Cultural excerpts

Act Two, Scene Four

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
... Before you go, I must confide to you a secret. I am in love with a lady
of great rank and quality, and wish to ask your help in writing her a note
which I intend to drop most casually at her feet.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
Oh, yes. That ought to be a lovely treat.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
That is the gallant thing now, is it not?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
Oh, certainly. A verse you'd like to jot?

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
No, no, no verse for me.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
So you want prose?


MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
No, neither.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER

Well, I think we must suppose
It's one or its the other.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN

Why?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER

I guess
That those are all the options to express.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
There's only prose and verse?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER

To make the point most terse.
What isn't verse is prose, and what's not prose is verse.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
And this, the way I speak. What name would be applied to the --

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
The way you speak?

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN

Yes.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER

Prose.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN

It's prose?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER

Decidedly.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
Oh, really? So when I say: "Nicole bring me my slippers and fetch my
nightcap," is that prose?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
Most clearly.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
Well, what do you know about that! These forty years now, I've been speaking
in prose without knowing it! How grateful am I to you for teaching me that!
So, what I wish to tell the gentle lady is: "Fair Marquise, your lovely eyes
make me die of love," but in a way that's elegant, and nicely turned.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
Then you can say the fires from her eyes do sear your heart down to an ashen
ember, and that you suffer night and day --

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
Oh no, not like that at all. I want it just as I now told you: "Fair
Marquise, your lovely eyes make me die of love." That's it.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
You really should draw out the thing a bit.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
No, listen. I only want those words there in that letter, but nicely turned
with art to the arrangement. Please tell me of the ways that this can be
expressed, so that I might select the one that works the best.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
Well, your first choice could be to put it just the way you've said it:
"Fair Marquise, your lovely eyes make me die of love," or then you might
say, "Of love, fair Marquise, your lovely eyes make me die." Or else: "Of
lovely love, your eyes, Marquise fair, me make die." Or then: "Your lovely
eyes, fair Marquise, die of love; make me." Or yet again: "Make me die of
love, lovely eyes, your fair Marquise."

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
But of those several ways which is the best?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
The one you came up with on your own: "Fair Marquise, your lovely eyes make
me die of love."

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN
And to think: I've never studied, and yet I did that one right on the first
go! I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Tomorrow, please come see me
sooner still.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER
I will. (HE exits.)