JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN MOLIÈRE1622--1673From The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces Vol. 2, 7th edition, ed. Maynard Mack, et. al. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999) Son of a prosperous Paris merchant, Jean-Baptiste Molière (originally named Poquelin) devoted his entire adult life to the creation of stage illusion, as playwright and as actor. At about the age of twenty-five, he joined a company of traveling players established by the Béjart family; with them he toured the provinces for about twelve years. In 1658 the company was ordered to perform for Louis XIV in Paris; a year later, Molières first great success, The High-Brow Ladies (Les Précieuses ridicules), was produced. The theatrical company to which he belonged, patronized by the king, became increasingly successful, developing finally (1680) into the Comédie Française. In 1662, Molière married Armande Béjart. He died a few hours after performing in the lead role of his own play The Imaginary Invalid. Molière wrote both broad farce and comedies of character, in which he caricatured some form of vice or folly by embodying it in a single figure. His targets included the miser, the aspiring but vulgar middle class, female would-be intellectuals, the hypochondriac, and in Tartuffe, the religious hypocrite. In Tartuffe (1664), as in his other plays, Molière employs classic comic devices of plot and character--here, a foolish, stubborn father blocking the course of young love; an impudent servant commenting on her superiors actions; a happy ending involving a marriage facilitated by implausible means. He often uses such devices, however, to comment on his own immediate social scene, imagining how universal patterns play themselves out in a specific historical context. Tartuffe had contemporary relevance so transparent that the Catholic Church forced the king to ban it, although Molière managed to have it publishe...