Licentious, sanctimonious, adulterous, grovelling, miserly, hypocritical and deceitful of all kinds are the human characters that form the core of the cast of protagonists of the fascinating literary opus of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, comedian of all time, Jean-Baptiste Molière (1622-1673). This year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of this giant of French and world theatre, and his plays are still among the most performed on stages around the world.
They remain topical precisely because they bring to the fore those defects of human character that continue to mark us today in our relations with power, might, money and the opposite sex. With a sharp but witty pen, he raised questions of (un)principle in love, business, relationships with others and self-perception with endless comic complications. Without over-moralising, he left the conclusions to the audience. Molière held up a mirror to 17th century French society in a way that people could not resist, despite the harsh reality of his reflection.
Born into a distinguished bourgeois family as Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, Molière was undoubtedly a great literary genius who could not only write a play in a few weeks, but also produce it, direct it, put it on the stage and play one of the main roles in it. He began his theatrical career as an actor, much to his father’s disappointment, but soon proved himself to be above all a brilliant writer of comedies, as well as the founder and successful manager of his own theatre company.
In 17 years he wrote 35 works, including classics that changed theatre forever, popularised it and made it attractive to the masses, such as The Cannibal, The School for Wives, Tartuffe, Don Juan, The Learned Woman, The Scapegoat, The Imaginary Patient.
In his writing, he departed from the invented Baroque style and wrote simply and directly, in a language accessible to all. He tried his hand at a number of genres, comedy, farce and tragicomedy, mixing elements of each. His most successful and original were his folk comedies or farces, rooted in the Italian commedia dell’arte. He skilfully wove unpredictable and comic dramatic plots that still bring audiences to tears four hundred years later. During his lifetime, he was known as the ‘God of Laughter’.
But something else, besides his boundless talent and obsession with his work, was crucial to his success: the patronage of the most important man in the kingdom – the Sun King Louis XIV. Despite the many artistic and amorous controversies that marked the artist’s most fruitful years, the King remained his key source of income and his loyal supporter. He even defended him against the Roman Catholic Church, a regular target of Molière’s critical works.
Molière’s work and Louis’s passion for art and the theatre are inextricably linked. And although the aristocracy was often the target of Molière’s insolent mockery, he was very lenient with the hand that fed him. And yet, there are many things that could be said against the naked Louis.
The playwright himself was thus confronted with dilemmas of principle, sacrificing it for the success and well-being of his theatre and his work. He blamed its lack on his characters, which often reflected his own life. In this way, Molière also held up a mirror to himself in his work, which makes it all the more authentic and interesting.
His life was fascinating, not only because of his many talents and boundless energy, but also because of the relationships he forged in both the professional and private spheres, which were completely intertwined.
Although he left behind no written sources of his own, diaries, letters, manuscripts, since he was one of the best-known public figures of his time, a great deal is known about his life. He stirred the public with his love life – he lived unmarried for years with his femme fatale Madeleine Béjart, also the star of his theatre, and then married Armande, twenty years his junior, who was even said to be the daughter of his long-time partner. He dedicated some of his best female roles to her. His jealous and indulgent opponents, of whom he had no shortage in literary and ecclesiastical circles, insisted that his wife was also his daughter.
Molière, famous and celebrated, notorious and adored, stamped and glorified, remained faithful to his mission and reputation even in death. During the fourth performance of The Imaginary Patient, in which he played the leading role, he felt so ill that he could hardly stand the rest of the performance. He was taken home, shivering and bleeding, and after a few hours he died of tuberculosis, which had plagued him for several years. The fictional patient thus moved from the stage into his own life and ended it as he had lived it, at the age of 51. Tragic, but fulfilled and proud.
Born for court
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was born in 1622 to a father who was an upholsterer and merchant and a mother who also came from a family of upholsterers. These were not ordinary craftsmen, but renowned experts in interior design, furniture making and the decoration of the homes of aristocrats and the royal court. The marriage was successful in many respects, although it is unlikely to have been born of true love rather than financial or wider dynastic gain for the young couple. Jean-Baptiste was born first, followed by five more siblings in just six years.
His father soon earned the title of honorary bourgeois of Paris, a title which, due to the strict conditions, was only held by about one-sixth of all Parisian craftsmen and merchants. Among other things, bourgeois had to be wealthy and economically independent, pay taxes, prove they were Catholic, own property and even possess weapons to defend the city in the event of an attack.
An even greater honour came to Jean Poquelin the Elder when he became the King’s tapeter, a post shared by several chosen men, each of whom worked three months a year and earned a handsome salary. It was also hereditary, and Jean-Baptiste the Younger, as the first son, was cradled with a bright future – a respectable profession, financial security and movement in high circles in close proximity to the King. That he would indeed keep the King’s company on a regular basis, but not as a court upholsterer, but as his on-call entertainer and protégé, was a dream no one would have dreamt of.
The first to introduce the boy to the world of the theatre was his maternal grandfather. Fascinated by the farces that were popular at the time, but which were in slow decline, he regularly took his grandson to performances, while the locals sniggered. This kind of entertainment was considered second-class by many, and the actors were said to be lechers and heretics who made money by poisoning innocent souls.
It was not until Molière’s generation that the theatre was elevated to a higher level, not least through the support of the King and his passion for the stage. But actors remained little-valued members of society, ostracised by the Church and unworthy of a Catholic funeral.
At the age of 13, Jean-Baptiste began attending the most prestigious and fashionable school in Paris, the Jesuit college of Clermont, where he was enrolled by his cunning and condescending father, as it was there that children from the upper bourgeois class could mingle with the nobility. The legislation was very advanced for those times and both boys and girls were of school age.
However, such Jesuit schools were an anti-Reformation tool in the period of severe religious strife that followed the Reformation and discouraged parents from enrolling their children in private Protestant schools. To be respected and attractive, they had to be of high quality and demanding.
Thus, in addition to respectable classmates, boys were expected to work hard, to be subjected to iron discipline and, above all, to be rivals. All of this marked his character for ever. Jesuit pedagogical approaches were based on constant competition and on comparing boys on the basis of their abilities and diligence. The Jesuits believed that children should be encouraged early to want to be better than others, and instilled with a passion for work and a disdain for laziness.
They were constantly forced into competitions – boy against boy, class against class – and each year the best in each category were declared. The latter included rhetoric, Greek, Latin, ancient literature and, above all, acting in classical comedies and tragedies. It was then that Molière had his second close encounter with the theatre and began to realise his true passion and talent.
But before he could devote himself fully to them, he had to face up to his father’s expectations. At the age of 18, indifferent, he enrolled to study law, at the same time as his father had already signed over to him the position of court upholsterer in order to keep it in the family.
In 1642, the young Poquelin met Madeleine Béjart, an actress four years his senior, a beauty with magnificent red hair and a rising star on the Parisian acting scene. It was the most fateful meeting of his life. Within a year, he had broken off contact with his father, regained the title of court tapestry maker and made a cross over his hitherto orderly bourgeois life. He joined the Béjart family’s theatre group and, as the spirit of the times dictated, gave himself an artistic name – Molière.
I want to be an actor!
Molière was in the right place at the right time. After 1630, the French theatre was experiencing an incredible upsurge. Paris, then the largest city in Europe with a population of around 400,000, did not yet have an established theatre company like those in London and Madrid. The only registered theatre, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, was dedicated to amateur productions of religious works. The Italian commedia dell’arte, based on improvisation, was becoming popular throughout Europe, and many in France also preferred it to the performances of travelling French theatre companies.
Then came the Prime Minister’s chair, the adviser to King Louis XIII (father of the Sun King), Cardinal and Duke Richelieu, one of the most influential and astute French politicians of all time. He intended to make France the very centre of power and influence in Europe, including its artistic tradition.
He passionately supported and adored all that was French. This also gave impetus to French theatre, and the first professional theatre companies with French repertoire were founded. Playwrights and actors rushed to prove that their work had little in common with the obscene and shallow burqas of the past.
In addition to farces and tragicomedies in the Italian style, works better suited to local culture and customs were coming from the pens of increasingly established French playwrights, and plays were at last beginning to be taken more seriously in literary circles and salons. Richelieu had a sumptuous theatre built in his luxurious palace, which years later was the home of none other than Molière. The King even signed a decree declaring the theatre to be a useful and appropriate way of entertaining the masses.
Just ten years after the establishment of professional theatre, Molière was probably one of the first promising and talented upper-middle-class children to utter the unthinkable to the horror of his parents: “I want to be an actor!” He could no longer repress the inclination to act, which he had felt from a young age, after meeting Madeleine, the embodiment of the actor’s ideal and erotic attraction.
Madeleine’s talent combined all the elements of an actress – she was charismatic and witty, she could write well and, of course, she could sing, dance and play many instruments. Women actresses were still a novelty in the 17th century, and the first to make a name for herself was only a few decades before Madeleine. Before that, actresses were mostly Italian women in the commedia dell’arte, well-educated but often former courtesans, who were excellent at improvising dialogue on the theme of love. This made them even more despised by the Catholic Church.
Other members of the Béjart family, with whom Molière founded a new theatre in 1643, were similarly talented to Madeleine. They gave themselves the rather ostentatious and self-important name of L’Illustre Théâtre (The Illustrious Theatre). The group was not lacking in self-confidence, but it was certainly lacking in experience and in influential connections and acquaintances.
They set out to compete with two established theatres, the aforementioned Hôtel de Bourgogne and the Théâtre du Marais. To begin with, they had to rent a suitable space, which in those days was mostly abandoned tennis courts that could be transformed into a rudimentary theatre quite easily and cheaply. Then it was a matter of choosing works that would appeal to a potential audience. Instead, they were replaced by mostly monotonous tragedies with overlong monologues, and nobody but Madeleine impressed the audience.
Tragedies were not to the young Molière’s taste, even though he wanted to act in them anyway, because they were more prestigious than comedies. His appearance alone did not suit the tragic characters, as he was of average appearance, medium size and build, a little crooked and stooped, with a short neck, a large nose and mouth, thick dark eyebrows and slightly bulging eyes. But despite this seemingly unflattering appearance, his face was extremely plastic and capable of all kinds of facial expressions, and thus just right for comedy.
Molière and his fellow actors soon discovered that he was capable of making the audience laugh to tears in an instant while performing comic characters. So before he was an author, he was an actor, and eventually even one of the most famous of his time. And as a writer he also enjoyed more success with his comedies, although his oeuvre also includes many tragedies.
But the Theatre of Fame did not live up to its name. It had too many powerful opponents, especially among the Church dignitaries. The most famous parish priest in Paris shouted relentlessly from the pulpit: “The devil will take not only the actors of the Theatre Glorieuse, but also all those who go to see them!”. Then they also got into serious debt and Molière even ended up in prison.
So he secretly left Paris with Madeleine and joined a travelling theatre group.
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The road to court favourite
For thirteen years (1645-1658) he travelled and performed in provincial France, at various fairs and events, private parties with country nobles and other notables. The group was so versatile that they performed comedies and tragedies, danced ballets, sang and improvised. Molière’s entrepreneurial spirit quickly came to light and he took over not only the artistic direction of the group, but also the general management of its business affairs.
He increasingly turned to writing, and his first full-length work was probably a mediocre comedy-ballet in verse and five acts, entitled The Lightminded Man. He himself played one of the leading roles in it, establishing a pattern that he followed for the rest of his life.
They also staged increasingly elaborate and complex plays. One such production was the spectacular Andromeda, with 19 speaking parts, four singing parts, two choruses, eight dance parts and a set that included a mountain with a cave, a main square in the middle of the city surrounded by magnificent palaces, a beautiful garden with monuments and fountains, a royal palace, a great temple, a huge head of Medusa, and the list could go on and on. To top it all, many of the roles required floating in the air or flying above the stage.
Between 1648 and 1653, so-called fronts or revolts against the policies of Jules Mazarin, the all-powerful First Minister and close confidant of Queen Regent Anne of Austria, spread across France. After the death of her husband, King Louis XIII, her first-born son’s minority meant that his mother, Princess Anne of Spain, took over the regency, leaving Mazarin, as it were, in charge of the country. He ravaged her coffers, lined his own pockets and incurred the enmity of the people, the Assembly and the nobility.
But the rebellion was successfully averted and Mazarin remained influential until Anne’s death in 1661, when Louis XIV formally took power. During the period of the rebellions, Molière’s troupe was thus more often fleeing civil war than entertaining audiences, but the respite didn’t harm it too much and it held together.
In the last five years it was taken under the wing of the powerful Prince Conti, and then in 1658 they were noticed by none other than the French King’s brother, Philippe of Orléans, barely eighteen years old. Philip, who had already heard of the successful theatrical project of Madame Béjart and the versatile M. Molière, was a fervent enthusiast of the spoken word.
In October 1658, he invited the company to the Louvre, where they first performed the tragedy Nicomedia by the well-known author Pierre Corneille. They received a rather lukewarm reception, but immediately afterwards they impressed with Molière’s comedy The Doctor in Love. The King was among the spectators and Molière’s golden age began.
He returned to Paris determined to establish his own permanent theatre. At thirty-six, he was no longer a young man with years of experience, but he knew how to get things right. First, he secured the permanent patronage of the King’s brother, and soon afterwards permission to stage his works in the Great Hall of Richelieu’s magnificent theatre inside his Palais Royal. This auditorium was the first in France to be equipped with such a set and mechanics that they could be changed during the play itself. It became Molière’s theatre home.
In 1658, although the new theatre had ten shareholders, three wonderful actresses, a successful author and a manager, it lacked a large repertoire of its own, as Molière had written only two plays up to that point. They had given them a successful opening season, but Molière knew that he would have to take up the pen honestly. The farce The Ridiculous Precioses was produced in record time and was immediately met with great enthusiasm. And became the victim of attacks and insinuations. But it was the best combination for visibility and success.
Molière began to produce comedies and farces on the fly, but he never made a breakthrough with tragedies. He achieved immortality mainly through farces, short prose works in one to three acts, which dealt with unpredictable everyday situations and relationships in a comic way. Farces were not new on the stage and in the past they often used toilet humour, the plots were simple and the language obscene. Their main characters were members of the lower classes, mainly peasants and villagers.
Molière then added a number of new features to farce, turning it into a satirical work of deeper meaning, which, while it was intended to entertain with its unpredictable twists and turns, its suspenseful and intriguing plots, was also intended to be educational and thought-provoking.
It attacked the upper classes in particular, exposing the hypocrisy, sanctimony and grovelling of their members for material gain or to flatter the nobility and the Church. Most of Molière’s works were merciless and harsh denunciations of the behaviour patterns and infirmities of high society, the bourgeoisie and the Catholic Church. For this reason, his works were much more character-driven than situational, and typical characters such as the miser, the hypochondriac, the hypocrite, the liar and the con-man always appear in them.
Molière brought freshness and sincerity to Parisian cultural circles, unlike the commedia dell’arte, which was mostly performed in vulgar Latin, by using a lively, simple and clear language. This is why the expression ‘French is the language of Molière’ is still used today. He also introduced a particular style of acting, more modern than the existing one, with less posing and declamation.
The first Paris season ended successfully and the future was bright, even if it rested largely on Molière’s shoulders. He was well aware of the pressure, so he just kept working all day. He was on stage at least three times a week, in between writing new plays – sometimes taking barely a fortnight – and taking care of the theatre’s content, programming and financial management. He was approaching his 40th birthday, unmarried, childless and increasingly tired.
Molière’s saviour, patron and employer
After years of intimacy with Madeleine, who was slowly becoming too old for most female roles by the standards of the time, Molière began to look at Armande, who was twenty years his junior. To this day, her origins remain shrouded in mystery and it is impossible to say for certain who her parents really were.
The malicious tongues of Molière’s detractors spread malicious rumours around Paris that Armande was the daughter of Molière’s long-time business and love partner Madeleine, and doubts remained even when it was not until 1821 that a marriage certificate was found stating that her parents were Joseph Béjart and Marie Hervé.
Molière skilfully avoided the controversy and devoted himself to his work, in which his young wife also played a large part. He created for her a number of outstanding female roles in some of his greatest works, such as Tartuffe, The Cannibal and The Learned Women. Armande was brilliant in them, and Molière sometimes boldly put the two great loves of his life, Madeleine and Armande, on stage at the same time, adding fuel to the fire of rumours and exaggerations.
But his theatre remained a success, both financially and artistically, even though he was regularly slandered and ridiculed for his plays, which were always supposed to revolve around trifles and nonsense.
His works became more and more sophisticated, and he often drew material from his own life. In The School for Husbands, in the light of his marriage to a much younger woman, he wrote about how husbands should treat young wives so that they do not toot their own horns. He wrote about the inevitable jealousy, but he also promised discernment, understanding and generosity.
In 1660, the young Louis returned to court with a new wife, and by then Molière’s group was already a permanent fixture at court. The King had them summoned several times a year, and for weeks together they entertained the courtiers and their guests. This was often tiring, especially when Molière had to follow the King’s every whim, often conceiving and writing a new play virtually overnight and preparing it for the stage in a matter of days.
He cleverly expressed his disapproval of this through a play called L’Impromptu de Versailles (Improvisation at Versailles), a particular form of theatre within the theatre. The story features Molière and his colleagues as characters, and is about their disagreement with being forced to perform a play they had not even managed to rehearse, at the King’s request.
The Sun King was, as the title he gave himself testifies, the one and only one, the centre of the world, to whom everyone had to bow. Including Molière, even though he was the harshest critic of this kind of kowtowing and kowtowing. But even he was occasionally forced to sacrifice his principles if he wanted to ensure a relatively carefree future for his theatre.
He even went so far as to declare sycophantically: “/…/ all the glory I aspire to is to be able to entertain you. That is the limit of my ambition /…/.” But when the King, once ill, forced him to write and perform a merry ballet play, the author had the audacity to remark: “It is the most rash play that Majesty has ever commanded me /…/.”
And indeed, the King generously supported Molière’s theatre, for he knew how to enjoy the parody of the constant flattery of the courtiers, which he himself encountered daily. At the same time, he also defended the comedian against the relentless and constant attacks of the Church. He paid the actors handsomely, covered the costs of productions and even became godfather to the first of Molière’s children.
In addition to farces and comedies, Molière also staged a few plays for the King, more akin to spectacle than to traditional theatre. For example, the charming Versailles with its botanical gardens – which did not yet have the scale it has today – was the perfect setting for The Pleasures of the Enchanted Island, whose stage was spread over islets in the middle of a lake. As part of the play, there was, say, a royal orchestra on one and a whole zoo on another. After the show, the fun continued long into the night, and the next day it was the turn of the second. It was Tartuffe.
Tartuffe and death
Tartuffe is Molière’s undisputed masterpiece. In it, the author takes on a most ungrateful target, the church, and the sanctimonious people who pretended to be pious in order to make it easier for them to profit in various ways. The first time the King saw Tartuffe, he laughed himself to tears, but was quickly persuaded, or almost forced, by his advisers that the game was harmful and should be banned. Many people recognised themselves in it. The very pious Queen Mother was also very strongly opposed to the game.
So between 1664 and 1669 Tartuffe was indeed banned, and Molière grew increasingly sick and tired of the constant battles with the windmills. Yet he still had the energy to fight to the end for his best work, to write several versions and finally, after five years, to put it triumphantly back on the stage of the Royal Palace.
While in the first version he attacked the Church, in the last one the King was clearly the target, since it was Molière’s long-standing ban on the work that Molière resented the most. When Tartuffe returned to the stage, it became an instant hit and one of the most profitable plays of the time.
Years of hard work and constant cultural and verbal battles, plus the Tartuffe affair, took a heavy toll on Molière. In addition, his marriage to Armande, who was said to have had several extramarital affairs, broke down. He had been suffering from tuberculosis for several years and had to take several breaks from the stage, which he sought in the country. There, he continued to write, but at the same time he enjoyed the natural surroundings and the fresh air, whether in peace with friends or alone.
Molière chose doctors as the final target for his rich oeuvre, perhaps because he was already seriously ill. Doctors, he thought, were no better than charlatans and alchemists. They are con artists who profit from the greatest of human weaknesses – the love of life – even though they cannot, in fact, give the sick what they most want, health and eternal life.
Medicine is one of the greatest follies of mankind, as he addresses in The Imaginary Patient, where one of the characters declares “Almost everyone dies of medicine, not of disease.”
Molière was aware that his days were numbered, but he still wanted to make the most of his life. When he nearly collapsed in pain while acting in The Imaginary Patient, he did not stop. He was taken home, dying, and on 17 February 1763 he breathed his last in the company of a young boy to whom he had probably become only platonically attached in the last years of his life, and a wife with whom he had reconnected.
As an actor, he should not have been buried in consecrated ground, but the King made an exception at Armande’s express request. He allowed a Catholic funeral for the greatest artist of the 17th century, but to avoid scandal, without any pomp and in the middle of the night.
Nevertheless, Jean-Baptiste Molière left the world as if he had written the script for his own departure. In the end, he smiled once more into his moustache at those whom he had ridiculed all his life.
