The French dramatist Molière (1622-1673) wrote comedies that range from simple farces to sophisticated satires. The master of French comedy, he was both the product and the critic of the French classical period.

As author, director, producer, manager, and actor, Molière lived fully the life of a man of the theater. His adventures can be understood only in this context, for his medium of expression, the theater, was also that which best gives expression to his life. The Paris of his day was alive with theatrical activity. Not only did the public attend his plays, but it also took sides for or against the playwright. His friends and enemies were divided along literary, rather than social, lines. Since he put a little of himself into each character he created, he was not exempt from personal attack when he offended the sensibilities of certain groups. Many of his enemies were powerful members of the court, and only because a number of his friends were also powerful figures was he able to continue writing and presenting his works. His comedies, which often dealt with exaggerated passions, evoked equally passionate responses from his audience. Against such a backdrop, the life of Molière was played out amidst intrigues and financial concerns both on and off the stage.

Molière, born Jean Baptiste Poquelin, was baptized in the church of St-Eustache in Paris on Jan. 15, 1622. His father, a member of the rising bourgeoisie, purchased the post of official furnisher (tapissier ordinaire du Roi) at the court. The young Jean Baptiste grew up in the shadow of the court, the most lively section of Paris. Like many of the great writers of his time, he was educated at the Collège de Clermont, a Jesuit institution. There he received a solid classical background, and he may have known some of the future libertine thinkers, such as Pierre Gassendi and Cyrano de Bergerac. After finishing his secondary education, he studied law briefly and was admitted to the bar in 1641.

Choice of Vocation

At this point Molière was to take over his father's post at the court, but such was not to be the case. Ever since he was a small boy, he had been attracted to the theater. Tradition affords the image of the little boy grasping his grandfather's hand as they both watched the farces and tragedies at the Hôtel de Bourgogne or at the fair at Saint-Germain. When Tiberio Fiorelli, called Scaramouche, came to Paris in 1640, Molière struck up a warm friendship with the Italian actor-mime. He also met at this time a young actress, Madeleine Béjart, with whom he was to be associated until her death in 1672.

In 1643 Molière renounced the hereditary post his father held and chose instead the theater. Since the life of the theater was not considered very respectable, he assumed the name "Molière" in order to spare embarrassment to his family. That same year he signed on with the family of Madeleine Béjart and nine other actors, who formed a troupe known as the Illustre Théâtre. As the most recent of three Parisian companies, Molière and his friends fared very badly. In 1944, ridden by debts and having served two terms in debtors' prison, Molière was forced to abandon this venture. He and the Béjarts joined another company, whose tours were to take them all over France for the next 13 years. In 1650 Molière became the head of the troupe, and he managed to secure the patronage of the Prince of Conti.

Although little factual evidence of his travels and tribulations is available, it is certain that Molière and his itinerant players learned much in the provinces. Molière was a hard worker. The short, stocky man with a large head and melancholy eyes frequently acted, sometimes under a harlequin mask, with the troupe he managed. Rhythm and mime, learned from the Italians, were an important part of their style. When the company was finally called to give a performance before Louis XIV in 1658, it was Molière's farce, Le Docteur amoureux, that most amused the King. The King's brother became patron of the troupe, and Molière returned to the city of his birth.

First "Cause Célèbre"

In December 1662 Molière presented his latest comedy, L'École des femmes, in five acts and in verse, before the King. It was to be his greatest success. The play centers about Arnolphe, a bourgeois who delights in watching the signs of cuckoldry all around him. In order to spare himself the same shameful fate, he chooses for his bride a child whom he then raises in total ignorance. The principal comic device of the plot rests upon the fact that his young rival, ignorant of Arnolphe's identity, tells him exactly how he plans to steal Agnès from under his nose. The play gave rise to a storm of protest, known as the "Quarrel of L'École des femmes." Molière's enemies, jealous of the King's favor toward the playwright, attacked him on grounds of irreligion, vulgarity, plagiarism, and immorality. Rather than answer his enemies directly, Molière chose to vindicate himself by writing a response in the form of a play. His Critique de l'École des femmes, presented in June 1663, dramatized the controversy by introduction and discussion on stage of both the critics and the criticisms. The raison d'être of the play may be summed up in the celebrated formula pronounced by the character Dorante: "Je voudrais bien savoir si la grande règle de toutes les règles n'est pas de plaire, et si une pièce de théâtre qui a attrapé son but n'a pas suivi un bon chemin (Is it not true that the greatest of all rules is to be pleasing, and if a play has attained that end, has it not followed the right road?)."

The "Quarrel" served a purpose much larger than the comedy on which it was centered. In fact, it served to put comedy on an equal footing with tragedy as a legitimate literary form. Until that time it had been considered a humble stepchild of great French classical tragedy, exemplified by many of the works of Pierre Corneille. Molière proved that the passions and vices ridiculed through comedy were just as deeply rooted and universal as those that lent themselves to the creation of tragedy. In an age firmly committed to the superiority of tragedy and the dictates of Aristotle's Poetics, Molière reestablished comedy in a place of honor.

Battle of Tartuffe

In May 1664 Louis XIV organized at Versailles a splendid celebration called Les Plaisirs de l'Île Enchantée. It was here that Molière was invited to perform Tartuffe ou l'Imposteur. The play's title has become synonymous in French with hypocrite and, in particular, a hypocrite in matters of religion. The plot centers on the household of Orgon and its plight after the head of the house has taken in a spiritual adviser who is an impostor and a rogue. Only Orgon and his mother are too blind to see through the mask of piety; the other members of the household are aware of Tartuffe's hypocrisy. The latter group must resort to extraordinary means in order to convince Orgon of his error. In the final version of the play, intervention of the King himself, through an emissary, is necessary to dispose of Tartuffe.

It is not surprising that the play incurred the wrath of the powerful Society of the Holy Sacrament. This order of puritan religious devotees advocated restraints and assumed postures not unlike those of Tartuffe. Although the King harbored no love for the puritans, even he was ineffective in lessening their hold over a segment of the aristocracy. For 5 long years Molière struggled for the right to perform his play - even in amended form - but to no avail. Finally, in 1669, the "Peace of the Church" put an end to the powerful group, and Tartuffe was revived with great success at the Palais Royal.

Dom Juan

The interdiction of Tartuffe in 1664 left Molière with a gap in his repertory program. In spite of the fact that Dom Juan was composed hastily and in prose, a growing number of critics regard it as one of his greatest plays. Certainly, the popularity of the Don Juan legend attests to the compelling nature of the protagonist.

Molière did not originate the legend and, in fact, borrowed from a variety of sources. Nevertheless, his Dom Juan bears the stamp of its creator. Like his predecessors, this Dom Juan is struck down by a statue, but only after he has assumed the mask of the hypocrite. As long as he asserts his liberty from outside the social framework, he remains free and invulnerable. His downfall becomes possible, however, when he seeks to subvert society from within. There is a significant difference between the hypocrisy of Tartuffe and that of Dom Juan. Whereas the former is a servile and often vulgar hypocrite, the latter maintains the aloofness and superiority of the aristocrat.

Dom Juan was presented in February 1665 and was favorably received. After Easter, however, the play was mysteriously removed from the boards, and it was not published until after Moilère's death. It remained almost unknown until the 20th century.

Le Misanthrope

Molière first presented Le Misanthrope in June 1666. Although he had been granted the personal patronage of the King, illness, marital problems, and melancholy had left their mark on the playwright. Yet, during this unhappy period, Molière conceived and presented a work that attests to his mastery and genius.

Alceste, the misanthrope of the title, is at war with the aristocratic society of which he is a member. Like many other characters in the dramatic universe of Molière, he seeks to impose his own imperfect vision upon society. He will settle for nothing less than absolutes in a world governed by relative values. Because of this attitude he is basically a comic figure, and all the more so when he asserts in the final scene that only by leaving aristocratic society will he become the perfect aristocrat.

Last Years

Le Misanthrope pleased a small number of admirers, but it lacked the popular appeal necessary to make it a financial success. L'Avare, presented 2 years later, failed miserably, and Molière faced grave monetary problems. It required a comedy-ballet, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), to bring in the public once again.

Not the least of Molière's hardships was a hacking cough, which he tried to mask as a comic device. When overcome by a coughing spell onstage, he made it seem voluntary and exaggerated. In his last years, however, his condition worsened greatly. He had little faith in medicine, and one might argue, justifiably - for doctors had been unable to help him. In 1671 he gave Les Fourberies de Scapin, a bright comedy reminiscent of his early farces. But the best commentary on his condition was the biting work that was to be his last: Le Malade imaginaire. During the fourth performance, on Jan. 17, 1673, Molière was seized by convulsions. He died that same night, attended only by two nuns, having been refused the right to see a priest.

Further Reading

Much of the immense Moilère bibliography is in French. Biographies in English which merit particular attention are John L. Palmer, Molière (1930), and Ramon Fernandez, Molière: The Man as Seen through the Plays, translated by Wilson Follett (1958). Other biographies include Henry M. Trollope, The Life of Molière (1905); H. C. Chatfield-Taylor, Molière: A Biography (1906); D. B. Wyndham Lewis, Molière: The Comic Mask (1959); and Mikhail Bulgakov, The Life of Monsieur de Molière (trans. 1970), a lively fictionalized biography.

An important critical study of Molière's works and a forerunner of much recent criticism is Will G. Moore, Molière: A New Criticism (1949). Judd D. Hubert, Molière and the Comedy of Intellect (1962), is a more psychologically oriented study. Lionel Gossman, Men and Masks: A Study of Molière (1963), also reflects modern trends. A more varied critical perspective appears in Jacques Guicharnaud, ed., Molière: A Collection of Critical Essays (1964). Recommended for general historical background are Henry Carrington Lancaster, A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century (5 vols., 1929-1942), and P. J. Yarrow, The Seventeenth Century, 1600-1715 (1967).

For more information on Molière, visit Britannica.com.

Molière (stage name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin;b Paris, Jan. 1622, d Paris, 17 Feb. 1673). French actor, playwright, and ballet librettist. A dancer himself, Molière wrote the libretto for Beauchamps's Les Fâcheux (1661), which inaugurated the genre of the comédie-ballet. He collaborated with Lully on the comédie-ballets L'Amour médecin (1665), Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (1669), and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670). He wrote the libretto for Lully's Le Mariage forcé (1664) and collaborated with Lully and Beauchamps on Les Festes de l'Amour et de Bacchus (1672). He died while performing in his own ballet, Le Malade imaginaire.

Molière (pseud. of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) (1622-73). Widely considered to be one of the greatest comic playwrights of all time, Molière belonged to a brilliant generation of artists and writers who flourished under the patronage of Louis XIV. He was born in Paris, the son of an upholsterer attached to the court, and after a solid education at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont seemed destined for a career in the law. But in 1643 he abandoned his studies and renounced his succession to his father's trade in order to found the ‘Illustre Théâtre’ with the Béjart family and others; it was at this time also that he adopted the name ‘de Molière’. The Illustre Théâtre survived little more than a year in Paris, and was plagued by debt and other difficulties; in 1645 the company abandoned the attempt to establish itself in the capital and moved to the provinces. For 13 years Molière's troupe performed in provincial cities and noblemen's houses; its repertoire included plays by leading contemporary play-wrights, and farces and comedies composed by Molière himself, notably L'Étourdi (1653/5) and Le Dépit amoureux (1656). Molière's success in the capital would be inexplicable but for the training as an actor and as a manager and theatre director which these years provided.

He attracted provincial patrons of increasing power and wealth; eventually he was promised the protection of Monsieur, brother of Louis XIV, and returned to Paris in 1658. There he shared the Salle du Petit-Bourbon with an Italian company; his troupe also acted in private houses and at court festivities. The first play he composed after his return to Paris, Le Précieuses ridicules, was performed in November 1659; it was an immediate success. A topical social satire, dealing with the affected prudishness inspired by the novels of Madeleine de Scudéry, it inaugurated a series of comedies on current affairs which were to involve Molière in violent literary and theatrical feuding. He had already attracted the attention of the king, and it is likely that royal support enabled the company to move to its own theatre, the Salle du Palais-Royal, in 1660-1 [see Theatres And Audiences, I]. Louis's support did not stop there, however; a royal pension was granted to Molière in 1663 and his company was accorded the title ‘Troupe du Roi’ in 1665. A sign of the personal affection of the monarch for his favoured playwright is Louis's agreement to be god-father to Molière's son Louis, born in 1664. In 1662 Molière had married Armande Béjart, the sister of his rejected mistress Madeleine; contemporary gossip suggested that Armande was not Madeleine's sister but her daughter, and implied that the relationship was incestuous. The fact that the king stood sponsor for Molière's first child in these circumstances shows that he was willing to defend him publicly.

In his 15 years in Paris Molière showed a remarkable versatility in his output of plays, which range from one-act farces to comédie-ballet, and from machine plays to high comedy. He began by composing farces, adding new elements to this traditional genre. Les Précieuses ridicules, for example, was, unusually for farce, topical; and the eponymous hero of Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire (1660) is not a stereotype, but a character who reflects comically on his own failings. In 1661, Molière experimented with a heroic comedy, Dom Garcie de Navarre. This play was a flop, not only because the theme of jealousy was rather unsatisfactorily treated, but also because Molière's troupe, and especially Molière himself, considered to be the greatest comic actor of his day, were much more successful in performing comedy than serious drama. Also in 1661 Molière produced Les Fâcheux for an entertainment given by Fouquet to Louis XIV at Vaux-le-Vicomte; this was the first of a number of successful comédies-ballets, designed to appeal to the court.

Louis XIV had himself suggested to Molière one of the characters to be included in Les Fâcheux, in which a parade of court bores pass before the eyes of the spectators; Molière's next plays have been said to be further contributions to Louis's artistic and social policies. Apart from the brief Le Mariage forcé and the comédie-ballet La Princesse d'Élide (both 1664), they were all contentious. L' École des femmes (1662) is a five-act verse comedy which supplanted the tragedy normally performed as the main element of a theatrical soirée; like L'École des maris of the previous year, it places on stage representatives of contemporary manners and attitudes (in this case, a potentially repressive husband) and advocates moderate permissiveness and social conformism. The play provoked a storm of protest on both literary and social grounds, to which Molière replied by producing two short conversation pieces set respectively in a salon and in a theatre: La Critique de l'École des femmes and L'Impromptu de Versailles. The latter play expressed his confidence in the king's support and carried on his feud with the rival troupe, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, which specialized in the performance of tragedy.

The furore raised by L'École des femmes, however, was nothing in comparison to the reception which awaited his next play, Le Tartuffe. Molière dared in this comedy to put on stage a religious hypocrite; this touched a very raw nerve in the entourage of the king and provoked the ecclesiastical and devout party at court to conspire in banning the play in spite of the fact that the king apparently approved of it. The play did not obtain a licence for public performance until 1669, five years after its first, partial performance at a court festivity; it then became financially the most successful of all of Molière's comedies. Like Les Précieuses ridicules and L'École des femmes, it was set in contemporary Paris and even made direct reference to the Fronde and to the king, who is eulogized in the last act of the play.

Political and social issues are raised also in the plays written by Molière while waiting for Tartuffe to be licensed for performance: Dom Juan (1665) portrays a libertin nobleman who is punished at the end of the play by being dragged off to hell, but not before he has commented darkly on the religious hypocrisy of the age; Le Misanthrope (1666) shows the socially unacceptable behaviour of a number of aristocratic habitués of a salon; L' Le Avare (1668) demonstrates the corrosive effect of the pursuit of money on human relations; Amphitryon of the same year, which may well refer discreetly to Louis XIV's notorious affair with Madame de Montespan, appears to advocate prudence and silence in an absolutist state. The plays of this period, which also include the lighter-hearted L'Amour médecin (1665), Le Médecin malgré lui (1666), Mélicerte, Pastorale comique, and Le Sicilien (all 1666-7), are famous for some of Molière's most memorable creations: Dom Juan, whose urbane manipulation of those about him is highly entertaining, and only becomes disturbing towards the end of the play; Alceste the misanthropist, whose tempestuous and contradictory pursuit of sincerity at all costs wreaks havoc in the circles in which he moves; Harpagon, whose obsessive avarice is as sinister as it is funny.

There is some evidence that Molière's finances were in crisis just before the release of Tartuffe in 1669, and this may in part account for the new direction his dramatic production took at around that date. In conjunction first with Lully, and later with Charpentier, Molière undertook to produce a number of comédies-ballets for the court: George Dandin (1668), Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (1669), Les Amants magnifiques (1670), and most notably Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1671). This last play combined a satire of the nouveaux-riches and their pretensions to social graces with the vogue for all things Turkish at court. The portrayal of contemporary vice and folly is as sharp as in the earlier plays, but the whimsicality of the pseudo-Turkish ceremonies of the end of the play relieves it of some of its sting. Similarly, the harsh portrayal of the cuckolded farmer George Dandin, who has foolishly married above his station, is attenuated by the pastoral ballet episode at the end of the play. Molière even experimented with a combination of tragedy and ballet, as happens in Psyché of 1671. At the same time he produced the farces, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas and Les Fourberies de Scapin (both 1671), and two more memorable comedies of manners: Les Femmes savantes of 1672 and the three-act comédie-ballet Le Malade imaginaire, famous for its portrayal of the hypochondriac Argan. It was ironically in the course of the fourth performance of this play in 1673 that Molière collapsed on stage; he died later in the same evening.

Throughout his brilliant though tumultuous Parisian career, Molière set out to satisfy two audiences: on the one hand, the court and especially the king; and on the other, those who attended his theatre, many of whom belonged to the bourgeoisie. His satire is clearly designed to appeal to these very different clients; this conferred complexity on his plays, and may well have contributed to their enduring popularity and to the almost infinite range of interpretations to which they can be subjected.

He is often said to be a classical writer of comedies, which might seem to suggest that he represents timeless models of human vice and folly—the miser, the hypochondriac, the hypocrite, the misanthropist, and so on; but his plays have been successfully adapted to innumerable cultural settings from the 17th c. to the present day. This may be explained through Molière's sheer professionalism: he was an actor and a theatre director as well as a playwright, and had a virtuoso command of the techniques of all the theatrical genres of his day—commedia dell'arte, native French farce, high comedy, machine plays. Molière was as able to exploit the lowest tricks of farce—bawdy jokes, stageplay, stereotypical characters—as the most refined comedy of language which provokes not a guffaw but, as one of his contemporaries put it, a ‘rire dans l'âme’. Above all, he seems to have an effortless command of the psychological trigger of laughter, as is demonstrated by the reaction to his plays of audiences of many different generations and cultures.

Molière has been presented under many different guises: a precursor of the drame of the 18th c.; a comic genius indifferent to social issues; a moralist who employed comedy to ‘corriger les hommes en les divertissant’; a defender of bourgeois values; a toady of the aristocracy. All of these opinions may have something in them: but Molière's multifaceted plays transcend them all.

[Ian Maclean]

Bibliography

• R. Bray, Molière, homme de théâtre (1953)
• W. D. Howarth, Molière (1982)
• J. Grimm, Molière (1984)

(zhäN bätēst' pôklăN' môlyĕr') , 1622–73, French playwright and actor, b. Paris; son of a merchant who was upholsterer to the king. His name was originally Jean Baptiste Poquelin. Molière was the creator of French high comedy; his genius lay in exposing the hypocrisies and follies of his society through satire.

Life

In his youth Moliére joined the Béjart troupe of professional actors. Madeleine Béjart was for years his mistress, but in 1662 he scandalized many by marrying Armande Béjart, who was either Madeleine's younger sister or her daughter. The little company, headed by Molière and called the Illustre Théâtre, settled (1643) in Paris, but their venture failed (1645), and they spent the next 13 years touring the provinces. They returned in triumph with a performance of Molière's Le Docteur amoureux for Louis XIV. Under royal patronage this troupe, performing at the Palais Royal, enjoyed continuous success; it is known as the ancestor of the Comédie Française. Molière had, nevertheless, to contend with rivalry from the Hôtel de Bourgogne and with cries of impiety and slander from critics and other authors.

The Plays

The great variety in Molière's work stems from his being at once actor, director, stage manager, and writer. Influenced by the commedia dell'arte, he wrote farces, comedies, masks, and ballets on short notice for the entertainment of the court. He is best known for the great comedies of character in which he ridicules a vice or a type of excess by caricaturing a person who is its incarnation: Le Tartuffe (1664), on the religious hypocrite; Le Misanthrope (1666), on the antisocial man; L'Avare (1668, tr. The Miser); and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670, tr. The Would-Be Gentleman), on the parvenu.

Other plays in which vices are personified are Les Femmes savantes (1672, tr. The Learned Women), on the fashionable, affected intellectuals whom he had already lampooned in Les Précieuses ridicules (1659), often called the first comedy of manners and Le Malade imaginaire (1673), on the hypochondriac. Molière was acting the title role of the latter when he was fatally stricken. Also comedies of character, but depending more on absurdities, are L'École des maris (1661, tr. The School for Husbands) and L'École des femmes (1662, tr. The School for Wives), which was followed by a skit against the critics, La Critique de l'École des femmes (1663); and Don Juan (1665), an adaptation of the old story of the libertine.

The playwright's farces are uproarious—Sganarelle (1660), Le Médecin malgré lui (1666, tr. The Doctor in Spite of Himself), George Dandin (1668), Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (1669), Les Fourberies de Scapin (1671, tr. Scapin, the Trickster), and La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas (1671). Among Molière's other works are the poetic Amphitryon (1668), after Plautus; L'Étourdi (1653?, tr. The Blunderer); Le Dépit amoureux (1656, tr. The Amorous Quarrel); and Le Mariage forcé (1664, tr. The Forced Marriage).

Bibliography

A primary source on Molière's career is the careful Registre or daybook of programs, expenditures, and receipts of the Paris company from 1658. It was kept by the actor Charles Varlet de la Grange (1639?—1692).

See also biographies by H. M. Trollope (1905), D. B. W. Lewis (1959), J. Palmer (2d ed. 1965), and V. Scott (2001); studies by P. A. Chapman (1941, repr. 1965), L. Gossman (1969), R. Fernandez (1929, repr. 1980), N. Gross (1982), and H. C. Knutson (1987).

Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin; 1622–1673), French playwright, actor, and troupe director. Born into a successful merchant family, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin received an education from the Jesuits and was studying law when, at the age of twenty-one, he renounced his career to join a troupe of itinerant actors. In 1643 he signed a contract with the actress Madeleine Béjart and other members of her family to establish a troupe which they called the "Illustrious Theater," but they were soon unable to pay their bills and Poquelin, who had assumed the stage name Molière, was jailed for debt in 1645. Once released, he and his troupe departed to tour the provinces. From 1646 to 1658 they staged plays throughout the French countryside, with Molière gradually assuming a role as the troupe's leader, principal actor, and creator of scenarios for the farces that the group performed along with their centerpiece tragedies. In 1653 the prince de Conti, royal governor of Languedoc, engaged the actors as his personal troupe, granting them status and financial stability until Conti's abrupt "conversion" to a life of religious austerity led him to withdraw his patronage. In 1658 the Illustrious Theater returned to Paris and were granted another opportunity to please the more difficult audiences of city and court, where they played first at the Louvre palace. The king's brother Philip, duke of Orleans, became their sponsor.

Beginning in 1659, Molière focused on performing his own plays, though he professed ambivalence about his new status of published author in the preface to his play Les précieuses ridicules (1660; The affected young ladies). His attention to performance and staging and to the improvisational traditions of the commedia dell'arte remained paramount in his comedies, even as he developed an increasingly sophisticated vision of the comic genre. His greatest achievement as an author was to have invented a "comedy of character" that introduced psychological depth to stock comic situations, in the process drawing on traditions from popular farce and more serious drama. Beginning with L'école des femmes (1662; The school for wives), he wrote fiveact comedies in verse, as well as comédies-ballets combining music, dance, and poetry with the clownish elements of commedia dell'arte. His comic characters often have a single dominant trait or "mask," suggested in many of the titles of his plays, as in L'étourdi (1655, The bungler) and L'avare (1668, The miser). They also portray the social obsessions of Molière's elite audiences, as in his satirical portrait of educated women, Les femmes savantes (1672, The learned ladies) or in his penetrating portrayal of salon society, Le misanthrope (1666).

Having secured the favor of the young King Louis XIV, Molière undertook to fight, from the stage, the attacks on the theater being mounted by radical religious parties of the Catholic reform movement. A first version of his play Tartuffe, portraying a religious hypocrite who deceives his gullible and devout host and attempts to seduce his wife, was staged in 1664. It was immediately banned by the church's censors and attacked in print by Molière's former patron Conti, among others. Molière withdrew the play, but continued to press for its revival, at great personal risk, until a final version, which included a flattering panegyric to the king, was produced under royal protection in 1669. Meanwhile, in 1665, he composed and produced Dom Juan, a disquieting and innovative version of the story of the legendary seducer of women, who in Molière's version is a libertine and an atheist, a modern, educated nobleman who has lost his moral bearings.

Throughout the first decade of the reign of Louis XIV, Molière produced plays commissioned for court spectacles, many of them on short notice, in which he also played the principal role. His L'impromptu de Versailles (1663) gives us an amusing inside look at his own troupe at work attempting to rehearse a play that Molière has not had the time to finish. George Dandin (1668) was first performed at Versailles with ballet and musical intermèdes written by the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, and Monsieur de Pourceaugnac was commissioned for a court spectacle at the château de Chambord in 1669. Le bourgeois gentilhomme (The would-be gentleman), a comédie-ballet also produced in collaboration with Lully, premiered at Chambord in 1670.

Molière died 17 February 1673, after collapsing during a production of his play Le malade imaginaire (The imaginary invalid), in which he was playing the title role. Denied burial on sacred ground because of his profession, he was finally interred, secretly and at night, in his parish cemetery by special permission of the king. The manner of his death has become part of his legacy; students of the theater regard him as an iconic figure, devoted to the stage, whose work bridges the gap that so often divides the play as text and performance. The chair in which Molière was seated during his last production is preserved in the halls of the Comédie Française, an institution founded by several of the members of his troupe six years after his death, and today the world's oldest theater company.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Molière. The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays. Translated by Maya Slater. Oxford and New York, 2001.

——. Oeuvres complètes. Edited by Georges Couton. Paris, 1981.

——. The School for Wives. Translated by Richard Wilbur. New York, 1971.

——. Tartuffe and Other Plays. Translated by Donald M. Frame. New York, 1981.

Secondary Sources

Calder, Andrew. Molière: The Theory and Practice of Comedy. London, 1993.

Scott, Virginia. Molière: A Theatrical Life. Cambridge, U.K., 2000.

—ELIZABETH C. GOLDSMITH

IN BRIEF: n. - French author of sophisticated comedies (1622-1673).

Quotes:

"The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it."

"The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself."

"A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one."

"Gold makes the ugly beautiful."

"Grammar, which can govern even Kings."

"Long is the road from conception to completion."

See more famous quotes by Moliere

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