Lcs focheux (The llores), a comedy-ballet in three :lets, (tad] at Vans (August, 1661), for Fotspeet on the eve of his downfall, illustrates this diversion of genius, and is interesting bemuse Louis XIV. suggested one of its scenes; L'eeolc des femme's, which follows. (December, I In.?), is an exhibition of Ahdii're's mature art as a satirist aiming at ?slwial and moral reformation, and La critique de l'ecole des fenimes with L'impromplu di Versailles, which immediately this in 1663, are answers to the criticism that it evoked —criticism imbittered by MoliSre's success and given a handle by his marriage( February, 1662) to Armande 116jart, She was probably the sister of an old member of his company, herself an actress, and her indiscretions were a source of constant vexation and jealousy to Moliire.
LYcule des femincs is the first of :Nlolii%re's great comedies, the first great serious comedy of French literature. ft deals with the part of woman in society and her proper preparation for it, and treats both in a spirit more liberal than the France of to-day wholly approves. This alone would have insured violent criticism, but to it was added a bold and contemptuous satire on the prevalent materialistic views of future punishment. The play was denounced, not merely as vulgar and obscene, but as impious—for in stance, by Boursault in his Portrait du peintre. Boursault was answered by name in the merciless Impromptu de Versailles, where, too, the rival company of the llittel de Bourgogne were parodied and ridiculed.
This controversy had by no means subsided when Aloliere, after the' trivial Iforiage fore(' (1664) and La princesse dYlide (1664). two eomedy-ballets, provoked redoubled fury by two attacks on hypocrisy, Tartufe and Dun .hian, or Le festin de Pierre. Of the former three nets only were presented in 1664. Jesuits and :Ian senists alike winced at it. and five years of persistent effort barely extorted permission to present the masterpieve as a whole. lion Juan appeared in February. 1665, and in August the King significantly adopted Aloliere's troupe as his own. But even his sympathy had its limits, and this appointment was perhaps in the nature of a consolation for the suppression of Don Jima in the midst of a prosperous run. The full text of this play is preserved to us only in a copy kept by the thief of police.
While awaiting permission to act Tartufc in its entirety, with Dim, Juan forbidden, Aloliere wrote !Amour inedccin (16ee5), a elever attack on the medical practitioners of his day, and Lc misanthrope (July, 1666), in which his rivals and critics rightly discerned 'a new style of emu• cdy,' wherein the eonstant motive forces of universal human nature arc shown modified by the highest refinement to which civilization had yet attained. The easy optimist is set off against
the noble pessimist, and a social school for sea ndai supplies the lighter comedy and oilers a pillory fur fops and poetasters.
Abort this time Alolii.re's health seems to have begun to fail. Cold and fatigue brought on a disease of the lungs, and what he say, of the distracted and pedantic doctors of his day, when superstition and tradition were struggling with one another with Intlf understood fragments of science, lent said point to the Medecin malgre Ini, the second of his noteworthy attacks on the quackery of that time. 'Then follows a period of relaxed activity with only three- comedy ballets, Ma/curie (1666), Le pastoral comigac (1667), awl Le' Siciiid id (1667), followed] by the comparatively insignificant ph itryon 11668), a cilarse yet witty adaptation from Plautus. In July of 1668 NloliiNre shows his old self again in acurge Moulin, an immortal type of the man who marries above his social station and suffers the consequences with rueful self-accusation. The story is at least as old as Boccaccio, hut Moliere's squirarchie Sotenvilles are his creation and au abiding delight.
This little master stroke was followed in Septem ber, 1668, by a masterpiece, L'a rare, whose cen tral figure, the caricatured Itarpagon, is one of Idoliere's greatest studies of vitiated character. Several lighter pieces followed, first M. de Pour ecaugnae, a eomedy-hallet with inneh raillery at the physicians; then Les (mauls inagnifigurs (1670), a persiflage of astrological extrava gances; then that exeellently comic farce, Lc bourgeois gcntithocstmc then Psychic (1671), a tragedy-ballet, written in eollaboratiott with Corneille and Quinault. The music was by Lulli. Then followed the lively Pour/Jet-Ws de Scapin ( 1671) ; and finally the rainless(' d'Esear bagnas, a study of provincial manners and an attack on financiers, heralding thus Lesage's Turearct. Aluch greater than any of these are the last legacies to French comedy of the dying I\ toilets., Les femIlle8 so ea ni es (1672), and Lc moimie imaginaire (1673). The former recurs to the subjeet of the Precienses ridicules and with ripest power attacks the admirers of pedantry and the affectations elf learning. The latter, pri marily a last gibe at physicians, is important for its widening of satiric comedy to include the per version of childhood.