Géronte

Géronte is a character of comedy. As the name indicates it (of the Greek, γερων), it simply represented old age before becoming a type of more than these greybeards imbeciles, always misled and bernés, whose theater, old and modern, offers so many varieties.

Géronte of the Menteur is misled by his/her son, but is scoffed by nobody when it strikes down the misleading one of this noble language:

And in the cowardice of the defect where I you voi

You are not any more gentleman having left me.

Hard, miserly, heading, of a limited and credulous spirit, Géronte of the comic tradition has less of good-naturedness than Pantalon and Cassandre, but its inclinations of spite - or at least of severity - are only used to make it ridicule more.

In the Sister , Rotrou, put this character on the French scene with a certain originality: he makes it come from Constantinople in Turkish costume. Molière gave him, in the Doctor in spite of him and Cheatings of Scapin , his final aspect, that Regnard, in Player , the Sole legatee , etc, accurately preserved to him.

Source

Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 878

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