Etourdi Ou Les Contret by Jean-Baptiste Moliere

Etourdi Ou Les Contret by Jean-Baptiste Moliere

A mischievous new translation by the poet Richard Wilbur, The Bungler] is great good fun and should open the gate for the play to be presented with the regularity it deserves.--Bruce Weber, The New York Times

My notion of translation is that you try to bring it back alive. Speak-ability is so important. . . . I came to see that a line that simply says 'I love you, ' at the right point in the show, is entirely adequate, that a great deal of verbal sophistication is not necessarily called for.--Richard Wilbur

Poet Richard Wilbur's translations of Moliere's plays are loved, renowned, and performed throughout the world. This volume is part of Theater Communications Group's new series (with cover designs by Chip Kidd) to complete trade publication of these vital works of French neoclassical comedy. The Bungler is Moliere's first recognizably great play, and the first to be written in verse. The charming farce is set in Sicily and born of the great Italian tradition of the commedia dell'arte: Loyal valet Mascarille schemes to win the lovely Celie away from rival Leadre, and into the arms of his master Leslie. Moliere himself originated the role Mascarille, self-described as the rashest fool on earth, who naturally bungles the job along the way.

Richard Wilbur is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a former Poet Laureate of the United States. His publications include six volumes of poetry and two collections of selected verses, a collection of prose, and two books for children.

Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in1622, began his career as an actor before becoming a playwright who specialized in satirizing the institutions and morals of his day. In 1658, his theater company settled in Paris in the Théâter du Petit-Bourbon. The object of fierce attack because of such masterpieces as Tartuffe and Don Juan, Molière nonetheless won the favor of the public. In 1665, his company became the King's Troupe, and the following year saw the staging of The Misanthrope, as well as The Doctor in Spite of Himself. In 1668, he produced his bitterly comic The Miser and, in the remaining years before his death, created such plays as The Would-Be Gentleman, The Mischievous Machinations of Scapin, and The Learned Women. In 1673, Molière collapsed onstage while performing his last play, The Imaginary Invalid, and died shortly thereafter.

Donald M. Frame was Moore Professor of French at Columbia University and an acclaimed scholar and translator of French literature. Among his notable works of translation are The Complete Essays of Montaigne, The Complete Works of Rabelais, and the Signet Classics Tartuffe & Other Plays and Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories.

Virginia Scott is Professor Emerita in the Department of Theater of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the author of Moliére: A Theatrical Life, The Commedia Dell'Arte in Paris, and Performance, Poetry and Politics on the Queen's Day: Catherine de Medici and Pierre de Ronsard at Fontainebleau (with Sara Sturm-Maddox).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9782070418497
ISBN 10	2070418499
Title	Etourdi Ou Les Contret
Author	Jean Baptiste Moliere
Series	Folio Theatre
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Gallimard Education
Year published	2002-05-01
Number of pages	0
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.