The Learned Ladies

Molière (1622–1673), born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, is widely celebrated as the supreme master of French comedy. Abandoning a comfortable, upper-middle-class destiny and a potential career in law, he chose instead the precarious life of the theater, co-founding his own acting troupe. After spending over a decade touring the French provinces, he returned to Paris where his sharp wit, physical comedy, and undeniable stage presence caught the eye of King Louis XIV, who became his powerful, lifelong patron.

Molière used laughter as a weapon to expose the hypocrisy and absurdity of 17th-century French society. He fearlessly satirized religious frauds, social climbers, pedantic scholars, and greedy doctors, frequently drawing the intense wrath of the Church and the Parisian establishment. A true man of the theater, he acted in, directed, and wrote his own plays right up until the very end, famously collapsing on stage while performing the lead role in his final comedy and passing away shortly after.

Essential Reading

• Tartuffe (1664): A daring, brilliantly constructed satire about a pious, manipulative fraud who infiltrates a wealthy household and nearly destroys a gullible patriarch.
• The Misanthrope (1666): A sophisticated comedy of manners centered on Alceste, a man who insists on absolute honesty in a high-society world built entirely on polite flattery and deceit.
• The Bourgeois Gentleman (1670): A hilarious, highly entertaining farce that mocks a foolish, newly wealthy merchant desperately attempting to buy the manners and education of the aristocracy.
• The Miser (1668): A classic, enduring comedy detailing the chaotic household of a paranoid, tyrannical father whose absolute obsession with his hidden gold ruins the lives of his children.
• The Imaginary Invalid (1673): His final masterpiece, a scathing and uproarious takedown of the medical profession, featuring a wealthy hypochondriac completely at the mercy of quack doctors.