The Bourgeois Gentleman [4] - {{ productInfo[0].CHARACTER }}

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. Monsieur Jourdain is a member of the merchant class living in denial of his “Bourgeois” roots. He does all he might to imitate the superficial activities of the nobility, failing miserably at every turn. He has hired a dancing master, a music master, a fencing master and a philosophy master to train him in the arts which seem to come so naturally to those who are “to the manner born.” The pleasure of Bourgeois Gentleman lies in the ongoing faux pas of Monsieur Jourdain, who hasn’t the slightest sense of courtly behavior. While he may imitate the superficial pretensions of masters of music, dancing, philosophy or fencing, his attempts are pathetic and hilarious. In the play’s most famous moment, Jourdain questions the difference between prose and verse. The philosophy master explains that his very pedestrian bits of speech are, in fact, prose (by virtue of the fact that they are not verse). Jourdain is enthralled: “Well, what do you know about that! These forty years now, I’ve been speaking in prose without knowing it!”see less

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. Monsieur Jourdain is a member of the merchant class living in denial of his “Bourgeois” roots. He does all he might to imitate the superficial activities of the nobility, failing miserably...see more