The comedy master known as Molière was baptized Jean- Baptiste Poquelin on January 15, 1622, in Paris. His father, Jean the elder, was a successful upholsterer who purchased the post of tapissier ordinaire du roi, or royal furnisher. Young Poquelin was educated at the rigorous Jesuit Collège de Clermont, which, as the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, trained many other brilliant Frenchmen, including Voltaire, Pierre Gassendi, and Cyrano de Bergerac. An important part of Poquelin’s upbringing was the regular visits he made with his maternal grandfather to the farces and tragedies performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, one of the two indoor theaters in Paris—where a trio of famous clowns would close any play—and the fair at Saint-Germain. Poquelin studied law after finishing his secondary education and was admitted to the bar in 1641. He renounced this life in 1643 to join with nine others to establish the Illustre-Théâtre. He took his stage name, Molière, in 1644, presumably to shield his family from the embarrassment of association with the disreputable acting profession. Three of the founders of the new troupe were members of the established theatrical Béjart family, which included the successful tragedienne Madeleine. She and Molière began a long and fruitful association that ranged from romantic to eventually purely professional; in 1662 Molière married Madeleine’s daughter, Armande Béjart, an event that generated scandalized uproar throughout Parisian society (for it was widely rumored that Molière was Armande’s father). The Illustre-Théâtre fought a losing battle for financial success in Paris, in large part because they were considered unsuccessful at playing tragedy, the dominant dramatic form of the time. When the company collapsed, Molière and his associates fled the city to tour the provinces. During their 13 years in provincial exile, comedy as a dramatic form grew in popularity; Molière wrote, directed, and performed several during this period, including his first two known plays: L’étourdi (The Blunderer, 1655) and Le dépit amoureux (The Amorous Quarrel, 1656). Molière’s troupe eventually returned to the capital and, on October 24, 1658, presented a program at the Louvre that included his comedy Le docteur amoureux (The Amorous Doctor). King Louis XIV favored it over everything else on the program, and its success secured for Molière’s company the patronage of both the king and his brother, Philippe, duc d’Orléans. The company became known as le troupe du roi and was installed in the Théâtre du Petit-Bourbon. (Molière’s company would later form the foundation of the Comédie-Française, honored to this day as the national theater of France.) From then on Molière focused increasingly on his own work as a writer of comedy and on his responsibilities as actor/manager/ producer. Once established in Paris, Molière went on to write and act in a series of plays that satirized Parisian society and the royal court while winning the enduring admiration of the king: Les précieuses ridicules (The Affected Young Ladies, 1659), Sganarelle (1660), L’école des maris (The School for Husbands, 1661), L’école des femmes (The School for Wives, 1662), Tartuffe (1664), Dom Juan (1665), Le Misanthrope (1666), Le médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself, 1666), L’Avare (The Miser, 1668), George Dandin (1668), Le bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman, 1670), Les fourberies de Scapin (The Tricks of Scapin, 1671), and Les femmes savantes (The Learned Ladies, 1672), among many others. The king’s favor earned Molière the envy of his theatrical and social rivals, and his unyielding and unerring mockery of the hypocrisy of Parisian social and religious life engendered the ire of the Catholic Church. These two groups would dog Molière for the rest of his life, causing him to struggle constantly to hold his company together. A life spent traversing the extremes of success and adversity exhausted Molière. On February 17, 1673, at age 51, he collapsed backstage while playing the title role of The Imaginary Invalid. He was conveyed to his house in the rue de Richelieu, where he soon died. After two priests refused to hear Molière’s deathbed renunciation of his profession—a common practice of dying actors, who were forbidden by Church law to be buried in consecrated ground—Armande requested special permission so her husband could be buried with appropriate sanctity. The king agreed, but the archbishop stipulated that the burial be held without ceremony, at night. Molière was buried after sunset on February 21 in the cemetery of Saint-Joseph. —Valerie Hart j
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 14:34:30 +0000
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