The Miser

About this book

Harpagon, a wealthy widower of Paris, loves money more than anything in the world, including his own children. He keeps a box of ten thousand crowns buried in his garden, suspects everyone of stealing, starves his servants and his horses, and plans to marry his son to a rich widow and his daughter to an old man who will take her without a dowry, while he himself courts Mariane, the young woman his son loves. When the money box is stolen, he goes mad with grief.

Context and significance

Molière first staged the comedy in 1668, basing it on a play by the Roman writer Plautus, and Harpagon's name became a French word for a miser. This translation is by Charles Heron Wall. Read Molière's Tartuffe.

About the author