^{Note 1 in page 359} See Francisque Sarcey, Quarante ans de théâtre (Paris, 1900) : “Harpagon est moins un caractère bien étudié et suivi en ses développements, qu'une collection de traits d'avarice, qui ne se tiennent pas tous” (n, 129); Eugène Rigal, Molière (Paris, 1908) : “… il serait ridicule de marchander son admiration à ce chef-d'œuvre, mais… il est difficile aussi de trouver une suffisante unité, soit dans le personnage même de l'Avare, soit dans la composition générale de la comédie” (ii, 146); Pierre Brisson, Molière (Montreal, 1943) : “La peinture de l'avarice dans la pièce se ramène à une série de numéros de répertoire” (p. 211). AU references to the text of L'Avare are to Œuvres de Molière, ed. Despois-Mesnard (Paris, 1882), vii, 51–204.

^{Note 2 in page 359} Cf. H. C. Lancaster, French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore, 1936) : “A failure to fuse completely elements from different sources explains, though it does not justify, the lack of harmony that still remains in the portrait of Harpagon, who reincarnates Boisrobert's money-lender, Plautus's hoarder and Chappuzeau's amorous miser” (Part iii, ii, 716).

^{Note 3 in page 360} Rigal, pp. 156, 160.

^{Note 4 in page 360} Rigal, p. 161; Théâtre complet de Molière, ed. Robert Jouanny (Paris, Gamier, n.d.), ii, 236.

^{Note 5 in page 360} Grimarest's anonymous duke.

^{Note 6 in page 360} La Vie de Molière (Paris, 1929), p. 204.

^{Note 7 in page 360} See, for instance, Rigal, in note 1, and Gustave Michaut's Notice to the play in Œuvres complètes de Molière (Paris, 1947) : “Mais l'Avare n'en est pas moins un chef-d'œuvre” (vii, 126).

^{Note 8 in page 360} A far cry from Boisrobert's Amidor, the likely model for this circumstance, whose wealth merely serves to give point to Corinne's designs on his son.

^{Note 9 in page 361} Boisrobert, however, scatters his shot: the surprise resulting from the identity of the usurer is divorced from the display of picturesque stinginess (four-fifths of the sum is promised in she-apes, parrots, and cannons sailing in from the Cape Verde islands!), which is ascribed, not to Amidor, but to Mison, a usurer who “A votre père… feroit des leçons” (iv.ii).

^{Note 10 in page 361} The miser has long since defaced himself, by stripping himself of the use of the possessions which constitute the material framework of his dignity.

^{Note 11 in page 361} In Victor Fournel, Les Contemporains de Molière (Paris, 1863), i, 363–400. References to Boisrobert's La Belle Plaideuse are to the text in Edouard Fournier, Le Théâtre français au XVIe et au XVIIe siècles (Paris, 1874), ii, 588–666.

^{Note 12 in page 362} Jacques Copeau puts it most succinctly : “Harpagon flétrit tout ce qu'il touche, dessèche tout ce qui l'entoure.” Œuvres de Molière (Paris, 1930), vi, 7.

^{Note 13 in page 362} One of the strictures on the play which Lancaster takes up in this connection is the abortive scheme of the comtesse de Basse-Bretagne airily thrown off by Frosine (iv.i) and left dangling unused at the end of the play. I think his footnote is worth quoting in full: “In la Belle Plaideuse the young man's sweetheart pretends to be a countess from Brittany, wins the miser's admiration, and makes him desire to give her in marriage to his son. The contract is signed before he discovers that she is the young woman whom he did not wish his son to marry, but, when she has won her suit and learned that she has the title, he is delighted with the match. As, in l'Avare, the miser is his son's rival, the plan would naturally be altered so that Harpagon would be induced to seek her for himself rather than for his son. There may also have been a suggestion from Thomas Corneille's Baron d'Albikrac, in which a valet is disguised as a nobleman from Brittany in order to win the affections of an aunt, so that she would give up her desire to marry her niece's lover. Or it may be that the selection of this theme by Thomas Corneille prevented Molière from using it to bring about his dénouement. If this is the case, it would help explain why Molière allowed Frosine to propose the plan, but did not utilize it further.” (French Dramatic Literature, Part iii, ii, 714–715, n. 11.) The author of this ingenious explanation seems nowhere to suspect that the reference to Thomas Corneille utterly voids his assumption that Molière had to get the idea from Chappuzeau. Evidently a Breton name is in itself a comic asset (cf. Bois-robert, n.iii), while its outlandishness makes for a convenient claim of landed wealth that is hard to check up on. Molière was probably reminded of the fact by the—rather clumsy—use that Boisrobert makes of the device (his Corinne really is a Breton countess, hence the play only gives the appearance of taking in Amidor), and used it for the sort of trick a Frosine might think of. But the point of the episode is not that he is preparing a dénouement (this play calls for a miracle to give it a happy ending, not a trick), but that he exhibits the inhumanity of Harpagon, which is seen here as forcing even Frosine into an unexpectedly humane and sympathetic posture. The dangling scheme—which is perfectly true to life—is small price to pay for this extra bit of indirect characterization.

^{Note 14 in page 364} “L'esclavage des passions est un esclavage par le Rien. Toute passion est vanité”: Paul Ricœur, Philosophie de la volonté (Paris, 1949), i, 26. Harpagon, by this token, is a pure embodiment of passion, as he feverishly empties himself, under its strong compulsion, of all his attributes: paternity, respectability, humanity—all for the sake of the absent gold. Even his “love” for Mariane is an empty gesture; devoid of affection and even of lust, it partakes of the essential remoteness of his maîtresse passion. Mariane he will own—and rally to the service of his god.

^{Note 15 in page 364} The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago, 1951), p. 202.

^{Note 16 in page 364} See F. M. Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy (London, 1914); also Northrop Frye, “The Mythos of Spring: Comedy,” Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, 1957), p. 171.

^{Note 17 in page 364} Euclio's “Perii interii occidi” (Aulularia, iv.ix), by contrast, is but a gasp of comically exaggerated despair. He has stinted himself, and now others will make merry over his loss. His grief is over real injury (his self-inflicted penury, the damage to his pride), not a dirge over his own symbolic death.

^{Note 18 in page 365} For a good summary of psychoanalytic views on the equation of money and excrement, see Donald O. Brown, “Filthy Lucre,” Life Against Death (Middletown, Conn., 1959), pp. 234–306.

^{Note 19 in page 365} From the Greek aQjta, snatcher, plunderer; and , meat-hook through the Latin harpago (see Mes-nard, vii, 51, n. 1).