Moliere, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in1622, began his career as an actor before becoming a playwright who specialized in satirizing the institutions and morals of his day. In 1658, his theater company settled in Paris in the Theater du Petit-Bourbon. The object of fierce attack because of such masterpieces as Tartuffe and Don Juan, Moliere nonetheless won the favor of the public. In 1665, his company became the King’s Troupe, and the following year saw the staging ofThe Misanthrope, as well as The Doctor in Spite of Himself. In 1668, he produced his bitterly comicThe Miser and, in the remaining years before his death, created such plays asThe Would-Be Gentleman, The Mischievous Machinations of Scapin, andThe Learned Women. In 1673, Moliere collapsed onstage while performing his last play,The Imaginary Invalid, and died shortly thereafter.
Donald M. Frame was Moore Professor of French at Columbia University and an acclaimed scholar and translator of French literature. Among his notable works of translation areThe Complete Essays of Montaigne, The Complete Works of Rabelais, and the Signet ClassicsTartuffe & Other Plays and Candide, Zadig, and Selected Stories.
Virginia Scott is Professor Emerita in the Department of Theater of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the author ofMoliere: A Theatrical Life, The Commedia Dell’Arte in Paris, and Performance, Poetry and Politics on the Queen’s Day: Catherine de Medici and Pierre de Ronsard at Fontainebleau (with Sara Sturm-Maddox).
