MOLIRE,

original name Jean-baptiste Poquelin (baptized Jan. 15, 1622, Paris, Franced. Feb. 17, 1673, Paris), French actor and playwright, the greatest of all writers of French comedy. Molire, the son of a well-to-do upholsterer, received a good education but left home in 1643 to become an actor. He helped form the Illustre Thtre company and then toured the French provinces (164558) with a theatre troupe, writing plays and also acting in them. His Prcieuses ridicules (1659; The Affected Young Ladies) was the success that established him in Paris. He soon had a permanent theatre and wrote plays both for bourgeois audiences in Paris and for the court. Molire's major plays are L'cole des femmes (1662; The School for Wives); Le Tartuffe (first performed 1664; The Imposter), which outraged the religious authorities and was banned until it had been revised; Le Misanthrope (1666); L'Avare (1668; The Miser); and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670). Others include Dom Juan (1665) and Les Femmes savantes (1672; The Blue-Stockings). Molire's theory of comedy was expounded in La Critique de l'cole des femmes (1663). In 1673 Molire collapsed onstage during an early performance of his last play, Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid), and died that same night.