Le Misanthrope

Alceste enters the stage in a fury. He has just caught his friend Philinte lavishing embraces upon a stranger, and such complaisance is unbearable to him. Let him be left alone, let them flee from him, let them go into hiding: he will have no more of a friendship parceled out to all and sundry. After all, what is the use of esteem if it is prostituted to the first scoundrel who comes along? A friend to mankind is not to his taste at all. He wants to be singled out, he wants the depths of the heart to be revealed in speech, and for true feelings never to be masked beneath empty compliments. Philinte, on the other hand, takes men as they are, accustoms his soul to endure what they do, counters Alceste's bile with his philosophical phlegm, and even ventures a delicate observation: how is it that a man so at odds with the human race has chosen to love Célimène, a coquettish young widow whose slanderous disposition seems so very much in keeping with the manners of the time? Alceste knows this full well. He sees her flaws, he condemns them, he is the first to blame them—but despite it all, she compels him to love her, and her grace reigns supreme.

Enter Oronte, an eager courtier burning to forge an instant bond of friendship with Alceste, offering to seal this beautiful tie by reading him a sonnet of his own composition. Alceste politely declines, warning that he has the flaw of being rather more sincere than is strictly necessary. Oronte insists, reciting his gallant sonnet on deceptive hope, while the complaisant Philinte exclaims at every stanza that it is charming, admirable, and beautifully phrased. Alceste seethes. He begins with evasions—invoking a man to whom he once said that a gentleman ought to curb his itching to write—then, pushed to the limit, blurts out that the sonnet is fit only for the privy, that this figurative style departs from good nature and truth, and that an old song in which the heart speaks plainly is worth far more than such baubles. Oronte turns pale, a quarrel breaks out, and the two men part ways hurling formulas of icy politeness at each other.

At Célimène's house, Alceste attempts to speak alone with the woman he loves. It is in vain: the drawing room is never empty. Two marquesses, Acaste and Clitandre, settle in, and Célimène—brilliant, fierce, and irresistible—launches into a series of character assassinations: the mysterious Timante who whispers everything in one's ear, Géralde who cites only dukes, Bélise whose conversation bores one to death, the young Cléon whose only merit is his cook. Alceste listens, fumes, and finally explodes: they are feeding this woman's slander by applauding her, and it is the flatterers who are to blame. Célimène retorts with a scathing portrait of Alceste himself, that contrary spirit who always takes the opposing view and fights his own feelings the moment he sees them in the mouths of others. A guard of the constabulary interrupts the sparring match: Alceste is summoned before the marshals over the affair of Oronte's sonnet.

The following act opens with Arsinoé, the prude, who comes to visit Célimène under the pretext of reporting to her, out of friendship, the ugly rumors circulating about her conduct. Célimène, who is nobody's fool, returns the compliment with exact symmetry: it is also said, in certain circles, that Arsinoé's prudery is but a false veil cast over a dreadful loneliness, that she beats her servants and fails to pay them, that she has the nudities in paintings covered but harbors a lust for the realities. The two women part, smiles on their lips and venom in their hearts. Left alone with Alceste, Arsinoé attempts to seduce him: she offers him support at court, pities him for loving an ingrate, and takes him to her home to show him proof of Célimène's infidelity—a compromising note.

Alceste returns beside himself. Before Éliante and Philinte, he brandishes the letter, cries treason, and offers his heart to Éliante out of spite. But Éliante, wise and clear-sighted, knows that a lover's anger dissipates quickly and that a beloved culprit is soon deemed innocent. Alceste finds himself face to face with Célimène. He berates her, he begs her, he demands explanations. The letter is for Oronte, he says. No, she answers, it is for a woman. The evasion is too clumsy, he rages. Very well then, she retorts, it is for Oronte; believe what you will. And this very insolence disarms him, for his heart is too cowardly to break the chain that binds him. He ends up pleading with her to defend herself, to simply appear faithful—and he, for his part, will strive to believe her so. She turns the tables on him yet again: it is he who is guilty for doubting a confession she has made at the cost of her sex's honor. Alceste yields, utterly defeated.

Meanwhile, Philinte reports on the hearing before the marshals. Alceste has consented to everything except to recant: he considers Oronte a gentleman, a man of quality, merit, and courage—but a very wretched author. The only concession that could be wrung from him was that he heartily wished he could have found the sonnet better. Then the lawsuit he refused to canvass for takes a bad turn: he loses it. Twenty thousand francs are gone, but he wishes to keep the verdict as a glorious testament to the wickedness of men. He will not appeal it. He wants to flee to a desert.

In the final act, everything comes to a head. Oronte and Alceste jointly demand that Célimène choose between them. She stalls, she agonizes, she wishes that the gentler tokens of her inclination might spare her from breaking with either of them to their faces. But Acaste and Clitandre arrive, triumphant and bitter, each bearing a letter Célimène has written to them. They read aloud, in front of everyone, the portrait the young woman has painted of each of her suitors: the tall, lanky viscount who spits into a well to make ripples, the little marquess whose entire person is dismally slight, the man with the green ribbons who sometimes entertains with his bluntness but is a hundred times over the most tiresome man in the world, the man of the sonnet whose prose is as exhausting as his verse. The masks fall. The marquesses leave, Oronte withdraws, and Arsinoé savors her rival's humiliation.

Alceste remains alone with Célimène. She admits her wrong, seeks no excuses, and submits to his anger. And he, can he bring himself to hate her? His heart refuses to obey him. So he offers everything: he will forgive her misdeeds, he will cloak them under the name of a weakness to which the vices of the age have driven her youth—provided she consents to flee the world with him, to follow him into that desert where he has vowed to live. Célimène refuses. To renounce the world before growing old, to go and bury herself in a desert—solitude terrifies a soul of twenty. She offers her hand, she offers wedlock, but not exile. Alceste rejects her: since she is incapable of finding her all in him as he finds his all in her, he refuses her, and this deeply felt outrage frees him forever from his unworthy shackles. He turns to Éliante, who gracefully declines and points to Philinte, who has long been ready to receive her hand. Betrayed on all sides, overwhelmed by injustices, Alceste exits to seek some secluded spot on earth where one is free to be a man of honor. And Philinte rushes after him, drawing Éliante along, to attempt to thwart the design his heart contemplates.