----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Jack Stanley, in his note forwarded from the screenwriters' list, compares "play" to "screenplay" by declaring that the former relies on the director, while the latter relies on the text. To illustrate this point, he suggests Moliere -- whose plays he calls "dull" -- because he says that a reader can get no sense of the comedy that a well-staged production will bring out of one of Moliere's works. I find the logic of this hard to follow. If a director can see the comedy of the text -- as directors of Moliere's works have done successfully for 330 years or so -- the comedy must be *in* the text. Moliere might have argued alongside Dr. Stanley that comedy is strongest in performance -- he was, after all, an actor who died with his stage make-up still on -- but having struggled for his texts, for the names he gave his characters, and for the punch of his dialogue, he cannot be discredited for what he gave to literature (it was he, after all, who spoke of "grammar which knows how to rule even kings.") Moliere's comedies live on stage, but his texts have lived in history. "Tartuffe," for example, was banned by Louis XIV, edited by the playwrights of the French Revolution, and lauded by Napoleon (reading it aloud in St. Helena). "Vile Tartuffe," was the epithet thrown at the hiding Robespierre as the cart carrying the Dantonists to the guillotine passed by his home. And yet we watch the play on stage and it makes us laugh. Theater departments may articulate a superior claim to Moliere, just as film departments may voice their own priorities in teaching Mamet. But to take Moliere out of the literature classroom is to deny half his essence -- just as denying Mamet entry there would be to deny half of his. Shari ([log in to unmask])