The School for Husbands [9] - Isabelle

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. The lesser-known forerunner to the following year’s The School for Wives, The School for Husbands is the shorter play, in three acts, with very similar themes. In both, a domineering older man insists that the only way to maintain one’s wife’s fidelity is to limit her exposure to the corrupt outside world. And while, in School for Wives, we find that man essentially digging his own grave, as each precaution he takes has the opposite effect intended, in School for Husbands, we find the wife foiling the patriarch’s plans with her own initiative. This establishes Isabelle of School for Husbands as a stronger, more resourceful precursor to Agnes of School for Wives.see less