Pour un nouvel examen des Fâcheux de Molière (1662)
Type de matériel :
53
Molière’s bibliographers have for a long time noted a few anomalies in Molière’s play Les Fâcheux, published in 1662: the second quire bears the letter ‘A’ while it contains introductory material; the numbering starts with this quire and not with the play itself; and the first two pages of the play (A6r-v) are mistakenly numbered 9-10 instead of 11-12. This led bibliographers to surmise that the first two quires had undergone a new composition, meant to replace what was formerly a dedicatory epistle to Nicolas Fouquet with a new one to the King. Molière would have had second thoughts after the disfavour of the superintendent of finance. Since nothing supports Molière’s alleged change of mind, a material re-examination was in order on the occasion of a new edition of the dramatist’s works in the La Pléiade collection. A careful analysis limits the significance of the observed anomalies; it does not reveal any typographical break between the first quires and the rest of the play; it shows that the four sheets of the book use the same paper with the same watermark; and it uncovers a clue overlooked by bibliographers: a frame element present on A6v is found again on other quires, which is proof of the typographical consistency of the whole. This new examination of Molière’s Les Fâcheux re-establishes the production’s circumstances and refutes assumptions made until now by bibliographers.
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