The Miser and The Would-Be Gentleman

Summary

Molière wrote these two prose comedies two years apart for the same troupe, and they make a natural pair: one father is ruined by love of money, the other by love of rank, and in both the children's marriages are held hostage to a parent's obsession. The Miser (L'Avare, 1668) takes its central device, a hoarded pot of gold, from Plautus's Aulularia. Harpagon, a rich Parisian widower, has buried ten thousand crowns in his garden and suspects everyone of wanting them. He plans to marry the poor young Marianne himself, to give his son Cléante to a rich widow, and to marry his daughter Élise to the elderly Anselme because Anselme will take her 'without dowry', a phrase Harpagon repeats as if it settled every objection. Élise is secretly engaged to Valère, who has entered the house as steward and flatters Harpagon's stinginess to stay near her; Cléante, short of money, tries to borrow at ruinous interest and discovers that the usurer is his own father. When Cléante's servant La Flèche digs up the money box, Harpagon's soliloquy of loss is one of the great comic speeches of the stage. A recognition scene reveals that Valère and Marianne are the lost children of Anselme, who pays for both weddings. Harpagon consents on condition that he gets his casket back and a new suit for the wedding. The Would-Be Gentleman (Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, 1670), translated here as The Middle Class Gentleman, is a comedy-ballet made for Louis XIV at Chambord with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Monsieur Jourdain, a wealthy cloth merchant's son, hires masters of music, dancing, fencing and philosophy, orders a ridiculous suit, and is thrilled to learn that he has been speaking prose for more than forty years. He lends money to the impoverished Count Dorante, who uses Jourdain's gifts to court the Marquise Dorimène for himself. Madame Jourdain and the maid Nicole mock his pretensions. When Cléonte, an honest suitor, refuses to pass himself off as a gentleman, Jourdain rejects him; Cléonte's valet Covielle then disguises his master as the son of the Grand Turk, and Jourdain, made a 'Mamamouchi' in a burlesque Turkish ceremony, happily gives his daughter Lucile away. Both plays laugh at disordered love: Harpagon's makes him cruel, Jourdain's makes him gullible. Neither man reforms, and the young lovers are freed by contrivance rather than by any change of heart. Students can read them as studies in how a single passion, left unchecked, distorts a household, and as examples of how classical comedy corrects by ridicule. The library attaches Charles Heron Wall's translation of The Miser and Philip Dwight Jones's translation of The Middle Class Gentleman. Both are suitable for high school; the Turkish ceremony uses mock-Italian and Ottoman stereotypes of its time that are worth explaining in class.

Plot or Argument

• The Miser, Act I: a household of secrets

  Élise and Valère confess their love; Cléante tells Élise he loves Marianne. Harpagon searches La Flèche for stolen goods, frets about his buried crowns, and announces three marriages: himself to Marianne, Cléante to a widow, Élise to Anselme 'without dowry'. Valère pretends to agree with him.

• The Miser, Act II: the borrower meets the lender

  Cléante, through a broker, seeks a loan whose terms include usurious interest and a heap of worthless goods; the lender turns out to be Harpagon. Frosine, a matchmaker, flatters Harpagon that Marianne prefers old men, but cannot get a penny from him.

• The Miser, Act III: the stingy supper

  Harpagon orders a dinner for Marianne on almost nothing; Master Jacques, cook and coachman, protests and is beaten. Marianne arrives and is dismayed to recognise Cléante; Cléante gives her his father's diamond ring in his father's name.

• The Miser, Act IV: rivals and the theft

  Harpagon tricks Cléante into confessing his love for Marianne and curses him. Master Jacques 'reconciles' them by telling each that the other has given way. La Flèche brings Cléante the stolen money box, and Harpagon rushes in crying thieves and murder.

• The Miser, Act V: recognitions

  A police officer questions the household; Master Jacques accuses Valère out of spite. Valère, thinking Harpagon means Élise, confesses to the 'theft' of his treasure. Anselme recognises Valère and Marianne as his children, lost in a shipwreck; Cléante returns the casket in exchange for Marianne.

• The Would-Be Gentleman, Acts One and Two: the masters

  The music and dancing masters, who despise Jourdain but want his money, show off a serenade and a minuet. The fencing master quarrels with them; the philosophy master, after joining the brawl, teaches Jourdain the vowels and the difference between prose and verse. A tailor dresses him in a suit with the flowers upside down, and his apprentices flatter him into tipping them.

• The Would-Be Gentleman, Act Three: wife, maid and suitor

  Madame Jourdain and Nicole laugh at him; Dorante borrows more money and brings Jourdain's diamond to Dorimène as his own gift. Cléonte and Lucile quarrel and make up with their servants. Cléonte refuses to call himself a gentleman, and Jourdain refuses him his daughter.

• The Would-Be Gentleman, Acts Four and Five: the Grand Turk

  Jourdain's dinner for Dorimène is broken up by his wife. Covielle, in disguise, announces that the son of the Grand Turk wants Lucile, and Cléonte appears as the prince. Jourdain is ennobled as a Mamamouchi in a sung ceremony; Lucile and Madame Jourdain are let into the joke, and three marriages are arranged, with a closing ballet.

Characters

• Harpagon, the miser

  A rich widower who starves his horses and servants, lends at usurious rates, and loves his buried money box more than his children.

• Cléante, Harpagon's son

  A young man who dresses well on borrowed and gambled money and loves Marianne; his quarrel with his father turns bitter.

• Élise and Valère, secret lovers

  Harpagon's daughter and the young man who saved her from drowning and serves as steward to stay near her, flattering Harpagon at every turn.

• Marianne, Harpagon's intended bride

  A poor, virtuous girl caring for a sick mother, loved by both father and son.

• Master Jacques, cook and coachman

  Harpagon's servant of two offices, who changes coats with his roles and tells the truth only when it gets him beaten.

• Monsieur Jourdain, the would-be gentleman

  A wealthy bourgeois of Paris who believes rank can be bought with lessons, clothes and loans to nobles.

• Madame Jourdain and Nicole, wife and maid

  Plain-spoken women who laugh at Jourdain's follies and defend common sense and Lucile's happiness.

• Dorante, count

  A charming, indebted noble who exploits Jourdain's vanity to court Dorimène at his expense.

• Cléonte and Covielle, suitor and valet

  Lucile's honest lover, who will not claim a false title, and the inventive servant who devises the Turkish masquerade.

Lessons

• Without dowry: when one passion rules a house

  Harpagon answers every objection to Élise's marriage with the words 'without dowry', and Valère, playing along, claims the phrase 'compensates for want of beauty, youth, birth, honour, wisdom, and probity.' The joke shows avarice as a vice that narrows judgment until a single consideration replaces every other good. Scripture calls the love of money a root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10), and Molière shows the root branching out into cruelty to children, servants and even horses.

  • List the ways Harpagon's avarice harms each member of his household. Which harm is worst?
  • Why is it funny when Valère praises 'without dowry'? What does Valère's flattery cost him morally?
  • Harpagon never repents. Does comedy need its villain to change?

• Fathers and sons as rival creditors

  In Act II Cléante, desperate for money, discovers that the anonymous usurer offering him a loan at extortionate terms is his own father; in Act IV the two are rivals for the same woman. Molière makes the family a market, where the father lends to his son at interest and the son wishes his father dead. The scenes invite reflection on the fifth commandment from both directions: what children owe parents, and what fathers owe their children (Ephesians 6:1-4).

  • Is Cléante right to resent his father? Is anything in his own conduct blameworthy?
  • How does the usury scene make Harpagon's sin visible in a way a speech could not?
  • Compare the ending, where Anselme pays for everything, with what the household actually needed.

• Speaking prose without knowing it

  Monsieur Jourdain's delight at learning that 'For more than forty years I have been speaking prose' is the best-known moment in the play. The philosophy master's lesson on the vowels, and the quarrel of the masters over whose art is most necessary, satirise education bought as a badge rather than pursued for wisdom. The scene is also gentle: Jourdain's appetite to learn is real, and the masters, not the pupil, are the cynics. It is a good occasion to ask what the liberal arts are for.

  • Each master claims his art is the foundation of the others. Which, if any, has a case?
  • What does Jourdain want from learning? How does that differ from what a student should want?
  • Is the philosophy master, who preaches calm and then joins the brawl, a fair portrait of philosophers?

• Cléonte's honesty and the stolen title

  Asked whether he is a gentleman, Cléonte refuses to present himself 'with a stolen title', calling it cowardice to disguise 'what Heaven made us at birth.' Jourdain rejects him for it, and the plot then rewards him only through a masquerade far more false than any title. Molière thus sets a principled refusal of imposture against a comic world where imposture wins. Students can weigh the honour that comes from truthful speech against the honour of rank.

  • Summarise Cléonte's reasons. Do you find them convincing?
  • Is the Turkish trick a betrayal of the principle Cléonte has just stated?
  • Madame Jourdain asks whether the Jourdains are 'of the line of St. Louis'. What is her view of rank, and is it wiser than her husband's?

Context

Molière's troupe performed at the Palais-Royal theatre in Paris under the patronage of Louis XIV. The 1660s brought him both royal favour and controversy, especially over Tartuffe (banned from 1664 to 1669). The Miser belongs to that period of struggle; The Would-Be Gentleman was a court commission. Both reflect a Paris in which wealthy merchant families bought offices, lent to an indebted nobility, and sought to marry upward, while lending at interest remained morally suspect.

Composition

The Miser was first performed at the Palais-Royal on 9 September 1668; its main source is Plautus's Aulularia, with borrowings from Italian comedy. The Would-Be Gentleman, a comedy-ballet with music by Lully, was performed for the king at Chambord in October 1670 and in Paris at the Palais-Royal on 23 November 1670, as the translation's title page records. The Turkish ceremony is usually connected with the visit of the Ottoman envoy Süleyman Aga to the French court in 1669, which the king wished to see mocked. Molière himself played Harpagon and Jourdain.

Reception

The Miser was coolly received at first but became one of the most performed plays of the Comédie-Française repertory, and 'Harpagon' entered French as a common noun for a miser. The Would-Be Gentleman pleased the court and has kept its place partly through Lully's music. Both were translated and adapted into English from the late seventeenth century on, notably by Henry Fielding (The Miser, 1733).

Comparisons

• The Misanthrope and Other Plays

  The Misanthrope (1666), written two years before The Miser, is Molière's most serious comedy of character: Alceste's passion for sincerity isolates him as Harpagon's passion for money does. But Alceste's fault is an excess of a virtue, while Harpagon's and Jourdain's are plain vices, so the later plays are broader and more farcical.

• A Christmas Carol

  Scrooge and Harpagon are the two great misers of the stage and page, but Dickens's 1843 story turns on conversion, while Molière's Harpagon ends exactly as he began, embracing his casket. Comparing them shows the difference between a Christian redemption narrative and classical comedy, which corrects the audience rather than the character.

Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine is incidental in these two plays, unlike Molière's doctor comedies (The Doctor in Spite of Himself, The Imaginary Invalid). Valère's advice to Élise to feign an illness, because a doctor will always find a cause for any complaint, is an early sketch of Molière's lifelong satire of physicians. Harpagon's soliloquy after the theft, in which he grabs his own arm and says his mind is wandering, is comic exaggeration of a single ruling passion; reading it as a clinical obsession is an interpretation, not Molière's framing. Valère's 'precepts of health' against overeating parody dietetic advice used as cover for stinginess.

• The Miser, Act I, Scene VIII

  Valère tells Élise to feign an illness to delay the marriage, mocking doctors who can explain any disease a patient claims.

  Physicians Doctors Quackery Charlatans
• The Miser, Act III, Scene V

  Valère cites the doctors and 'the precepts of health' against excess at table to justify Harpagon's meagre supper.

  Starvation Nutrition
• The Miser, Act IV, Scene VII

  Harpagon's frenzied soliloquy after the theft, in which he suspects everyone, seizes his own arm, and says he is dying for want of his money.

  Obsession Monomania

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write a scene, a year after the play, in which Cléante and Marianne visit Harpagon and ask him to lend money to Marianne's sick mother.

• Essay

  Harpagon loves money and Jourdain loves rank. Write an essay arguing which passion does more damage to a family, using scenes from both plays.

• Classroom

  Stage the philosophy lesson (Act Two, Scene IV) with one student as Jourdain and one as the master, then rewrite it with a modern subject Jourdain wants to learn for show.

• Fiction

  Tell the story of the Turkish ceremony from Nicole's point of view, as a letter to her sister in the village.

Further Reading

• Aulularia (The Pot of Gold), Plautus

  The Roman comedy of a miser and his buried pot, Molière's main source for The Miser.

• The Imaginary Invalid, Molière

  Molière's last play (1673), his fullest satire of physicians and hypochondria.

• Tartuffe, Molière

  Another father whose ruling passion, here for a false devotion, puts his daughter's marriage at risk.

• The Miser, Henry Fielding

  Fielding's 1733 English adaptation for the London stage.