M. Jourdain tells them to wait until his special guest, for whom he requisitioned the piece, arrives for dinner. Suggest a Title. RESOURCES. Speak then, what is this? The Bourgeois Gentleman, comedy in five acts by Molière, gently satirizing the pretensions of the social climber whose affectations are absurd to everyone but himself. MUSIC MASTER: (To Musicians)Come, come into this room, sit there and wait until he comes. Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme Act II Summary & Analysis. To that end, he has taken up song and dance—exclusive pastimes of that era's nobility—while donning foppish clothing and affecting an upper-crust dialect; all practices that make the husband/father look foolish, as recurrently pointed out by his wife. LEGAL. 2 0 obj Announcing our NEW encyclopedia for Kids! PUPIL: Yes. Act 5. Molière makes the character as delightful as he is fatuous, as genuine as he is naïve; his folly is embedded in an expansive disposition. MUSIC MASTER: Let's see. What a spectacle! The would-be gentleman is Monsieur Jourdain, a wealthy tradesman who hires tutors in music, dancing, fencing, and philosophy and patronizes a fashionable tailor in order to acquire gentlemanly polish. Moliere thus sought to criticize both the pretentiousness of the middle class in wanting to be aristocratic and the snobbery of the aristocracy in holding to their own status. Custom writing from scratch. Staged at the Utrecht Baroque Festival, historians have referred to this production—which had Jourdain absurdly attired to absolute authenticity—as the most faithful of all to Molière and Lully's 1670 concept. Choreographed by dance notationist Pierre Beauchamp, with set constructions by Italian designer Carlo Vigarani, the initial run of The Bourgeois Gentleman featured some of the finest actors of Versailles, including Molière himself in the role of Jourdain. That is: a member of a bourgeoisie could by definition not be a gentleman in 17th-century France, because a gentleman was nothing other than a member of the aristocracy. This is good. When the choreographer fell ill by that decade's end, theatre producer Jerome Robbins took the reins for a much-acclaimed New York City Opera staging. His daughter, Lucille, wishes to wed the middle-class Cléonte, but Jourdain objects, as the elder wants his girl to marry an aristocrat. Who has bundled you up like that? … This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Bourgeois-Gentleman, The Literary Encyclopedia - Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. <> SCENE I (Music Master, Dancing Master, Musicians, and Dancers) (The play opens with a great assembly of instruments, and in the middle of the stage is a pupil of the Music Master seated at a table composing a melody which Monsieur Jourdain has ordered for a serenade.) After moving stateside in 1934, Balanchine continued staging versions of the play on through to the 1970s. . Funds can be used for tuition, books, housing, and/or other school expenses. Comprised of five acts, the play was premiered on Oct. 14, 1670, before Louis the Great at the Château of Chambord in the heart of France. Plot Summaries. Banished to Paris, the Turk set up a coffee house with the waiters donning Ottoman-style attire. The play centers on the character of Monsieur Jourdain, a middle-aged bourgeois man whose sole aim in life is to rise up into the upper class. It has also been translated into English as The Prodigious Snob. The title was intended as an oxymoron, since the word "gentlemen" referred exclusively to men born to nobility in French Renaissance society; thus "gentleman" and "bourgeois" (middle class) were mutually exclusive terms in Molière's time.

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