Note the division of the scenes. It was a tradition in the French neoclassic stage for a scene to end when a new character appeared onstage or when a character left the stage. Sometimes when the entrance or exit occurs within the length of a few short exchanges of dialogue, this practice seems highly artificial; however, in the actual production of the play, none of these scene divisions interfered with the continuity of the action, since the curtain was never lowered except at the end of an act.
Early in the first scene Molière establishes certain dramatic tensions which will continue throughout the play: Alceste and the contrasting Philinte appear together onstage. We can clearly see from the start that Alceste is an intemperate person, as he immediately complains about people betraying their integrity. There is a heavy tone to most of the raving Alceste does, whereas Philinte seems much more reasonably contained, allowing his friend to spurt forth his rage before saying much. Alceste's language is characterized by harsh and bitter castigation of his fellow man: "shameful," and "disgraceful." He says "what a base degrading infamous thing it is to stoop to betraying one's integrity like that." Alceste exclaims that he would hang himself if ever he stooped to such a point, but Philinte answers that he will spare his own neck for a time while he attempts to correct Alceste's views.
In this first exchange between these two characters, Molière sets up the dialectic which will dominate the entire play. We see that Alceste and Philinte are friends in spite of the language that Alceste uses. We get the impression that Philinte is tolerating his friend's idiosyncrasies, while not entirely contradicting them.
