The Middle-Class Gentleman

Excerpt

ACT ONE

SCENE I (Music Master, Dancing Master, Musicians, and Dancers)

(The play opens with a great assembly of instruments, and in the middle of the stage is a pupil of the Music Master seated at a table composing a melody which Monsieur Jourdain has ordered for a serenade.)

MUSIC MASTER: (To Musicians) Come, come into this room, sit there and wait until he comes. 

DANCING MASTER: (To dancers) And you too, on this side. 

MUSIC MASTER: (To Pupil) Is it done? 

PUPIL: Yes. 

MUSIC MASTER: Let's see. . . This is good. 

DANCING MASTER: Is it something new? 

MUSIC MASTER: Yes, it's a melody for a serenade that I set him to composing here, while waiting for our man to awake. 

DANCING MASTER: May I see it? 

MUSIC MASTER: You'll hear it, with the dialogue, when he comes. He won't be long. 

DANCING MASTER: Our work, yours and mine, is not trivial at present. 

MUSIC MASTER: This is true. We've found here such a man as we both need. This is a nice source of income for us -- this Monsieur Jourdain, with the visions of nobility and gallantry that he has gotten into his head. You and I should hope that everyone resembled him. 

DANCING MASTER: Not entirely; I could wish that he understood better the things that we give him. 

MUSIC MASTER: It's true that he understands them poorly, but he pays well, and that's what our art needs now more than anything else. 

DANCING MASTER: As for me, I admit, I feed a little on glory. Applause touches me; and I hold that, in all the fine arts, it is painful to produce for dolts, to endure the barbarous opinions of a fool about my choreography. It is a pleasure, don't tell me otherwise, to work for people who can appreciate the fine points of an art, who know how to give a sweet reception to the beauties of a work and, by pleasurable approbations, gratify us for our labor. Yes, the most agreeable recompense we can receive for the things we do is to see them recognized and flattered by an applause that honors us. There is nothing, in my opinion, that pays us better for all our fatigue; and it is an exquisite delight to receive the praises of the well-informed. 

MUSIC MASTER: I agree, and I enjoy them as you do. There is surely nothing more agreeable than the applause you speak of; but that incense does not provide a living. Pure praises do not provide a comfortable existence; it is necessary to add something solid, and the best way to praise is to praise with cash-in-hand. He's a man, it's true, whose insight is very slight, who talks nonsense about everything and applauds only for the wrong reasons but his money makes up for his judgments. He has discernment in his purse. His praises are in cash, and this ignorant bourgeois is worth more to us, as you see, than the educated nobleman who introduced us here. 

DANCING MASTER: There is some truth in what you say; but I find that you lean a little too heavily on money; and material interest is something so base that a man of good taste should never show an attachment to it. 

MUSIC MASTER: You are ready enough to receive the money our man gives you. 

DANCING MASTER: Assuredly; but I don't place all my happiness in it, and I could wish that together with his fortune he had some good taste in things. 

MUSIC MASTER: I could wish it too, that's what both of us are working for as much as we can....