MOLIÈRE, JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN, called. Playwright, b. in Paris in January 1622, d. there 17 Feb. 1673. With forceful eagerness, he entered into and carried to extreme conclusions the artisanal and popular tradition of the commedia dell’arte, which had passed from Italy to France; and in theatrical forms of boldly brilliant clarity, he composed farcical and spectacular plays for the diversion of a carefree hour, as well as comedies that, despite their comic and grotesque modes, touch upon the great harsh desperation and cruelty of pitiless tragedy.
His father, though as a merchant he belonged to the wealthy and industrious Parisian bourgeoisie historically tied to the French monarchy as “valet and upholsterer to the King,” had a precise role at court: as arranger of royal ceremonies, one might say; and the son never forgot this station. Receiving the classical education appropriate to his social class, he pursued, albeit marginally, legal studies, but the theater called him: this meant stepping beyond the norm, living adventurously in a guarded and defiant independence of outlawry. In 1643, he founded the “Illustre Théâtre,” ambitiously but in company with the Béjart actors, masters of their craft. The venture failed, and in 1645 the entrepreneur was imprisoned for debt. He then accepted the common lot of actors—wandering—and until 1658 traveled from one province to another, especially in southern France, gaining fertile experience in theatrical technique and popular language. His ambitions rose higher, toward reconciling the craft of theater with literature: even in the final years of his provincial wanderings, he composed farces plainly imitative of Italian models (*La jalousie du Barbouillé*; *Le médecin volant*) and comedies of more complex intent (*L’étourdi*; *Le dépit amoureux*); but in Paris he debuted with a tragedy by Corneille in the Salle des Gardes at the Louvre (24 Oct. 1658). The first comedy to open the path to his success was *Les précieuses ridicules* (1659), which, blending literary satire of preciosity with the farce of disguised servants, insinuates a keenly perceptive note of social custom.
The masterpiece *L’école des femmes* (1662) firmly established him: he worked at the Palais-Royal theater, became the official playwright to Louis XIV, relied on the King and his authority, ambitious to rise above all discord—even controversies touching religion—during the long dispute over *Tartuffe ou l’imposteur* (1664–69): the comedy that presumed to vindicate the rights of natural honesty and reasonable common sense against the masked turpitudes of hypocrites, intervening in the Jansenist controversy by rejecting both contenders and appealing to the Monarch, far-sighted, generous, and just. In a few years of immense labor, Molière devoted himself to the many roles of author, actor, impresario of his comic troupe, and arranger of the fêtes of King Louis. It is fitting to mark them with a list of his 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 overtook him while he was performing the comedy of the man who refuses to acknowledge that he must die: doubtless fortified by religious comforts, but not buried in consecrated ground.
Three great themes run through his grand dramaturgy: love, royalty, and nature. But love is the life of the senses, and jealousy, which makes one a slave to one’s own craving for possession, poisons every joy (exemplified by the character of Arnolphe in *L’école des femmes*). Royalty seems a refuge, ensuring grandeur and protection to human fate, yet the court poet becomes a weary director of ballets and pastorals, when he does not adapt himself to assist the sovereign in his amorous disguises (*Amphitryon*, 1668). Nature, which in its fear of all transcendence and even in the proud defiance of Don Juan should have been his mother, instead menaces man with sickness and threatens him with death: nor does it avail him, condemned to die young in the grotesque ceremony that enrolls the imaginary invalid among the Faculty of Medicine, to mock the supposed usurpers of nature, the physicians.
In his naive thirst for joy, the poet is continually thwarted and overwhelmed, and the comedy, which would sing of abandoning oneself to the naturalness of living and loving, becomes, unexpectedly, bold and bitter drama: almost as if it detaches itself from his intentions and turns back upon him. It is precisely in this detachment of the poetic image from the elaboration so diligently and shrewdly wrought that the poetry lies; and the work, as if proceeding on its own toward the bold bitter truth that overwhelms him, becomes the judge of its author.