SOURCE: “Lessons Unheeded: The Denouement of Le Misanthrope,” in Nottingham French Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1, Spring, 1990, pp. 10-20.

In the following essay, Peacock examines the ending of Molière's Le Misanthrope, contending that its paradoxical nature is representative of the comic, and not the tragic, dramatic genre.

‘Le dénouement, quel qu'il soit, ne peut être que tragique’.¹ Horville's dark interpretation of the ending of Le Misanthrope is representative of a tradition in Molière criticism which is still widely accepted despite persuasive attempts to correct it.² Evidence, however meagre, from Molière's contemporaries indicates a comic ending. Montausier, who was thought at the time to have been a prototype of Alceste, claimed that he had become the butt of everyone's laughter. The first performance of the play provoked what Donneau de Visé termed ‘rire dans l'âme’. The tragic lighting seems to have been introduced in productions after...