Chapter Two addresses the first example of a metaphorical use of blindness: the idea that blindness is a kind of punishment (and results from immoral behaviour). In particular, the chapter focuses on a particularly dangerous category of this trope that persists into the present day – the idea that blind people (and blind characters) are immoral because they are pretending to be blind. Ancient examples in this chapter are Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus at Colonus and Euripides’ Hecuba and Cyclops (these ancient texts recur in almost every chapter). Modern texts under examination here include Shakespeare’s Henry VI part 2, and King Lear, French medieval drama (especially farce) and the anonymous Historie of Jacob and Esau. As well as introducing this metaphorical use of blindness, this chapter also delves further into the question of temporality and origin-positioning.

Molière’s career was punctuated by episodes of polemic. In the twin contexts of an ideological quarrel concerning theatre’s morality and a commercial war between rival theatres, he confronted primarily two types of enemy: the dévots who condemned theatre in general and his rivals who took against his theatre in particular. His private life was attacked as well as his public one (as author, actor and company leader). He was sometimes condemned with disdain as the ‘best farce actor in France’, sometimes with dread as a ‘demon clothed in flesh’. Faced with plots and threats of censorship, Molière shone by his exploitation of these polemical episodes to invent new theatrical forms and confirm his supremacy. From Les Précieuses ridicules to Dom Juan, via L’École des femmes and Tartufe, his entire output can be seen to derive from a conflictual logic, whereby each new play is generated by the debates surrounding the preceding one, in a process of constant negotiation with the legitimising powers whose support he sought: the Parisian public and those with political power. Polemic was thus a driving creative force and laughter became Molière’s most fearful weapon in bringing down his rivals.

Plautus’ Pseudolus plays upon the concept of ‘credit’, and reveals the similar nature of the belief that audiences grant to the stage-events and the belief in someone’s credit that underpins borrowing and lending. The Roman understanding of credit in both senses anticipates the modern emergence of the concept of fiction within a modern mercantile economyy.