“Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity/ In least speak most, to my capacity.
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream)”

Shakespeare (1564-1616)
and Molière (1622-1673)
English playwright, poet and actor/ French comic playwright

“All seems false and affected in Molière – all seems mad and improvised in Shakespeare – and yet, it is the same art, and the two are very close. Their secret is the intuitive knowledge of true life and of its shape. Man cannot know real life, which has no form, unless someone gives it a shape. The art of theatre is that – giving life a shape, as false and as arbitrary as possible, and making it more real than reality. This is the secret of the great masters, and it can only be learned in humility. This is why I’ve worked with profound joy, a bit like a bad cook, in the kitchen of Molière and Shakespeare. I’ll add however, without humility, that in a certain measure, you have to possess this secret, or the work is useless. For the secret of theatre is only transmitted to those who already have it from birth. (…)”

Jean Anouilh (1910-1987)
French playwright and director