SOURCE: "Expansion and Brevity in Molière's Style," in Molière: Stage and Study, edited by W. D. Howarth and Merlin Thomas, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1973, pp. 93-113.

Wilson is an English educator and critic. In the following essay, he discusses the characteristic comic techniques of Molière 's dialogue.

Molière's style, long praised for its naturalness and truth to life, possesses a degree of artifice which suggests that its intention is quite different from this. It is the unobtrusive nature of this artifice, however, which both guarantees its success in achieving its aim and explains the fact that critics have been so slow to recognize it. Unlike that of many of his predecessors in seventeenth-century French comedy, the stylistic artifice of Molière is so integrated into the dramatic dialogue that it rarely draws attention to itself.

Although no play can be an exact transcription...