Moliere, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife

From 1680 until the French Revolution, when legislation abolished restrictions on theatrical enterprise, a single theater held sole proprietorship of Moliere’s works. After 1791, his plays were performed in new theaters all over Paris by new actors, before audiences new to his works. In
Moliere, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife , Mechele Leon convincingly demonstrates how revolutionaries challenged the ties that bound this preeminent comic playwright to the Old Regime and provided him with a place of honor in the nation’s new cultural memory. Leon begins by analyzing the performance of Moliere’s plays during the Revolution, showing how his privileged position as royal servant was disrupted by the practical conditions of the revolutionary theater. Next she explores Moliere’s relationship to Louis XIV, Tartuffe, and the social function of his comedy, using Rousseau’s famous critique of Moliere as well as appropriations of George Dandin in revolutionary iconography to discuss how Molierean laughter was retooled to serve republican interests. After examining the profusion of plays dealing with his life in the latter years of the Revolution, she looks at the exhumation of his remains and their re entombment as the tangible manifestation of his passage from Ancient Regime favorite to new national icon. By showing how the Father of French Comedy was represented, reborn, and reburied in the new France - how the revolutionaries asserted his relevance in ways that were audacious, irreverent, imaginative, and extreme - Leon clarifies the important role of theatrical figures in preserving and portraying a nation’s history.