MOLIÈRE, JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN, detto. - Playwright, b. in Paris in Jan. 1622, d. there on 17 Feb. 1673. Into the artisanal and popular tradition of the commedia dell'arte players, who had passed from Italy into France, he entered with restless force, carrying it to extreme consequences; and in theatrical forms of bold, ingenious vividness he composed farcical and spectacular entertainments for the diversion of a carefree hour, and comedies that, even in their comic and grotesque modes, touch the desperate and cruel grandeur of pitiless tragedy.
His father, if as a merchant he belonged to the wealthy and industrious Parisian bourgeoisie, historically bound to the monarchy of France, as "valet and upholsterer to the King" had a precise function at court: arranger of royal ceremonies, one might say: nor would the son ever forget this condition. Having received the classical education befitting his social class, he completes, albeit marginally, studies in law, but the theater calls him: this meant placing oneself beyond the norm, living precariously in a watched and spiteful independence of an outlaw. In 1643 he founds the "Illustre Théâtre," ambitiously, but in the company of actors, the Béjarts, highly expert in the trade. The venture is unlucky, and the entrepreneur in 1645 is imprisoned for debts. He then accepts the common condition of actors, vagabondage, and until 1658 he passes from one province to another, especially in southern France, gaining a fruitful experience of theatrical technique and popular language. His ambitions aim at a higher mark, at the reconciliation of the trade of the theater with literature: already in the last period of his provincial tour he composes farces in open imitation of Italian models (La jalousie du Barbouillé; Le médecin volant) and comedies of more complex intention (L'étourdi; Le dépit amoureux); but in Paris he makes his debut with a tragedy of Corneille in the Salle des Gardes at the Louvre (24 Oct. 1658); and the first comedy that opens the way to success for him is that of the Précieuses ridicules (1659), which between the literary satire of précieusité and the farce of disguised servants insinuates the very witty, shrewd note of manners. The masterpiece of the Ecole des femmes (1662) asserts him clamorously: he works at the theater of the Palais Royal, becomes official playwright of Louis XIV, relies on the King, and on his authority, ambitious to place himself above all discords, and even above the controversies that touched on religion, during the long dispute over the Tartuffe ou l'Imposteur (1664-69): the comedy that presumed to vindicate the rights of natural honesty, of reasonable good sense, against the masked turpitudes of hypocrites, and that in the Jansenist polemic intervened by rejecting both one and the other of the contending parties, and appealing to the Monarch, far-sighted and generous and just. In a few years of enormous labor M. exerts himself in the many functions of author, actor, manager of his comic troupe and arranger of King Louis's festivities: let it suffice to mark them with the list of masterpieces: Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre (1665), Le misanthrope (1666), George Dandin (1668), L'avare (1668), Les femmes savantes (1672), Le malade imaginaire (1673). Death assails him while he is performing the comedy of the man who will not know that he must die: fortified, it seems certain, with the religious comforts, but not buried in Christian ground.
Three great themes run through his great dramaturgy: love, royalty, nature. But love is life of the senses, and jealousy, which makes it the slave of its own craving for possession, poisons every joy of it (the character of Arnolphe in the Ecole des femmes is exemplary). Royalty seems a refuge, which may assure grandeur and defense to the human lot, but the court poet becomes a weary director of ballets and pastorals, when he does not stoop to assist the sovereign in his amorous disguises (Amphitryon, 1668). Nature, which in his fear of every transcendence, and even in Don Giovanni's proud defiance, ought to be a mother to him, waylays man with illness and threatens him with death: nor does it avail him, condemned to die young in the grotesque ceremony that enrolls the imaginary invalid in the Faculty of Medicine, to mock the presumed transgressors of nature, the doctors. In his naive thirst for joy the poet is continually thwarted and overwhelmed, and the comedy, which would wish to sing the abandonment to the naturalness of living and of love, becomes, unforeseeably, a bold and bitter drama: it almost detaches itself from his intentions and turns back upon him. Precisely in this detachment of the poetic image from the elaboration arranged with such solicitude and such choice technical skill, lies the poetry; and the work becomes, as if continuing on its own toward the bold bitter truth that overwhelms him, the judge of its author.
BIBL. edd.: Oeuvres (corredato di antiche incisioni e annotate da B. Guégan), 7 voll., Parigi 1925-29; Oeuvres de M. (secondo i testi originali, con notizie di J. Copeau), 10 voll., ivi 1929; Oeuvres complètes (testo critico e note di M. Rat), 2 voll., ivi 1932. Repertori bibliografici: P. Lacroix, Collect. molièresque, 20 voll., ivi 1867-75; id., e G. Monval, Nouvelle collect. molièresque, 17 voll., ivi 1861-90; C. Levi, Saggio di una bibl. italiana di M., in Studi molieriani, Palermo 1922, p. 187 agg.; P. F. Saintonge-R. W. Christ, Fifty years of M. studies (1892-1941), Baltimore 1942. Biografie e studi: dei numerosi contributi v. specialmente: C. Levi, M., Roma 1922; F. Picco, M., Firenze 1930; G. Michaut, M. raconté par ceux qui l'ont vu, Parigi 1932; M. Apollonio, M., Brescia 1942; P. Brisson, M., sa vie dans ses oeuvres, Parigi 1942; D. Mornet, M., ivi 1943.