The Life and Work of Molière
The celebrated and controversial playwright of TARTUFFE
Onstage at Lantern Theater Company September 7 through October 8, 2023, Tartuffe is the most enduring comedy of the master of the French form: Molière. But despite being a member of the highest echelons of respected playwrights at home and abroad, Molière’s origins were humble. His career story was more of struggle than of success — a struggle that nonetheless produced classic comedies still performed today and a name that would be celebrated long after his death.
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was born in 1622 to solidly middle-class Parisian parents. His father worked as a respected tapissier, a tradesman who provided tapestries and furnishings to wealthy Parisian households and who held a royal appointment, one that would be inheritable by his son. The young Jean-Baptiste was educated at a fashionable school run by Jesuits — an order of Catholic priests known for running rigorous educational institutions — and he later studied law, seemingly on course to fulfill the respectable, middle-class destiny into which he was born.
But that changed in 1643, when Jean-Baptiste announced that rather than follow in his now-widowed father’s footsteps, he would prefer instead to chart his own path in the theater. It wasn’t only the lack of stability in the arts and the renouncing of a royal appointment that concerned Jean-Baptiste’s father about his son’s plans — a theater career was social suicide in 17th century France. So the young man did what many before him had and took a stage name in part to spare his family name from the embarrassment of an association with the trade. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was no more; Molière was born.
That same year, Molière formed the Illustre Théâtre with his business and possible romantic partner, actress Madeleine Béjart. It was only Paris’ third standing theater company — and that was apparently one too many, as it shuttered just 18 months later in debt and under scrutiny from the Catholic Church (something that would follow Molière throughout his career). So Molière and Bejart took to the road, touring the French provinces for 13 years with a troupe of actors. It was during this period that Molière picked up a pen and began to write.
Despite his enduring renown today as a comedian, that genre was not his intended pursuit. While Molière dabbled in writing short comedies while on the road, he actually wanted to be a great tragedian actor. When his and Bejart’s troupe returned to Paris in 1658 and leased a theater, they attracted royal attention. They performed a tragedy by Molière’s contemporary Pierre Corneille for young King Louis XIV, followed by a short farce Molière wrote. It was Molière’s comedy, and not his tragic chops, that fatefully caught the Sun King’s attention and support. That same year, he wrote Affected Young Ladies — his first truly great comedy — and Molière’s enduring career was born.
With the patronage of Louis XIV’s brother, the troupe was able to do what Illustre Théâtre could not: put down roots in Paris as the city’s third official company. They began producing Molière’s comedies, in which he always wrote himself a juicy part to play (he originated Orgon in Tartuffe, alongside Madeleine as Dorine and Molière’s young wife Armande — Madeleine’s daughter from a previous relationship — as Elmire). While many of his plays were popular, Molière was often writing to keep the proverbial lights on; he was the author of more than 30 plays for his company, his prolific output partially due to the need to keep his actors working in his theater and keep the ticket income flowing.
But his galloping pace never diminished his genius. In the final decade of his life, he wrote his best-known and most celebrated satires: The School for Wives (1663), The Misanthrope (1666), Tartuffe (1664–69), The Bourgeois Gentleman (1670), and The Imaginary Invalid (1673). His comedies focused on the concerns of his own middle-class upbringing, and satirized obsession and hypocrisy. Their stinging wit drew laughs from the audience, but often stirred the ire of the Church and many politicians. Tartuffe was famously banned for five years under pressure from the Catholic Church before becoming a hit in 1669, and Dom Juan (1665) was performed once and then never again during Molière’s lifetime, banned under a storm of controversy over its irreverence.
Molière was creating a type of comedy all his own — one that focused on the lives of those middle-class audiences most likely to be in his audience, marrying the rigid rules of 17th century French drama with the heightened slapstick of the popular commedia dell’arte. And his devotion to his craft was so complete that he both lived and died by it. While performing as the title character in a performance of his comedy The Imaginary Invalid in 1673, he fell ill onstage. For a man who rejected a comfortable middle-class life for the highs and very frequent lows of a life in the theater, the show must go on: he finished the performance, then died a few hours after the curtain came down.
It was no more honorable to be an actor in death than it was in life, and actors were required to formally renounce their profession in order to be buried in consecrated ground. Molière had done no such thing, and so his wife and fellow actor Armande had to convince King Louis XIV himself to get the Church to bury her husband in the churchyard. Permission was granted, but only on the condition that the funeral be a quiet affair held during the night to avoid attention.
In the centuries since Molière’s death, he has been afforded greater dignity. His company became a founding component of the Comedie-Française, France’s state theater. Despite the controversies surrounding his work during his life, his plays have been performed there so regularly that it is sometimes called the House of Molière. And in 1792, his remains were moved from their humble resting place to various offices, a museum of monuments, and finally in 1817, the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery, where they rest under his assumed and celebrated stage name, taken to spare his family embarrassment but now a source of national pride. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was dead. Long live Molière.
More great reading: See other recent articles and interviews on the Lantern Searchlight blog
Lantern Theater Company’s production of Molière’s Tartuffe, translated into English verse by Richard Wilbur, is onstage September 7 through October 8, 2023, at St. Stephen’s Theater. Visit our website for tickets and information.
