IV

(89 complete and 5 incomplete lines) and almost disappears in Act V (17 complete and one incomplete line). However, the image of Tartuffe does not lose its power. It is revealed through the character's ideas, his actions, the perception of other characters, and the depiction of the catastrophic consequences of hypocrisy.

The composition of the comedy is very original and unexpected: the main character Tartuffe appears only in the third act. The first two acts are a dispute about Tartuffe. The head of the family into which Tartuffe has infiltrated, Orgon and his mother Madame Pernelle consider Tartuffe a holy man, their trust in the hypocrite is limitless. The religious enthusiasm that Tartuffe aroused in them makes them blind and ridiculous. At the other pole are Orgon’s son Damis, daughter Mariana with her lover Valera, wife Elmira, and other heroes. Among all these characters who hate Tartuffe, the maid Dorina especially stands out. In many of Moliere's comedies, people from the people are smarter, more resourceful, more energetic, and more talented than their masters. For Orgon, Tartuffe is the height of all perfection, for Dorina it is “a beggar who came here thin and barefoot,” and now “fancies himself a ruler.”

The third and fourth acts are structured very similarly: Tartuffe, who finally appears, falls into the “mousetrap” twice, his essence becomes obvious. This saint has decided to seduce Orgon’s wife Elmira and acts completely shamelessly. For the first time, Orgon's son Damis hears his frank confessions to Elmira. But Orgon does not believe his revelations; he not only does not kick Tartuffe out, but, on the contrary, gives him his home. It was necessary to repeat this entire scene especially for Orgon so that he could see the light. This scene of the fourth act, in which Tartuffe again demands love from Elmira, and Orgon sits at the table and hears everything, is one of the most famous scenes in all of Moliere’s works.

Now Orgon understood the truth. But unexpectedly Madame Pernelle objects to him, who cannot believe in Tartuffe’s crime. No matter how angry Orgon is with her, nothing can convince her until Tartuffe expels the entire family from the house that now belongs to him and brings an officer to arrest Orgon as a traitor to the king (Orgon entrusted Tartuffe with the secret documents of the Fronde participants). Thus, Moliere emphasizes the special danger of hypocrisy: it is difficult to believe in the baseness and immorality of a hypocrite until you are directly confronted with his criminal activities and see his face without a pious mask.

The fifth act, in which Tartuffe, having thrown off his mask, threatens Orgon and his family with the greatest troubles, takes on tragic features, Comedy develops into tragicomedy. The basis of the tragicomic in Tartuffe is Orgon’s insight. As long as he blindly believed Tartuffe, he only caused laughter and condemnation. Could a man who decided to give his daughter in marriage to Tartuffe, although he knew that she loved Valera, evoke different feelings? But finally Orgon realized his mistake and repented of it. And now he begins to evoke pity and compassion as a person who has become the victim of a scoundrel. The drama of the situation is enhanced by the fact that the whole family is on the street with Orgon. And what is especially dramatic is that there is nowhere to expect salvation: none of the heroes of the work can overcome Tartuffe.

But Moliere, obeying the laws of the genre, ends the comedy with a happy denouement: it turns out that the officer whom Tartuffe brought to arrest Orgon has a royal order to arrest Tartuffe himself. The king had been keeping an eye on this swindler for a long time, and as soon as Tartuffe’s activities became dangerous, a decree was immediately sent for his arrest. However, the completion of Tartuffe represents an ostensibly happy ending. Tartuffe is not a specific person, but a generalized image, a literary type, behind him are thousands of hypocrites. The king, on the contrary, is not a type, but the only person in the state. It is impossible to imagine that he could know about all the Tartuffes. Thus, the tragicomic connotation of the work is not removed by its happy ending.

For centuries, Tartuffe remained Moliere's most popular comedy. This work was highly appreciated by Hugo and Balzac, Pushkin and Belinsky. The name Tartuffe became a common noun for a hypocrite.

The banning of Tartuffe in 1664 brought significant damage to Molière's troupe: the performance was supposed to be the main premiere of the year. The playwright is urgently writing a new comedy - “Don Juan”. Completed in 1664, it was delivered early the next year. If we remember that “Tartuffe” of 1664 was not yet that great “Tartuffe”, but a three-act play that had to be improved and polished, then it will become clear why “Don Juan”, which appeared later than the initial version of “Tartuffe”, is considered the first great comedy by Moliere.

The plot is taken from a play by a 17th century Spanish writer. Tirso de Molina's "The Mischief of Seville, or the Stone Guest" (1630), where Don Juan (in French - Don Juan) first appeared. So we know this world literary type by the name given to the hero by Moliere. The French playwright greatly simplifies the plot of Tirso de Molina's play. He focuses on the confrontation between Don Juan and his servant Sganarelle.

The name Don Juan has become a household name to denote a libertine who seduces many women and then abandons them. This property of Don Juan in Moliere’s comedy stems from his belonging to the aristocracy, to which everything is allowed and which does not want to feel responsible for anything.

Don Juan is an egoist, but he does not consider this bad, because egoism is completely consistent with the privileged position of an aristocrat in society. The portrait of an aristocrat is complemented by atheism and complete contempt for religion.

The aristocratic freethinking of Doi Juan is contrasted with the bourgeois freethinking of Sganarelle. Whose side is Moliere on? No one's. If Don Juan's free-thinking causes sympathy, then this feeling disappears when Doi Juan resorts to hypocrisy like Tartuffe. His opponent Sganarelle, who defends morality and religion, is cowardly, hypocritical, and loves money more than anything else.

Therefore, in the finale of the play, which also develops from a comedy into a tragicomedy, both heroes face a punishment commensurate with their characters: Don

Juan falls into hell, dragged there by the statue of the Commander he killed, and Sganarelle thinks that the owner, falling into hell, did not pay him. “My salary, my salary, my salary!” - the comedy ends with these sorrowful cries of Sganarelle.

The clergy immediately realized that it was no coincidence that Moliere had assigned such a nonentity as Sganarelle to defend religion in the play. The comedy was performed 15 times and was banned. It was published after the death of the playwright, and staged again in France only in 1841.

In comedy "Misanthrope"(1666) Moliere decided to explore another vice - misanthropy. However, he does not make the comedy hero, misanthropic Alceste, a negative character. On the contrary, he draws an honest, straightforward hero who wants to preserve his humanity. But the society in which he lives makes a terrible impression, “heinous injustice reigns everywhere.”

Moliere brings the main character of the comedy Alceste onto the stage immediately after the curtain rises, without any preparation. He is already nervous: “Please leave me alone!” (translated by T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik), he says to the reasonable Filint and adds: “I was really friendly with you until now, / But, know, I don’t need such a friend anymore.” The reason for the breakup is that Alceste witnessed Philinte’s too warm reception of a man whom he barely knew, as he later admitted. Philint tries to laugh it off (“...Although the guilt is heavy, / Let me not hang myself for now”), which provokes a rebuke from Alceste, who does not accept or understand humor at all: “How you become humorous at the wrong time!” Philint’s position: “Rotating in society, we are tributaries of decency, / Which are required by both morals and custom.” Alceste’s answer: “No! We must punish with a merciless hand / All the vileness of secular lies and such emptiness. / We must be people...” Philint’s position: “But there are cases when this truthfulness / Would appear funny or harmful to the world. / Sometimes - may your severity forgive me! - / We must hide what is deep in our hearts.” Alceste’s opinion: “Betrayal, betrayal, deceit, flattery are everywhere, / Vile injustice reigns everywhere; / I’m furious, I don’t have the strength to control myself, / And I’d like to challenge the entire human race to battle!” As an example, Alceste cites a certain hypocrite with whom he has a lawsuit. Philint agrees with the destructive characterization of this man and that is why he invites Alceste to deal not with his criticism, but with the essence of the matter. But Alcest, while waiting for the court’s decision, does not want to do anything; he would gladly lose the case, if only to find confirmation of “the baseness and malice of people.” But why, valuing the human race so low, does he tolerate the shortcomings of the frivolous Selimena, does he really not notice them, Philint asks his friend. Alceste replies: “Oh no! My love knows no blindness. / All the shortcomings in her are clear to me without a doubt.<...>The fire of my love - I deeply believe in this - / Will cleanse her soul from the scum of vice.” Alceste came here to Celimene’s house to talk to her. Orontes, a admirer of Celimene, appears. He asks Alceste to become a friend, immoderately extolling his virtues. To this Alceste utters wonderful words about friendship:

“After all, friendship is a sacrament, and mystery is dearer to it; / She shouldn’t play so frivolously. / Union by choice - this is the expression of friendship; First - knowledge, then - rapprochement.” Orontes agrees to wait in friendship and asks Alceste for advice on whether he can present his last sonnet to the public. Alceste warns that he is too sincere as a critic, but this does not stop Orontes: he needs the truth. Philinte listens to his sonnet “Hope”: “I have never heard a more graceful verse anywhere” - and Alceste: “It is only good for throwing it away! /<...>An empty game of words, panache or fashion. / But, my God, is that what nature says?” - and twice reads the verses of a folk song, where love is spoken simply, without embellishment. Orontes is offended, the argument almost leads to a duel, and only Philinte’s intervention defuses the situation. The prudent Filint laments: “You have made an enemy! Well, let's go science. / But it would be worthwhile to slightly praise the sonnet...”, Alceste’s answer: “Not a word more.”

Act two, like the first, begins without any preparation with a stormy explanation between Alceste and Celimene: “Do you want me to tell you the whole truth? / Madam, your temper has tormented my soul, / You torment me with such treatment. / We need to separate - I see with grief.” Alceste reproaches his beloved for frivolity. Selimene retorts: you can’t drive away fans with a stick. Alceste: “It’s not a stick that is needed here - completely different means: / Less softness, courtesy, coquetry<...>/ Meanwhile, you like these courtships! - and then Moliere puts into Alceste’s mouth words that a number of researchers consider as the embodiment of his personal experiences addressed to his wife Armande Bejart, who played the role of Celimene: “How one must love you so as not to part with you! / ABOUT! If I could tear my heart out of your hands, / If I could save it from unbearable torment, / I would thank the heavens for that touchingly.<...>/ I love you for my sins.<...>/ My crazy passion is incomprehensible! / No one, madam, loved as much as I did.”

Selimena receives guests with whom she chats with many acquaintances. Her slander is brilliant. Alceste accuses the guests of encouraging this slander, while when they meet the people they ridicule, they throw themselves into their arms and assure them of friendship. Then Celimene gives a harsh description of Alceste: “Contradiction is his special gift. / Public opinion is terrible for him, / And agreeing with it is an outright crime. / He would have considered himself disgraced forever, / If he had not bravely gone against everyone!” The arriving gendarme has an order to escort Alceste to the department: criticism of the sonnet had an effect in such an unexpected form. But Alceste rejects all advice to soften his judgment: “Until the king himself forced me, / So that I praise and glorify such poems, / I will argue that his sonnet is bad / And the poet himself is worthy of a noose for it!”

Act III is given over to the depiction of secular mores: the Marquises Clitander and Acaetus, seeking Celimene’s favor, are ready to give in to each other if she prefers one of them; Selimene, who sarcastically characterizes her friend Arsinoe, depicts stormy joy at the occasion of her arrival, each tells the other all the nasty things that are said about them in the world, adding iodine with this screen of poison from herself. Alceste appears only in the finale. He hears from Arsinoe praise for his intelligence and other qualities that “the court should notice,” which she can contribute through her connections. But Alceste rejects this path: “I was not created by fate for life at court, / I am not inclined to the diplomatic game, - / I was born with a rebellious, rebellious soul, / And I will not succeed among the court servants. / I have one gift: I am sincere and courageous, / And I would never be able to play people”; a person who does not know how to hide his thoughts and feelings must abandon the intention of taking some place in the world, “But, having lost the hope of elevation, / We do not need to endure refusals and humiliation. / We never need to play fools, / We don’t need to praise mediocre rhymes, / We don’t need to endure whims from lovely ladies, / And we don’t need to endure empty marquises with wit!” Then Arsinoe goes over to Celimene and assures that she has precise evidence of her infidelity to Alceste. He, having condemned Arsino for slandering his friend, nevertheless wants to get acquainted with this evidence: “I would like one thing: let the light be shed. / To find out the whole truth - there are no other desires.”

In Act IV from Philinte's story, the scene in the office is restored, where the judges tried to force Alceste to change his mind about Orontes' sonnet. He stubbornly stood his ground: “He is an honest nobleman, there is no doubt about it, / He is brave, worthy, kind, but he is a bad poet;<...>/ I could only forgive him his poems, believe me, / If he wrote them under pain of cruel death.” Reconciliation was achieved only when Alceste agreed to utter a phrase in a presumptive manner: “I, sir, am very sorry that I judge so strictly, / Out of friendship for you, I would like from the bottom of my heart / To tell you that the poems are undeniably good!” Celimene's cousin Elianta, to whom Philinte tells this story, gives Alceste high praise for his sincerity and admits to his interlocutor that she is not indifferent to Alceste. Filint, in turn, confesses his love for Eliante. Moliere, thus, a year before the premiere of Racine's Andromache, builds a love chain similar to Racine's, where the heroes are endowed with unrequited love, each loves the one who loves the other. In The Misanthrope, Philinte loves Eliante, who loves Alceste, who loves Celimene, who loves no one. In Racine, such love leads to tragedy.

Elianta is ready to encourage Alceste’s love for Celimene, hoping that Alceste himself will notice her feelings; Philinte is just as ready to wait for Eliante’s favor when she is free of feelings for Alceste; Selimena is not bothered by the lack of love. They will not worry for long, having not achieved what they wanted, Arsinoe, who fell in love with Alceste and Akaet, Clitander, who fell in love with Selimene, Orontes, whose shallow feelings complicate the love chain in “The Misanthrope,” does not react in any way to the vicissitudes of Eliant’s love. And only the intensity of Alceste’s feelings makes his situation close to tragic. He is not inclined to trust rumors. But Arsinoe gives him a letter from Celimene to Orontes, full of tender feelings. Convinced of Celimene's infidelity, Alceste rushes to Eliante with a marriage proposal, without hiding the fact that he is driven by jealousy and a desire to take revenge on Celimene. Selimena's appearance changes everything: she claims that she wrote this letter to a friend. Alceste’s critical mind tells him that this is just a trick, but he is inclined to believe because he is in love: “I am yours, and I want to follow to the end, / How you deceive a blind man in love.” This bifurcation of the hero, when one being in him critically observes the other, is one of the examples that allows us to come to the conclusion: in “The Misanthrope” Moliere is ahead of Racine in establishing the principle of psychologism in French literature.

In Act V, the intensity of Alceste's conflict with society reaches its highest development. Alceste lost the case in court, although his opponent was wrong and used the lowest methods to achieve his goal - and everyone knew it. Alceste wants to leave society and is only waiting for what Celimene will tell him: “I must, must know whether I am loved or not, / And her answer will decide my future life.” But by chance Alceste hears exactly the same question asked to Celimene by Orontes. She is at a loss, she does not want to lose any of the young people who are passionate about her. The appearance of Acastus and Clitander with letters from Celimene, in which she slanderes all her fans, including Alceste, leads to a scandal. Everyone leaves Celimene, except Alceste: he does not find the strength in himself to hate his beloved and explains this to Eliante and Philinte in verses so similar to the future tirades of Racine’s tragic heroes: “You see, I am a slave to my unhappy passion: / I am in the power of my criminal weakness ! / But this is not the end - and, to my shame, / In love, you see, I will go to the end. / We are called wise... What does this wisdom mean? / No, every heart hides human weakness...” He is ready to forgive Celimene everything, to justify infidelity with someone else’s influence, her youth, but he invites his beloved to share life with him outside of society, in the wilderness, in the desert: “Oh, if we love, Why do we need the whole world? Selimene is ready to become Alceste’s wife, but she would not like to leave society; such a future does not attract her. She doesn't have time to finish her sentence. Alceste understood everything before, now he is ripe for the decision: “Enough! I was cured at once: / You did it now with your refusal. / Since you cannot in the depths of your heart - / Just as I found everything in you, so you can find everything in me, / Farewell forever; like a heavy burden, / Freely, finally, I will throw off your chains!” Alceste decides to leave society: “Everyone has betrayed me and everyone is cruel to me; / I will leave the pool, where vices reign; / Perhaps there is such a corner in the world, / Where a person is free to cherish his honor” (translated by M. E. Levberg).

The image of Alceste is psychologically complex, which makes it difficult to interpret. Judging by the fact that The Misanthrope is written in verse, it was intended for great purposes, and not to solve the problems of the current repertoire of the Palais Royal. The playwright removed the original subtitle - “The Hypochondriac in Love”, which allows us to guess in what direction the idea developed at first and what the author abandoned in the end. Moliere did not explain his understanding of the image of Alceste. In the first edition of the comedy, he included “Letter on the Misanthrope” by his former enemy Donno de Wiese. From this review it emerged that the audience approved of Filint as a person who avoids extremes. “As for the Misanthrope, he must arouse in his fellows the desire to be spoiled.” It is believed that Moliere, by placing this review in the publication of the comedy, thereby identifies himself with him.

In the next century the situation changes. J.-J. Rousseau condemned Moliere for ridiculing Alceste: “Wherever the Misanthrope is ridiculous, he only fulfills the duty of a decent person” (“Letter to D’Alembert”).

Is Alceste really funny? This is how he is characterized by the characters of the comedy (the first is Philint: Act I, scene 1), but not by the situations created by the playwright. Thus, in the scene with Orontes’ sonnet, Orontes looks funny, not Alcestes (Orontes seeks Alcestes’ friendship, asks him to speak about the sonnet, he himself belittles the importance of the poem, citing the fact that he wrote it “in a few minutes,” etc.). The poems are frankly weak, so Philint’s praises turn out to be inappropriate and do him no credit. Criticism of the sonnet is not a trifle, judging by the consequences: the gendarme takes Alceste to the department, where the judges decide the issue of reconciliation of Orontes and Alceste. And in other cases, representatives of secular society show inadequacy. Moliere, playing Alceste, emphasized the causticity and causticity rather than the comic nature of the character.

Is Alceste really a misanthrope? His statements about people are no more sharp than the attacks of Selimena, Arsinoe, other participants in the “school of slander”, Philinte, who says: “I agree that lies and debauchery are everywhere, / That malice and selfishness reign everywhere around, / That only cunning leads now to luck, / That people should have been created differently.” The title of the comedy “The Misanthrope” is misleading: Alceste, capable of passionate love, is less of a misanthrope than Celimene, who loves no one. Alceste’s misanthropy always manifests itself in specific situations, i.e. has motives, and does not constitute his character, distinguishing this hero from other characters. It is characteristic that if the names of Tartuffe or Harpagon became proper names in French, then the name of Alceste did not; on the contrary, the proper name “misanthrope” replaced his personal name, like Rousseau, who wrote it with a capital letter, but it changed the meaning, becoming a symbol of not misanthropy, but directness, honesty, sincerity.

Moliere develops the system of images and the plot of the comedy in such a way that it is not Alceste who is drawn to society, but society to him. What makes the beautiful and young Celimene, the sensible Eliante, the hypocritical Arsinoe seek his love, and the reasonable Philinte and the precise Orontes - his friendship? Alceste is not young and ugly, he is not rich, he has no connections, he is not known at court, he does not shine in salons, he is not involved in politics, science or any art. Obviously, there is something attractive about him that others don’t have. Elianta calls this trait: “Such sincerity is a special quality; / There is some kind of noble heroism in her. / This is a very rare trait for our days, / I would like to meet her more often.” Sincerity constitutes the character of Alceste (that fundamental quality that lies in all manifestations of his personality). Society wants to depersonalize Alceste, to make him like everyone else, but it also envies the amazing resilience of this man. There is a long tradition that Moliere portrayed himself in the image of Alceste, and his wife Armande Bejart in the image of Celimene. But viewers of the premiere saw completely different prototypes in the characters of the comedy: Alceste - Duke of Montosier, Orontes - Duke of Saint-Aignan, Arsinoe - Duchess of Navay, etc. Moliere, judging by his messages to the king, dedications, and “Versailles Impromptu,” is more similar to Philint. This is confirmed by the surviving description of Moliere’s character, as he was remembered by his contemporaries: “As for his character, Moliere was kind, helpful, and generous.” Alceste is less a portrait of the playwright than his hidden ideal. Therefore, outwardly there is a reason for ridicule of Alceste due to his tendency to extremes, but in the structure of the work there is a hidden layer that exalts Alceste as a true tragic hero who chooses his own fate. Therefore, in the finale, not only sad notes are heard, but also Alceste’s recognition of the liberation that came when he, like the heroes of Corneille, chose the proper path. In his work, Moliere brilliantly anticipated the ideas of the Enlightenment. Alceste - a man of the 18th century. In Moliere's time he was still too lonely, he was a rarity, and like any rarity he could evoke surprise, ridicule, sympathy, and admiration.

The plot of “The Misanthrope” is original, although the motif of misanthropy was not new in literature (the story of Timon of Athens, who lived in the 5th century BC, reflected in Lucian’s dialogue “Timon the Misanthrope”, in the biography of Mark Antony, included in “Comparative Lives” "Plutarch, in "Timon of Athens" by W. Shakespeare, etc.). The theme of sincerity is undoubtedly connected with the theme of hypocrisy in Tartuffe, for which Moliere fought to lift the ban during the years of creating The Misanthrope.

For Boileau, Moliere was primarily the author of The Misanthrope. Voltaire also highly appreciated this work. Rousseau and Mercy criticized the playwright for mocking Alceste. At the beginning of the French Revolution, Fabre d'Eglantine created the comedy Moliere's Philint, or the Continuation of the Misanthrope (1790). Alceste in it was portrayed as a real revolutionary, and Philinte as a hypocrite like Tartuffe. The image of Goethe's Alceste and romance was highly valued. There is reason to talk about the closeness of the image of Alceste and the image of Chatsky from Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit.”

The image of the Misanthrope is one of the greatest creations of the human genius, he is on a par with Hamlet, Don Quixote, and Faust. "The Misanthrope" is the most striking example of "high comedy". This work is perfect in form. Moliere worked on it more than on any of his other plays. This is his most beloved work; it has lyricism, testifying to the closeness of the image of Alceste to its creator.

Soon after The Misanthrope, Moliere, who continued to fight for Tartuffe, wrote a comedy in prose in a short time "Stingy"(1668). And again a creative victory, associated primarily with the image of the main character. This is Harpagon, the father of Cleanthes and Eliza, who is in love with Mariana. Moliere transfers the story told by the ancient Roman playwright Plautus to contemporary Paris. Harpagon lives in his own house, he is rich, but stingy. Stinginess, reaching its highest limit, crowds out all other qualities of the character’s personality and becomes his character. Stinginess turns Harpagon into a real predator, which is reflected in his name, formed by Moliere from the Latin harpago- “harpoon” (the name of special anchors that were used to pull up enemy ships before a boarding battle during naval battles; figurative meaning is “grabber”).

The comic in “The Miser” acquires not so much a carnival, but rather a satirical character, which makes the comedy the pinnacle of Molière’s satire (along with “Tartuffe”). In the image of Harpagon, the classicist approach to character, in which diversity gives way to unity, and the individual to the generalized-typical, is reflected with particular clarity. Comparing the heroes of Shakespeare and Moliere, A. S. Pushkin wrote: “The faces created by Shakespeare are not, like Moliere’s, types of such and such a passion, such and such a vice, but living beings, filled with many passions, many vices; circumstances develop before the viewer their diverse and multifaceted characters. Molière is stingy, and that’s all...” (“Table-Talk”). However, Moliere's approach to depicting character gives a very great artistic effect. His characters are so significant that their names become household names. The name Harpagon also became a common noun to denote the passion for hoarding and stinginess (the first known case of such use dates back to 1721).

Moliere's last great comedy - "A tradesman among the nobility"(1670), it was written in the genre of “comedy-ballet”: on the instructions of the king, it was necessary to include dances that would contain a mockery of Turkish ceremonies. It was necessary to collaborate with the famous composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), a native of Italy, a wonderful musician, who was connected with Moliere by previous work on comedies and ballets and at the same time by mutual enmity. Moliere skillfully introduced dance scenes into the plot of the comedy, maintaining the unity of its structure.

The general law of this construction is that the comedy of character appears against the background of the comedy of manners. The bearers of morals are all the heroes of the comedy with the exception of the main character - Jourdain. The sphere of morals is the customs, traditions, habits of society. Characters can express this sphere only in the aggregate (such as Jourdain’s wife and daughter, his servants, teachers, aristocrats Dorant and Dorimena, who want to profit from the wealth of Jourdain’s bourgeoisie). They are endowed with characteristic features, but not character. These features, even comically sharpened, nevertheless do not violate the verisimilitude.

Jourdain, unlike the characters in the comedy of manners, acts as a comedic character. The peculiarity of Moliere's character is that the tendency that exists in reality is brought to such a degree of concentration that the hero breaks out of the framework of its natural, “reasonable” order. Such are Don Juan, Alceste, Harpagon, Tartuffe, Orgon - the hero of the highest honesty and dishonesty, martyrs of noble passions and fools.

This is Jourdain, a bourgeois who decided to become a nobleman. For forty years he lived in his own world, did not know any contradictions. This world was harmonious because everything in it was in its place. Jourdain was quite smart, bourgeois-sharp. The desire to enter the world of the nobles, which has become the character of the bourgeois Jourdain, destroys the harmonious family order. Jourdain becomes a tyrant, a tyrant who prevents Cleonte from marrying Lucille, Jourdain’s daughter, who loves him, only because he is not a nobleman. And at the same time, he looks more and more like a naive child who is easy to deceive.

Jourdain evokes both cheerful laughter and satirical, condemning laughter (let us recall that this distinction between types of laughter was deeply substantiated by M. M. Bakhtin, including with reference to the works of Moliere).

Through the mouth of Cleont, the idea of ​​the play is stated: “People without a twinge of conscience assign to themselves the title of nobility - this kind of theft, apparently, has become a custom. But I admit, I am more scrupulous about this. I believe that every deception casts a shadow on a decent person. To be ashamed of those from whom heaven destined you to be born, to shine in society with a fictitious title, to pretend that you are not what you really are - this, in my opinion, is a sign of spiritual baseness.”

But this idea turns out to be in conflict with the further development of the comedy plot. The noble Cleont at the end of the play, in order to obtain Jourdain's permission to marry Lucille, pretends to be the son of the Turkish Sultan, and the honest Madame Jourdain and Lucille help him in this deception. The deception was a success, but ultimately Jourdain wins, because he forced honest people, his relatives and servants, contrary to their honesty and decency, to deceive. Under the influence of the Jourdains, the world is changing. This is a world of bourgeois narrow-mindedness, a world where money rules.

Moliere raised the poetic and prosaic language of comedy to the highest level; he brilliantly mastered comedic techniques and composition. His achievements are especially significant in the creation of comedic characters, in which extreme generality is complemented by life-like authenticity. The names of many of Moliere's characters have become household names.

He is one of the most popular playwrights in the world: on the stage of the Parisian Comedie Française theater alone, over three hundred years, his comedies have been shown more than thirty thousand times. Moliere had a huge influence on the subsequent development of world artistic culture. Moliere was completely mastered by Russian culture. L. N. Tolstoy said beautifully about him: “Moliere is perhaps the most popular, and therefore a wonderful artist of the new art.”

Composition

In the mid-1660s, Moliere created his best comedies, in which he criticized the vices of the clergy, nobility and bourgeoisie. The first of them was “Tartuffe, or the Deceiver” (edition 1664, G667 and 1669). The play shows the time of the grandiose court holiday “The Amusement of the Enchanted Island,” which took place in May 1664 in Versailles. However, the play upset the holiday. A real conspiracy arose against Moliere, led by Queen Mother Anne of Austria. Moliere was accused of insulting religion and the church, demanding punishment for this. Performances of the play were stopped.

Moliere made an attempt to stage the play in a new edition. In the first edition of 1664, Tartuffe was the clergyman of the Parisian bourgeois Orgon, into whose house this rogue enters, pretending to be a saint; he does not yet have a daughter - the priest Tartuffe could not marry her. Tartuffe deftly gets out of a difficult situation, despite the accusations of his son Orgon, who fell in love with him while courting his stepmother Elmira. The triumph of Tartuffe unequivocally testified to the danger of hypocrisy.

In the second edition (1667; like the first, it has not reached us) Moliere expanded the play, added two more acts to the existing three, where he depicted the connections of the hypocrite Tartuffe with the court, the court and the police, Tartuffe was called Panyulf and turned into a secular a man who intends to marry Orgon's daughter Marianne. The comedy, called “The Deceiver,” ended with the exposure of Pasholf and the glorification of the king. In the latest edition that has come down to us (1669), the hypocrite was again called Tartuffe, and the whole play was called “Tartuffe, or the Deceiver.”

The king knew about Moliere's play and approved his plan. Fighting for “Tartuffe,” Moliere, in his first “Petition” to the king, defended comedy, defended himself from accusations of godlessness, and spoke about the social role of the satirical writer. The king did not lift the ban on the play, but did not listen to the advice of the rabid saints “to burn not only the book, but also its author, a demon, an atheist and a libertine, who wrote a devilish play full of abomination, in which he mocks the church and religion, the sacred functions” (“The Greatest King of the World,” pamphlet by Sorbonne doctor Pierre Roullet, 1664).

Permission to stage the play in its second edition was given by the king orally, in a hurry, upon leaving for the army. Immediately after the premiere, the comedy was again banned by the President of Parliament (the highest judicial institution), Lamoignon, and the Parisian Archbishop Perefix issued a message in which he forbade all parishioners and clergy from “presenting, reading or listening to a dangerous play” under pain of excommunication.

Tartuffe is not the embodiment of hypocrisy as a universal human vice, it is a socially generalized type. It is not for nothing that he is not alone in the comedy: his servant Laurent, the bailiff, and the old woman, Orgon’s mother Madame Pernel, are hypocritical. They all cover up their unsightly actions with pious speeches and vigilantly monitor the behavior of others. He settled well in Orgon's house, where the owner not only satisfies his slightest whims, but is also ready to give him his daughter Marianne, a rich heiress, as his wife. Orgon confides all secrets to him, including entrusting him with the storage of the treasured box with incriminating documents. Tartuffe succeeds because he is a subtle psychologist; playing on the fear of the gullible Orgon, he forces the latter to reveal any secrets to him. Tartuffe covers up his insidious plans with religious arguments. He is well aware of his strength, and therefore does not restrain his vicious desires. He does not love Marianne, she is only an advantageous bride for him, he is carried away by the beautiful Elmira, whom Tartuffe is trying to seduce. His casuistic reasoning that betrayal is not a sin if no one knows about it outrages Elmira. Damis, Orgon's son, a witness to the secret meeting, wants to expose the scoundrel, but he, having taken a pose of self-flagellation and repentance for supposedly imperfect sins, again makes Orgon his defender. When, after the second date, Tartuffe falls into a trap and Orgon kicks him out of the house, he begins to take revenge, fully revealing his vicious, corrupt and selfish nature.

But Molière not only exposes hypocrisy. In Tartuffe, he poses an important question: why did Orgon allow himself to be so deceived? This already middle-aged man, clearly not stupid, with a strong disposition and strong will, succumbed to the widespread fashion for piety. Orgon believed in Tartuffe’s piety and “holiness” and sees him as his spiritual mentor. However, he becomes a pawn in the hands of Tartuffe, who shamelessly declares that Orgon would rather believe him “than his own eyes.” The reason for this is the inertia of Orgon’s consciousness, brought up in submission to authority. This inertia does not give him the opportunity to critically comprehend the phenomena of life and evaluate the People around him.

Later, this theme attracted the attention of playwrights in Italy and France, who developed it as a legend about an unrepentant sinner, devoid of national and everyday characteristics. Moliere treated this well-known theme in a completely original way, abandoning the religious and moral interpretation of the image of the main character. His Don Juai is an ordinary socialite, and the events that happen to him are determined by the properties of his nature, everyday traditions, and social relationships. Moliere's Don Juan, whom his servant Sganarelle defines from the very beginning of the play as “the greatest of all villains that the earth has ever bore, a monster, a dog, a devil, a Turk, a heretic” (I, /), is a young daredevil, a rake, who does not see any barriers to the manifestation of his vicious personality: he lives by the principle “everything is allowed.” In creating his Don Juan, Moliere denounced not debauchery in general, but the immorality inherent in the French aristocrat of the 17th century. Moliere knew this breed of people well and therefore depicted his hero very reliably.

He considered himself an actor, not a playwright.

He wrote the play “The Misanthrope” and the French Academy, which could not stand him, was so delighted that they offered him to become an academician and receive the title of immortal. But this is conditional. That he will stop going on stage as an actor. Moliere refused. After his death, the academicians erected a monument to him and wrote in Latin: his glory is boundless for the fullness of our glory we lack him.

Moliere highly valued Corneille's plays. I thought that tragedy should be staged in the theater. And he considered himself a tragic actor. he was a very educated man. Graduated from Clermont College. He translated Lucretius from Latin. He was not a buffoon. By outward appearances, he was not a comic actor. he really had all the qualities of a tragic actor - a hero. Only his breathing was weak. It wasn't enough for a full stanza. He took theater seriously.

Moliere borrowed all the plots and they were not the main ones for him. It is impossible to base the plot on its dramaturgy. The main thing there is the interaction of characters, not the plot.

He wrote “Don Juan” at the request of the actors in 3 months. That's why it is written in prose. There was no time to rhyme it. When you read Moliere, you need to understand what role Moliere himself played. Because he played the main role. He wrote all the roles for the actors, taking into account their individual characteristics. When he joined the troupe Lagrange , who kept the famous register. He began to write heroic roles for him and a Don Juan role for him. It is difficult to stage Molière, because when writing the play he took into account the psychophysiological capabilities of the actors in his troupe. This is tough material. His actors were golden. He quarreled with Racine over an actress (Marquise Teresa Duparc), whom Racine lured to him with the promise of writing the role of Andromache for her.

Moliere is the creator of high comedy.

High comedy - comedy without a positive hero(School for Wives, Tartuffe, Don Juan, The Miser, The Misanthrope). There is no need to look for positive heroes from him there.

A tradesman among the nobility is not a high comedy.

But he also has farces.

High comedy addresses the mechanisms that give rise to vices in humans.

Main character - Orgone (played by Molière)

Tartuffe appears in act 3.

Everyone argues about it and the viewer must take some point of view.

Orgon is not an idiot, but why did he bring Tartuffe into the house and trust him so much? Orgon is not young (about 50), and his second wife Elmira is almost the same age as his children. He must solve the problem of the soul for himself. How to combine spiritual and social life with a young wife. For the 17th century, this was the main reason why the play was closed. But the king did not close this play. All of Moliere's appeals to the king were due to the fact that he did not know the true reason why the play was closed. And they closed it because of Anna, the Austrian mother of the king. And the king could not influence the mother’s decision.

She died in 69, and in 70 the play was immediately performed. What was the problem? In the question of what is grace and what is a secular person. Argon meets Tartuffe in the church in a noble dress, who brings him holy water. Orgon had a great desire to find a person who would combine these two qualities and it seemed to him that Tartuffe such a person. He takes him into the house and seems to go crazy. Everything in the house went upside down. Moliere turns to a precise psychological mechanism. When a person wants to be ideal, he tries to bring the ideal closer to himself physically. He begins not to break himself, but to bring the ideal closer to himself.

Tartuffe doesn't deceive anyone anywhere. He behaves simply arrogantly. Everyone understands. What is he an idiot except Madame Pernelle and Orgon .Dorina - housemaid Mariana is not a positive hero in this play. He behaves impudently. Mocking Argon. Cleant - Brother Elmira , brother-in-law of Orgon

Orgon gives Tartuffe everything. He wants to get as close to his idol as possible. Do not make yourself an idol. This is about psychological unfreedom. Super Christian play.

If a person lives by some idea, then no force can convince him. Orgon gives his daughter in marriage. He curses his son and throws him out of the house. Gives away his property. He gave someone else's box to a friend. Elmira was the only one who could dissuade him. And not in word, but in deed.

In order to perform this play at the Molière Theater they used a fringed tablecloth and a royal decree. the actor's existence there redeemed everything. How accurate is the theater?

The scene of revelation when Orgon is under the table. Lasts a long time. And when he gets out, he experiences a catastrophe. This is a sign of high comedy. The hero of high comedy experiences a real tragedy. He's here now. Like Othello, who realized that he had strangled Desdemona in vain. And when the main character suffers, the viewer laughs furiously. This is a paradoxical move. In every play Moliere has such a scene.

The more you suffer Harpagon in The Miser (the role of Molière) whose box is stolen, the funnier it is for the viewer. He shouts - police! Arrest me! Cut off my hand! Why are you laughing? He says to the viewer. Maybe you stole my wallet? He asks the nobles sitting on the stage. The gallery laughs. Or maybe there is a thief among you? He turns to the gallery. And the audience laughs more and more. And when they’ve already laughed it off. After some time they should understand. That Harpagon is them.

Textbooks write nonsense about Tartuffe regarding the ending. When the guard comes with the king’s decree, they write that Moliere couldn’t stand it and made concessions to the king in order to get the play through... it’s not true!

In France, the king is the pinnacle of the spiritual world. This is the embodiment of reason and ideas. Orgon, through his efforts, plunged nightmare and destruction into the life of his family. And if you end up with Orgon being kicked out of the house, then what is that play about? About the fact that he's just a fool and that's all. But this is not a subject for conversation. There is no ending. A guard with a decree appears as a certain function (a god on a machine), a certain force that is able to restore order in Orgon’s house. He is forgiven, his house and box are returned to him, and the tartuffe goes to prison. You can put your house in order, but you can’t put your head in order. Maybe he will bring a new Tartuffe into the house?.. and we understand that the play reveals the psychological mechanism of inventing an ideal, getting closer to this ideal, in the absence of the opportunity for this person to really change. The man is funny. As soon as a person begins to look for support in some idea, he turns into Orgone. This play is not going well for us.

In France, since the 17th century, there was a secret conspiratorial society (the society of secret communion or the society of the holy gifts), headed by Anna of Austria, which served as the morality police. it was the third political force in the state. Cardinal Richelieu knew and fought against this society and this was the basis of their conflict with the queen.

At this time, the Jesuit order began to actively operate. Who know how to combine secular and spiritual life. Salon abbots appear (Aramis is like that). They made religion attractive to the secular population. And the same Jesuits infiltrated homes and took possession of property. Because an order for something had to exist. And the play Tartuffe was written at the personal request of the king. In Molière's troupe there was a farceur actor who played farces by Grovenet du Parc (?). and the first edition was a farce. It ended with Tartuffe taking everything away and driving Orgon out. Tartuffe was played for the opening of Versailles. And in the middle of Act 1, the queen stood up and left, as soon as it became clear who Tartuffe was. the play was closed. Although she walked freely in manuscripts and was played in private houses. But Molière’s troupe could not do this. Nucius arrived from Rome and Moliere asked him why he was forbidden to play it? He said, I don’t understand. Normal play. Here in Italy they write worse. Then the performer of the role of Tartuffe dies and Moliere rewrites the play. Tartuffe becomes a nobleman with a more complex character. The play is changing before our eyes. Then the war with the Netherlands began, the king leaves there and Moliere writes an appeal to the chairman of the Parisian parliament, not knowing that this is the right hand of Anne of Austria in this order. and the play is of course banned again

The Jansenists and the Jesuits started a dispute about grace. As a result, the king reconciled them all and played the play Tartuffe. The Jansenists thought that Tartuffe was a Jesuit. And the Jesuits say that he is a Jansenist.

Don Juan

The plot is borrowed.

Moliere very accurately stylized the performance as a commedia dell'arte theater. He has 1 act. which is written in Patois (a dialect of French), like a peasant act. When J talking to peasant women ( Maturina and Charlotte ).

J is a libertine (a freethinker, a nobleman engaged in scientific work). Angelica's husband (marquise of angels) was a libertine. He had a factory that produced gold.

Libertinage is knowledge of the world in all forms.

In Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, the Comte de GICH is Cyrano's main enemy; he is a libertine. These people could eat pork on Good Friday, calling it carp, who despised all Christian norms and were immoral towards women, etc.

IN J both sides of this concept of Libertinage are concentrated.

JJ is not an atheist. He analyzes everything skeptically and does not take its word for anything. He is obsessed with the ideas of Descartes. analysis, movement of thought. From simple to complex. He says he has the temperament of Alexander the Great. He is not a lover of women at all. In Moliere he is dry and rational. All these women came from the Spanish plot, like a dowry.

JD is the embodiment of scientific knowledge of the world.

Sganarelle (played by Moliere) is the embodiment of an ordinary, traditional view of things, based on religion. The main question for that society is how to connect the scientific and moral worlds. And what is morality?

Sganarelle constantly scolds JJ that he is violating all moral laws, the bastard, the Turk, the dog... JJ does not justify himself in any way. Women throw themselves at him. Maturina and Charlotte they simply board him. He runs away from his wife Elvira and says that as soon as a woman stops being interesting, he moves on. He is obsessed with the thirst for knowledge. There are no barriers for him.

In act 3 they escape from pursuit and Sganarelle begins to philosophize. The stage is led by Sganarelle. He is generally talkative. And J is a man of few words.

J says that he believes that 2x2 = 4, and 2x4 = 8 and Sganarelle says, so your religion is arithmetic. But there is a different translation. He believed that 2+2=4 and 4+4=8 And this is Descartes’ Principle: Separate difficulties and move from simple to complex. He says he believes in a method of understanding the world. Sganarelle does not understand this and says a whole monologue in which he gives a bunch of arguments that are simply the main evidence of the existence of God of Thomas Aquinas. This is the popular understanding of the basic tenets of the Catholic idea. And at the end Sganarelle falls, and JJ says, here’s proof for you - he broke his nose. There are no rightists in their dialogues.

Then comes the famous scene with the beggars. JJ says blaspheme, I will give you gold. And Sganarelle, who was just talking about virtue. says - blaspheme there is no great guilt in this.

The scene ends with J giving him a gold piece and saying, “Here it is, I’m giving it to you out of humanity.” This is a question of morality and scientific knowledge of the world.

What is morality? Today it is a question of questions.

The play is structured in such a way that neither science nor religion gives us an answer to the question.

And the main events take place in the finale. Appears ghost – the image of time with a scythe. Then it appears stone guest , and then they fall into hell.

What do these three transformations mean?

When a ghost appears (in the textbooks they write that Doña Elvira came in a blanket to scare him - this is complete nonsense) this is the time with the scythe. It was a black suit with bones painted on it. The scythe is death. This is a female figure wearing a long veil from head to toe. Death has its own way of speaking and moving on stage.

In the Molière theater the stone guest looked like this: o2.26.08

The actor was wearing Collet is a men's short, fitted, sleeveless jacket (vest), usually made of light leather, worn over a doublet in the 16th and 17th centuries. The word is also applied to a similar sleeveless garment worn by the British army in the 20th century.

He was whitened with flour like a statue and walked like a statue.

When at the end of the play they come to the tomb and look at it. Sganarelle says how handsome he is in the clothes of a Roman emperor. For Moliere, the concept of a Roman emperor was associated with only one person - Louis 14

In 1664, Versailles opened, the procession was opened by the king, who rode in the clothes of the Roman emperor, but it was not a toga, but an ordinary tunic and a hat with a feather. And that’s what everyone thought—the Roman emperor looked like that.

In 1666, by decree of Louis 14, copper statues depicting Louis 14 in the robes of a Roman emperor were erected in the main cities of France. During the great French bourgeois revolution, they were all poured into cannons. But one statue, a stone one, has survived. It stands in the center of the Cornovale Museum in Paris.

In a word, at the end it is not a ghost that appears, but a king, that is, a higher mind that must resolve the dispute between science and religion

Kamen.guest extends his hand and J begins to say to Sgonarel: “I feel like a terrible cold is eating me up. He talks about his feelings. Fixes them. He experiences the world until his death.

The statue falls through. How to do this on stage? They stood on the hatch. They went down there. And a rocket was launched from there, and then tongues of painted flame burst out. This infuriated the archbishop (they depict hell with a rocket and painted flames). It is known that a fireman was on duty at the performance.

JD did not receive an answer to the question. There remained Sganarelle, who lamented, oh my salary...

Neither religion nor science provided an answer to the question of morality.

This is high comedy and its philosophical meaning is enormous.

The French believe that there are 3 works that express the essence of European culture Hamlet, Don Juan and Faust.

The misanthrope is a play of grandiose quality!!! There's practically no plot. Griboedov appreciated it when he wrote Woe from the Mind, he simply quoted some moments. This is one of the reasons why the play is not working for us.

For Moliere she was important. In order for the public to watch it, he wrote a terrible farce “The Imaginary Cuckold.” And first he played a misanthrope, and then a farce. And he sang a song about a bottle, which made Nicolas Boileau exclaim - how can a great misanthrope author sing this song!

Misanthrope that any person is a misanthrope (a person who does not like people.) because the need to live together develops the most misanthropic traits in a person. And the only way not to kill each other is to treat each other leniently. Dispute about who is a misanthrope or something? Filint, either Alceste (Moliere's role) continues to this day. There was a performance. Where was the misanthrope Selimena . This play is somewhat literary. But that's not true.

The play Stingy is a super play today!!

It was called Voltaire's most tragic work in the 18th century. When reading it, you need to detach yourself from the scheme. The main positive hero here Harpagon . He is the miser who does not allow anyone to live and whose treasure was stolen. In this play, all the characters are hunting for money, under the most plausible pretexts. They only need money to spend it. The son borrows money secretly because his dad will die in 6 months. The bride marries Harpagon, although she does not love him. Etc

Harpagon is a philosopher. The truth was revealed to him that everyone talks only about morality. In general, the world is built only on money. And as long as you have money, you will be the center and life will revolve around you. He doesn't spend money. He saves himself from loneliness with money. This is a precise psychological move. The world is monstrous. This is a scary play. She horrified his contemporaries. Cook-coachman and coachman-cook Jacques . He changes clothes all the time. And he asks who are you talking to now? This is Harpagon saving on servants.

And at the end he gives a summary: When you tell the truth they beat you, when you lie they want to hang you...

This is what the modern world is.

« We deal vices a heavy blow by exposing them to public ridicule. ». Comedy has two big tasks: to teach and to entertain. Moliere's ideas about the tasks of comedy do not leave the circle of classicist aesthetics. The task of comedy is to present on stage a pleasant image of common shortcomings. An actor should not play himself. Moliere's comedy contains all the characteristic features of classic theater. At the beginning of the play, some moral, social or political problem is posed. here the demarcation of forces is indicated. two points of view, two interpretations, two opinions. There is a struggle to give a solution at the end, the opinion of the author himself. The second feature is the extreme concentration of stage means around the main idea. The development of the plot, conflict, collisions and the stage characters themselves only illustrate the given theme. all the playwright's attention is drawn to the depiction of the passion with which a person is obsessed. the playwright’s thought acquires greater clarity and weight.

Tartuffe.

The comedy of “high comedy” is intellectual comedy, character comedy. In Moliere we find such comedy in the plays “Don Juan”, “The Misanthrope”, “Tartuffe”.

"Tartuffe, or the Deceiver" was Moliere's first comedy, where he criticized the vices of the clergy and nobility. The play was to be shown during the court festival "The Amusements of the Enchanted Island" in May 1664 at Versailles. In the first edition of the comedy, Tartuffe was a clergyman. The wealthy Parisian bourgeois Orgon, into whose house this rogue plays the saint, enters, does not yet have a daughter - the priest Tartuffe could not marry her. Tartuffe deftly gets out of a difficult situation, despite the accusations of his son Orgon, who caught him courting his stepmother Elmira. The triumph of Tartuffe unequivocally testified to the danger of hypocrisy. However, the play upset the holiday, and a real conspiracy arose against Moliere: he was accused of insulting religion and the church, demanding punishment for this. Performances of the play were stopped.

In 1667, Moliere made an attempt to stage the play in a new edition. In the second edition, Moliere expanded the play, added two more acts to the existing three, where he depicted the connections of the hypocrite Tartuffe with the court, the court and the police. Tartuffe was named Panjulf ​​and turned into a socialite, intending to marry Orgon's daughter Marianne. The comedy, called “The Deceiver,” ended with the exposure of Panyulf and the glorification of the king. In the latest edition that has come down to us (1669), the hypocrite was again called Tartuffe, and the entire play was called “Tartuffe, or the Deceiver.”

In Tartuffe, Moliere turned to the most common type of hypocrisy at that time - religious - and wrote it based on his observations of the activities of the religious "Society of the Holy Gifts", whose activities were surrounded by great mystery. Acting under the motto “Suppress all evil, promote every good,” members of this society saw their main task as the fight against freethinking and godlessness. Members of the society preached severity and asceticism in morals, had a negative attitude towards all kinds of secular entertainment and theater, and pursued a passion for fashion. Moliere observed how members of society insinuatingly and skillfully infiltrate other people's families, how they subjugate people, completely taking possession of their conscience and their will. This suggested the plot of the play, and Tartuffe’s character was formed from typical traits inherent in members of the “Society of the Holy Gifts.”

As part of the plausible movement of the plot of the comedy, Moliere gives two comedic hyperboles that balance each other - Orgon's hyperbolic passion for Tartuffe and the equally hyperbolic hypocrisy of Tartuffe. In creating this character, Moliere put forward the main characteristic characteristic of a given personality and, exaggerating it, presented it as out of the ordinary. This trait is hypocrisy.

The image of Tartuffe is not the embodiment of hypocrisy as a universal human vice, it is a socially generalized type. It is not for nothing that he is not at all alone in the comedy: his servant Laurent, the bailiff Loyal, and Orgon’s old mother Madame Pernel are hypocritical. They all cover up their unsightly actions with pious speeches and vigilantly monitor the behavior of others. For example, Madame Pernelle, Orgon’s mother, already in the first scene of the first act gives scathing characterizations to almost everyone around her: She says to Dorina that “there is no maid in the world louder than you, and a worse rude person,” to her grandson Damis - “My dear grandson “, you are simply a fool... the last tomboy,” “goes to” Elmira: “You are wasteful. You can’t look without anger when you dress up like a queen. To please your husband, such magnificent attire is useless.”

Tartuffe’s characteristic appearance is created by his imaginary holiness and humility: “He prayed in church every day next to me, kneeling in an outburst of piety. He attracted everyone’s attention.” Tartuffe is not without external attractiveness; he has courteous, insinuating manners, which hide prudence, energy, an ambitious thirst for power, and the ability to take revenge. He settled well in Orgon's house, where the owner not only satisfies his slightest whims, but is also ready to give him his daughter Marianne, a rich heiress, as his wife. Tartuffe achieves success because he is a subtle psychologist: playing on the fear of the gullible Orgon, he forces the latter to reveal any secrets to him. Tartuffe covers up his insidious plans with religious arguments:

No fair witness will say

That I am guided by the desire for profit.

I am not tempted by the sight of worldly riches,

Their deceptive shine will not blind me...

After all, the property could have gone to waste,

To go to sinners who are capable

Use it for an inappropriate craft,

Without converting him, as I will do myself,

For the good of one's neighbor, for the sake of heaven (IV, 1)

He is well aware of his strength, and therefore does not restrain his vicious desires. He does not love Marianne, she is only an advantageous bride for him, he is carried away by the beautiful Elmira, whom Tartuffe is trying to seduce:

His casuistic reasoning that betrayal is not a sin if no one knows about it (“evil happens where we make noise about it. Whoever introduces temptation into the world, of course, sins, but whoever sins in silence commits no sin” - IV,5), outrage Elmira. Damis, Orgon's son, a witness to the secret meeting, wants to expose the scoundrel, but he, having taken a pose of self-flagellation and repentance for supposedly imperfect sins, again makes Orgon his defender. When, after the second date, Tartuffe falls into a trap and Orgon kicks him out of the house, he begins to take revenge, fully revealing his vicious, corrupt and selfish nature.

Despite the fact that Moliere was forced to take off his hero’s cassock, the theme of religious bigotry and the hypocrisy of Catholic circles was preserved in the comedy. The comedy provides a classic expose of one of the main strongholds of the absolutist state - the first estate of France - the clerics. However, the image of Tartuffe has an immeasurably greater capacity. In words, Tartuffe is a rigorist, rejecting everything sensual and material without any condescension. But he himself is no stranger to sensual desires, which he has to hide from prying eyes.

In the last act, Tartuffe no longer appears as a religious figure, but as a political hypocrite: he declares the renunciation of material wealth and personal attachments in the name of the interests of the absolutist state:

But my first duty is to benefit the king,

And the duty of this divine power

Now all the feelings in my soul have been extinguished,

And I would doom him, without grieving at all,

Friends, wife, relatives and yourself (V, 7)

But Molière not only exposes hypocrisy. In Tartuffe he poses an important question: why did Orgon allow himself to be so deceived? This already middle-aged man, clearly not stupid, with a strong disposition and strong will, succumbed to the widespread fashion for piety. "Tartuffe" has something similar to a farcical collision and places a figure in the center fooled father of the family. Moliere makes the narrow-minded, primitive and gifted bourgeois of that era the central character. The bourgeois of the era of guild craft production is an archaic bourgeois. He is a representative of the third tax-paying estate of the absolute monarchy and grew up on the basis of old patriarchal relations. These patriarchal and narrow-minded bourgeoisie have just embarked on the path of civilization. They look at the world naively and perceive it directly. This is exactly the kind of bourgeois that Moliere portrays.

Moliere's character is funny because of his quirk, but otherwise he is quite sober and no different from an ordinary person. Orgon is gullible and therefore allows himself to be led by the nose by all sorts of charlatans. The nature of the comedy hero's quirk is inseparable from the fact that this character is a French bourgeois, selfish, selfish, stubborn, that he is the head of the family. His quirk is one-sided, but he insists on it and persists. In the development of the action of Molière's comedies, a prominent place is occupied by scenes when Orgon is dissuaded from his absurd intentions, they are tried to dissuade him. However, he bravely and persistently follows his passion. The passion here is concentrated and one-sided, there is no fantastic whimsy in it, it is elementary, consistent and stems from the selfish character of the bourgeois. Moliere's hero takes his quirk seriously, no matter how incredible this quirk may be.

Orgon believed in the piety and “holiness” of Tartuffe and sees in him his spiritual mentor, “but with Tartuffe everything in the sky is smooth, and this is more useful than any prosperity” (II, 2). However, he becomes a pawn in the hands of Tartuffe, who shamelessly declares that “he will measure everything as it is by our standards: I taught him not to believe my eyes” (IV, 5). The reason for this is the inertia of Orgon’s consciousness, brought up in submission to authority. This inertia does not give him the opportunity to critically comprehend the phenomena of life and evaluate the people around him.

The virtuous bourgeois Orgon, who even had merits to his fatherland, was captivated by Tartuffe’s severe religious enthusiasm, and he surrendered himself with great enthusiasm to this sublime feeling. Believing in the words of Tartuffe, Orgon immediately felt like a chosen being and, following his spiritual mentor, began to consider the earthly world “a heap of dung.” Tartuffe in the eyes of Orgon is a “saint”, a “righteous man” (III.6). The image of Tartuffe blinded Orgon to such an extent that he no longer saw anything except his adored teacher. It’s not for nothing that when he returns home, he asks Dorina only about Tartuffe’s condition. Dorina tells him about Elmira’s poor health, and Orgon asks the same question four times: “Well, what about Tartuffe?” The head of the bourgeois family, Orgon, has “gone crazy” - this is the comedy “on the contrary”. Orgon is blind, he mistook Tartuffe's hypocrisy for holiness. He does not see the mask on Tartuffe's face. The comedy of the play lies in this misconception of Orgon. But he himself takes his passion absolutely seriously. Orgon admires Tartuffe and idolizes him. His passion for Tartuffe is so contrary to common sense that he even interprets his idol’s jealousy for Elmira as a manifestation of Tartuffe’s ardent love for him, Orgon.

But the comedic traits in Orgon’s character end there. Under the influence of Tartuffe, Orgon becomes dehumanized - he becomes indifferent to his family and children (handing Tartuffe the box, he directly says that “a truthful, honest friend, chosen by me as a son-in-law, is closer to me than my wife, and son, and the whole family”), begins to come running to constant links to heaven. He drives his son out of the house (“Good riddance! From now on you are deprived of your inheritance, and besides, you are cursed, hanged man, by your own father!”), causes suffering to his daughter, and puts his wife in an ambiguous position. But Orgone does not only bring suffering to others. Orgon lives in a cruel world in which his happiness depends on his financial situation and his relationship with the law. The whim that prompts him to transfer his fortune to Tartuffe and entrust him with a box of documents brings him to the brink of poverty and threatens him with prison.

Therefore, the release of Orgon does not bring him joy: he cannot laugh at him along with the viewer, for he is ruined and is in the hands of Tartuffe. His situation is almost tragic.

Moliere extremely subtly substantiates the hyperbolic nature of Orgon's passion. She causes everyone's surprise and Dorina's ridicule. On the other hand, in the comedy there is a character whose passion for Tartuffe has acquired an even more exaggerated character. This is Madame Pernelle. The scene when Madame Pernelle tries to refute Tartuffe's red tape, which Orgon himself witnessed, is not only an amusing parody of Orgon's behavior, but also a way to give his delusion an even more natural character. It turns out that Orgon’s delusion is not yet the limit. If Orgon at the end of the play nevertheless acquires a sensible view of the world after Tartuffe is exposed, then his mother, old woman Pernelle, a stupidly pious supporter of inert patriarchal views, never saw Tartuffe’s true face.

The younger generation, represented in the comedy, which immediately discerned Tartuffe’s true face, is united by the maid Dorina, who has long and faithfully served in Orgon’s house and enjoys love and respect here. Her wisdom, common sense and insight help to find the most suitable means to combat the cunning rogue. She boldly attacks both the saint himself and all those who indulge him. Unable to find expressions and take into account circumstances, Dorina speaks freely and harshly, and in this spontaneity the rational nature of popular judgments is revealed. Just look at her ironic speech addressed to Marianne.

She is the first to guess Tartuffe’s intentions in relation to Elmira: “She has some power over the thoughts of the prude: he meekly listens to whatever she says, and even, perhaps, is sinlessly in love with her” (III, 1).

Together with Dorina, he also categorically exposes Tartuffe and Cleante:

And this unification, as it were, symbolizes the union of common sense with enlightened reason, acting together against hypocrisy. But neither Dorina nor Cleante manages to finally expose Tartuffe - his methods of fraud are too cunning and his circle of influence is too wide. The king himself exposes Tartuffe. With this happy ending, Moliere seemed to be calling on the king to punish the hypocrites and reassuring himself and others that justice would still triumph over the lies reigning in the world. This external intervention is not connected with the course of the play, it is completely unexpected, but at the same time it is not caused by censorship considerations. This reflects Moliere's opinion about a just king, who is “the enemy of all deceit.” The king's intervention frees Orgon from the power of the hypocrite, provides a comedic resolution to the conflict, and helps the play remain a comedy.

An important theme associated with the image of Tartuffe is the contradiction between appearance and essence, face and the mask thrown over oneself. The contradiction between face and mask is a central problem in 17th century literature. The “theatrical metaphor” (life-theater) runs through all literature. The mask falls only in the face of death. People living in society try to appear different from who they really are. In general, this is a universal human problem, but it also has a social connotation - the laws of society do not coincide with the aspirations of human nature (La Rochefoucauld wrote about this). Moliere interprets this problem as a social one (he considers hypocrisy the most dangerous vice). Orgon believes in appearance, takes the mask, the guise of Tartuffe for a face. Throughout the comedy, Tartuffe's mask and face are torn off. Tartuffe constantly covers up his unclean earthly aspirations with ideal motives, covers up his secret sins with a handsome appearance. The eccentric hero splits into two characters: T. is a hypocrite, O. is gullible. They depend on each other in direct proportion: the more one lies, the more the other believes. 2 mental images of T.: one in O.’s consciousness, the other in the consciousness of the others.

The development of action is internally subordinated to the multiplication of contrasts, because exposure occurs through the discrepancy between appearance and essence.

The highest point of T.'s triumph is the beginning of the 4th act, Clean's conversation with T. From here - down.

Internal symmetry. Scene on stage. Farcical nature of the scene (due to O.’s character)

A box with letters is incriminating evidence. Technique of gradual development of motive (from action to action).

The final contrast between face and mask: informer/loyal subject. Prison motive: prison is T’s last word.

A special category of comedy characters are lovers. In Moliere they play a relatively minor role. They are overshadowed by the image of the fooled Orgon and the hypocritical Tartuffe. One might even say that Moliere's images of lovers are a kind of tribute to tradition. In love with Moliere's comedies, it makes no difference whether he comes from a noble or bourgeois family, a decent person, polite, well-mannered and courteous, ardent in love.

However, in Moliere's comedies there are moments when the images of lovers acquire vitality and realistic concreteness. This happens during quarrels, scenes of suspicion and jealousy. In Tartuffe, Moliere is condescending towards the love of young people, understands the naturalness and legitimacy of their passion. But lovers indulge too much in their passions and therefore turn out to be funny. The ardor, sudden suspicions, carelessness and indiscretion of lovers transfer them into the comic sphere, that is, into the sphere where Moliere feels like a master.

The image and ideal of the sage-reasoner was formulated in French literature of the Renaissance. In Tartuffe, Cleanthes plays the role of such a sage to some extent. Moliere, in his person, defends the point of view of conformity, common sense and the golden mean:

How? A vain thought about popular opinion

Can you be prevented from doing a noble act?

No, we will do what heaven tells us,

And conscience will always provide us with a reliable shield.

The sage-reasoner in Tartuffe is still a secondary and accompanying figure who does not determine the development of the action and the course of the play. Orgon became convinced of Tartuffe’s hypocrisy not under the influence of Cleanthe’s persuasion, but through a trick that revealed to him the true appearance of the hypocrite. Embodying Moliere's positive morality, the sage is still a pale and conventional figure.

Don Juan.

World art knows more than a hundred versions of the image of Don Juan. but the coolest one is from Moliere. The comedy has two heroes - Don Juan and his servant Sganarelle. in the comedy, Sganarelle is a servant-philosopher, a bearer of folk wisdom, common sense, and a sober attitude towards things. The image of Don Juan is contradictory; he combines good and bad qualities. He is flighty, woman-loving, he considers all women to be beautiful and wants to fuck everyone. He explains this with his love of beauty. Moreover, his rubber cracked so much that Sganarelle shut up with his reproaches for the meanness of Comrade. Juan and frequent marriages. Don Juan struck a chord with Dona Elvira, and she was terribly in love with him. He told her about his love, but then gave her a dynamo in full. She overtakes him when he is already in the heat of new love. In short, she gives him p#$%^lei. Moliere shows the scene of the seduction of the peasant woman Charlotte. Don Juan shows neither arrogance nor rudeness towards a girl from the people. He likes her, just as a minute before he liked another peasant girl, Maturina (this is not a surname, but a first name). He behaves more freely with the peasant woman, but there is no hint of disrespect. However, Don Juan is not alien to class morality and considers himself entitled to punch the peasant Pero in the face, even though he saved his life. Don Juan is brave, and bravery is always noble. True, the person he saved accidentally turned out to be the brother of the seduced Elvira, and the second brother wants to screw him.

The philosophical culmination of the comedy is the religious dispute between Don Juan and Sganarelle. Don Juan does not believe in God, or the devil, or even the “gray monk.” Sganarelle is the defender of the religious point of view in the comedy.

scene with the beggar: the beggar prays every day for the health of the people who give to him, but heaven does not send him gifts. Don Juan offers a beggar a piece of gold so that he can blaspheme. Out of his most humane feelings, Sganarelle persuades him to blaspheme. He refuses, and Don Juan gives him a gold one “out of love for people.”

The conflict between Don Juan and the commander is neither justified nor understandable, and yet it is the stone image of the commander that punishes Don Juan. In the first four acts, Don Juan is bold and daring. but something happened to him and he was reborn. the father receives the repentant prodigal son in tears. Sganarelle is delighted. but his degeneration is of a different kind: hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, he declares. He declared himself repentant. and Don Juan became a saint. He has become unrecognizable, and now he is truly vile. he has become a truly negative person and can and should be punished. a stone guest appears. Thunder and lightning strike Don Juan, the earth opens up and swallows the great sinner. Only Sganarelle is not satisfied with the death of Don Juan, because his salary was cut off.

Misanthrope.

This is one of Moliere's most profound comedies. The main character of the tragedy, Alceste, is more tragic than funny. begins with an argument between two friends. the subject of the dispute is the main problem of the play. Before us are two different solutions to the problem - how to treat people, very perfect creatures. Alceste rejects all tolerance for shortcomings. In short, the loaf crumbles for everyone and everything. For him everything is g..o. His sidekick Filint counts differently - in a column. he does not want to hate the whole world without exception, he has a philosophy of patience with human weaknesses. Moliere called Alceste a misanthrope, but his misanthropy is nothing more than a mournful, fanatical humanism. in reality, he loves people, wants to see them kind, honest, truthful (red-haired, honest, in love). but they all, the bastards, turn out to be flawed. Therefore, Alceste tries to deceive everyone and leave the human world. Here Filint is normal, his humanism is soft and fluffy. the author did not seek to discredit Alceste; he clearly liked him. But Moliere is not on the side of Alceste, he shows his defeat. Alceste demands great strength from people and does not forgive weaknesses, but he himself shows them at the first encounter with life. Alceste fell in love with Celimene, and although she has many shortcomings, he cannot help but love her. he demands loyalty, sincerity and truthfulness from her, he annoyed her with his doubts, she got tired of proving her skill to him and sent him away on a light boat, saying that she did not love her. Alceste immediately asks her to at least try to be faithful, he is ready to believe everything, he agrees that passion dominates people. In order to reveal Alceste’s misanthropy, Moliere confronts him with real evil. but with minor weaknesses, not so significant as to sharply condemn all of humanity because of them.

a scene with a rogue sonnet by a certain Orontes: the Philint remained silent, Alcestes crap from head to toe.

Selimene sends Alceste out with his voluntary loneliness and exile, he renounces love and happiness. This is the sad ending of Alceste’s peculiar quixoticism. Filint, who is opposed to him, finds happiness. Filint jerked off to Eliante for a long time and took a steam bath, knowing that she was jerking off to Alceste. But he treated his opponent normally. Eliante was convinced that Alceste would never get hard on her and gave himself up to wife of Filintu.F. happy and only wants to return the voluntary fugitive to society.

26. “The Poetic Art” of Boileau. Strict guardian of classicist traditions .

Shlyakova Oksana Vasilievna
Job title: teacher of Russian language and literature
Educational institution: MBOU Secondary School No. 1
Locality: village Orlovsky, Rostov region
Name of material: methodological development
Subject: Literature lesson in 9th grade "J.B. Moliere "Tartuffe". The skill and innovation of Moliere. The topicality and relevance of comedy."
Publication date: 20.02.2016
Chapter: secondary education

Literature lesson notes (9th grade)

Lesson topic
:
J.B. Moliere "Tartuffe". Molière's mastery and innovation. Topicality and

relevance of comedy.

The purpose of the lesson
: creation of a figurative-emotional pedagogical situation in a literature lesson to achieve the following goals: educational - to introduce the content of the comedy J-B. Moliere's “Tartuffe”, to determine what constitutes the skill of Moliere the comedian, what traditions of classicism the author adheres to, and also what his innovation consists of. educational - to create conditions for self-development and self-realization of students in the process of cooperation in groups, to instill a desire to join world culture, to bring to consciousness the idea that culture does not exist without traditions. developmental – to develop the ability to analyze literary works, independently formulate and cogently present one’s point of view.
Lesson type
: lesson in learning new material
Equipment
: texts of J.B. Molière’s comedy “Tartuffe”, multimedia installation for demonstrating slides on the topic of the lesson and student presentations, illustrations for the work.
Lesson content
I.
Organizational, motivational stages
:
1.Greeting.

2.Creation of a figurative-emotional pedagogical situation
(during the entire lesson). The board shows slides depicting scenes from theatrical productions, accompanied by classical music.
3.Teacher's word
France...Mid 17th century...The plays of Jean Baptiste Moliere are performed on the theater stage with stunning success. His comedies are so popular that the King of France himself, Louis XIV, invites the Moliere Theater to show his art at court and becomes a devoted admirer of the work of this talented playwright. Moliere is a unique genius in the history of world culture. He was a man of the theater in the full sense of the word. Moliere was the creator and director of the best acting troupe of his era, its leading actor and one of the best comic actors in the entire history of the theater, director, innovator and reformer of the theater. However, today he is perceived primarily as a talented playwright.
4. Goal setting
Today in the lesson we will try to find out what is the skill and innovation of Moliere the playwright using the example of his famous comedy “Tartuffe” and think about whether his comedy can be considered relevant and topical today. Write down in your notebooks the topic of the lesson “J.B. Moliere "Tartuffe". Molière's mastery and innovation. Topicality and relevance of comedy."
II.Work on new material.

1. Presentation of an individual student project “Creativity of J.B. Molière”
I think you will be interested, first of all, to learn some facts from the biography and work of Jean Baptiste Moliere. Tanya Zvonareva will tell us about this, who, having received an individual task, prepared a presentation. Slide demonstration accompanied by a student's story. Students record in notebooks the main stages of the playwright’s work.
- Thank you Tatiana. Your work deserves an “excellent” rating. I would just like to add something:
2. Teacher's word
. Moliere is the stage name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin, the son of a wealthy Parisian bourgeois who received an excellent classical education. He was seized by a passion for theater early on, and he organized his first troupe at the age of 21. It was the 4th theater in Paris, but soon went bankrupt. Moliere leaves Paris for 12 long years for the life of a traveling actor. To replenish the repertoire of his troupe, Moliere begins to write plays. Moliere is a born comedian; all the plays that came from his pen belong to the genre of comedy: entertaining comedies, sitcoms, comedies of manners, comedies-ballets, “high” - classic comedies. An example of “high” comedy can be “Tartuffe, or the Deceiver,” which you read for today’s lesson. This comedy was the hardest for Moliere and at the same time brought him the greatest success during his lifetime.
3.Work on the work

A)
- Let's remember
comedy content
. Briefly convey
plot…
- Of course, while reading a comedy you. Each in their own way imagined its characters, scenes from the play.
b)
Try now to pick from the text
words that fit these scenes.

Vocabulary work
- Which
vices
is the author making fun of it? (hypocrisy and hypocrisy)
Hypocrisy
- behavior that covers up insincerity and maliciousness with feigned sincerity and virtue.
Hypocrisy
- behavior typical of hypocrites. A prude is a hypocrite hiding behind virtue and piety.
G) -
How about this comedy?
great people responded
: A.S. Pushkin: “The immortal “Tartuffe” is the fruit of the strongest tension of comic genius... High comedy is not based solely on laughter, but on the development of characters - and, quite often, it comes close to tragedy.” V.G. Belinsky: “...The creator of Tartuffe cannot be forgotten! Add to this the poetic richness of the spoken language..., remember that many expressions and poems from comedy have turned into proverbs, - and you will understand the grateful enthusiasm of the French for Moliere!..” - Do you agree with these statements? - Let's try to prove their validity by working in groups. Now we will discuss what issues each group will consider, and then you will choose the group in which you think the work will be interesting for you. Please note that A.S. Pushkin calls comedy “high” and even compares it with tragedy. Is there a contradiction in this statement?
e) Preparatory stage: updating the knowledge necessary for answers.
Let's speculate. So, the comedy was written in the mid-17th century. What literary movement was dominant in Europe at this time? (classicism) Remember the main features of this artistic method...
Classicism
- a literary movement, the main property of which is adherence to a certain system of rules, mandatory for each author; turning to antiquity as a classic and ideal model. Main features of classicism 1. Cult of reason; the work is intended to instruct the viewer or reader. 2. Strict hierarchy of genres. High Low tragedy Social life and historical events are depicted; act heroes, generals, monarchs comedy Depicts the everyday life of ordinary people ode fable epic satire 3. Human characters are depicted straightforwardly, only one character trait is emphasized, positive and negative heroes are contrasted. 4. The work contains a hero-reasoner, a character who pronounces a moral lesson for the viewer; the author himself speaks through the mouth of the reasoner.. 5. The classicist rule of three unities: the unity of time, place and action. A play usually has 5 acts. - So,
task to the first group: “Consider the comedy “Tartuffe” from the point of view of compliance

or non-compliance with these rules of classicism"
(questions are displayed on the board)
- A.S. Pushkin, using words
"high comedy" most likely meant innovation

Moliere in the comedy genre.

-What is innovation in literature?
? (continuation of tradition, going beyond its scope). - The task is not easy
, to the second group: “Why A.S. Pushkin calls the play “Tartuffe”

"high comedy"? What was Moliere’s innovation as a comedian?”
You can look for the answer to this question in the preface that Moliere wrote to his comedy. - And finally,
task to the third group: “Find expressions in the text of the comedy “Tartuffe”,

which can be considered aphorisms"
-What is an “aphorism”? (short expressive saying)
f) Work in groups. 3rd group – at the computer
. Answers to questions and tasks...
1 group. “Consider the comedy “Tartuffe” from the point of view of conformity or inconsistency

these rules of classicism"
The comedy “Tartuffe” corresponds to the rules of classicism, because: Comedy is a low genre that contains colloquial speech. For example, in this comedy, common vocabulary is often found: “Fool”, “not a family, but a madhouse.” “Tartuffe” consists of five acts, all actions take place in one day in one place, in Orgon’s house - all this is a characteristic feature of classicism. The theme of the comedy is the life of ordinary people, not heroes and kings. The hero of Tartuffe is the bourgeois Orgon and his family. The purpose of comedy is to make fun of the shortcomings that prevent a person from being perfect. This comedy ridicules such vices as hypocrisy and hypocrisy. The characters are not complex; one feature is emphasized in Tartuffe - hypocrisy. Cleante calls Tartuffe a “slippery snake”; he comes out of any situation “scary”, taking on the appearance of a saint and ranting about the will of God. His hypocrisy is the source of his profit. Thanks to false sermons, he subjugated the good-natured and trusting Orgon to his will. Whatever position Tartuffe finds himself in, he behaves only like a hypocrite. Confessing his love to Elmira, he is not averse to marrying Marianne; He prays to God in church, attracting everyone's attention: Sometimes lamentations suddenly flew out of his mouth, Then he raised his hands to heaven in tears, And then he lay down for a long time, kissing the ashes. And is this true humility if “he later brought repentance to heaven for giving it away without a feeling of compassion.” Only one quality is emphasized in the hero - this is also a feature of classicism. Moliere's comedy "Tartuffe" is a typical classic work.
2nd group. “Why does A.S. Pushkin call the play “Tartuffe” “high comedy”? What

was the innovation of Molière the comedian?”
A.S. Pushkin calls Molière’s comedy “high,” because by exposing the deceiver Tartuffe, it is clear that the author is exposing the hypocrisy and hypocrisy of not just one person, but social vices, vices that have afflicted society. It is not for nothing that Tartuffe is not alone in the comedy: his servant Laurent, the bailiff Loyal, and the old woman - Orgon's mother, Madame Pernelle - are hypocritical. They all cover up their actions with pious speeches and vigilantly monitor the behavior of others. And it even becomes a little sad when you realize how many such people there can be around. Teacher's addition to the answer of the 2nd group: - Indeed, Moliere complies with the laws of classicism, as the 1st group proved, but, as you know, the schemes are not applicable to great works. The playwright, observing the traditions of classicism, takes comedy (low genre) to another level. The guys very subtly noticed that comedy causes not only laughter, but also sad feelings. This is where Moliere's innovation lies - in his work, comedy ceased to be a genre designed to make the audience laugh; he introduced ideological content and social relevance to comedy.
Moliere himself, reflecting on his innovation in the comedy genre, wrote: (highlight on the board): “I find that it is much easier to talk about high feelings, to fight fortune in poetry, to blame fate, to curse the gods, than to take a closer look at the funny features in a person and show the vices of society on stage in a way that is entertaining... When you portray ordinary people, you have to write from life. Portraits should be similar, and if people of your time are not recognized in them, then you have not achieved your goal... Making decent people laugh is not an easy task...” Moliere, thus raising comedy to the level of tragedy, says that the task of a comedian is more difficult than the task of the author tragedies.
Group 3 “Find expressions in the text of the comedy “Tartuffe” that can be considered

aphorisms"

G) Heuristic questions
- You already know that Moliere was a wonderful actor, in each of his plays there was a role that he played himself, and the character of this character is always the most ambiguous in the play. This is also Moliere's innovation.
- Who do you think he played in the comedy “Tartuffe”?
(In Tartuffe he played Orgon)
-Why?
(This particular image is not so much comical as tragic. After all, Tartuffe was able to completely subjugate the will of the owner of the house, Orgon, an adult, successful in business, a man, the father of a family, who is ready to break with everyone who dares to tell him the truth about Tartuffe, even expels from his son's house.)
- Why did Orgon allow himself to be deceived like that?
(He believed in the piety and “holiness” of Tartuffe, sees in him his spiritual mentor, because Tartuffe is a subtle psychologist, he prevents the attempts of Orgon’s relatives to expose him. The reason is the inertia of Orgon’s consciousness, brought up in submission to authorities. Orgon in the spiritual sense, lack of self-sufficiency. He lacks his own inner content, which he tries to compensate for with faith in the goodness and infallibility of Tartuffe. Without gullible orgones, there are no deceiving Tartuffes.)
- Do you think the comedy “Tartuffe” can be considered relevant and topical?

of interest today? Why?
- Indeed, many of you liked the comedy and some guys expressed a desire to try their hand at acting. (Students show a skit).
III. Assessment.Result
(For the presentation of “Moliere TV”, for the poster, for work in groups - the most active students, giving reasoned, complete answers). Lesson summary: - What did you like about the lesson? -What is Moliere’s skill as a comedian? His innovation?
Homework:
write a petition to the king asking for permission to stage a comedy (on behalf of a nobleman of the 17th century)