Book Description
Including The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, The Miser, The Would-Be Gentleman, The Mischievous Machinations of Scapin, The Learned Woman, and The Imaginary Invalid, this collection highlights perhaps France's greatest playwright of all time. ... Read more

Book Description
In The Doctor in Spite of Himself, Moliere's scalpel-sharp satire of the medical profession, Sganarelle's wife spreads the word the he is secretly a brilliant doctor who won't reveal his skills unless he is unmercifully punished. The Bourgeois Gentleman, Moliere's classic treatment of snobbery, presents Monsieur Jordain's obsessive desire to move up out of the ranks of the middle class and associate with the gentry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

clear and modern translations of great plays
Bermel's translations are funny and sharp and a little bawdier than most, but they will appeal more to modern audiences reared on Mtv and reality shows. The Doctor is especially sharp and would make an excellent piece for college theatre groups. Both bring forth Moliere's satire beautifully.

A Bad Translation?
These are two comdedies that fail in a modern sense: a woodcutter as a doctor
and a middle class fellow who wants "Culture".Coming from California
I have felt the sting of New York/ east coast snobbery and
wanted to be able to reply.So the Bourgeois Gentleman
isn't funny to me: it is cruel.The Army made a medic of me
despite of my religious history, so I sympathize with the poor woodcutter.
Had the translation been better the plays might have survived them,
but it fails the humor of the plays and they fall flat. ... Read more

Book Description
In one of Moliere's most popular plays, Scapin, that monarch of con men, puts his store of ingenuity to work, getting two lovesick young men married to the girls they pine for and, along the way, taking revenge on their grasping old fathers. Closed down after its first, highly successful run because of opposition from powerful enemies of the playwright, Don Juan was performed in a bowdlerized version for almost two hundred years, until actors, directors and critics restored the original text, recognizing it as the most ambitious and mightiest of Moliere's prose plays. Bermel's translations of the scripts as presented here have received rave reviews. ... Read more

Book Description
Moliere is considered the Shakespeare of France. Moliere's plays are enacted throughout the world in virtually every language, as much today as ever. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume of Moliere's dramatic commentaries on society presents The Miser, a misguided hero who obsessively disrupts the lives of those around him. The School for Wives is newly translated for this edition and was fiercely denounced as impious and vulgar. Moliere's response to his detractors became The School for Wives Criticized. Even more alarming to critics was his version of Don Juan. In The Hypochondriac, he produced an outrageous expose of medicine. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

the miser and other plays
moliere is one of the great comic genuises of our time. The miser, which is perhaps the most well known and definately my personal favorite play in this book, is a great example of his quick wit and irony. this translation,while for clarity completely perfect, seems to stray a little from otherand more beautiful translations of this play i have read. However, what atreat for the actor and the reader alike. Second only to the misanthrope(and maybe Tartuffe) this, one of Moliere's classics, is a must read. Notealso, for the actor, that there are some wonderful scenes that requiregreat timing in this play and would be wonderful as a duo audition piece. ... Read more

Book Description
Moliere's prose plays demonstrate both his versatility as a playwright and the reasons for his enduring popularity from the France of Louis XIV to the present. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

excellent read!
great book!The English translations of the French are superb and enjoyable to read! ... Read more

Book Description
These are the best of Moliere's masterful one-acts, blending broad farce and pointed wit to express his never-ending delight in human foibles. But Moliere is more than just the "master of the laugh," for behind the comic gestures of these matchless rogues, tight-fisted masters, possessive lovers and elegant ladies lurk fears, insecurities and their consequences. Includes: The Jealous Husband, The Flying Doctor, Two Precious Maidens Ridiculed, The Imaginary Cuckold, The Rehearsal at Versailles, The Forced Marriage, The Seductive Mistress. ... Read more

Book Description
Moliére's anticlerical comedy Tartuffe is the unique prism through which Sheryl Kroen views postrevolutionary France in the years of the Restoration. Following the lead of the French men and women who turned to this play in the 1820s to make sense of their world, Kroen exposes the crisis of legitimacy defining the regime in these years and demonstrates how the people of the time made steps toward a democratic resolution to this crisis. Moving from the town squares, where state and ecclesiastical officials orchestrated their public spectacles in favor of the monarchy, to the theaters, where the French used Tartuffe to mock the restored monarch and the church, this cultural history of the Restoration offers a rich and colorful portrait of a period in which critical legacies of the revolutionary period were played out and cemented.
While most historians have characterized the Restoration as a period of reaction and reversal, Kroen offers convincing evidence that the Restoration was a critical bridge between the emerging practices of the Old Regime, the Revolution, and the post-1830 politics of protest. She re-creates the atmosphere of Restoration France and at the same time brings major nineteenth-century themes into focus: memory and commemoration, public and private spheres, politics and religion, anticlericalism, and the formation of democratic ideologies and practices. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

i luv this book
this book is pretty cool it definitly inspired the creation of another cuckold resource.I recommend this book[..].

great story
i greatly enjoyed this book.it was amusing and terribly funny.i could barely put it down.the characters were life-like and i found myself wrapped up in their twisted plot.i would recommend this book for anyone that wants a liesurely read. ... Read more