Molieres the Imaginary Invalid :: essays research papers fc

Molieres "The unreal Invalid"     Molieres "The Imaginary Invalid" is a farcical play about a hypochondriacal who is so obsessed with his health and money that he ends upneglecting his family. The point involves several antithetic newspaper publishers and plotswithin one family. A new rendering of this 17th century play is now beingperformed at the arts Club Theater it incorporates some new changes andmodernizations in addition to the conventional improvisation. Morris Panych hasin spades succeeded in delivering a new, more comical version of Molieres utmost play.     Moreover, the dominant theme of this play is body versus mind. The playis about a wealthy, but stingy man who believes that he is constantly sick(Argan). However, thither is an obvious doubt to whether he is really sick or ifhe is just imagining his ill fortuneness. Therefore, the primary theme is Argansinternal struggle of body vs. mind. This theme is dev eloped throughout the playinto smaller themes such as staminateness versus femininity, greed versus love,and death versus life.     Two of the major changes from the text to the play be Argans degree ofillness and his death. In the text, there are very hardly a(prenominal) elaborate descriptions ofDr. Purgons treatment. However in the play by Panych, there is no shortage ofenemas and separate "bathroom" related scenes. I originally position this change wasfor comical purposes, but after some additional perspective I questioned whetherArgan was imagining his illness or if he really was ill. In the text, by nothaving too many bathroom scenes, Argan seems to be imagining his illness (thus,he is the imaginary invalid). In Panychs stage version, Argan shows severalsymptoms of being ill this definitely confuses the original play by Moliere.One of the original purposes of the play was to criticize, among other things,the medical profession in Molieres time . Now, if Argan really was sick, doesthat mean that the doctors were correct in their analysis? No, it doesnt. Ibelieve that Panych intended to show that it was the doctors treatments thatmade Argan ill and eventually killed him.     Another major change from Molieres version is Beraldes gender and consumptionin the play and in the family. Beralde is transformed into Argans sister,instead of his brother. Panych saw male versus female as a major theme. If youlook at the social structure of the original play, all the people who truly love Arganand mean him wholesome are female, except for Beralde. In fact out of all thedifferent characters who take advantage of Argan, only one of them is female-