BOURSAULT, EDME (1638-1701), French dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Mussy l'Eveque, now Mussy sur-Seine (Aube). In Paris in 1652 he produced his first comedy, Le Mort vivant. This and some other pieces of small merit secured for him distinguished patronage in the society ridiculed by Moliere in the Ecole des femmes. Boursault was per suaded that the "Lysidas" of that play was a caricature of himself, and attacked Moliere in Le Portrait du peintre on la contre-critique de l'Ecole des femmes (1663) . Moliere retaliated in L'Impromptu de Versailles, and Boileau attacked Boursault in Satires 7 and 9. Boursault replied to Boileau in his Satire des Satires (1669), but was afterwards reconciled with him. In 1671 he produced a didactic work, Ad tisum Delphini: la veritable etude des souverains, which so pleased the court that its author was about to be made assistant tutor to the dauphin when it was found that he was ignorant of Greek and Latin.
See his Oeuvres choisies (published in 1811) and the sketch of him in Saint-Rene Taillandier's Etudes litteraires (1881) .