THE SHOPKEEPER TURNED GENTLEMAN
A monologue from the
play by Molière
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from The Dramatic Works of Molière, Vol. III. Ed.
Charles Heron Wall. London: George Bell & Sons, 1891. |
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MRS. JOURDAIN: I will never consent to it. Marriages
between people who are not of the same rank are always subject
to the most serious inconveniences. I do not wish to have a son-in-law
who would have it in his power to reproach my daughter with her
parentage; nor that she should have children who would be ashamed
to call me their grandmother. If she came to see me with the
equipage of a grand lady, and failed through inadvertency to
salute some of the neighbours, people would not fail to say a
thousand ill-natured things. "Just see," they would
say, "our lady the marchioness, who is so puffed up now,
she is Mr. Jourdain's daughter; she was only too pleased, when
a child, to play at my lady with us. She has not always been
so exalted as now, and her two grandfathers sold cloth near St.
Innocents' Gate. They have laid a great deal of money by for
their children, for which, may be, they are now paying dearly
in the other world, for one does not generally become so rich
by honest means." I do not wish to give occasion for such
gossip, and I desire to meet with a man who, to cut it short,
will be grateful to me for my daughter, and to whom I can say,
"Sit down there, son-in-law, and dine with me."
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