Moliere (1622-73) combined all the traditional elements of comedy--wit, slapstick, spectacle and satire--with a deep understanding of character to create richly sophisticated dramas which have always delighted audiences. Most are built around dangerously deluded and obsessive heroes such as The Would-Be Gentleman and The Misanthrope who threaten to blight the lives of those around them. Such Foolish Affected Ladies and Those Learned Ladies (both newly translated for this edition) expose the extravagant, fashionable fads and snobbery of the Parisian smart set, while the story of the falsely...
Moliere (1622-73) combined all the traditional elements of comedy--wit, slapstick, spectacle and satire--with a deep understanding of character to cre...
This unique volume brings together four of Moliere's greatest verse comedies covering the best years of his prolific writing career. Actor, director, and playwright, Moliere (1622-73) was one of the finest and most influential French dramatists, adept at portraying human foibles and puncturing pomposity. The School for Wives was his first great success; Tartuffe, condemned and banned for five years, his most controversial play. The Misanthrope is his acknowledged masterpiece, and The Clever Women his last, and perhaps best-constructed, verse piece. In addition this collection includes a...
This unique volume brings together four of Moliere's greatest verse comedies covering the best years of his prolific writing career. Actor, director, ...
A new sparkling and witty version by Roger McGough of Moli?re's comedy published as a programme text to accompany the premiere at the Liverpool Everyman on 9 May 2008.
Tartuffe is a beacon of piety and in the home of wealthy merchant Orgon he has his feet firmly under the table. But all is not as it seems and as Orgon becomes more enraptured with his new companion the whole city is chattering. Is he a friend, a fraud, a miracle or a hypocrite? The family smell a rat and amidst the frills and frivolity of seventeenth century society they hatch a cunning plan to outwit the wily...
A new sparkling and witty version by Roger McGough of Moli?re's comedy published as a programme text to accompany the premiere at the Liverpool Eve...
Affection I can endure, affectation I abhor. Empty phrases, meaningless gestures of faked good-will. These affable dispensers of embraces make me ill.
Disgusted with French society where powdered fops gossip in code and bejewelled coquettes whisper behind fans, poet Alceste embarks on a one-man crusade against fakery, frippery and forked tongues. But could the woman he adores be the worst culprit of them all? And in this rarefied world will his revolution prove merely revolting?
Considered by many to be Moliere's best work, The...
Affection I can endure, affectation I abhor. Empty phrases, meaningless gestures of faked good-will. These affab...
Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Alceste, the misanthrope, hates all mankind, and despairs of its hypocrisy and falseness. He believes that the world could be perfected if people were more honest with each other. But when his honesty starts to make him enemies, and the target of malicious gossips, it is his world and his life which suffer. He alienates his love, Celimene, and reproaches her coquettish, flirty ways; he is summoned before the court of marshals to defend a candid opinion about Oronte's terrible poetry - a case which he knows he will lose despite...
Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Alceste, the misanthrope, hates all mankind, and despairs of its hypocrisy and falsene...
"Moliere, undoubtedly one of the greatest writers of comedy in the history of theatre, won enormous success for The School for Wives (L'Ecole des Femmes) in Paris in 1662; yet this highly popular play, satirising ridiculous male attitudes to women, aroused as much hostility as critical acclaim. Arnolphe, a narrow-minded merchant hoping to marry his young ward, Agnes, is obsessed with the fear of being made a cuckold. But all his artful plans serve only to speed him towards the fate he is so desperate to avoid. Moliere himself first played the hapless merchant, and this believable character in...
"Moliere, undoubtedly one of the greatest writers of comedy in the history of theatre, won enormous success for The School for Wives (L'Ecole des Femm...
