Book contents
- Molière in Context
- Molière in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Charts and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Translations
- Abbreviations
- Biographical Preface
- Part I Socio-Political Context
- Part II Intellectual and Artistic Context
- Part III Theatrical Context (Paris)
- Part IV Theatrical Context (Court)
- Part V Reception and Dissemination
- Chapter 23 Audience Laughter
- Chapter 24 The Triumph of Publicity
- Chapter 25 Molière and His Critics: The ‘Querelles’
- Chapter 26 Molière and His Publishers
- Chapter 27 Molière in Print
- Chapter 28 Early Modern English Translations of Molière
- Part VI Afterlives
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 27 - Molière in Print
from Part V - Reception and Dissemination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2022
- Molière in Context
- Molière in Context
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Charts and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Translations
- Abbreviations
- Biographical Preface
- Part I Socio-Political Context
- Part II Intellectual and Artistic Context
- Part III Theatrical Context (Paris)
- Part IV Theatrical Context (Court)
- Part V Reception and Dissemination
- Chapter 23 Audience Laughter
- Chapter 24 The Triumph of Publicity
- Chapter 25 Molière and His Critics: The ‘Querelles’
- Chapter 26 Molière and His Publishers
- Chapter 27 Molière in Print
- Chapter 28 Early Modern English Translations of Molière
- Part VI Afterlives
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Molière was an experienced actor and dramatist before he became a published author. He warned readers on more than one occasion that much of his art was simply lost in print. If that is self-evidently true, it is also the case that it was not all loss for Molière’s original readers: they could read his dedicatory epistles to society’s potentates whom he was trying to impress; they could read his occasional prefaces, in which he addressed his readers directly and with a lightness of touch that anticipates the dramatic text itself; and they could sometimes see illustrations that crystallised key aspects of his comic imagination. Moreover, readers would have been familiar with newly established conventions in the printing of dramatic literature that would have helped them to reconstitute in their mind’s eye aspects of performance: scene divisions evoking entrances and exits, and stage directions both explicit and (more importantly) implicit. The punctuation of the printed text is an unreliable guide to actual performances, but helps readers to hear the particular performance inscribed into the printed version of the text. Meanwhile, different editions, in the seventeenth century and since, with ever-evolving apparatus, offer readers increasingly varied approaches to the plays.
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- Molière in Context , pp. 256 - 264Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022