Interesting. Thanks!
I had the experience of seeing two Moliere plays staged at La Comédie-Française in Paris. It was a test of my French language skills to understand the humor and nuances of Moliere’s plays, but his poetry is stunning. He was a master of the difficult alexandrin poetic style, the dominant long line of French poetry in the 17th century. I think Moliere’s masterpiece is Tartuffe.
Mo-lay really pumps my nads...
If you are going to read Tartuffe, try to get the translation done by Richard Wilbur who, at one time, was the poet laureate of the United States. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his translated Tartuffe in which he somehow managed to keep the rhymed couplets in French to their original meaning in English.
If you think you can’t enjoy something written three hundred and fifty years ago, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how clever and entertaining it is. Tartuffe is my favorite play besides Macbeth although I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing it actually produced on the stage.