SOURCE: “Translating Molière for the English Stage,” in Nottingham French Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, Spring, 1994, pp. 83-91.

In the following essay, Peacock discusses the issues surrounding the translation of Molière's plays, focusing on three types of translators: conservationists, modernists, and postmodernists.

If we are not careful, Molière could become one of the obstacles to a united Europe. How can you trade freely, let alone merge with a nation whose best comedy does not travel?¹

This ironic taunt by John Peter in 1987, which could so easily have been taken for a backbench salvo in the Maastricht debate in 1993, gives expression to the disquiet, shared by numerous actors, directors, and especially theatre box-office managers, at the lack of performable translations of Molière in English. The dramatic ineffectiveness, not to mention unspeakability, of certain versions, has given a misleading impression of the great comic dramatist, even to the...