Rating: 
Summary: "The Misanthrope" Review: An Annoying Play!
Review: "The Misanthrope" - this is the only play I read. This play is superficial and degrades, as always, women. The woman in this play is stereotyped as a flirtatious girl with many suitors. I did not find this play at all a farce and found the rhyming childish and annoying. The play ends without a true ending and will leave you wanting the time you spent reading it back. I do not recommend.
Rating:
Summary: "The Misanthrope" Review: An Annoying Play!
Review: "The Misanthrope" - this is the only play I read. This play is superficial and degrades, as always, women. The woman in this play is stereotyped as a flirtatious girl with many suitors. I did not find this play at all a farce and found the rhyming childish and annoying. The play ends without a true ending and will leave you wanting the time you spent reading it back. I do not recommend.
Rating: 
Summary: Moliere seems closer to us than Shakespeare.
Review: Although Moliere is only half a century younger than Shakespeare, he is less hard work - there is no elaborate rhetoric or difficult, metaphysical poetry. dialogue is plain and functional. This, of course, brings him nearer to us, and we are far more likely to meet a Tartuffe, say, in everyday life than a Lear or Hamlet. However, I don't think he's supposed to be this plain. Wood's translation is a nimble, enjoyable read, but in the two translations, from French to English, from metre to prose, something has been lost; maybe not poetry, but certainly language. What we are left with are breezily amusing farces - this is more than enough for me, but makes me wonder why Bloom had him in his canon. 'Tartuffe' is the most famous play in this collection. Subject to censorship and interdiction in its time, Wood introduces the play with a preface and two petitions to the King from Moliere. Although they are revealing about Moliere's absolute dependency on the monarch, and the need to flatter culminating in the play's preposterous deus ex machina, they necessarily caricature the play's complexity. Tartuffe the religious hypocrite who tries to bring down the social order, who reveals the aristocracy's own hypocrisy (look at the amount of two-facedness needed to expose him), forces them down to his level, makes blatant the fundamental desires high society would prefer not to acknowledge - sex, food, wealth etc. The true horror of Tartuffe's marriage with Marianne is not that he is a repulsive bigot, but because he is trying to wrest power and means from the nobility (a job already started by the Figaro-like maid). I bet it wasn't really the Tartuffes who hated this play.
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT TRANSLATION!
Review: As a literary scholar who has read this play in both French and English, I can verify that this is a great translation. "The Misanthrope" is Moliere's most lyrical play; the language is absolutely breathtaking. The translator has managed to preserve this quality without disturbing the story and its impact. All readers should enjoy this great play.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT TRANSLATION!
Review: As a literary scholar who has read this play in both French and English, I can verify that this is a great translation. "The Misanthrope" is Moliere's most lyrical play; the language is absolutely breathtaking. The translator has managed to preserve this quality without disturbing the story and its impact. All readers should enjoy this great play.
Rating:
Summary: Honesty
Review: France in politically powerful and economically wealthy. King Louis XIV saw himself as ruling over an enlightened society. He was passionate about the arts and obsessive about theatre. Moliere wrote comedy. He contrasts what people are to what they think of themselves. Moliere's audience was spoiled, well educated, bourgeois, aristocratic and royal. The audience wanted to be entertained, to laugh and to be cheerful. The Misanthrope was controversial but a box office success. The play takes place in Celimene's house where she entertains a variety of visitors. Her visitors are relatives, friends and suitors who spend their time much as the upper society of the day. They dressed, penned and received letters wrote poems and libelous prose. They visited each other, hoped to be noticed by royalty and the litigious pursed lawsuits to uphold their reputations. Several suitors vie for Celimene's favour. Her malicious wit and her reluctance to pick one partner over the others cause her to end up alone. The play begins with Alceste and Philinte arguing about one of the social conventions of the day. Alceste declares that it is morally wrong to falsely flatter and Philinte says we must be tolerant of peoples behaviour. These two alternatives a-re frequently presented to the audience. There are two ways to approach the world and one is as good as the other. Throughout the play the characters axe thrown up against this dilemma with a variety of responses and outcomes. Each player presents as a contradiction with a hidden core. So that, depending on how one chooses to read the play, the characters can be interpreted in a variety of ways. This is were the fun begins, Alceste has been interpreted by many audiences as a noble, heroic idealist, a champion of honesty. He also can be seen as a rigid extremist, an absolutist whose maniacal criticism is quickly tiresome. He criticizes societies corruptions and acts like a conceited prig. Celimen is a chilly shrew or bewitchingly shrewd. She employs the conventions of the times in that she is a gossip, she has a malicious wit etc. but she is an admirable character. Philinte and Eliante are studiously tolerant of everyone and are consummate bores. Alceste's passionate assertion on the ideal of truth and honesty verses falsity comes across as absurdity. His absolutist stance is difficult to examine. He is a rigid extremist obsessed with his vision of right. He is in love with a person who embodies everything he abhors i.e. a coquette who falsely flatters, who is a witty gossip and although he professes to he wants to change her and at the end of the play Celimene is abandoned to society and Alceste leaves her stranded even though he first wished she was helpless so that he could rescue her. His passion is out of proportion to events. i.e. Alceste advises Philante that hanging would be an appropriate response to falsely flattering. He is unable to apply anything he says to himself so that he thinks that he is reasonable and he is mostly unreasonable, bad tempered and brusque i.e. instead of an apology regarding his lawsuit he hopes he is guilty so that he can show the stupidity of society. The play is derisive of bourgeois behaviour but with Alceste as the messenger one wonders if Moliere is serious. Philinte and Eliante who are perhaps the Epicureans in the play stand for reasonable tolerance but they seem iust tedious i.e. Eliante's prescription for how love works. Celimene is the character who generates the most empathy. Even so, she ruthlessly rips everyone apart. She is quick and intelligent with the small talk. She is beautiful, rich, independent and her salon is the gathering place of the moment. She is the one who displays the most false behavior but perhaps she is the most honest. Truth and honesty, usually traits to strive for, in Alceste's character, seem somehow less than desirable. His passion and contradictory behaviour smack of insincerity, the very trait he claims to despise. This culture is obsessed with wealth and power and societal recognition. The currency is wit, youth, beauty. Celimene is aware that she has a very short time to establish herself before she will have the status of Arsinone, an older prude who is relegated to the ranks of visitor rather than someone who people want to visit. Even though Celimene plays by the rules she fails. Alceste and Celimene are totally unsuited to each other but perhaps they share obsession: he to distaste, she to taste. Alceste claims the more one loves the less one should forgive. Alceste courts isolation but at the end of the play Philinte and Eliante stick with him. Such a small book with such a rich context.
Miguel Llora
Rating:
Summary: Hysterical
Review: It is my blief that everyone should read this book. I am a high school senior and find it very insightful. In addition to that, it is also very ammusing. It is an accurate commentary on society.
Rating:
Summary: Brief but pointed
Review: Moliere deals with numerous common themes in his short five-act play. The play follows the throes of passion of the main character (Alceste), obsessed with his love for Celimene while being plagued by his need for truth, often at the unsociable expense of bluntness. His friend (Philinte) attempts to dissuade Alceste both in his love for Celimene and his brusque honesty, but fails in both. Aleceste finally ends up retiring to a hermit-esque fate after ironically forgiving Celemine for courting the favor and advances of a number of other admirers, all of whom end up enraged with her flattery and lack of direction. In a brief 52 pages, Moliere pointed debates the virtues of "niceness" and "truth," two seemingly mutually exclusive virtues, leaving the reader with a provoking but conclusionless sense of indecision.
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Summary: No comedy without truth and no truth without comedy
Review: Moliere said that ' there is no comedy without truth, and no truth without comedy'. And his plays are a scathing and humorous depiction of a simplified, and stylized human nature. Whether it is religious hypocrisy in ' Tartuffe' , miserliness in 'The Miser' or misanthropy in ' The Misantrhope' Moliere often focuses on one quality in order to satirize and society and mankind in general. In the Misanthrope the main character Alceste tells the truth to everyone ( except himself) and in so doing alienates everyone. This is against the advice of his best friend Philinte. At the same time he is in love with the frivolous Celimene who he attempts to change by constantly criticizing. He begs that she retire with him away from the corruption of society but she prefers society to him. The play ends with Philinte and his fiancee trying to persuade Alceste to remain.
Moliere writes in a clear, simple direct language and the surface sense of his work is readily understood. His view of human nature is harsh and critical , but redeemed by a comic laughter suggesting we are wiser if we do not take ourselves all that seriously.
Rating:
Summary: The Misanthrope is the ultimate in theatrical comedy
Review: Moliere's "The Misanthrope" is the most humorous play written in any language. It centers around the character Alceste, who has a firm beleif in being brutally honest all the time. The habit of others to speak harshly behind other's backs and hypocritically praise them to their faces drives him to the brink of insanity. It irks him so much that his only wish would be to become a hermit in the mountains. If it weren't for his love of the beautiful Celimene. However, to make things more complicated, she happens to be the queen of duplicitous thought. Alceste hates himself for loving a woman who behaves in the manner that irritates him the most, but cannot bring himself to confront what troubles him. That, paired with the remarkably written exchanges between Alceste, his friend Philinte, the pompous Oronte, and the many social courtiers and French aristocracy make this the ideal story to bring you to tears with laughter. I highly recommend this book to all lovers of theater, humor, and excellent writing. It truly deserves all 5 stars.
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