Description

RARE ORIGINAL EDITION of this satirical comedy, which opens fire in the quarrel of l'Ecole de femmes. 

This play deals with the criticism levelled at Molière, who is parodied in the guise of Elomire - an anagram of the playwright. It is sometimes attributed to Claude Deschamps de Villiers, an actor at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, but most recent studies give it to Jean Donneau de Visé.

With the creation ofSchool for Women On 26 December 1662, at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, the great Moliéresque comedy took its definitive direction. Despite the rebellion against it, the play was an immediate success and was performed before the King, who appreciated it. During the Easter recess of 1663, Molière had his play printed, accompanied by a preface in the form of a "little Comedy" to "answer the Censors", the Criticism of L'Ecole des femmes. He waited several weeks before performing the play again, followed by his Critique, which helped to make the revival an event. It was Molière himself who sparked off the famous "Ecole des femmes quarrel".

"Launch La Critique de l'École des femmesTo do so was to take the calculated risk of attracting a backlash - a risk deliberately accentuated by the rapid publication of the play - and turning the 'buzz' into a full-blown confrontation. [...] It was only the day after the Criticism of L'École des femmes that Visé began to collect reproaches and condemnations in his Zélinde or the True Criticism of the School for Wives. [...] However, Molière's total silence towards Donneau de Visé over the following months clearly shows that he was in no way upset by his little satirical comedy [...], and he seems to have found no problem with his own booksellers publishing it at the same time (4 August 1663) as Donneau de Visé. La Critique (7 August). After all, Visé was merely repeating in greater detail and slightly more acerbically the debonair criticisms he had sketched out a few months earlier in his Nouvelles nouvelles [...]. Could we go so far as to assert that Donneau and Molière's booksellers had been able to launch this publicity operation with Molière's full admission? Once again, it is particularly disturbing to observe that it was to Boursault, the Corneille brothers and the comedians of the Hôtel de Bourgogne that he reserved his arrows two months later in L'Impromptu de Versailleswithout making the slightest allusion to the author of Zélinde. [...] [Moreover], it is quite remarkable that Donneau de Visé should have abandoned Jean Ribou, with whom he had collaborated since the affair of the The imaginary cuckold (summer 1660) and who had published his Latest news in February [1663], to have his Zélinde published by the cartel of eight booksellers who had joined forces to exploit Molière's success: de Luyne, Sercy, Joly, Loyson, Guignard, Barbin, Quinet and Billaient". (Georges Forestier, Claude Bourque, How Molière invented the Ecole des femmes quarrel... Littératures classiques 2013/2 (No. 81), p. 185-197).

A very fine copy in full morocco, perfectly established by Reymann.

Provenance: According to a handwritten note on the first flyleaf, this copy came from the library of Valentin Paul Gros (Drouot sale, 15-16 March 1934) and then from the library of M. Jean Fillioux (Drouot sale, 13-14 June 1960, no. 226).

Lacroix, Molière's bibliographyGuibert p. 795, no. 26.