Book Description

Excerpt from The Works of Moliere, Vol. 2 of 6 The comedy of the Romantic Ladies deserves to be marked among the best of Moliere's performances, although it is not one of the best with regard to the plot. He ventured, in this piece, to forsake the common path of complicated intrigues, to lead us in a comic road, first known by him. The main end of a good comedy appeared to him to be, to criticise the follies and manners which were peculiar to his time. The passion for wit, or rather the abuse they made of it, was a kind of contagious malady then in fashion. The forced bombast style in romances, which the woman admired for the very reasons which have since discredited those works, had got into conversation: In a word, both the quality and common people were affected; and at this conjuncture did the comedy of the Romantic Ladies make its appearance; never was greater success known; the prodigious number of spectators made the company demand double prices at the second representation of it, and the piece run for four months together: It produced a general reformation, people saw themselves in it, laughed, and gave the truest applause to it by forsaking their folly. Mr. Menage, who assisted at the first representation, said to Chapelaine, "You and I both approved of all these follies which have been now so excellently and so sensibly criticized; believe me, we must burn what we have admired, and admire what we have burnt." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.