



Produced by David Moynihan, D Garcia, Charles Franks and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.











LES PRECIEUSES RIDICULES:

COMEDIE EN UN ACTE.

1659.

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THE PRETENTIOUS YOUNG LADIES:

A COMEDY IN ONE ACT.

(_THE ORIGINAL IN PROSE_.)
1659.




INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

Moliere began in _The Pretentious Young Ladies_ to paint men and women
as they are; to make living characters and existing manners the
ground-work of his plays. From that time he abandoned all imitation of
Italian or Spanish imbroglios and intrigues.

There is no doubt that aristocratic society attempted, about the latter
years of the reign of Louis XIII., to amend the coarse and licentious
expressions, which, during the civil wars had been introduced into
literature as well as into manners. It was praiseworthy of some
high-born ladies in Parisian society to endeavour to refine the language
and the mind. But there was a very great difference between the
influence these ladies exercised from 1620 until 1640, and what took
place in 1658, the year when Moliere returned to Paris. The Hotel de
Rambouillet, and the aristocratic drawing-rooms, had then done their
work, and done it well; but they were succeeded by a clique which cared
only for what was nicely said, or rather what was out of the common.
Instead of using an elegant and refined diction, they employed only a
pretentious and conceitedly affected style, which became highly
ridiculous; instead of improving the national idiom they completely
spoilt it. Where formerly D'Urfe, Malherbe, Racan, Balzac, and Voiture
reigned, Chapelain, Scudery, Menage, and the Abbe Cotin, "the father of
the French Riddle,"