Tartuffe (1664 (final version 1669))
A pious fraud dupes the gullible Orgon; banned after its first performance at Versailles
Literature · Playwrights
Molière
1622–1673 · French
French classical comedy; comédie-ballet
Molière, the stage name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, was an actor-manager and the greatest writer of French comedy. Under the patronage of Louis XIV he satirised hypocrisy, pretension and quack medicine in plays such as Tartuffe, The Misanthrope and The Miser. His company became the nucleus of the Comédie-Française, still called "la Maison de Molière".
How to spot them
- ▸Real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, son of an upholsterer to the king
- ▸Tartuffe the religious hypocrite; Harpagon the miser; Alceste the misanthrope
- ▸Monsieur Jourdain, delighted to learn he has been speaking prose all his life
- ▸Collapsed while playing the hypochondriac Argan in The Imaginary Invalid and died hours later
- ▸French is sometimes called 'la langue de Molière'
Key works
The Misanthrope (Le Misanthrope) (1666)
Alceste, who despises social flattery, loves the flirtatious Célimène
The Miser (L'Avare) (1668)
The avaricious Harpagon obsesses over his hidden cash-box
The Would-Be Gentleman (Le Bourgeois gentilhomme) (1670)
Comédie-ballet with music by Lully; the social-climbing Monsieur Jourdain
The Imaginary Invalid (Le Malade imaginaire) (1673)
The hypochondriac Argan and his doctors; Molière's last play
The School for Wives (L'École des femmes) (1662)
Arnolphe raises his ward Agnès in ignorance to make her a faithful wife, and fails
Dom Juan (1665)
The libertine seducer who defies heaven and is dragged to hell by a statue
The Learned Ladies (Les Femmes savantes) (1672)
Satire on pretentious female intellectuals and the pedant Trissotin
Key ideas
- Comedy as a moral corrective: exposing vices such as hypocrisy, avarice and snobbery to ridicule
- Developed the comédie-ballet, combining spoken comedy with music and dance, often with Jean-Baptiste Lully
- Repeatedly mocked the medical profession, from Le Médecin malgré lui to Le Malade imaginaire
Quick-fire facts
- •Baptised in Paris on 15 January 1622; his father was a tapissier (upholsterer) to the royal household
- •Co-founded the Illustre Théâtre in 1643 with Madeleine Béjart; it failed and he was briefly imprisoned for debt
- •Toured the French provinces for about 13 years before returning to Paris in 1658
- •His first great Paris success was Les Précieuses ridicules (1659)
- •Married Armande Béjart, some 20 years his junior, in 1662
- •Took ill on stage during the fourth performance of Le Malade imaginaire on 17 February 1673 and died that night
- •As an actor who had not renounced his profession, he was refused normal church burial; Louis XIV's intervention allowed a night-time burial
- •The Comédie-Française was founded in 1680 by merging his former troupe with that of the Hôtel de Bourgogne
- •France's principal theatre awards are called the Molières
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Molière
- Virginia Scott — Molière: A Theatrical Life