Biography
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known as Molière (1622-1673), born in Paris into a prosperous bourgeois family, is the defining figure of French comic theatre and among the supreme dramatists of world literature. Molière founded the Illustre Théâtre at twenty-one and spent years as an itinerant actor-manager before securing the patronage of Louis XIV in 1658. His mature comedies—Tartuffe (1664), Le Misanthrope (1666), L'Avare (1668), Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), and Le Malade Imaginaire (1673)—combined popular comedy with sharp social critique and acute psychological portraiture. Tartuffe's exposure of religious hypocrisy brought him into prolonged conflict with the Catholic Church. Molière died on stage, collapsing during the fourth performance of Le Malade Imaginaire in which he played the hypochondriac Argan. The Comédie-Française, which traces its origins to Molière's troupe, remains his living legacy.
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