Molière's "L'Avare"

Defining comedy extends into break ….

In the playground the fat one they call
Elmer is wriggling against the wall again,
inviting, enjoying jibes, punches, spit ….
Funny, of course it’s funny -
Molière ‘castigat ridendo mores’ -
students quote the introduction for proof.
 
Harpagon, such meanness, such cruelty
to his children, servants, horses,
deserves to lose his ‘chère cassette’
of cash, and crack up, as if widowed again,
to hang the world, and then himself.
His howls of anguish turn up the laughter,
uncomfortably, despite ourselves.
 
Molière is castigating less the mores,
more the man, the more he’s
hooked on money, his love, his fix,
the more the misfit, the more he’s
writhing against the public wall
of his private hell,
the louder the hoots of derision,
to send them away laughing,
because comedy has a happy ending,

students say, glad of a break.

.