The unfortunate marriage of Moliere with Armande Mart took place on Feb. 20, 1662. We have already alluded to the circumstances of the marriage and the problems it presents. The character of Armande and her relations with Moliere have been the subject of even more discussion than her parentage. It is again impossible to go into the details of the controversy. There can be little doubt that Armande is the "petite Menou" who six years previously as a child had taken the part of Ephyre in the Andromede of Corneille while the company was in the provinces. The promiscuous infidelities with which she is charged by the author of La Fameuse Comedienne can be safely dismissed, but there can be no doubt whatever that she gave Moliere frequent and just cause of complaint. She was greedy of pleasure and spoiled with flattery. She had small regard for her husband's position. Moliere was surrounded by enemies who did not scruple to use his private troubles to discredit him, and the least we can say of Armande is that she did not show him the loyalty he had a right to expect. There was a fundamental incompatibility be tween them, which Moliere subsequently idealized in the encoun ters between Alceste and Celimene. The uneasiness of their relations was such as might have been expected to arise between a sensitive man of genius in middle life and a capricious girl whom everyone, including her own husband, had helped to spoil from the time she was a child of ten. It is difficult to date the various estrangements and reconciliations between them. There was cer tainly a long period (1666-71) during which they were in effect separated, and in Aug. 1667 Moliere took a house in Auteuil where he lived with his friend Chapelle, and apparently saw his wife only at the theatre. Even then, of course, they must have been in constant touch with one another professionally. In 1671 there was a last effort to resume life together, and when Moliere died in 1673 they were inhabiting the same house in the Rue de Richelieu. The first part given by Moliere to his wife was that of Elise in La Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes. Her talent as an actress was much admired, and contemporary writers all bear witness to her vivacity and charm. Moliere himself has painted ner portrait delightfully in Lucile of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. After his death she married a second-rate actor, Guerin d'Estriche, who ruled her firmly and with whom she appears to have been entirely happy. There were three children born to Moliere, a son on Jan. 19, 1664, who died nine months later, a daughter on Aug. 4, 1665, who survived, and a second son on Sept. 15, 1672, who died within a month.
On Dec. 26, 1662, ten months after his marriage, Moliere produced L'Ecole des Femmes, a com panion comedy to L'Ecole des Maris. With the production of this play he enters upon a more militant period of his career. Hitherto he had excited only the jealousy of professional rivals and the resentment of a coterie. Henceforth he had to reckon with serious charges of license and impiety. Socially the play was more start ling than the modern critic can easily realize. It anticipated the modern feminist attitude to male jealousy by over two centuries. Moliere was to suffer all the tortures of a man infatuated with a young wife of whom he could never be sure, and in L'Ecole des Femmes he stages his own misfortunes. No one has written of jealousy with a finer detachment or a more delicate sense of the moral and social issues involved than Moliere. The author of L'Ecole des Femmes, regarding himself with comic detachment, takes his own weakness for a subject. In the same way we shall see him later on, in the hands of the doctors, using his own illness as a theme for one of his gayest comedies.
L'Ecole des Femmes ran continuously from Dec. 1662 to Aug. 1663, except for a short break at Easter, and Moliere, taking the offensive against his critics, wrote a brilliant postscript to the comedy in one act, dedicated to the queen mother, in which he ridiculed his detractors. The new play, entitled La Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes, provoked a whole series of rejoinders. The two most important of them were Zelinde, ou la Critique de la Critique by de Vise, and the Portrait du Peintre by Boursault. The latter play was performed at the Hotel de Bourgogne and wit nessed by Moliere himself, who replied with L'Impromptu de Versailles, to which allusion has already been made. Modern readers may look in vain for the irregularities of form and im pieties of substance alleged by the critics of Moliere. The main attack was delivered upon the scenes in which Arnolphe threatens Agnes with the cauldrons of hell if she should ever deceive him, and catechizes her upon her deportment with the enterprising Horace. "There is nothing more scandalous than the sixth scene
of the second act," says the reformed Prince de Conti in his Traite de la Comedie et des Spectacles. There is no doubt that the implicit mockery by Moliere of a falsely puritan conception of conduct and his broad views on the freedom of women and the reasonable confidence which should be placed in their dis cretion profoundly disconcerted his contemporaries.
The next two plays were occasional: Le Mariage Force (Feb. 15, 1664), an impromptu farce with a ballet, for which Lulli wrote the music, and in which the king himself danced as an Egyptian, and the Princesse d'Elide (May 8, 1664), hastily produced to form part of the festival of Les Plaisirs de Vile Enchantee at Versailles. More important was the inclusion by Moliere among Les Plaisirs de rile Enchantee of a first perform ance of the first three acts of Tartuffe. The production of these three acts was the beginning of a violent and obstinate struggle in comparison with which the controversy over L'Ecole des Femmes was no more than a preliminary skirmish. The king was driven into a position which as clearly indicates his own admira tion of the play as the strength of the opposition it aroused. Moliere pleaded in vain that Tartuffe was a satire upon a false and not a genuine devotion, as he had on a previous occasion pleaded that Les Precieuses Ridicules was a satire upon the false and not the genuine exquisites. The satire went too nearly home, and not even Louis XIV. dared publicly to license an indictment of religious hypocrisy with which he secretly concurred. He found it necessary to forbid the public performance of Tartuffe. Lest, however, his private opinion of the play should be misunderstood, he invited Moliere to Fontainebleau on July 2 I, and Tartuffe was read to an audience which included Cardinal Chigi, legate a latere of Pope Alexander VII. The royal approval, even though supported by the toleration of a cardinal legate, did not, however, suffice to silence the opposition. Pierre Roulle, vicar of St. Barthelemy of Paris, in a pamphlet addressed to the most glorious king in the world, after describing Moliere as a demon in human flesh and trusting that he would ultimately pass through earthly to eternal fires, congratulated his majesty on his decision to "suppress, destroy, suffocate and burn" the offending work. Mo liere protested against this violent attack in the first of the "pla cers" to the king, which afterwards appeared as prefaces to the play. The author in this "placet" expresses his entire confidence in the royal support. Meanwhile, the reading parties at court con tinued, and in July 1664 the first three acts of the play were per formed at the house of the Duc d'Orleans in the presence of the king, the queen and the queen-mother, while in Nov. 1664 the whole five acts were played before the Prince de Conde, and re peated in Nov. 1665. For another two years Moliere persistently continued to plead for a public performance, and he at last obtained the royal consent subject to certain emendations designed to make it clear that no general attack upon the clergy was in tended. But the battle was not yet won. Moliere amended the play, which was publicly produced at the Palais Royal on Aug. 5, 1667. The king, however, was unfortunately absent in Flanders, and on the day following the production of the play, the president of the parlement closed the theatre and tore down the posters from its walls. Moliere thereupon wrote his second "placet" in which he went so far as to declare that he would retire from the stage "si les Tartuffes ont l'avantage." The "placet" was taken to the king in Flanders by two members of the company. The messengers of Moliere were well received. The king promised to examine the new version of the play on his return and, if possible, to authorize its performance. But that was easier said than done, even by the king of France. The archbishop of Paris had on Aug. 11 prohibited anyone in his diocese from presenting, reading, or hearing the comedy, either in public or private, under pain of excommunica tion, and the king on his return to Paris did not venture to license its production. Moliere was persuaded not to carry out his threat of retirement, but he had to wait for another 18 months before the public performance of the play was finally authorized on Feb. 5, 1669. Its success was immediate and prolonged.