The purpose of this research is to examine the life and work of the French playwright MoliFre, with special focus on the play Tartuffe. The plan of the research will be to set forth the biographical context in which MoliFre's work emerged, and then to discuss how MoliFre's work reflected the culture in which he lived and how that culture influenced and is reflected by his plays, as well as how his unique style of comedic theatre connected with the social environment of the period.
Among the most significant features of MoliFre's work is that it took place by and large in the milieu of the French court. Born in 1622 into the bourgeois family licensed as upholsterers to the king, MoliFre abandoned a law career to create an acting troupe in 1643, and he spent the next thirty years as an actor-playwright-manager whose company was either under the patronage of Louis XIV or attempting to acquire royal patronage and a licensed performance venue in Paris (Gassner, Reader's 582-3).
MoliFre's first troupe failed financially in Paris after two years, and he was sent to debtor's prison. Upon release, he reconstituted a troupe that performed so successfully in the French provinces between 1645 and 1658 that when it again arrived in Paris to perform for Louis XIV, it was a success. Until his death in 1673, MoliFre continually produced his own and others' plays for both court and public, with variable success (Gassner, Reader's 582-3; Clark 110). Indeed, some productions of his plays caused public scandal, notably Les Precieuses ridicules, L'Ecole des femmes, and Tartuffe, the last-named undergoing three versions before Louis XIV would permit it to be performed in public instead of exclusively at the court (Gassner, Reader's 583). In other words, social approval was a factor of artistic success.
What is necessary to appreciate about MoliFre's struggles to maintain a theatre company is that the reign of Louis XIV was very much marked by a soc...