Molière

Molière was the stage name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, a French actor, theatre manager and playwright who worked in Paris under the patronage of Louis XIV. In comedies such as Tartuffe, The Misanthrope and The Miser he mocked hypocrisy, snobbery, greed and quack medicine, and several of his plays caused public scandal. He is regarded as the creator of modern French comedy, and French is still sometimes called "the language of Molière".

He was baptised in Paris on 15 January 1622, the eldest son of Jean Poquelin, a prosperous upholsterer who in 1631 bought a court office as upholsterer and valet to the king's chamber. He was educated at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont, one of the leading schools in the city, and around 1642 probably studied law, perhaps in Orléans, although there is no record that he qualified.

In June 1643, at 21, he gave this up for the stage. With the actress Madeleine Béjart and members of her family he founded a company called the Illustre Théâtre in Paris. It failed within two years, leaving heavy debts, mostly for rent, and he spent a day in prison. Around this time he adopted the name Molière, possibly to spare his father the embarrassment of having an actor in the family.

For roughly twelve years he and Béjart toured the provinces of the Kingdom of France, at first with another troupe and later at the head of their own, which won the support of the Prince of Conti, governor of Languedoc. Molière learned his trade as actor and manager and began to write, blending the improvised Italian commedia dell'arte with French traditions.

In 1658 the company played before the young Louis XIV in the Louvre, performing a tragedy by Corneille followed by a farce of Molière's own. It became the troupe of the king's brother, Philippe of Orléans, and shared a hall near the Louvre with an Italian company before moving in 1661 to the theatre of the Palais-Royal. The Affected Ladies of 1659 satirised fashionable pretension, and The School for Husbands and The School for Wives followed. His marriage in 1662 to Armande Béjart, either the sister or possibly the daughter of Madeleine, gave his enemies material for gossip.

Molière also invented the comédie-ballet, plays interwoven with dance and music, often written with the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully for court festivities. Louis granted the company a pension, stood as godfather to Molière's first son, and later made it the King's Troupe.

The protection mattered. Tartuffe, first performed at the Palace of Versailles in 1664, portrayed a religious hypocrite who worms his way into a household. Devout circles at court, including his former patron Conti, saw it as an attack on religion, and the play was banned. A revised version was banned again in 1667 by the head of the Paris Parlement and the archbishop while the king was away, and it was only allowed on stage a few years later.

The Misanthrope of 1666, now often thought his finest play, was a commercial failure at first, and he quickly followed it with The Doctor in Spite of Himself, one of several plays mocking physicians. Then came The Miser, The Bourgeois Gentleman, Scapin's Deceits and The Learned Ladies.

He suffered from tuberculosis. On 17 February 1673, playing the hypochondriac Argan in his last play, The Imaginary Invalid, he was seized by coughing and a haemorrhage, finished the performance, and died at home a few hours later. Actors could not then be buried in consecrated ground, but at his widow's request the king allowed a quiet funeral at night.

Though churchmen and doctors resented him, audiences did not. His plays are performed by the Comédie-Française more than those of any other writer, and they have been translated into every major language. Character names have become French words: a tartuffe is a hypocrite and a harpagon, after the miser of The Miser, a skinflint.

Our 1650 map shows France as Molière toured its provinces, and the 1700 map shows the kingdom of Louis XIV a generation after his death.