File:Richard Mansfield as Alceste in "The Misanthrope".jpg

Identifier: lifeartofrichard02wint (find matches)
Title: Life and art of Richard Mansfield : with selections from his letters
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Winter, William, 1836-1917
Subjects: Mansfield, Richard, 1857-1907
Publisher: New York : Moffat, Yard and company
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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vain. Orante, a pert, frivolous, effusive, con-sequential prig, a rival aspirant for the favor ofCelimene., has written some silly verses about thatcharmer, and he insists on reading them to Alceste,and demanding a critical opinion of them. Philinte,who is present at the reading, would, in his urbane,playful way, utter the conventional words of emptycompliment that are usually spoken on such occa-sions. Alceste not only speaks the plain, harshtruth, but makes it offensive, and a quarrel ensues.That fact comes to the knowledge of the Marshalsof France, a tribunal authorized to inquire intoaffairs of honor among gentlemen, and Alceste isarrested, at the crisis of an animated controversialinterview with Celimene and a group of her butter-fly-admirers. Compromise averts a duel. The flirta-tions of the deceitful Celimene continue. Arsinoe,an elderly female acquaintance of Celimenes, afterthose two women have emerged, with ruffled plumes,from a particularly spiteful verbal encounter, lures
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MANSFIELD AS ALCE8TE IX THE ALCESTE 181 Alceste to her abode, and provides him with writtenevidence of Cclimenes duplicity; for that mis-chievous siren has the indiscreet habit of writingsatirical letters about her suitors and acquaintances,and one of those letters has fallen into Arsinoespossession. Alceste repairs to the home of Celimeneand confronts her with this proof of her treachery,but at the height of a stormy colloquy between themhe is called away to meet the emergency of arrest,consequent on the loss of his law-suit. He nowbecomes almost frenzied, in the anguish of a woundedspirit. The final catastrophe is precipitated when,in a deftly devised assemblage of the essential inter-locutory characters, disingenuous and malicious let-ters written by Celimene to Acaste and Clitande,two of her dangling suitors, are read aloud by thoseresentful dupes, and the artful coquette stands self-rev :aled as an image of contemptible vanity andturpitude. Even then the tortured, suffering Alces

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