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To be or not to be Molière: that is the latest questionwreaking havoc among French academics.
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To be or not to be Molière: that is the latest question wreaking havoc among French academics. In "Corneille in the Shadow of Molière," a book recently published in France, Dominique Labbé, a specialist in what is known as lexical statistics, claims that he has solved a "fascinating scientific enigma" by determining that all of Molière's masterpieces - "Le Tartuffe", "Dom Juan," "Le Misanthrope," value="148422">"L'Avare" - were in fact the work of Pierre Corneille, the revered tragedian and acclaimed author of "Le Cid." "There is such a powerful convergence of clues that no doubt is possible," Mr. Labbé said. The centerpiece of his supposed discovery is that the vocabularies used in the greatest plays of Molière and two comedies of Corneille bear an uncanny similarity. According to Mr. Labbé, all these plays share 75 percent of their vocabulary, an unusually high percentage. Mr. Labbé's claim has upset more than the...
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