STUDENTS' SERIES OF CLASSIC FRENCH PLAYS-111. LE MISANTHROPE A COMEDY BY MOLIÈRE LIBR EDITED With Explanatory Notes for the use of Students BY EDWARD S. JOYNES, M. A. Professor of Modern Languages in LIBRARY OF THE University of California. CIRCULATING BRANCH. Return in two weeks; or a week before the end of the term. NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY F. W. CHRISTERN BOSTON: SCHÖNHOF & MÖLLER 81/m mi ENTERED according to act of Congress, in the year 1872, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington 36622 Lange, Little & Co., New York. PREFACE. THIS Edition of Le Misanthrope completes, for the pres ent, the series of Classic French Plays of which Le Cid and Athalie have been issued heretofore. The design of the edition is the same as in the preceding Plays. In this case, nowever, the Notes will be found to be still more largely explanatory, as the greater difficulty of the text required; and less attention being bestowed, relatively, upon purely grammatical considerations, greater care has been devoted to idiomatic expression, and to the development of the analogies or contrasts in the phraseology of the two languages. The idiomatic relations between French and English are of a peculiar character. Neither of these languages is, in any large degree, grammatical, while both of them are pre-eminently idiomatic; and the comparison of their idioms offers to the student on the one hand,difficulties, and on the other, points of interest and instruction, such as are rarely found in the comparative study of any two languages. In this view, also, the study of French may be made not only highly disciplinary in itself, but an excellent school for the study of the most peculiar powers of our own language. This remark is peculiarly true with reference to an author so thoroughly idiomatic as Molière; and the Notes to this edition of Le Misanthrope will be found to be chiefly illustrative of this principle. Though numerous and detailed, the Editor hopes they will not be found superfluous. The teacher will appreciate the necessity for such detail, in the nature of the task itself; while to the student, the help that is thus afforded will not, it is believed, prove unacceptable or uninstructive. That in such a work some repetition should arise, is perhaps unavoidable; but that kind of repetition which |