Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Pretentious Young Ladies
    The Pretentious Young Ladies
    The Pretentious Young Ladies
    Ebook89 pages54 minutes

    The Pretentious Young Ladies

    By Molière

    3/5

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 1965
    The Pretentious Young Ladies
    Author

    Molière

    Molière was a French playwright, actor, and poet. Widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and universal literature, his extant works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets, and more.

    Read more from Molière

    Related to The Pretentious Young Ladies

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Sam Shepard’s Dynamic Women

      Aug 11, 2017

      Sam Shepard’s Dynamic Women
      4 min read

    • Article

      Polly Stenham

      Jun 4, 2016

      Polly Stenham
      1 min read

    • Article

      Refugees

      Mar 1, 2019

      Refugees
      12 min read

    • Article

      Carrie Coon Has Drawn Acclaim for Her TV Work, but Her Return to Theater in 'Mary Jane' Brings a Welcome Clarity of Character

      Oct 27, 2017

      NEW YORK - You can tell by the way Carrie Coon confidently maneuvers around the tables of a crowded Tribeca restaurant that this is an actress who has hit her stride. She recently completed two tours of television duty, receiving acclaim for her work

      6 min read

    • Article

      The 10 Best Shows

      Dec 19, 2016

      The 10 Best Shows
      3 min read

    • Article

      We Laughed–until We Cried

      Feb 5, 2020

      We Laughed–until We Cried
      4 min read

    • Article

      Pain And Love In The Backyard

      Feb 25, 2020

      In Will Arbery’s new play, five conservative Catholics in Wyoming gather late at night by a fire pit to argue, commiserate, and face the uncertain future of their faith and their country. Danya Taymor, who directed the play’s premiere at New York Cit

      8 min read

    • Article

      Onstage March 19

      Feb 25, 2019

      Onstage March 19
      26 min read

    • Article

      “Where Did You Laugh?”

      Dec 14, 2019

      “Where Did You Laugh?”
      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘The Humans’ Review: Stephen Karam’s Hit Play About An Unsettling Thanksgiving Comes To Showtime, Starring Amy Schumer And A Table Full Of Real Humans

      Nov 24, 2021

      ‘The Humans’ Review: Stephen Karam’s Hit Play About An Unsettling Thanksgiving Comes To Showtime, Starring Amy Schumer And A Table Full Of Real Humans
      2 min read

    • Article

      V (formerly Eve Ensler) On Biden, Feminism And Why She Was Wrong To Cancel Her Father

      Mar 9, 2021

      You don’t just hook up with Eve Ensler," said Glenn Close, who performed in the play that made Enlser’s name and changed the lives of women around the world, The Vagina Monologues. "You become part of her crusade". Talking to Ensler, who is now known

      6 min read

    • Article

      Our 25-year friendship

      May 6, 2021

      Our 25-year friendship
      3 min read

    • Article

      Editor’s Note

      Jul 25, 2019

      IF THE FIERCE WOMAN IN A BROCADE JACKET ON OUR cover is unfamiliar to you, allow us to correct that. Playwright Adrienne Kennedy is an American original as distinctive as any artist who’s ever walked among us. Born in 1931, she began writing her lyri

      2 min read

    • Article

      Broadway’s Dirty Secret

      Nov 6, 2019

      Broadway’s Dirty Secret
      5 min read

    • Article

      Adapting the Bard: On the Hogarth Shakespeare Project’s Diversity Problem

      Oct 5, 2017

      It is disappointing when a project aims to see “the Bard’s plays retold by acclaimed, bestselling novelists and brought to life for a contemporary readership,” yet the writers selected are not ultimately representative of all that contemporary societ

      6 min read

    • Article

      Qui Nguyen Finds a Home in Orange County

      Apr 2, 2019

      As a playwright, I’m a little bit ADD artistically,” says Qui Nguyen. “I get bored really quickly. I put things in there that are kind of wild, just to keep myself entertained.” Nguyen’s breakthrough play, Vietgone, illustrates exactly what he’s talk

      5 min read

    • Article

      Review: Martyna Majok's Pulitzer-winning Drama 'Cost Of Living' Has Found An Ideal Home

      Nov 13, 2018

      LOS ANGELES - Two of the best productions this fall have happened at intimate theaters that are keeping up with the exciting developments in American playwriting. Earlier this season, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' "Gloria" was presented by Echo Theater Com

      3 min read

    Reviews for The Pretentious Young Ladies

    3/5

    1 rating1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Moliere has long been on my to-read list because his comedies were on a list of "100 Significant Books" I was determined to read through. The introduction in one of the books of his plays says that of his "thirty-two comedies... a good third are among the comic masterpieces of world literature." The plays are surprisingly accessible and amusing, even if by and large they strike me as frothy and light compared to comedies by Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Wilde, Shaw and Rostand. But I may be at a disadvantage. I'm a native New Yorker, and looking back it's amazing how many classic plays I've seen on stage, plenty I've seen in filmed adaptation and many I've studied in school. Yet I've never encountered Moliere before this. Several productions of Shakespeare live and filmed are definitely responsible for me love of his plays. Reading a play is really no substitute for seeing it--the text is only scaffolding. So that might be why I don't rate these plays higher. I admit I also found Wilbur's much recommended translation off-putting at first. The format of rhyming couplets seemed sing-song and trite, as if I was reading the lyrics to a musical rather than a play. As I read more I did get used to that form, but I do suspect these are the kinds of works that play much better on stage than on the page. Les Précieuses ridicules is a one-act satire about two girls who are taken in by their own social pretensions and made ridiculous. This is an early work, and especially having read before this such works by Moliere as The Misanthrope and Tartuffe this comes across as rather slight.

    Book preview

    The Pretentious Young Ladies - Molière

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pretentious Young Ladies, by Moliere

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: The Pretentious Young Ladies

    Author: Moliere

    Posting Date: April 17, 2013 [EBook #6562] Release Date: September, 2004 First Posted: December 28, 2002

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRETENTIOUS YOUNG LADIES ***

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

    LES PRÉCIEUSES RIDICULES:

    COMÉDIE EN UN ACTE.

    1659.

    * * * * *

    THE PRETENTIOUS YOUNG LADIES:

    A COMEDY IN ONE ACT.

    (THE ORIGINAL IN PROSE.) 1659.

    INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.

    Molière 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 Molière returned to Paris. The Hôtel 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, Scudéry, Ménage, and the Abbé 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 Scudéry became the text-book of the précieux and the précieuses, 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 éclairant 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, châtier son style; to correct one's style; dépenser une heure, to spend an hour; revètir ses pensées d'expressions nobles, to clothe one's thoughts in noble expressions, etc.

    Though the précieux and précieuses had been several times attacked before, it remained for Molière 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 Molière'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 Théâtre du Petit Bourbon, on the 18th of November, 1659, and met with great success. Through the influence of some noble précieux and précieuses 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 Molière 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,

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1