Bolt achieves with his translation of Moliere's classic comedy what David Hirson did with his 1991 play, La Bete. While remaining true to the general language of Moliere's time and rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter, Bolt is still able to sprinkle modern touches that make the comedy pop out even more. Bolt's British wit sparkles through the French comedy, making for an enjoyable read as well as performance.

Interesting, too, is Nicholas Dromgoole's introduction, which makes some incredibly interesting points yet also keeps in tone with Bolt's take on Moliere's commedia dell'arte-influenced School For Wives.

Whether you're a fan of Moliere or a novice to his works, Bolt's translation of The School for Wives is a fantastic read that keeps the comedy alive, even after 350 years.

I read this play for a French Lit. class (in the original French)and enjoyed Moliere's sense of humor. I laughed out loud as I watched everyone's plans go horribly awry. A great classic social commentary. It centers around one man's obsessive fear of cuckoldry (when a man's wife cheats on him), and the extremes to which he goes to avoid this. He practically emprisons a girl/young woman so that she can be raised properly and will make a faithful and obedient wife when she finally matures. This of course leads him into a muddle of confusion and coincidences as everything goes wrong . . .

I read this play for a college comparative literature course and it was great. Moliere is extremely easy to read and his work is very enjoyable. You can't help but be astonished by Arnolphe's views of women, but his ignorance gives you a good laugh. Enjoy!!

I studied this text when I was 18. Moliere is witty and humorous, which actually made reading this text a pleasure. He has lovely usage of his language.

I read this in my French class... the play is hilarious, well worth reading, and if you can't read French, you should read a translation or go see the play! It's funny, and although it is like many of Molière's other plays, it's a nice deviation from the normal play.

I've read all but one of Pulitzer-Prize winner Richard Wilbur's translations of French master playwright Moliere. This is my favorite. I was provoked to laugh out loud many times while reading it, something I rarely do with contemporary comedies, much less ones written in the 17th Century. The School for Wives I found more fresh and delightful than any present-day television sit-com and The Learned Ladies had its moments as well (especially the poetry reading by the pedantic Trissotin).

The School for Wives centers around a man, Arnolfe, who is afraid of being cuckolded. He has raised a girl from when she was very young to know nothing but praying and sewing, so that when she marries she will not have the wherewithal to cheat on him. Of course, a young man in the neighborhood happens to see her while Arnolfe is out. In a series of misunderstandings, the young man ends up enlisting Arnolfe's aid in wooing the girl. Arnolfe's every attempt to thwart their union is in turn thwarted by her. She may have been raised ignorant, but she is not stupid.

The Learned Ladies is, in present context, somewhat misogynist. Much of the comedy revolves around the matriarch of a family who rules her household "like a man." The plot again involves young lovers separated by a willful parent. The daughter of the matriarch wants to wed a young man who is equally in love with her but her mother wants her to wed the stuck-up court poet Trissotin. This is really just a pretext for a lot of the deflation of pomposity at which Moliere excels. For those who like the old battle-of-the-sexes screwball comedies, here is a likely progenitor.

The most famous of Moliere's plays are The Misanthrope, The Hypocondriac and Tartuffe. If you've already read them and like them, then I have no reservation recommending this delightful double-header.

Moliere and Wilbur, though they did not, of course, work together, are a match for Gilbert and Sullivan as a wedding of talents. Each of these plays is very funny and full of insights about human vanity.

Moliere is one of the world's great dramatists and this is a wonderful collection. Like Shakespeare, he appeals to us an entertainer as well as a thinker, which accounts for his continued popularity since the 17th century. This collection is ideal for scholars, fans and common readers alike. The selections accurately represent the variety and quality of Moliere's writing.

In a world where Jim Carey passes for a comic genius, we clearly have not read enough Moliere. This is one of his best plays, both from a structural and a comedic perspective. Moliere died while performing this play. Of course, since he was portraying the lead in "The Hypochondriac," everyone thought he was faking. Another joke from the grand master. But he was dying. When asked what dying was like, Moliere is reported to have said, "Dying is hard, but comedy is even harder." This is certainly true, and all the sub-par Jim Varey films prove it. Read this wonderful play and discover what comedy--and human nature--is all about.

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I absoultely loved it! It is a classic play by a classic author.

Mikhail Bulgakov's book The Life of Monsieur de Moliere is a very biased book that is uncritical of the great French writer Moliere. Despite the author's unabashed love of Moliere, the book is a treat from beginning to end. Bulgakov feels an affinity with Moliere because he wrote under a totalitarian regime headed by Stalin in Russia and Moliere wrote during the reign of Louis XIV. Although Moliere certainly had much more freedom than Bulgakov did, he still felt the sting of censorship from religious zealots and was often persecuted by those whom he made fun of in his plays, ( nobles, doctors, the affected ladies of French society). Bulgakov praises Moliere as the greatest French writer and as one of the greatest comediens ever. Indeed history has proven him correct. Three centuries later Moliere's works are performed in almost every nation in the world. The great joy that Bulgakov feels towards Moliere infuses the entire book (sometimes to the point of unintentional farce.) But he paints a vivid and energenic portrait of the playwright, actor and director that captures the essence of his work. Many of the details of Moliere's life are unknown and Bulgakov does take Moliere's side wherever there is ambiguity. ( For example, many of his enemies have said that Moliere married his own daughter and knew that in fact she was his daughter.) Bulgakov refutes this charge as ridiculous and indeed, without proof, it should be discounted. Bulgakov takes us from Moliere's birth (a very funny telling of how the midwife who delivered him couldn't realize he was more important to history than any royal baby she may have delivered) to his tragically ironic death right after a performance of his play The Imaginary Invalid. Bulgakov wheres his love of Moliere on his sleeve and it works to perfection in this book. Moliere's plays have an energy that imbues every verse. This book is the same way. Most other biographies are staid in comparison. They rarely capture the true genius of the great writer and almost never convey the great fun embodied in his works. Mikhail Bulgakov's biography is the best book, even though it is biased, ever written about the great French playwright.

This book is an insightful view of Moliere's classic plays.

Over the past year I have read extensively about the 17th century. "The Age of Louis XIV" is the best book which I have found on the period. Volume VII of Will and Ariel Durant's multi-volume "Story of Civilization", this book documents more detail of the era than any others which I have read.

The book begins with sections on France and England. The next section is "The Periphery" dealing with Russia, Poland, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, and Iberia. After the geographically oriented sections, the reader is treated to sections organized along intellectual topics, such as science, philosophy, and faith and reason, which contain chapters dealing with specific philosophers or scientists. The conclusion wraps it all up with the denouement of Louis XIV.

This book makes the 17th century understandable. The premier character of the era was Louis XIV, the Sun King of France. During his reign, the policies of he and his ministers established France's day in the sun. Absolute ruler of the most populous and powerful kingdom in Western Europe, Louis made France the center of Western Civilization. On these pages we learn about the Fronde, the revolt by the nobility at the rising of his Sun, from which Louis acquired his life long aversion to Paris, Louis' aggressive support of Catholicism, while at the same time maintaining illicit personal relationships, and his generous support for the arts. This era, rich in French literature and theatre, as represented in Moliere, is revealed.

The forces threatening to rend the Catholic Church further asunder, as well as the relationship between King and Pope, are dealt with in detail. I was surprised to learn that Louis exercised a power over the Church in France similar to that which Henry VIII had previously established over the Church in England.

England, meanwhile, endured Cromwell, The Stuart Restoration, and the Glorious Revolution, while spawning Milton, Dryden, Swift and other literary giants.

Interesting contrasts are illustrated. Whereas in France the monarchy was strengthened into absolutism, England was making hesitating steps toward democracy. Whereas Louis excluded much of the nobility from government and military service, essentially forcing them into the role of idle rich, the English nobility gradually gained power and responsibility for the governance of their country. We can see how these trends may have encouraged the resentment of the aristocrats on the part of the French peasantry, which may have contributed to the intensity of feeling during The Terror of the French Revolution. By contrast, the empowerment of the English nobility may have helped solidify the tradition of peaceful political maturation.

On the Periphery, Charles XII brought Sweden to the zenith of its international power, while Peter the great modernized Russia. Germany survived the onslaught of the Turks, while Italy and Iberia, the "Old Europe" of the day, slid through an era of decline.

Intellectually the era was one of giants. Many of the names with which we are familiar come alive as we read of Isaac Newton, Thomas Hobbes, John Lock, Spinoza, Leibniz and others.

The conclusion of the era was the sunset of the Sun King. Having exhausted his country with dynastic war, bled it with unequal taxation and incurred the enmity of the world, Louis negotiated a peace which left his kingdom a shattered hulk of its former greatness.

For anyone desiring an introduction to the history of the 17th century, this is a great place to start. It has me ready for other books in the Durants' "Story of Civilization".

Though the central figure of this book is Louix XIV, this book is not about French history, but about European history as a whole.

The focus of this book is not on political and military history but on the history of religion, art, literature, science and philosophy. Or I can say politics is deeply involved in religion, art, literature and philosophy. I have never studied European philosophy before, and I thought it would be exttremely difficult to understand philosophy. But while I was reading this book, I found that phlosophy could be much easier when it was explained in a political context of the times.

And in this book English history was emphasized as much as French history. It is quite natural because Louis himself was deeply involved in and greatly responsible for the 17th century English history, and Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were Englishmen.

I believe that this book is the best book I've ever read. I'd like to read all 12 volumes of Will & Ariel Durant's "The History of Civilization" series.

By the way, I found 2 trivial mistakes in this book.
According to p 505, Halley identified another comet, seen in 1680, with one observed in the year of Christ's death; he traced its recurrence every 575 years, and from the periodicity he computed its orbit and speed around the sun. According to my own calculation, however, 575 x 2 + 33 = 1183, while 575 x 3 + 33 = 1758.
According to p 513, Mariotte amused his friends by showing that "cold" could burn: with a concave slab of ice he focused sunlight upon gunpowder, causing it to explode. To focus sunlight, however, we need a convex lens, not a concave lens.

The Durants succeed again in encapsulating the 17th century in Europe. They label it as the landmark century intellectually and scientifically and there is much truth to their assessment: the 18th Century, the "Enlightenment" and "Aufklarung" usually takes pride of place given the American and French Revolutions that dominated them and the general retreat of superstition and obscurantism that marred both Catholicism and Protestantism in the previous centuries. The Durants clearly show that all the 18th century did was develop themes initially sounded and expounded by 17th century thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Leibniz, Spinoza and the English Deists. These writers, and others, laid the bedrock for the various revolutions that shook Europe in the 1700 and 1800s and which have culminated in our own day: The Industrial, Political and Scientific.

Thematically, the book is erected upon the scaffolding of the Le Roi Soleil's life. They present his wars, mistresses, patronage of art, political autocracy as well as murderous bigotry. In my opinion, in their conclusion they let Louis off far too lightly. He was a man who countenanced, nay, actually encouraged and gloried not only in wars to dominate Europe--a common enough failing amongst the crowned--but in the Persecution of the Huguenots he left a blot on his record that, in light of the deadly century we just left and the religious fanaticism of 11 September, should sink his record in the humanitarian sense.

His vanity and thirst for "la glorie" (which he admitted himself to have been his worst failing) bankrupted France and left the Peasants in a savage and degrading poverty they hadn't experienced since the calamities of the 14th century. His refusal to use his power to actually reform government and tax the nobility mark his reign as regressive and disastrous in many ways. Still his impeccable taste in the visual and plastic arts-as opposed to his love of second-rate playwrights and third-rate opera--make him the supreme art patron in history. And the prestige and admiration that accumulated acted as a sort of bank that his incompetent, worthless successor cruised upon. Only under sixteenth Louis did the credit of the Sun King's name finally run out...

Still, the Durants must credited for making this error sparkle and shimmer with life and the lovely prose still entrances and pleases regardless of how dull or recondite the subject might be. Again, they are two of the greatest of all American writers. Someday, I hope, they will be acknowledged as such.