Affection I can endure,affectation I abhor. Empty phrases,meaningless gestures of faked good-will.These affable dispensers of embraces make me ill.Disgusted with French society where powdered fops gossip in code and bejewelled coquettes whisper behind fans, poet Alceste embarks on a one-man crusade against fakery, frippery and forked tongues. But could the woman he adores be the worst culprit of them all? And in this rarefied world will his revolution prove merely revolting?Considered by many to be Molière's best work,
The Misanthrope was first performed in 1666 in Paris by the King's Players. Following the huge successes of
Tartuffe and
The Hypochondriac master wordsmith Roger McGough once again dips his quill into a Molière classic in this mockery of manners and morals set amid seventeenth-century French aristocracy and written in verse.
Molière doesn't need email and references to HRT to speak to us - what he really needs is a poet who can wring the dryness out of the 12-syllable Alexandrine line while retaining most of the juicy rhyming couplets. McGough's version is a whimsical delight. Alfred Hickling Guardian 20130221
Molière (born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in 1622) was a French playwright and actor-manager. Molière's main achievement was in raising the standard of French comedy to a level commensurate with French tragedy. In doing so he created a body of work that would continue to be performed for the next three centuries, providing generation after generation of performers with some of their finest roles.
Roger McGough, CBE is one of the pre-eminent poets writing today. As one of the Liverpool poets alongside Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, he helped create the art of performance poetry and is now in huge demand for his performances, with his new collections and anthologies being eagerly awaited. He regularly writes and performs on the television and radio. He is also an accomplished playwright, with two of his previous adaptations of Molière's plays published by Methuen Drama. He is an honorary fellow of Liverpool John Moores University and President of the Poetry Society. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004.
Klappentext
Following the huge successes of Tartuffe and The Hypochondriac master wordsmith Roger McGough once again dips his quill into The Misanthrope, the comedy many consider to be Molière's best work.
Roger McGough is a major poet whose work is widely studied and reverred. This lively, hilarious and fast-paced adaptation will undoubtedly appeal to students and young people because of its accessibility, humour and extremely clever verse.
