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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," ruled in their stead. Moreover, every lady in Paris,
as well as in the provinces, no matter what her education was, held her
drawing-room, where nothing was heard but a ridiculous, exaggerated, and
what was worse, a borrowed phraseology. The novels of Mdlle. de Scudery
became the text-book of the _precieux_ and the _precieuses_, for such
was the name given to these gentlemen and ladies who set up for wits,
and thought they displayed exquisite taste, refined ideas, fastidious
judgment, and consummate and critical discrimination, whilst they only
uttered vapid and blatant nonsense. What other language can be used when
we find that they called the sun _l'aimable eclairant le plus beau du
monde, l'epoux de la nature_, and that when speaking of an old gentleman
with grey hair, they said, not as a joke, but seriously, _il a des
quittances d'amour_. A few of their expressions, however, are employed
even at the present time, such as, _chatier son style_; to correct one's
style; _depenser une heure_, to spend an hour; _revetir ses pensees
d'expressions nobles_, to clothe one's thoughts in noble expressions,
etc.

Though the _precieux and precieuses_ had been several times attacked
before, it remained for Moliere to give them their death blow, and after
the performance of his comedy the name became a term of ridicule and
contumely. What enhanced the bitterness of the attack was the difference
between Moliere's natural style and the affected tone of the would-be
elegants he brought upon the stage.

This comedy, in prose, was first acted at Paris, at the Theatre du Petit
Bourbon, on the 18th of November, 1659, and met with great success.
Through the influence of some noble _precieux_ and _precieuses_ it was
forbidden until the 2d of December, when the concourse of spectators was
so great that it had to be performed twice a day, that the prices of
nearly all the places were raised (See Note 7, page xxv.), and that it
ran for four months together. We have referred in our prefatory memoir
of Moliere to some of the legendary anecdotes connected with this play.

It has also been said that our author owed perhaps the first idea of
this play to a scarcely-known work, _le Cercle des Femmes, ou le Secret
du Lit Nuptial; entretiens comiques_, written by a long-forgotten
author, Samuel Chapuzeau, in which a servant, dressed in his master's
clothes, is well received by a certain lady who had rejected the master.
But as the witty dialogue is the principal merit in Moliere's play, it
is really of no great consequence who first suggested the primary idea.

The piece, though played in 1659, was only printed on the 29