Library of America Moliere: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations

One of the most accomplished American poets of his generation, Richard Wilbur (1921\-2017) was also a prolific translator of French and Russian literature. His verse translations of Moliere\x27s plays are especially admired by readers and are still performed today in theatres around the world. \x27Wilbur,\x27 the critic John Simon once wrote, \x27makes Moliere into as great an English verse playwright as he was a French one.\x27 Now, for the first time, all ten of Wilbur\x27s unsurpassed translations of Moliere\x27s plays are brought together in two\-volume Library of America edition, fulfilling the poet\x27s vision for the translations. The first volume comprises Moliere\x27s delightful early farces The Bungler, Lover\x27s Quarrels, and The Imaginary Cuckhold, or Sganarelle; the comedies The School for Husbands and The School for Wives, about the efforts of middle\-aged men to control their young wives or fiances, which so delighted female theatre goers in Moliere\x27s seventeenth\-century France; and Don Juan, Moliere\x27s retelling of the Don Juan story, performed only briefly in the playwright\x27s lifetime before pious censure forced it to close and not part of the repertoire of the Comedie\-Fran§aise until 1847. This volume includes the original introductions by Richard Wilbur and an introduction by Adam Gopnik on the exquisite art of Wilbur\x27s translations.The second volume includes the elusive masterpiece, The Misanthrope, often said to occupy the same space in comedy as Shakespeare\x27s Hamlet does in tragedy; the fantastic farce Amphitryon, about how Jupiter and Mercury commandeer the identities of two mortals; Tartuffe, Moliere\x27s biting satire of religious hypocrisy; and The Learned Ladies, like Tarfuffe, a drama of a household turned suddenly upside down. This volume includes the original introductions by Richard Wilbur and an introduction by Adam Gopnik on the exquisite art of Wilbur\x27s translations.