The Doctor in Spite of Himself [4] - Edith

From The Big Book of Molière Monologues by actor/author Timothy Mooney. A collection of over 160 of Molière's funniest monologues in new rhymed iambic pentameter versions. Molière’s satire was driven, not so much by the specific details of medical treatment, as the bureaucratic arrogance which would institutionalize bad medical practice. As such, we find doctors sworn to uphold the practices of the “ancients,” blindly following medical traditions handed down from ancient Greece. Doctors who pushed the boundaries of medical practice were ostracized from the medical community and denied advancement within the profession. Thereby, some proven medical discoveries, such as the circulation of the blood were suppressed by the medical community, and controversial more than forty years later. The Doctor In Spite of Himself finds an ignorant peasant elevated to authority, with nobody noticing the difference. Through simple manipulation of obtuse phrases and convoluted logic, the pretender is indistinguishable from the real thing. Just as the peasant is indistinguishable from the doctor, so are the sick indistinguishable from the healthy. The daughter, Lucinde, has pretended to have lost the capacity to speak in order to delay the marriage to the man to whom her father has promised her. With two frauds at the heart of his action, Molière is free to improvise wildly, exploiting a comic situation for all it is worth.see less