SOURCE: “Obligation in Dom Juan,” in From Gestures to Idea: Esthetics and Ethics in Moliere's Comedy, Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 39-71.

In the following essay, Gross presents an in-depth discussion of Molière's Dom Juan, focusing on the gestural nature of the play.

Dom Juan, composed in the shadow of the banned Tartuffe, is a machine-play, a “spectacular” in the etymological sense, whose use of mechanical devices in the tomb and the Statue belongs to a pattern of gestures implicit in the text which shape the comedy's structure and meaning. Sganarelle's gestures during his opening speech supplement his praise of snuff. Like the allusions to kneeling in Tartuffe, they are recalled throughout the play and, in an entirely different sense, in his final speech as he cries for his wages. Molière, playing the role in 1665, must have brought the full tradition of comic turns and pranks, inflection...