Where Moliere Mocks Pretensions

Molieres Les Precieuses Ridicules by Molière
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

(Read in English translation)

This is a short play, so a short review:

This is pretty entertaining to read, both for informing myself about the writer and the times and for the play itself. It might be amusing to see it staged. I found it more comprehensible and relatable (in some ways) than I expected, which is good, since this is my first foray into Moliere's writing. Except for being translated, it didn't need a lot of notes for me to make sense of the story and feel like I had a handle on much of the context.

It's a comedy, and it's sorta funny. The "ridiculous young women" of the story are silly and shallow, and it's reasonable to laugh at their affectations, though I didn't care to see them made *too* much fun of. They're not evil; they just read novels.

For me, the most interesting thing about the play is the writer's absolute confidence that the audience would understand that the girls are ridiculous for being silly enough to be tricked by a couple of servants, dressed up in fancy clothes, pretending to be gentlemen. See? How stupid can you be to think an inferior, a common servant, even all dressed up, even mouthing fancy words, could actually be as good as one of the upper class? The supposed gentlemen they were liking so much, once revealed, were clearly far beneath them. What horror. What shame.

That's an attitude that survives in a few places (I see them on the interwebs), or is at least understood still in places where it held sway for so long, but it seems wildly exotic to folks raised outside Europe.

Of course, Moliere could be referring to himself and his troupe, who are commoners all dressed up speaking fancy words. They receive applause on the stage, but too often face the derision of the upper class in public. Maybe this was a bit of ironic protest.

I don't know. I'm not gonna ask anybody, either. That's cheating. Let's see what the next play suggests so I can start to puzzle it out for myself. It's Tartuffe for me, next in the queue.

If you read drama, sure, why not, give this one a try. If you already read this, tell me what you thought. You know, if you feel like it.

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