This year marks the 400th anniversary of Molière's birth, commemorated by the world, and France opened with two major events as early as January: one was to hold a special exhibition at the Palace of Versailles, and the other was to stage his masterpiece "Hypocrites" by the Comémidie de France on his birthday. At the same time, various programs of French radio and television stations continued, and the commemoration activities could be described as climaxing, forming a veritable "Year of Molière".
Among these events, "The Hypocrite", directed by Belgian director Van Hauf, is undoubtedly the most eye-catching. Van Hof is one of the biggest directors in Europe today, but this time the focus is more on the script, and Gein is not the familiar five-act comedy, but the first draft restored after years of "literary archaeology", that is, Molière's three-act laugh play in the newly completed Gardens of Versailles on May 12, 1664.
This "archaeology" was done by Professor F. Flastier of the University of Paris III. The premiere, which was made by Molière himself, was so successful that it was unfortunately banned the next day by order of King Louis XIV. What is even more regrettable is that this three-act original work has mysteriously disappeared. Therefore, this performance has extraordinary significance, it is not only a tribute to Molière, but also a reverence for the original work, but also a respect for history.
The first performance stepped on the thunder, all because of the male protagonist
The five-act play "The Hypocrite", which is familiar to contemporary audiences, is actually the third version of the playwright's several drafts, which began as a three-act play. In the eyes of ordinary people, three acts and five acts are also two acts apart. In fact, whether from the perspective of theatrical genre or from the perspective of script content or aesthetic effect, what is the difference between the two? You know, Molière's original intention was originally very simple, that is, to complete the duties of the "entertainment director" of the court, and more specifically, to add to the beautiful Palace of Versailles and create a small play for the scene. French drama in the 17th century also had a "chain of contempt": the superiority of a play lies first and foremost in form, for example: poetry is higher than prose drama, tragedy is higher than comedy, comedy is higher than laughter, five-act drama is higher than three-act play... Since "Hypocrites" is only a scene, and the creation time is tight, it is natural not to consider writing five acts. It is not that Molière does not have this ability, he has stood out with the five-act poetry drama "Mrs. School" two years ago, which not only improved the status of French comedy, but also made himself sit on the top spot of French comedy. However, Molière never imagined that such a scene-appropriate drama would suffer such a fate. To be sure, the three-act play will not be banned, and the laugh drama will certainly not. As for the subject matter, the consciousness of exposing hypocrisy and satirizing religion has long ceased to be taboo since the Renaissance. So, where did Molière step on the thunder?
The answer lies in the protagonist, the false believer Daldover, who bears the title of "Teacher of Conscience." As a realist dramatist, Molière has always started from "nature", that is, social reality, from "Mrs. School" to "Hypocrites", all of which are custom comedies that reflect life. At that time, in France, society was in a stage of transformation, on the one hand, the power of the aristocracy was getting weaker and weaker, on the other hand, the power of the bourgeoisie was rising, and in the midst of this and the other, there were many unscrupulous aristocratic swindlers like Dardouf. They are often like "called Huazi" who is "so poor that they have no shoes, and their clothes are worth six copper coins", and when they are cornered, they start crooked thoughts, taking advantage of the new rich's bulging pockets, empty hearts and urgent needs for comfort, and they have dressed themselves as "conscience teachers" to cheat on eating and drinking, and even cheating on money. In the face of such a realistic comedy, the vast majority of the audience will laugh it. No, even the devout "Sun King" Louis XIV did not object when he listened to the report beforehand, and even laughed during the premiere, who would have thought that the next day would change!
The king's change of face was really helpless, in fact, it was more of a necessity to obey the will of his mother. The reason why his mother refused to let go of this little drama was because of the pressure of the powerful "Holy Spirit" sect. When the believers discovered that Molière's villains were cloaked in the cloak of "conscience teachers," they were furious. What frightened them the most was that the deceiver in front of them not only wore the same clothes as them, but also spoke the same words as them, and it was impossible not to think of the members of the "Holy Spirit", so he did not hesitate to use all resources and means to pressure the king, and Louis XIV, who could not do without the support of the Church, had to admit it, leaving endless helplessness to Molière.
However, Molière did not give in. He has always been an indomitable man, the "dramatist" whose real name is Jean-Baptiste Pokran came from a wealthy family, and his father was a "royal attendant" interior decorator who served in the court, because he cherished this decent profession, so he had long planned to let the eldest son inherit the family business. Who expected that since childhood, Jean-Baptiste, who had watched too many plays with his grandfather near the New Bridge in Paris, did not agree, but generously gave the "title" to his brother, and he resolutely threw himself into the drama. At that time, this was a lowly profession that was not ashamed of society and more intolerable to religion. To make matters worse, his theatrical path began with a prison sentence, and soon he was thrown into prison for high debts! The father thought of his family affection and ransomed his son, and hoped that he could change his mind, who knew that he simply flew away with his beloved actress, and walked the world under the stage name "Molière"! After more than a decade of stumbling in the provinces, he finally returned to the capital after full wings and soon gained a foothold in the strong Paris. In just 15 years, Molière has left more than 30 comedies for mankind. However, fate doomed his life to be a life of fighting, and the "Battle of the Hypocrites" can be called the longest, most intense, and most historically significant fierce battle in his life!
If the court does not allow the performance, it will perform in other royal palaces; Paris can not perform, go to the provinces to perform; If you don't let the official performance, then read it to people in private. In short, Molière used every opportunity to win sympathy and expand his influence, always maintaining a high morale and strong creativity. While fighting against religion and kingship, he successively created masterpieces such as "Don Juan" and "Miserly Ghost", and constantly revised "Hypocrites" to constantly express his feelings to the king. On August 5, 1667, he saw the death of the empress dowager and the loss of the "Holy Spirit" and put the second edition of the script on the stage of the Palace Theater. In order to prevent the believers from causing trouble again, Molière not only changed the title and name of the play, but also transformed the "caller" into a "superior person"; The bigger change is in the image: short hair is changed to long hair, large felt hats become small felt hats, black dresses are added with lace, a sword is added to the waist, and the long cloak is no longer worn on the body... However, he underestimated the energy of the "Eucharist". The result of the performance was the same as three years ago, and the next day it was banned by both the President of the High Court of Justice and the Archbishop of Paris. Molière had to endure again while continuing to revise the script. In 1669, he finally waited for a turning point: the Pope issued an edict of "religious peace", and the "Eucharist" was the end of the crossbow. After the lifting of the ban, the three-act comedy broke through the cocoon and became a five-act drama that can be called a model of classical comedy. The show was an unprecedented success, with 28 consecutive performances and a record-breaking box office record!
To this day, this play is still the "House of Molière", the magic weapon of the French Comedie Academy. However, the cost of this struggle was not small, and Molière's body and mind were greatly damaged. Four years later, he coughed up blood during a performance of "The Heart Sick Man", and died quickly after being sent home, living only in his early fifties. Behind him, the church that hated him to the bone not only did not perform the last sacrament for him, but did not even give him the funeral and cemetery he deserved, but the family had to secretly bury him at night, which was the grace that Molière's wife had pleaded with the king.
Together, The Hypocrite and Hamlet constitute two of the greatest openings in the history of world theater
Today, the story of The Hypocrite is not complicated, telling that the run-down nobleman Darduffer dressed as a devout believer in order to make a living, waiting for an opportunity to perform in the church, and the rich merchant Orgon brought him home. Because of this man's great deception, the rich merchant and his mother soon bowed to him. In order to generalize this "conscience teacher", the rich merchant even decided to marry his daughter to him, which led to the opposition of the family, and through his stepmother Ellville, he met with him twice, revealing his true face in broad daylight.
How is the five-act comedy different from the original three-act comedy? The main thing about it is the addition of a second act. In this scene, a plot and two characters are added- the love line between the daughter Mariana and the lover Valère. Some people will ask, doesn't this addition break the "plot uniformity" in the Trinity? As everyone knows, this is the misunderstanding of the Chinese people, the so-called "plot uniform", does not refer to a single plot, but a play has only one dominant plot, unlike Shakespeare's play, there are two or even multiple parallel lines. Mariana's love line in "The Hypocrite" is not independent, but is subordinate to the main line of exposing the deception, and the two lines are closely linked: Olgun decides to marry his daughter to him because of his admiration for Dardufer, resulting in misunderstanding and conflict between the two youths; And it is precisely to solve this contradiction that the two core scenes of the stepmother seducing the liar and exposing the liar appear. It can be said that it is precisely with this auxiliary line of love that the development of the main line is more reasonable, the content of the whole drama is richer, and the personality of the liar is more full. It is worth mentioning that many people think that the last two acts were added by the playwright, and the real situation, after Years of Hard Work by Professor Forestier, found that this is not the case.
In addition to the second act, the fifth act was also added later. The three-act play ends with the appearance of a liar exposed and transforms into a five-act play, and Molière adds two new scenes of "radical change": one is the one that is, the three acts and six scenes in which Orgon decides to marry his daughter immediately, deprive his son of the right to inherit and give it to a hypocrite; A dark one, that is, after the four acts and eight scenes of Dardufer are completely exposed, he carries the box that Orgon entrusted him with to file a complaint in front of the king, which turns out to contain a secret document from one of Orgon's friends who plotted against the king. The conflict is compounded by this: the hypocrites have the court send someone to expel the Orgon family, while the wicked will sue first and put them to death politically. However, this writing is a double-edged sword, which increases the drama and makes it difficult for Molière to end, so he has to move out of the "wise king", just as the ancient Greek dramatists relied on "machine séance" to solve the problem. Although there is a suspicion of a dog-tailed sable, in fact, it kills two birds with one stone, which not only solves the contradiction, but also pleases Louis XIV. However, in the end, the whole play can still be called flawed, and the structure of the whole play is still impeccable, no wonder Li Jianwu praised it as "purposeful, the structure is like a crystal, solid and transparent".
Similar to Shakespeare, Molière was a playwright who set out for stage practice. This is directly related to the fact that he grew up in the atmosphere of Paris folk comedy since childhood, and has always stumbled on the stage since his death. As a talented comedian of the Trinity of Writers and Directors, each of his plays has a rhythm and tension that the average book writer lacks. The plot of "The Hypocrite" is interlocked, and the time and place are also in line with the trinity: the whole drama begins in the morning, and after a thrilling conflict of day and night, it ends the next morning; The location always takes place in the Orgon Mansion, and being able to do this is undoubtedly inseparable from Molière's long and profound stage practice.
In addition, Molière's rich experience in acting and writing is also reflected in various aspects such as scene arrangement and character portrayal. As far as the core scene is concerned, the most praised by the world is the opening of the whole play. Goethe believed that "The Hypocrite" and "Hamlet" together constituted two of the greatest openings in the history of world theater. In Goethe's view, the play "from the very beginning, the sentences are meaningful and attract our attention to more important things." The opening of Lessing's "Mina" is good, but there is only one opening like "Hypocrites". 'What opens like it is the greatest and best opening in existence'" Indeed, Molière cleverly designed a scene of family quarrels at the beginning of the play: Orgon's mother, Mrs. Bernel, decided to leave in anger because she did not like her daughter-in-law, grandchildren and maids who did not respect the "teacher of conscience" as much as she and her son, so a crowd of people came to dissuade her, giving the old lady the opportunity to fall one by one, and the scene was extremely vivid. Through the mouth of the old lady, we learned that the young and beautiful Ermir loved to dress up and be pompous; Grandson Grand Mies is a word "stupid"; Granddaughter Mariana is as bad as "backwater"; The most troublesome thing for her was the maid Dolina who didn't take herself and her son seriously... The whole opening is advanced in a war of words and words, the two camps are clearly distinguished, not only makes the characters present prominent, but even the hypocrites and Orgon who have not yet appeared are also impressive, and the powerful aura of the cheater has now enveloped the entire stage, making people anxiously look forward to his appearance...
"I used all my artistic techniques and all the care possible"
Orgon soon appears, but Dardufer's appearance is delayed by Molière for two full scenes! Molière's pen is so wonderful that the protagonist who has stirred the master's family into a pot of porridge cannot be called out: watching the first act pass, not seeing him; The second act has passed again, and there is still no him; It wasn't until the second act of the third act that he finally appeared in the mood that the audience wanted to see through. In this regard, Molière explains: "I have exhausted all artistic techniques and all possible care in order to distinguish the hypocrites from the true believers. To do this, I spent two full acts preparing my villains for play. This is not wrong, but it is not complete, not to mention that it was written in 1669 when the script was printed. The truth is that if you remove the second act in which "Gasse" comes in, the villain actually plays in the second act, which is fully in line with the standards of classical drama. In other words, Daldulf's long-overdue arrival is not deliberately done by Molière, but the result of the ban, which can be described as a crooked beating!
Let's take a closer look at this character. Molière is known as the "contemplative man" because he is not only good at observing society, but also at observing everyone around him. In contrast to Shakespeare, he often wrote plays that were often tailor-made for troupe actors. The actor who plays the hypocrite was originally fat, which is exactly what the maid Dolina said was "thick and fat, with a transparent face and a red mouth", which is a complete portrayal of the actor. The hypocrite's name is "Dardufer", nor is it an invention of Molière, but comes from Italy, which originally means "deception", "disguise" and so on. The word was originally feminine, but because molière gave the character a distinct character, it was turned from negative to positive, and since 1690, its meaning has been defined as "false believer and hypocrite", and it is noted that it comes from Mo's comedy, which shows how influential "Hypocrite" was at that time.
However, if you want to see the character of this liar, you can do more with less compared to the "wronged boss" Orgon. This gong is like a mirror, and from his words and deeds that have lost his common sense, it can reflect how Dardufer has deceived and deceived. He chose to pass by orgon in front of the church, and distributed the money he had begged to the poor in front of him, which touched the rich merchants, and gradually lost his rationality and even humanity, and even said that he could "watch his brothers, children, mothers and wives die one by one, and not care at all." When he is determined to sacrifice the happiness of his daughter, when he believes in the liar after Damis exposes the truth, when he announces that he has stripped his son of the right to inherit and transfer it to the liar, when he insists on the liar to deal with his wife, we learn the hypocrite's clever tricks in him again and again, and we admire the handiwork of the playwright again and again. However, Molière is worthy of the master of drama, he has more powerful killer skills, and one move is better than one move. When Dardufer debuted, what kind of starting style was it? When he found the maid, he immediately turned around and shouted at the servant, pretending that he had just finished his asceticism. But the next small action ruthlessly exposed his hypocrisy: seeing that the maid was dressed in revealing clothes, he actually took out a handkerchief and asked her to cover her breasts: "I can't look down: a situation like this corrupts people's hearts and arouses guilty thoughts." The outspoken Dolina immediately taunted him, refuting his body. This scene has long been recorded in the history of world comedy, and no one has surpassed it so far.
Dardufer's two meetings with Ermir are so classic: the first time completely tearing off the disguise of the liar, and the second time allowing the fool to finally wake up. In both cases, Molière employs the most mastered farcical techniques: hiding and eavesdropping. When Dardufer first met With Ermir, his son Damis was hiding next door eavesdropping, and the atmosphere suddenly became tense. Dardufer said touching words that were half secular and half religious, while indulging in pinching her fingertips, putting his hands on her knees, and the chair moved closer and closer... Damis finally couldn't help but jump out! At this point in the plot, everyone will think that the liar will "die" without a doubt. Who knew that Molière had arranged a "sudden turn" here, and the swindler quickly turned the crisis into safety, and even turned defeat into victory! The second meeting was even more exciting, this time the playwright simply put up a table and let Orgon hide under the table, and the dramatic tension was greatly enhanced. When the liar demands that the long-coveted goddess of the heart immediately cash in on the "benefits", the husband hears the coughing sound of his wife asking for help, but he refuses to come out. At this time, the atmosphere on the field was tense and the response from the field was warm to imagine. Every time he arrives here, the audience can't help but applaud Molière's superb comedic art. More importantly, Molière was not a showman, and every trick he used was in the service of portraying people and revealing themes. The image of Dardufer the liar was so successfully portrayed that Stanislavsky regarded him as "the sum of all hypocrites of all mankind", and it can be said that the work has an incomparably strong vitality because of this character!
After the Translation of Hypocrites into Chinese, Dardufer was included in the dictionary everywhere he went as a synonym for liars and hypocrites. It can be said that before Hugo, Molière's influence was unbeatable, and comedians such as Goldoni in Italy, Sheridan in Britain, Holburg in Denmark, and Gogol in Russia were all his students, and their creations were more or less effective imitations of him. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the proud French have given their language its name, and the "language of Molière" has since become synonymous with "the most beautiful language in the world", French.
Author: Gong Baorong, Professor of the Shanghai Theater Academy, Knight of Literature and Art of the French Republic
Planner: Chen Xihan
Editor: Xu Luming