Molière

“ You doubtless thought you had found some young flirt, eager for an intrigue, and melting before pretty speeches. You see how your presents are received! Believe me, you waste your powder and shot. Isabella is a discreet girl, she loves me and your love insults her. Aim at some one else, and be off!
VAL. Yes, yes; your merits, to which everyone yields, are too great an obstacle, sir. Though my passion be sincere, it is folly to contend with you for the love of Isabella. ”

“ SCENE VIII.—VALÈRE, A MAGISTRATE, A NOTARY, SGANARELLE, ARISTE. VAL. (At the window of his house) . No, gentlemen; no man shall enter here until your pleasure be known to me. You know who I am; I have done my duty in signing the statement, which they can show you. If you intend to approve of the marriage, you must also put your names to this agreement; if not, prepare to take my life before you shall rob me of the object of my love.
SGAN. No, we have no notion of separating you from her. (Aside) . He has not yet been undeceived in the matter of Isabella. Let us make the most of his mistake. ”

“ It is honour which must hold them to their duty, not the severity which we display towards them. To tell you candidly, a woman who is discreet by compulsion only is not often to be met with. We pretend in vain to govern all her actions; I find that it is the heart we must win. For my part, whatever care might be taken, I would scarcely trust my honour in the hands of one who, in the desires which might assail her, required nothing but an opportunity of falling. ”

“ To see myself the wife of the one is all my desire; and rather than belong to the other, I would lose my life. But I have sufficiently declared my real sentiments; and languished too long under this severe torture. He whom I love must use diligence to make him whom I hate lose all hope, and deliver me by a happy marriage, from a suffering more terrible than death. ”

“ Ergaste, that is he, the Argus whom I hate, the stern guardian of her whom I adore.
SGAN. (Thinking himself alone) . In short, is there not something wonderful in the corruption of manners now-a-days?
VAL. I should like to address him, if I can get a chance, and try to strike up an acquaintance with him.
SGAN. (Thinking himself alone) . Instead of seeing that severity prevail which so admirably formed virtue in other days, uncontrolled and imperious youth here-about assumes... (Valère bows to Sganarelle from a distance) .
VAL. He does not see that we bow to him. ”

“ Léonor's education has been based on these maxims. I have not made crimes of the smallest acts of liberty, I have always assented to her youthful wishes, and, thank Heaven, I never repented of it. I have allowed her to see good company, to go to amusements, balls, plays. These are things which, for my part I think are calculated to form the minds of the young; the world is a school which, in my opinion, teaches them better how to live than any book. ”

“ SCENE X.—ISABELLA, VALÈRE, LÉONOR, ARISTE, SGANARELLE, MAGISTRATE, NOTARY, LISETTE, ERGASTE. ISA. Sister, I ask you generously to pardon me, if, by the freedom I have taken, I have brought some scandal upon your name. The urgent pressure of a great necessity, suggested to me, some time ago, this disgraceful stratagem. Your example condemns such an escapade; but fortune treated us differently. (To Sganarelle) . As for you, sir, I will not excuse myself to you. I serve you much more than I wrong you. Heaven did not design us for one another. ”

“ If a safe income of four thousand crowns a-year, great affection and consideration for her, may, in her opinion, counterbalance in marriage the inequality of our age, she may take me for her husband; if not she may choose elsewhere. If she can be happier without me, I do not object; I prefer to see her with another husband rather than that her hand should be given to me against her will. ”

“ SCENE IX.-SGANARELLE, VALÈRE, ERGASTE. SGAN. (Thinking himself alone) . Oh, thrice and four times blessed be the law which forbids extravagance in dress!
[Footnote: It is remarkable that Louis XIV., who was so extravagant himself in his buildings, dress, and general expenses published sixteen laws against luxury; the law Sganarelle speaks of was promulgated November 27th, 1660, against the use of guipures, cannetilles, paillettes, etc., on men's dresses.]
No longer will the troubles of husbands be so great! women will now be checked in their demands. ”

“ A respectable girl ought always to refuse to read the letters a man sends her. The curiosity which she thus betrays shows a secret pleasure in listening to gallantries. I think it right that this letter should be peremptorily returned to Valère unopened, that he may the better learn this day the great contempt which my heart feels for him; so that his passion may from this time lose all hope, and never more attempt such a transgression. ”

“ I do not think that we should act like those people who always exaggerate the fashion, and who are annoyed that another should go further than themselves in the extremes which they affect; but I maintain that it is wrong, for whatever reasons, obstinately to eschew what every one observes; that it would be better to be counted among the fools than to be the only wise person, in opposition to every one else. ”

“ They fancy that everything must give way before their flaxen wigs, and think they have said the cleverest witticism when they come up, with their silly chaffing tone, and rally you stupidly about the love of an old man. For my part, I value more highly the affection of such an old man than all the giddy raptures of a youthful brain. ”

“ SCENE IV.—SGANARELLE, alone. Oh, they are all well suited to one another! What an admirable family. A foolish old man with a worn-out body who plays the fop; a girl-mistress and a thorough coquette; impudent servants;—no, wisdom itself could not succeed, but would exhaust sense and reason, trying to amend a household like this. By such associations, Isabella might lose those principles of honour which she learned amongst us; to prevent it, I shall presently send her back again to my cabbages and turkeys.
SCENE V.—VALÈRE, SGANARELLE, ERGASTE. VAL. (Behind) . ”

“ Molière's method—the simple and only true one, and, consequently, the one which incontestably establishes the original talent of its employer—is this: At the beginning of a play, he introduces his principal personages: sets them talking; suffers them to betray their characters, as men and women do in every-day life,—expecting from his hearers that same discernment which he has himself displayed in detecting their peculiarities: imports the germ of a plot in some slight misunderstanding or equivocal act ”

“ To see her I love in the power of a savage, a watchful dragon, whose severity will not permit her to enjoy a single moment of liberty.
ERG. That is just what is in your favour. Your love ought to expect a great deal from these circumstances. Know, for your encouragement, that a woman watched is half-won, and that the gloomy ill-temper of husbands and fathers has always promoted the affairs of the gallant. I intrigue very little; for that is not one of my accomplishments. I do not pretend to be a gallant ”

“ Do you think, after all, that these precautions are any bar to our designs? that when we take anything into our heads, the cleverest man would not be but a donkey to us? All that vigilance of yours is but a fool's notion; the best way of all, I assure you, is to trust us. He who torments us puts himself in extreme peril, for our honour must ever be its own protector. To take so much trouble in preventing us is almost to give us a desire to sin. If I were suspected by my husband, I should have a very good mind to justify his fears.
SGAN. (to Ariste) . ”

“ Are we in Turkey, that women must be shut up? There, they say, they are kept like slaves; this is why the Turks are accursed by God. Our honour, sir, is very weak indeed, if it must be perpetually watched. ”

“ You let her gad about, love idleness, be freely courted by dandies; I am quite satisfied. But I intend that mine shall live according to my fancy, and not according to her own; that she shall be dressed in honest serge, and wear only black on holidays; that, shut up in the house, prudent in bearing, she shall apply herself entirely to domestic concerns, mend my linen in her leisure hours, or else knit stockings for amusement; that she shall close her ears to the talk of young sparks, and never go out without some one to watch her. In short, flesh is weak ”

“ ISA. Let him think, then, how to prove his passion for me.
SGAN. Yes, here, kiss my hand.
ISA. Let him, without more sighing, hasten a marriage which is all I desire, and accept the assurance which I give him, never to listen to the vows of another. (She pretends to embrace Sganarelle, and gives her hand to Valère to kiss) .
[Footnote: This stage play is imitated by Congreve in The Old Bachelor, (Act iv., Scene 22) when Mrs. Fondlewife goes and hangs upon her husband's neck and kisses him; whilst Bellmour kisses her hand behind Fondlewife's back.] ”

“ That distinguishing good Sense, that nice Discernment, that refined Taste of Reading and Politeness for which Your LADYSHIP is so deservedly admir'd, must, I'm persuaded, make You esteem Molière; whose way of expression is easy and elegant, his Sentiments just and delicate, and his morals untainted: who constantly combats Vice and Folly with strong Reason and well turn'd Ridicule ”

“ The School for Husbands marks a distinct departure in the dramatist's literary progress. As a critic has well observed, it substitutes for situations produced by the mechanism of plot, characters which give rise to situations in accordance with the ordinary operations of human nature. ”

“ AR. It is strange that you should be so careful always to fling my age in my face, and that I should continually find you blaming my dress as well as my cheerfulness. One would imagine that old age ought to think of nothing but death, since it is condemned to give up all enjoyment; and that it is not attended by enough ugliness of its own, but must needs be slovenly and crabbed.
SGAN. However that may be, I am resolved to stick to my way of dress. In spite of the fashion, I like my cap so that my head may be comfortably sheltered beneath it ”

“ How impatient I am to see my brother, and tell him of his plight! The good man has been victimized, with all his bombast!
[Footnote: The original has phébus, which is often used for a swollen and pretentious style, because it is said that a work on the chase, written in the fourteenth century by Gaston, Count of Foix, in such a style, was called Miroir de Phébus. It is more probable that the word phébus, meaning showy language, is derived from the Greek phoibos, brilliant.] ”

“ The School for Husbands was directed against one of the special and prominent defects of society in the age and country in which Molière lived. Domestic tyranny was not only rife, but it was manifested in one of its coarsest forms. Sganarelle, though twenty years younger than Ariste, and not quite forty years old, could not govern by moral force; he relied solely on bolts and bars. Physical restraint was the safeguard in which husbands and parents had the greatest confidence, not perceiving that the brain and the heart are always able to prevail against it. ”

“ It depends on you alone to make me shortly your own; I wait only until you have declared your intentions to me before acquainting you with the resolution I have taken; but, above all remember that time presses, and that two hearts, which love each other, ought to understand even the slightest hint."
ERG. Well, sir, is not this contrivance original? For a young girl she is not so very ignorant. Would one have thought her capable of these love stratagems? ”

“ This play has two girls like Isabella, called Althea and Diana, two like Leonor, Victoria and Olivia, and four lovers, as well as a rather intricate plot. The Epilogue is amusing, and we give the beginning of it:—
Poets of all men have the hardest game,
Their best Endeavours can no Favours claim. ”

“ The lady's indignation at this kind of outrage, on the one hand, and the considerate compassion of the lover, on the other, afford an opportunity for pushing matters far enough." In a word, the surliness of Isabella's guardian is a circumstance sufficiently favourable for you.
VAL. But I could never find one moment to speak to her in the four months that I have ardently loved her.
ERG. Love quickens people's wits, though it has little effect on yours. ”

“ Unhappy he who trusts a woman after this! The best of them are always full of mischief; they were made to damn the whole world. I renounce the treacherous sex for ever, and give them to the devil with all my heart!
ERG. Well said.
AR. Let us all go to my house. Come, M. Valère, tomorrow we will try to appease his wrath.
LIS. (To the audience) . As for you, if you know any churlish husbands, by all means send them to school with us.
[Footnote: This is the last time Molière directly addressed the audience at the end of one of his plays; in Sganarelle he did it for the first time.] ”

“ There is some reason in what she says. Their sex loves to enjoy a little freedom; they are but ill-checked by so much austerity. Suspicious precautions, bolts and bars, make neither wives nor maids virtuous. ”

“ I see that you wear the stupid gewgaws which it is the fashion to wear.
AR. We should always agree with the majority, and never cause ourselves to be stared at. Extremes shock, and a wise man should do with his clothes as with his speech; avoid too much affectation, and without being in too great a hurry, follow whatever change custom introduces. ”

“ VAL. True; but we may sometimes be anxious to hear it? Shall you go and see the magnificent preparations for the birth of our Dauphin, sir?
[Footnote: The Dauphin, the son of Louis XIV. was born at Fontainebleau, on the 1st of November, 1661; The School for Husbands was first acted on the 24th of June of the same year; hence Molière ventures to prophesy about the Dauphin's birth.]
SGAN. If I feel inclined.
VAL. Confess that Paris affords us a hundred delightful pleasures which are not to be found elsewhere. The provinces are a desert in comparison. How do you pass your time? ”