MOLIERE, intYlyfle. The name assumed by JEAN Itm"rtsTE Poorwx (1622-73). The great• est dramatist and perhaps the greatest writer of France. Moliere was born January 15, 1622, in Paris. His father was it well-to•do tradesman and titular 'tapissier valet-de-ehambre' of the King, an office held later by Moliere, Moliere's mother died in 1632. Ile was educated by the .lesnits at the College de Clermont (1636.41), and came into touch with some literary men ('hapelle. Gassendi). ?4(inie say he went to Orleans to study law; others that he studied theology at the Sorbonne; and others still that he went with the Court as a minor officer to Narbonne. and formed bohemian asso ciations, among them being the 13(..jarts, whose daughter, Armande, he afterwards (1662) mar ried, In 1643 Moliere abandoned his office and family prospects for the stage. After two un successful theatrical ventures he was imprisoned for debt (1643), and in the winter of 1646-47 he became chief of a troupe of players which for twelve years (1647-58) acted in the provinces. In Oetober, 1658, Moliere played for the first time before the King, acting in Niromille and he doe teur amoureux. In these Years of wandering Mo liere learned the practieal side of his profession; as dramatic adapter and composer he learned its literary side. More than all, he learned human nature by observing the provinces in the excited period of the Fronde from the vantage ,ground of an actor who could view objectively the panorama of high and low life; And at the same time as nmnager he gained seriousness from responsi bility. a seriousness that gives his satire some times a tinge of bitterness and always the seal of superiority.
On Moliere's return to Paris (1655) he had the prestige of provincial success, and he had written two plays which he thought worthy of preservation. L'elourdi and Le amoureur. These were sufficiently superior in their easy, nat ural dialogue and the alert brilliancy of their style to win for him a Court patronage which he never lost and a popularity which assured his troupe a permanent support in Paris. This work
was, however, Italian in spirit; but in 1659 Moliere discarded, with Fix prYrienseR ridicuIrs, the stereotyped pattern. with its stock characters. anti inaugurated a new era in comedy with the first dramatic satire on cultured society in France. Not the affected language and manners of the Il 4o1 de Randionillet, but those. rather, of its bourgeois imitators, who abounded in Paris. were ridiculed with such infinite good humor that the play has not yet lost its comic force.
As typical of Moliere's genius, thongh of a oldie other phase of it. is soonorelle (1660), the first of those gay yet profound byre; flint still hold the stage beeause they evoke first a laugh and then a thoughtful smile. Ile was still feel ing his way. and non Gareie tie Vararre ( 16111 1. a live-act tragi-commly in verse, marks a relapse to traditions of the Spanish Stage. 1,Yrolr firs maris (16611 shows. however. :1 decided advance. The plot is from Terenee, but the aged lover is treated with a pathos and a tidelily to nature that hear the print of genius. From this point onward it becomes necessary to distinguish the work of Mullen' tla burn dramatist from that of Molii‘re the theatrical manager and purveyor of Court entertainments. lie wrote very much in the latter rapacity that he would not have written in the former. The financial success and prosperity of his company were also an obliga tion not to be neglected. To satisfy this he wrote conventional come lies and extravagant farces, and to please the royal taste he eomposedl for festivals at Versailles some thirteen semi-operatie comedies. in which the text was only a pretext for dancing and singing, wherein high dignitaries of the Court sometimes took part. Ile was dis tracted, too, by bitter attacks which he comic scosled occasionally to answer in his far(d 's, though such controversy seems to have spurred him to his greatest efforts and lent a keener edge to his attacks on hypocrisy and pharisaism.