Dramatic author and French actor. Like Dante or Goethe, Molière incarnates the own genius of a language and a culture main roads: he is not author French than him.

But it is not either of more universal French author: like Cervantès or Chaplin, it incarnates the laughter in its sovereign power, which transcends borders and times.

Lastly, as regards theater, its work, with that of Shakespeare, constitutes the absolute reference: for all the actors of the world, Molière remains the “owner”.

Admirable, skilful actor to benefit comic and expressive from his same physical defects, it invented the mask of Sganarelle, to which to some extent it was identified, but without never letting itself there lock up: the range of its scenic talent went from the sharp insolence of Scapin to the vehement bitterness of Alceste. This genius of the observation, the writing and the incarnation dramatic proceeds of a double secrecy: a sovereign intuition the essence, which confer on the comedy of Molière her relevant simplicity, its expressive accuracy and its depth of meditation without hustle; and a higher aptitude to operate the synthesis enters of the esthetic influences, the dramatic sources and the intentions very diverse morals, between subjects and comic registers very varied, between even disparate forms and styles.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin

Baptized on on January 15th, 1622 with Saint-Eustace, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin is the son of a commercial Parisian tapestry maker, Jean Poquelin, and of his wife Marie Cressé. It should have succeeded his father, who obtains for him the survival of his load, honourable and lucrative, of “tapestry maker and manservant of the king” - i.e. supplier of the fabric court of furnishing and small movable. It follows very normal studies for a young middle-class man of its time: initially, it seems, in Paris, at the Jesuits of the college of Clermont (the current Louis-the-Large college), then in Orleans, where it would have obtained its licenses in right. But Jean-Baptiste, who made enough Latin to read the comedies of Plaute and Terence in the text, meets the “tribe” Béjart, an original family, a little Bohemian, impassioned by the theater, and it is not long in giving up the paternal load.

The Famous-Theater

With his new friends, the young man founds in June 1643 the Famous-Theater. Being unaware of the comedy, it is with the great tragedies with the mode that the troop is tested; its success rests essentially on the talent of the beautiful Madeleine Béjart. Jean-Baptiste from now on became “Molière”; he will marry twenty years Armande Béjart later (most probably the sister of Madeleine, but it was claimed that he was her daughter, even that of Madeleine and Molière), who will create the character of Célimène in the Misanthropist. Installed initially in the Saint-Germain suburb then in the Saint-Paul district, the Famous-Theater goes bankrupt in spring 1645. Imprisoned for debts at the beginning of August and immediately released by her father, Molière leaves Paris then. From 1645 to 1658, the Famous-Theater, of which he became the director, makes its classes in the provinces, sponsored a time by the governor of Languedoc, prince de Conti, who installs his actors in particular with Pézenas at the time of the provincial states that he chairs.

The training of the comedy

Of return to Paris in 1658, Molière reports her provincial rounds an experiment of comic actor ground to the improvisations to Italian and the towers of the French joke, whose mask of Sganarelle operates the synthesis. Two comic groundworks, probably written by him, preserve the trace of this training: jealousy of smeared and the flying Doctor. Because Molière also began in province a career of poet dramatic and composed for her actors two regular comedies in worms drawn from Italian originals, the Thoughtless one or the Hitches and the Spite in love. It appears there in Mascarille, another standard character created by him, that of an intrepid servant and virtuoso, ancestor of Scapin. Lastly, it seems that he also tested himself as of then with the theater interfered with music and dance, by writing the screen of the Ballet of incompatible, danced in Montpellier in 1655. All the work of Molière will consist in from now on opening out these tendencies and, especially, amalgamating the intuitions of them according to varied proportionings, but in a unit and a coherence of prospects which one would be wrong to deny by artificially opposing at his place a moral vein and an inspiration bouffonne: the history of moliéresque creation is precisely that of their fusion, owing to a synthetic design of the laughter defined as a universal optics on the nature of the man, that of then and always.

First attempts in master strokes

Royal favor
From 1658 to 1664, Molière conquers Paris, the court and the king by a series of blows of glare, at the same time as he works out his comic esthetics while testing himself with the gallant comedy of constant tone (Dom Garcie de Navarre), by inventing a new form of association between the dramatic text and the musical and choreographic ornaments, than he will name “comedy-ballet” (the Annoying ones, then the Forced marriage), by trying various proportionings between the joke and sometimes the social satire (under the mask of Mascarille in the Invaluable ridiculous ones), sometimes the moral comedy (under the mask of Sganarelle in Sganarelle or the imaginary Cuckold, then itSchool of the husbands). It is a small joke, moreover, the Doctor in love, who put it in favor of the 1658 near the young person Louis XIV and of his court, avid to divert itself: this success is worth with the troop, which acquired the official protection of Sir, brother of the king, his installation initially in the room of the Petit-Bourbon, in October 1658, then, this theater yielding the place to the enlargings of new Louvre, in the room of the Palais Royal (built formerly for Richelieu), in January 1661.  

Parisian successes
And it is also with a small comedy of farcesque origin, but of satirical spirit and salt plus society man, whom it conquers Paris since 1659: the Invaluable ridiculous ones benefit from an effect of topicality to release from the pure joke the draft of a satire of manners and even of a comedy of characters of a new kind, where the buffoonery is either only given the responsability to slacken the atmosphere, but also to make the lesson with chimerical extravagances by the ridiculous one of which it overpowers them. Sganarelle or the imaginary Cuckold seals this alliance of meeting between the simple pleasure of giving to laugh by effects farcesques, the highest ambition to paint the ridiculous ones of its time and the deep moral intuition of eternal through human. The association of these ambitions, tied in the Invaluable ones around ridiculed extravagance, soon will fertilize, as suggests it the imaginary subtitle of Cuckold, a dramaturgy of the plugging and plugged imagination which induces these incongruous conduits, these absurd situations, these perverse and denatured doctrines whose comedy makes expeditious justice and relentless by the laughter. Of the imaginary Cuckold at the School of the husbands then at the School of the women, the lesson of the moralist and the trade of the comic poet certainly are purified and rise, but the direction remains the same one: the triumph of the School of the women is founded on alliance from now on accomplished between a bright laughter which exploit all the registers, even simplest and most immediate, and a revealing without concession of the masks of the heart in the grip of its aberrant illusions and to its lies twisted.  

Jealous and detractors
Of course, jealousies and hatreds are not long in emerging around Molière (whose, in addition, the Annoying ones are created on on August 17th, 1661 with Be worth-the-Viscount during the famous festival which, added to other objections, will be worth its disgrace with the Fouquet superintendent). Initially excited enmities by successes which it gains, then by the innovation of the esthetic ambitions which it assigns with the comedy while claiming to raise it with height of moral meditation without giving up for as much the prickly savor of the farcesques towers; and, especially, one reproaches him boldnesses of a thought exciting, in the name of nature and of the truth, the pleasures of the life, the love, freedom, the sincerity, which persecutes wrongfully a rigorous and despotic morals, plugged by its own whims which disfigure it and ridicule it. Besides the Criticism of the School of the women and the Impromptu one of Versailles, comedies of circumstance which it composes to retort since the scene with its adversaries, make it possible to Molière to formulate the data of this renewed esthetics. It professes there that the comic, fascinating poet for matter the extravagant conduits of his contemporaries, must work them in universal “characters” whose truth is measured, to finish, with the intensity of the laughter that these ridiculous transposed and put to naked cause spontaneously: the pleasure of the spectator applies to guarantee of the esthetic and moral success of the comedy.

The trilogy of imposture

The quarrel of the “Sanctimonious hypocrite”
Remain the ethical question and nun. To embarrass the excessively pious people, scandalized by the merry epicureanism and scoffer of the School of the women, Molière imagines to carry to the scene the ridiculous couple formed by a fanatic excessively pious person and a lecherous hypocrite who mystifies it. The Sanctimonious hypocrite is created, like the Forced marriage and the Princess of Elides, within the framework one cannot less pious of the “Pleasures of the enchanted island”, court given by Louis XIV to his mistress of the moment celebrates, Louise of Vallière. The part - moreover then unfinished - metamorphosis the traditional joke of the cuckold mystified by a lustful monk and an easy woman in a large comedy of the imposture supported by the perverse powers of the fallacious image and the fanaticized illusion. In spite of the discrete support of the young court and his king - which sponsors officially the troop as from August 1665 after having sponsored in February 1664 theborn one of the union between Molière and Armande Béjart (January 1662) -, Tartuffe is prohibited, under the pressure of the excessively pious people - gathered around the queen mother and supported by the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, which recruits until in the highest levels of society.  

“Dom Juan” and “the Misanthropist”
The crisis that make cross to Molière the outbursts of hatred caused by its part and the transitory triumph of its enemies expresses, back-to-back, by two at the same time vehement and perplexed masterpieces, Dom Juan and the Misanthropist; they raise in their turn the question of imposture and the truth, but also that of the role of pitiless denouncer lent to the kind comic, able to flush out by the laughter the pretenses of the mask and the frauds of imagination. Dom Juan, however “purified” as of the second representation of one of its major audacities (the scene of the blasphemy imposed on “Poor”), nevertheless is withdrawn from the poster in ON position does not know which pressure after fifteenth; the disease strikes seriously Molière during the winter 1665-1666; the Misanthropist is accommodated coldly; finally, a second version of Sanctimonious hypocrite, though softened, is in its prohibited turn in August 1667.  

A satire of the company

All that does nothing but urge on the activity of the poet and the director of troop: it compensates for losses and vexations by exploiting at the expense of the doctors the farcesque vein of its two last “sganarellades” (the Love doctor and the Doctor in spite of him) and by satirizing the provincial ridiculous ones (George Dandin). Molière also cultivates a vein gallant and smiling adapted to the royal festivals (the Princess of Elides, or Mélicerte, part created with the “Ballet of the Muses”, Saint-Germain), but especially opened out in poetry in half-tone which pleasantly colors the Sicilian and délicieusement Amphitryon, imitated of Plaute. Another subject drawn from the same model, the Miserly one is, like Dandin, carbonized these a little dark colors which, in the line of the Misanthropist and to the Hypochondriac a few years later, express the persistent presence of a rougher nuance in the pallet of Molière.

All these works, moreover, until the authorization of Sanctimonious hypocrite, finally occurred in February 1669, when the devout party lost much of its influence at the court, discreetly feel great quarrel supported by the playwright and of the blows that it took there and returned: doctors portrayed as cynical impostors (Filerin in the Love doctor), large lord covering his escapades of the mask of the devotion (Dom Juan), vain on the return making an end in the prudery (Arsinoé in the Misanthropist), private servant of his identity by a double who borrows his features to him to be made of it a mask (Double in Host), tyrannical fathers forcing their children with an asceticism out of reason by avarice (Scrooge in the Miserly one) or by moral rigor (Orgon in Tartuffe), woman licentious and crafty one which make fall down its fault on a husband victim of a miscarriage of justice in front of the court of the family (George Simpleton). Everywhere humanity seems in the grip of disorders and with the giddinesses of the illusion fomented and exploited by the sanctimonious hypocrites.

Imagination with the power

The years which follow the creation of the second Sanctimonious hypocrite perfect the synthesis between the three inspirations major, farcesque, gallant and moral, which had hitherto fertilized the work of Molière. And it is under the sign of imagination that this association takes place: under the sign of the inventive and merry imagination of cheating (Sbrigani in Mister de Pourceaugnac and Scapin in Cheatings); under the sign of imaginative and exotic imagination in the comedy-ballets with large spectacle (Greece of convention for the splendid Lovers or Psyche, and imaginary Turkey of the Middle-class gentleman); but also, and conversely, under the sign of is delirious of imagination, that of the middle-class man who is caught with his play of large lord (the Middle-class gentleman), that of the provincial one who believes great lady lit by the lights of Paris (the Countess of Escarbagnas), that of the women bitten by the demon of the knowledge (the erudite Women) and, top of mislaying, that of the bearing good who wants to be and believes themselves sick in spite of the obviousness (the Hypochondriac).

Comedy-ballets

Always imagination and its imaginations: “both Baptist”, Molière and Lully, create in three years (1669-1672) for the entertainment of the king not less than five comedy-ballets, whose comic text, written and played by the poet, is larded sung and danced entertainments conceived by the musician. However, for the sixth and last, the Hypochondriac, it is to Marc Antoine Charpentier that Molière orders the music. In fact, after the triumph of Psyche, fruit of a close cooperation between several artists which frustrates Molière of part of her invention and is appropriate rather little, finally, with his genius of ridiculous, alliance is demolished: Lully passes to creation of what will become, since 1673, the French opera. However, since the text even of the dramatic action is sung there and either only played, it is done by it comedy such as Molière the practice: the combat of avant-garde which the comedy-ballet had carried out since 1661 becomes then battles of rearguard, ineluctably lost, in spite of the efforts made by Molière as well as possible to insert the musical and choreographic entertainments in the comic screen of its last works.

The two best successes of these efforts remain, after the wild carnival of Pourceaugnac with its comic continuations and its farandoles, the scene of Turkish scene of the Middle-class gentleman and the ceremony of establishment of Argan as a doctor in the Hypochondriac. But, overall, it is especially the almost choreographic of the writing and structure dramatic moliéresques, significant nature as of the first works of the poet (Scapin is in that the twin brother of Mascarille of Thoughtless or the Hitches of 1655), which will have supported this unexpected fusion of ridiculous thickly of the moral comedy and gallant or delirious imaginations of the comedy-ballet.

Is delirious of imagination

However the principal asset of last works of Molière lies in the increase and the deepening of its characters the “imaginary ones” - i.e. these species of insane driven by the only law of their delirious imagination, haunted by an obsession or dazzled chimerical illusions -, like Mr. the Jordan, Mrs. d' Escarbagnas, Philaminte and Bélise, which besides succeed Arnolphe, Argan, Alceste, Harpagon. These characters divide into two major categories, “obsessional” and “extravagant”, those dazzled by a dream which repaints the world with the euphoric colors their puerile illusions, these absorptive by a craze which closes them with any other consideration and abolishes any other reality. Besides at some join one and the other form of madness: thus Argan, in the grip of the obsession of a disease which he claims to make look after by a medicine of which the knowledge is very chimerical. The metamorphosis of the hypochondriac as an imaginary doctor achieves, with the outcome of the last comedy of Molière, fusion between the two methods of is delirious of imagination whose its dramaturgy will not have ceased highlighting, by the most varied forms laughter, the ridiculous blindness.

A painting of the company

Here are which, on the whole, made emblem of all the dramatic step of an actor and playwright that the legend makes die on scene (in fact, Molière dies shortly after the fourth representation of the Hypochondriac, on on February 17th, 1673, that, taken of a spitting of blood, it must stop): before him, the comic poet believed himself obliged to choose between elegantly imitating reality to like and inform or deform it by caricaturing it to make laugh, to thus choose between the gallant comedy and the joke. From the principle which the man is by nature inclined with extravagant and aberrant behaviors, Molière succeeds in amalgamating these two inspirations: it is in reality even as the poet will seek his naturally deformed and caricatural matter; it will only remain to him to emphasize it in light and by the transposition for which provides the scenic writing. The ridiculous one consequently is not added any more by the poet to the defects of the men like a sanction for a salutary correction: it spouts out like an obviousness of the spectacle of their naturally ridiculous conduits.