Moliere's Misanthrope

[Red Terror Dr.]

I got out of prison in July of this year. In confinement I read Moliere's witty comedy The Misanthrope. I was filled with great delight at the wonderful epigrammatic verse. Here is a youtube version with the actors dressed in the wardrobe of the period in which Moliere lived and wrote (under the reign of King Loius XIV).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UyQmc9spwU&index=1&list=PL1IIRVPwL5-UjixJf7ikpu-5dkka0zi3P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdlx1wcGuj0

When I got out of prison I read 3 other plays of Moliere and plan to read his complete works. He's so universal.

Edit: If anyone is desirous in reading The Misanthrope and doesn't know French check out the translation by Richard Wilbur. He is the best translator of Moliere in the English language.

[Sasha]

molliere universal? wut? i mean, some of his plays, if radically reworked, can be quite entertaining but a Shakespeare or Euripides he is not.

[Quail]

I've had this book sitting on my bookshelf for years, will give it a read when I get the chance.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

molliere universal? wut? i mean, some of his plays, if radically reworked, can be quite entertaining but a Shakespeare or Euripides he is not.

Are either of those really universal, though? I think it is hard enough for us to sympathise with some of Shakespeare's protagonists today - just try to read the Merchant of Venice and not have the protagonists come off as massive pricks - let alone Euripides. Moliere is much closer to us - the bourgeois gentleman might be largely a thing of the past, Tartuffes (for example) are not.

[Sasha]

Depends, i think most Shakespeare dramas are still relevant, Richard 3th. Hamlet, Macbeth, the tempest, Othello certainly, the merchant of vennice and the taming off the shrew need an reworking because of our progress on the social issues they are about. His comedies and the lesser know royal plays are off less universal relevance.
The Greek classics are all in plot, in dramatic, essentials, its the base of western culture and an distilled essence of what makes us human.
Though some writers their prose needs less updating to still translate than the others. I think Euripides is one of those people you only need to translate and can still perform magic on everyone.

Moiliere is still relevant because his plays are archetypes, but archetypes as the comedia del arte, jack and Judy puppetry even. Yes they say something about and makefun off human traits but their understandimg of the depth of what makes us human is to superficial.

It's like how I love brecht for its social stance but in essence its already outdate operetta while I can guarantee that a thousand years from now people will still study Sarah Kane and Beckett

[Rurkel]

Misantrope is less archetypical than Moliere's usual work, though, with the author's sympathies being somewhat ambiguous.