Sganarelle ou le temps de la répétition

Molière never played Don Juan. Instead, he chose the part of Sganarelle, the querulous yet cowardly sidekick of the ‘grand seigneur méchant homme’. This choice might simply have been motivated by Molière’s desire to reprise one of the most popular character types of his comedic répertoire. However, beyond the proto-Bergsonian quest for mechanical laughter, this desire for repetition could also have signaled the comedian’s far more metaphysical concern with the repetitive nature of human time. From a dramatic standpoint, in fact, a case will be made for how Sganarelle’s cyclical experience of life on stage may well prove just as eternal as the myth of Don Juan itself.