s sharpened by years of absence and experience" (Hartnoll 648).
MoliFre's plays reveal that social satire was his forte. Throughout his work, he derives laughter from the foibles, follies, and pretenses of all classes of society in seventeenth-century France; in so doing, he exposes many faults of mankind in general. Social masks, deception, hypocrisies--these are the principal issues that engage MoliFre. "If it be the aim of comedy to correct man's vices, then I do not see for what reason there should be a privileged class," he writes in the preface to Tartuffe. "People do not mind being wicked; but they object to being made ridiculous" (MoliFre, "Preface to Tartuffe" 113). Thus can comedy in MoliFre's hand be interpreted as a weapon masquerading as a diversion, with the objective of battle effective social satire. Yet public, and sometimes royal, disapproval that MoliFre so frequently experienced as a consequence of his plays demonstrates that social truth unmistakably recognizable to MoliFre's audience formed the subtext of his work.
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