Description

Molière’s satire of intellectual snobbery, in a translation first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In Molière’s 1672 play Les Femmes Savantes, Chrysale’s daughter Henriette wants to marry Clitandre, but her mother wishes her to marry Trissotin, a poet with lofty aspirations. For the women of Chrysale’s household are obsessed with learning and culture of the most pretentious kind, and are oblivious to Trissotin’s true nature.

This English version of Molière’s The Learned Ladies, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated by A.R. Waller, and introduced by Kenneth McLeish. It was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, in July 1996, in a production directed by Steven Pimlott.