All this is certainly reminiscent of Armande, who, according to Grimarest, was no sooner married than she "believed herself a duchess," affected a coquettish manner with the idle gallants who flocked to pay court to her, and turned a deaf ear to the warnings of her husband, whose lessons appeared to her "too severe for a young person who, besides, had nothing wherewith to reproach herself." But the resemblance in the situations goes no further. If Dorimène, in her craving for "_toutes les chases de plaisir_" and Angélique, in her imperious temper and cold irony, bear some relation to Armande, the foolish and cowardly Sganarelle, who allows himself to be cudgelled by Dorimène's brother, Lycidas, into a marriage which he knows must bring him unhappiness, has nothing, save his age, in common with Molière; while the aspiring farmer, George Dandin, marrying not for love, but for social position, and deservedly punished for his snobbishness, is as far removed from his creator as Tartuffe or Monsieur Jourdain. When we come to the _Misanthrope_, the similarity between fiction and reality is too striking to admit of any doubt as to the author's intentions. It is true that a distinguished English critic[18] professes to see in this play, as in _Don Garcie de Navarre_--Molière's one failure, produced the year before his marriage, and withdrawn after a run of five nights--the outcome of the actor-dramatist's "desire of indulging his humour of seriousness and a determination to example his elocutionary theories in verse that, without being actually tragic and heroic, should have something in it of the tragic and heroic quality." But, though the large number of verses from _Don Garcie_ which Molière has incorporated with his role of Alceste would seem to lend some confirmation to this theory, the fact remains that writers are practically unanimous in regarding the _Misanthrope_ as, primarily, a pathetic autobiography of its author under the cloak of fiction. "This Célimène, so frivolous and so charming, so dangerous and so seductive, this incorrigible coquette, who does not understand what a noble heart she is wounding even unto death: is not this Armande Béjart, embellished by all the love and all the genius of Molière? And Alceste; who is he? At the first representations people believed that they recognised the Duc de Montausier, and the Duc de Montausier remarked, with good reason: 'I thank you; it is a great honour.' But we, for our part, recognise Molière. This misanthrope is something more than an honourable gentleman at odds with the world. He is a great genius misunderstood, who endures and waits; he is a passionate sage, an honest man with a great and excellent heart."[19]