The Pretentious Young Ladies

The Pretentious Young Ladies
[with accents]

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Title: The Pretentious Young Ladies
Author: Moliere
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LES PRÉCIEUSES RIDICULES:
COMÉDIE EN UN ACTE.
1659.
* * * * *
THE PRETENTIOUS YOUNG LADIES:
A COMEDY IN ONE ACT.
(THE ORIGINAL IN PROSE.) 1659.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
Molière began in The Pretentious Young Ladies to paint men and
women as they are; to make living characters and existing manners the
ground-work of his plays. From that time he abandoned all imitation of
Italian or Spanish imbroglios and intrigues.
There is no doubt that aristocratic society attempted, about the latter
years of the reign of Louis XIII., to amend the coarse and licentious
expressions, which, during the civil wars had been introduced into
literature as well as into manners. It was praiseworthy of some
high-born ladies in Parisian society to endeavour to refine the language
and the mind. But there was a very great difference between the
influence these ladies exercised from 1620 until 1640, and what took
place in 1658, the year when Molière returned to Paris. The Hôtel de
Rambouillet, and the aristocratic drawing-rooms, had then done their
work, and done it well; but they were succeeded by a clique which
cared only for what was nicely said, or rather what was out of the

common. Instead of using an elegant and refined diction, they
employed only a pretentious and conceitedly affected style, which
became highly ridiculous; instead of improving the national idiom they
completely spoilt it. Where formerly D'Urfe, Malherbe, Racan, Balzac,
and Voiture reigned, Chapelain, Scudéry, Ménage, and the Abbé Cotin,
"the father of the French Riddle," ruled in their stead. Moreover, every
lady in Paris, as well as in the provinces, no matter what her education
was, held her drawing-room, where nothing was heard but a ridiculous,
exaggerated, and what was worse, a borrowed phraseology. The novels
of Mdlle. de Scudéry became the text-book of the _précieux_ and the
_précieuses_, for such was the name given to these gentlemen and
ladies who set up for wits, and thought they displayed exquisite taste,
refined ideas, fastidious judgment, and consummate and critical
discrimination, whilst they only uttered vapid and blatant nonsense.
What other language can be used when we find that they called the sun
_l'aimable éclairant le plus beau du monde, l'epoux de la nature_, and
that when speaking of an old gentleman with grey hair, they said, not as
a joke, but seriously, _il a des quittances d'amour_. A few of their
expressions, however, are employed even at the present time, such as,
_châtier son style_; to correct one's style; _dépenser une heure_, to
spend an hour; _revètir ses pensées d'expressions nobles_, to clothe
one's thoughts in noble expressions, etc.
Though the _précieux and précieuses_ had been several times attacked
before, it remained for Molière to give them their death blow, and after
the performance of his comedy the name became a term of ridicule and
contumely. What enhanced the bitterness of the attack was the
difference between Molière's natural style and the affected tone of the
would-be elegants he brought upon the stage.
This comedy, in prose, was first acted at Paris, at the Théâtre du Petit
Bourbon, on the 18th of November, 1659, and met with great success.
Through the influence of some noble _précieux_ and _précieuses_ it
was forbidden until the 2d of December, when the concourse of
spectators was so great that it had to be performed twice a day, that the
prices of nearly all