Gorgibus, in the fourth speech
of the play, makes mentions of a number of books that were very well known in
Molière’s century. Clélie (1654-60)
was a wildly popular sentimental novel by Madeleine de Scudéry. The Quatrains of the magistrate Guy du Faur
de Pibrac (d. 1584) and the Tablettes de
la vie et de la mort of the historian Pierre Matthieu (d. 1621) were
edifying texts deemed essential to the education of the young. The Guide des pêcheurs was an ascetic
devotional book by a Spanish Dominican, Luis of Granada (d. 1588). I have made
a few trivial changes in the text, for ease of speaking or of understanding.
For example, Célie’s maid says in Scene 2, “God rest my poor Martin,” but I
thought that “God rest my dear dead Jacques” would be easier for an American
actress to say. And in the same character’s last speech (22), I have submitted “a
little pill / Of common sense” for the original’s “peu d’ellébore” because folk medicine no longer speaks, as it did in the
Middle Ages, of hellebore as a cure for madness.
No comments:
Post a Comment