Theatre Journal
Volume 55, Number 2, May 2003
E-ISSN: 1086-332X Print ISSN: 0192-2882
DOI: 10.1353/tj.2003.0085
E-ISSN: 1086-332X Print ISSN: 0192-2882
DOI: 10.1353/tj.2003.0085
Smith, Gretchen Elizabeth, 1959-
Moliere: A Theatrical Life (review)
Theatre Journal - Volume 55, Number 2, May 2003, pp. 373-374
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Gretchen Elizabeth Smith - Moliere: A Theatrical Life (review) -
Theatre Journal 55:2 Theatre Journal 55.2 (2003) 373-374 Molière: A Theatrical Life. By Virginia Scott.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; pp. 333. $23.00 paper,
$55.00 cloth. Molière: A Theatrical Life is the first important
English-language biography of the playwright/actor/manager since John
Palmer's Molière, published in 1930. Virginia Scott's reexamination of
the events and personal relationships of the life of the man born
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin results from her belief that "times have changed
and so has biography" (1). Indeed, the changes in the genre of
scholarly biography are a central part of Scott's agenda. Scott notes
that Palmer's biography demonstrates a conventional "positivist view of
the evidence" (7) of Molière's life, one drawn from a three-century
tradition of French scholarship. This tradition, introduced in Charles
Varlet La Grange's original biography of 1682 and carried on in Roger
Duchêne's Molière (Fayard...