Molière was the stage name of French actor and playwright, Jean Baptiste Poquelin, born Paris 1622. In 1643, he joined nine others to produce and perform comedies as a company named ‘Illustre-Théâtre’. In 17th Century Paris the numbers of people visiting theatres was insufficient and within two years, the company was bankrupt. Jean was sent to prison for debts on the properties he owned so when he was released in late 1945, he changed his name to Molière and, for around 13 years, the company made a living by touring the provinces of France. For several years of his life, he resided in Lyons, France, where he was greatly influenced by travelling Italian companies performing Commedia Dell’Arte. This influence is expressed in his early plays, which were mainly farces adapted from the classical Italian model. His performing style, like that used for Italian theatre, was animated However, unlike Italian theatre at the time, Molière’s plays contained a level of biting social satire. For example, The Miser is typical of Molière’s plays in its reliance upon Commedia Dell’Arte for stock characters and comedy routines. The play contains many examples of slapstick humour and fantastic situations. Like Roman comedy, characters fail to communicate; they involve themselves in many unpleasant situations, which they otherwise could have avoided. At the end they do not solve their own problems, but fate intervenes and solves them in much the same way that god intervened in some of the early Greek plays. Despite what might be considered dramatic weaknesses in a modern play, The Miser still provides fun for audiences, and without a doubt was highly entertaining to those who saw it during the 17th century. The play also makes a serious statement in... ... middle of paper ... ...cally to less formally constrained entertainments. While the classical ideal set its sights on the universal, they welcomed plays which satirised contemporary French manners and topical events, like Moliere’s. Molière always played his own leading roles, and his plays often contained autobiographical elements. For instance, in The School for husbands, an early satire, he borrowed from a variety of sources for the plot, but also ridiculed himself for his marriage at the age of forty to a girl less than half his age- Armande Bejart. Molière’s rise to fame began when the opportunity arose for his company to perform before the King, Louis XIV. The performance secured the favour of the King’s brother Philippe, duc d’Orleans. Philippe’s approval and patronage lasted 7 years until the King himself took over the company, which, since 1665, was known as ‘la troupe du Roi’.
Moliere’s Tartuffe assumed set of social conventions were shaped by all the characters within the play, however the authoritative figure was established depicted by the father, Oregon. Oregon’s character assumed the role of king or lord of his household. He believed that as the head of household, he had the right to rule over his kingdom as he saw fit. His kingdom had to run smoothly in order for it to be effective. No matter how harsh, unfair and painful it was for his, wife daughter or servants.
Stage, film, and television dancer, director, and choreographer, was born Robert Louis Fosse in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Cyril Kingsley Fosse, a vaudeville entertainer turned salesman, and Sarah Alice Stanton (Grubb). At nine years of age, Fosse began classes in jazz, tap, and ballet at Chicago’s Academy of the Arts. Small and asthmatic, with a speech impediment that caused him to slur words, he later remarked that his early dance training stemmed from a need to overcompensate for his perceived “handicaps” (Gottfried). He was still a child when he headlined his own act—Bobby Fosse’s Le Petit Cabaret—tap dancing and telling jokes in local nightclubs.
a vaudevillian and appropriately enough was born into the theatre. As a child, the art of
There are many important aspects of theatre history. Important playwrights, actors, theatres, and events that impacted theatre in major ways. In this paper I am going to discuss the life of an important actor who would be better known for his last name and the actions of his brother. By looking into his life I have learned how interesting of an actor he was and what significance he had on theatre history. This actor is Edwin Booth.
In his book Gargantua and Pantagruel, Francois Rabelais uses satire to address the dislocation felt by Renaissance Humanists. By providing an exaggerated fable, comical in nature, Rabelais poses a serious introspection into the extremes of both the Medieval and the Renaissance man. More importantly, however, he brings into question his own ideals of Humanism. Through an analysis of Rabelais’ satirical technique and by examining his social parody of the Medieval and the Renaissance man, we are able to better understand Rabelais’ introspection into the ideals of his own generation and to accept his argument that learning is transitory and often a necessary, yet futile, attempt to understand our world.
“Ten years later he had consolidated his position by obtaining sole rights over all dramatic performances with singing.”(Sadie 2000 pg. 166) “Any production not affiliated with The Academie Royale was limited to two singers and six players.” (Jean Baptiste Lully)
Molière’s play “Tartuffe and Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance of Being Earnest” both demonstrate a comical portrait of hypocrisy. In “Tartuffe”, the main character Tartuffe is seen as a religious hypocrite who takes advantage of Orgon’s wealth and agrees to marry his daughter, Mariane against her wishes. In “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Jack and Algernon both lie about their identity to get the woman of their dreams. The authors use the concept of double personalities in the play to reveal the deceit and lies to represent the theme of hypocrisy. In fact, hypocrisy is not only displayed in the characters but in the play as a whole. Additionally, the plays are both hypocrital in ways that they do not follow the structure of comedy.
Leroux attended an Arts school in Caen, studying the works of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Pere and writing short stories and poetry. He later abandoned his dreams to become a writer to please his father and travelled to Paris where he obtained a law degree in 1889, but lost interest in the profession after his father passed away. He then sunk into the world of alcoholism, and after gambling almost all of his inheritance, got a job as a journalist in the L'Echo de Paris and Le Matin, where he found inspiration for the falling chandelier, by one of articles written by him which described the 1896 events surrounding the death of a patron at the Paris Opera House when one of the chandelier's counterweights fell (Merriman). Sometime between 1896 and 1901 Leroux married Marie Lefranc, but later on, while in Swi...
Moliere was a moderate and against excess and obsession with all things. In Tartuffe, he has. used Orgon as an example of how the obsessive need to believe can cause man to be taken in by those who would cloak themselves in, and manipulate themselves with, those beliefs. The play is
Tartuffe is a satirical comedic play written by Molière in 1664. It is focused around the family of Orgon and the character of Tartuffe, who has become Orgon’s personal holy man. Before being brought into Orgon’s home, Tartuffe was nothing more than a common beggar who learned how to act pious. Throughout this play, we see Orgon give everything he owns to Tartuffe: his love, his money, his daughter, and even the deed to his house. While everyone else in the household sees Tartuffe for who he really is, Orgon remains blind to it throughout most of the play. Orgon is warned many times by different members of the household, including his own son, yet he only chooses to lash out against those speaking. From early on in the play we as readers are able to recognize that Tartuffe is no more than a hypocrite and Orgon is a blind fool. In the play Tartuffe by Molière there are several different important themes that impact this work,
It is noted in many books that near the start of his career, Peter Brook was attracted to both plays and techniques that expressed human contradiction. He often wondered, though, whether there were any modern playwrights who could possibly equal the richness and complexity of Shakespearean verse, and often complained about the improbability of ever finding material to work on or to produce as stimulating as that of Shakespeare. When, in 1964, Brook received a play entitled The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (Marat/Sade), by German playwright Peter Weiss, it is also noted that Brook felt he had finally encountered the challenge of Shakespearean theater he was looking for. Not only was Marat/Sade an incredibly well written and unique approach to theater as a whole, its incorporation of music and movement, song and montage, and naturalism and surrealism within the text created the perfect passage, for Brook, from his commercial past to his experimental present, as well as a way for both the playwright and the director to deal with the concept of theater as therapy; a rather ironic, yet at the same time clever, idea seeing as how the play itself is conducted within the confines of an asylum, with the inmates themselves as the stars. One of the most complex aspects of presenting Marat/Sade was its large and eclectic cast of characters and also its incorporation of a play within a play.
...seen were Moliere applied Commedia and were made to fit in the French form in the The Imaginary Invalid. The French had a tight hold upon theater in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was seen as political propaganda and anything that was put on the stage was heavily criticized. Moliere, being a prominent playwright, had to endure these criticisms. Moliere was greatly influenced by this form of theater, and it can be seen where he used it and where he applied Neo Classicism, the other popular art form. By looking at his three most famous plays, Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, and The Imaginary Invalid, through Commedia Dell’ Arte, with the characters, plot line, the authorship or structure, it can be seen where Moliere had his influence and when it was applied. “The tradition in playing Moliere is preserved in France by the Comedie Francaise” (Bertram-Cox,am-cox, 301).
Theater of the Absurd applies to a group of plays with a certain set of characteristics. These characteristics convey a sense of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an unexplainable feeling. These plays all have unusual actions and are missing a key element that would clearly define other pieces of literature. Language and actions differ from the usual and sometimes cannot be explained in the Theater of the Absurd. In the works of Albee and Ionesco language, behavior, and structure are abnormal if compared to other plays. Language is a key factor that is presented as a weak form of communication throughout “The Future is in Eggs,” “The Zoo Story,” “The American Dream,” and “The Leader.”
As the roles were essentially cemented into the culture, manipulations such as crossovers provide a source of conflict and intrigue into the narrative of the plays. Two of Shakespea...
On August 5, 1850, Maupassant was born near Normandy, France, where he lived for the majority of his childhood. He was the first son of Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant, who were both from prestigious bourgeois families. When Maupassant was eleven years old, his parents were legally divorced and both he and his brother lived with their mother until the age of thirteen when he attended a Catholic seminary school. It was apparent that Maupassant displayed hostility towards religion, however, because soon afterwards he deliberately got himself expelled. Despite this setback, Maupassant’s education did not end there – he finished his general schooling at a Rauen boarding school where he studied poetry and had a prominent part in theatricals (Wilson 167).