misers, Molière drew from a number of ancient and contemporary sources for elements in his The Miser. The character of Harpagon draws from the Latin play Aulularia by Plautus in which the miser Euclio incessantly changes the hiding place of his pot of gold out of fear of having it stolen, and the miser's fourth-act monologue exaggerating the loss of his pot was the basis for Harpagon's. Also from Aulularia Molière appropriated the love affair between Élise and Valère, Harpagon's inspection of the hands of La Flèche, and Valère's avowals of love for Élise that Harpagon takes as his confession to theft. La Belle Plaideuse (1655) of François le Métel de Boisrobert furnished Molière with the father-as-usurer, and the scene in which a lender lends the borrower 15,000 francs, of which 3,000 is in goods; several of these items appear in the list in The Miser. Jean Donneau de Visé's la Mère coquette (1665) gave Molière a father and son in love with the same young woman. Theatrical adaptations Very soon after the play's first production in 1668, versions began to appear elsewhere in Europe. A German translation, , appeared in Frankfurt in 1670. In England Thomas Shadwell adapted Molière's work under the title "The Miser" in 1672 and added eight new characters. An even more popular version based on both Plautus and Molière was produced by Henry Fielding in 1732. In Italian commedia dell'arte there was already a tradition of depicting misers as the Pantaleone figure, who was represented as a rich and avaricious Venetian merchant. However, Molière's play was eventually adapted to opera. Giovanni Bertati's libretto based on the play was set by Pasquale Anfossi as L'avaro in 1775 and in 1776 it was set again by Gennaro Astarita. Giuseppe Palomba also wrote a libretto based on the work which was set by Giacomo Cordella in 1814. In Russia, too, Vasily Pashkevich based his 18th century comic opera The Miser on Molière's play. Another musical adaptation in Arabic was pioneered by the Lebanese Marun Al Naqqash (1817–55) as al-Bakhil. This was performed in Beirut in 1847. Jovan Sterija Popović, the founding father of Serbian theatre, based his Tvrdica (The Miser, 1837) on Molière's play. In this work, the Harpagon figure is represented as a small town Greek merchant. One reason for so many versions must be the acknowledged fact that Molière's humour does not translate well and requires