Moliere

Jean-Baptiste Poqelin Moliere was born on January 15th, 1622, and, besides Racine and Corneille, is one of the most famous French comedy writers of the golden era.

His mother died while he was young and Moliere was never close to his father, Jean Poquelin who held a prestigious office in the court of Louis XIII. Poquelin purchased the position and planned to pass it down to his son, but Moliere had different ideas.

He attended school at the Jesuit College de Clermont, but at the age of twenty-one, Moliere dropped out of school so he could concentrate on plays. He and the actress, Madeleine Bejart opened a theater together called the Illustre Theatre.

Although Madeleine's brother and sister helped them with their performances, the theater went bankrupt in 1645. Moliere was imprisoned for 24 hours, but the debts were paid by his father. After this, he adapted his stage name to Moliere. The reason for this could have been that he did not want to embarrass his father. The court of Louis XIV has made actors more fashionably accepted in society, but they still couldn't be buried in consecrated ground.

For the next twelve years, Moliere and his troupe traveled throughout France organizing plays. Moliere had a talent for mockery which was evident. Along the way, he acquired a patron. Armand was the Prince of Conti of the House of Bourbon, and the governor of Languedoc. Moliere lost his patronage after Armand incurred syphilis and became religious. Then Armand joined with a group of zealots who boycotted Moliere's risque plays. When Moliere finally returned to Paris, he had developed some notoriety.

In Paris, he rented the Louvre, which was a theater at the time, and performed for the King in 1658. His troupe was a success and awarded the title of Troupe de Monsieur. While Moliere wrote plays in a comedic style, he used humor to criticize the customs of France at that time.

Except for being a writer, Moliere was also a screenwriter and contributed to the development of humorous satire. He planned on becoming a lawyer but he gave up and decided to dedicate his life to the theater where he worked as an actor, writer, and director until the end of his life.

He wrote 33 comedies, some of them were in verse, while some of them were in prose. They're believed to be used as a representation of French society in the 17th century. Moliere always tried to give a detailed description of the social layers and their characteristics. He was judgmental and laughed out everything that wasn't in harmony with the nature that he believed was the symbol of intellect.

His most famous comedies are: "The School for Husbands", "Tartuffe", "The Misanthrope", "Don Juan". He wanted to write tragedies but he became famous for his burlesques that were performed after the tragedies. Later on, he dedicated himself to writing musical comedies. He suffered from tuberculosis and, just a few minutes later after the show started, he coughed blood on stage and died on February 17th, 1673 in Paris.