One of the most striking features of L'Avare is the fact that Harpagon bestrides the stage like a colossus, present in twenty-three out of thirty-two scenes, with his dominant presence bearing down even more heavily on the final two acts. At first sight, from a structural point of view, the play seems at best nothing but a series of hastily assembled sketches on avarice, with an inconsequential, meandering plot, at worst simply unbalanced with insufficient counterweight to Harpagon. To many critics, the play ushers into the Molière canon a new disturbing note of bitter cynicism in relationships between the characters. Finally, and most persistently, the familiar accusation of plagiarism levelled against Molière by his contemporaries seems documented to an overwhelming extent. The charge of Riccoboni, to the effect that it would be an achievement to find four scenes of the playwright's own devising, seems self-evident. Yet the view of Molière's friend, the poet Boileau, that L'Avare is one of his best plays, is borne out by its perennial popularity with theatre audiences. This chapter seeks to investigate some of the ways in which Molière's stagecraft enables him to theatricalise an old theme through the creation of a multi-dimensional character of comedy, with appropriate references to sources deemed 'major'.

Whenever Molière's legion of contemporary critics questioned the originality of his plays, usually out of well-grounded reasons of professional jealousy, they arrived at the answer implicit in their question. Looking for originality of theme and plot, they concluded predictably that neither was to be found.