L’École des femmes
A separate edition, included in the second, factitious collected edition of Molière's Œuvres published by Daniel Elzevir (with the imprint of Amsterdam, chez Jacques le Jeune) under the general date of 1679. This printing of L'École des femmes belongs to volume II of that collected edition.
“This is the second reprint of the edition published under the date 1663 (Holland, Elzevier, à la Sphère), the first reprint being that of 1674. The dedication to Madame does not appear in this printing” and is found only in the 1663 Elzevir edition.
The copy has been enriched with an engraved frontispiece, bound in at front.
First performed at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal on 26 December 1662, L’École des femmes ran until 9 March 1663, an immediate mark of its success with the public: no fewer than thirty-one performances were given before the Easter break, and thirty-two afterward, not counting performances before the King and the so-called “visites.” To these clear signs of a triumphant reception was added another, equally telling: printed quickly after its first performance (the Privilège is dated 4 February 1663 and the achevé d’imprimer 17 March), the edition was divided among eight different booksellers — an exceptional arrangement for the period, suggesting that a major commercial success was anticipated. The text went through three printings in 1663 alone, as well as a counterfeit edition. The first printing, which lacks two pages that had to be supplied by a cancel, is the rarest. The second and third printings contain corrections that fixed the text for later editions.
This Dutch edition was issued by Daniel Elzevir.
Louis Jouvet, who staged the play at the Athénée in 1936, wrote: “Molière’s plays are as enigmatic as our own lives. Impenetrable, and yet reducible, they retain their perpetual power to solicit, to prompt meditation, and to entertain the human mind” (in Témoignages sur le théâtre).
Guibert, I, 134, no. 10; G. Couton, Œuvres complètes, Pléiade, I.