Shakespeare vs. Moliere

I just finished watching the 1968 film version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays (of the 38 he wrote during his lifetime).  This one features the Master Control Program, Sark (David Warner) as Lysander, Helen Mirren as Hermia, Judi Dench as Titania, Old Bilbo (Ian Holm) as Puck, and Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns, Diana Rigg, as Helena.   An excellent play, but you really have to pay attention because, as with all of Shakespeare’s stuff, the English is somewhat dated and difficult to follow.

Shakespeare.  Practically every US/UK student has to endure his plays through high school.   The man himself lived in England from 1564 to 1618.   His stories remain hugely popular and very often adapted to modern stories with contemporary dialogue.  [See The Onion: “Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play in Time, Place, Author Intended.” http://www.theonion.com/article/unconventional-director-sets-shakespeare-play-in-t-2214] Actors often wind up in high demand for Star Trek. 

As mentioned, the English is clever but difficult to follow.  In high school the books tended to alternate pages from actual dialogue to glossaries.  Ages ago we had a friend Mariano, from Costa Rica, whose English was very good, but even he was lost trying to follow Hamlet (the Mel Gibson version).

I’ll review some of the most popular, but obviously not all of them.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Whimsical fancy.  A bunch of layabouts do a play, led by Bottom, who winds up with a donkey’s head.  Meanwhile Puck acts as Cupid and messes things up for a pair of couples, Lysander, Demetrios, Hermia, and Helena.  Fortunately everything gets worked out in the end, but not before some confusion passing for comedy.

Much Ado About Nothing.  This isn’t nearly as popular in itself, but serves to inspire dozens of contemporary “love at first hate” stories:  Pride & Prejudice/Bridget Jones’ Diary, Gone with the Wind, and Star Wars:  any story in which the lead male and female characters start off hating each other but eventually fall in love.  Benedick and Beatrice are the original bickering couple matching wits and insults.  “Who you calling scruffy?”

Romeo & Juliet.   “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” A more mundane tragedy we all know.   Star-crossed lovers, forbidden to marry by their respective feuding families, wind up dead.  Hopefully this stirs the Montagues and Capulets to actually bury the hatchet, but with no sequel, how will we ever know?

Othello.  “The wine she drinks is made out of grapes”, spoketh Iago, easily the nastiest, but also tastiest villain of them all.  He’s jealous that Cassio wins a commission from Othello, the Big Dark Guy, so he puts it in Othello’s head that Mrs Othello, Desdemona, is having an affair with Cassio.  And it goes downhill from there.

MacBeth.  “Out, damn spot!”   The villain kills off Banquo, whose ghost comes back to haunt the overambitious Scottish king.  His wife, Lady MacBeth, is as deceitful and manipulative a woman e’er created in a story, and makes it worth enduring.   Very juicy.   [How about making Iago and Lady MacBeth a couple?  Indulge us.]

Hamlet.   “To Be Or Not To Be”.  Here’s where George R. R. Martin gets his penchant for killing off practically everyone.  Sorry to spoil the surprise, but by the end of the Danish tragedy, the only ones not dead are the ghosts.

Julius Caesar.  “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…” (Marc Anthony).  Since Brutus is the last to plunge a dagger into Caesar, he gets the famous line, “Et tu, Brute?” by the rapidly deceasing title character. 

Finally, Henry VI, Part II.  “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”  Spoken by Dick the Butcher, in a conversation with fellow murderer/conspirator Jack Cade.   Generally it’s been my experience that this quote is trotted out by non-lawyers to make themselves look witty, educated, etc. at the expense of lawyers.  Was it meant as an insult to lawyers? Or a backhanded compliment?  The most logical conclusion, given the context, is that it’s the latter: spoken by villains while planning their evil deeds and casually discussing “wouldn’t it be nice?”  Although Shakespeare was as knowledgeable as any of his peers that lawyers were as fallible and imperfect as anyone else, he didn’t seem to have any beef with lawyers as a profession as a matter of principle.

Moliere.  Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, lived from 1622-1673, so he came later than Shakespeare.  None of his plays seem to copy WS’ plots.  He was writing for French King Louis XIV.   Although he wrote 35 plays from 1645 to 1673, I read a mere fraction of them, and ONLY for French class when living in Paris from 1979-90.  [Marcel Pagnol was the only French author I liked enough to read his material voluntarily, though I should probably be more of a Camus fan than I am.  Anyhow.]  Ironically, Moliere is a bit easier to follow than Shakespeare as the French isn’t nearly as obtuse.  The three I’d comment on are as follows:

L’Avare (the Miser) (1668).  Basically about a Montgomery Burns/Ebenezer Scrooge grumpy old man obsessed with keeping his vast wealth. 

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman) (1670).   Kissing ass to King Louis XIV, Moliere mercilessly ridiculed a fictional merchant intent on buying nobility, as if such a thing could be crassly purchased with bags of gold. 

Les Femmes Savants (The Learned Women) (1672).  Here he makes fun of women pretending to be well-educated and intellectuals, when we all know they’re only good for “Kinder, Kuche, Kirche” (children, cooking, church) as the Germans might put it. 

Perhaps it’s because the world is more Anglo-centric than Franco-centric, but Shakespeare’s stories have far more application and popularity outside the high school English classroom than Moliere does outside the French class.   The other issue, and probably more pertinent, is that Shakespeare was writing for the general public, whereas Moliere only had to please the King, whose interests and preferences would have been considerably more limited than the population of London.  Having said that, the latter’s stories don’t seem to have resulted in any mainstream films and remain in the realm of plays, even to this day, i.e. I’m still waiting for the Onion article, “Unconventional Director Sets Moliere Play in Time, Place Author Intended.”