Moliere must be one of the most recognizable dramatists working in the comedy genre in the Western theatrical tradition. Born into a wealthy family, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, later adopting his famous stage moniker Moliere, began his theatrical career at twenty-five, leaving the stability and security of his previous life behind. Young Moliere traveled with Illustre Theatre for a good portion of his life. It was there that he fell in love with dramatic art and perfected his craft as an actor.
His recognizable honest and satirical style developed sometime later – “The High Brow Ladies” was the first play that had great success, soon promoting him to be a king Louis XIV’s patron. That fact did not intervene with his infamous reputation: as “with success came opposition – the Party of the Faithful banded together to protest” (Puncher, 2021, p. 135). Moliere was in an indirect conflict with the Church his whole life for his shameless approach to exposing the hypocrisy of religious leaders and fanatics alike.
Later in life, the author finds his purpose in pointing out the flaws in the social system. According to Puncher (2021), “Moliere’s particular talents lay in satirizing an overly sophisticated society”, exhibiting its sins and faults of human behavior: the themes of lust, greed, and religious fanaticism constitute the core of his work (p. 135). In his famous Tartuffe, he instills energy of “the struggle for erotic, psychic, economic power” in which the society often employs the use of various masks – and the ugliness of it all (Puncher, 2021, p. 136). Each of his characters, says Puncher (2021), is “in a grip of a fixed idea” – meaning each one represents a very particular human vice (p. 137). Here lies the genius of Moliere – the way he operates these characters and shows to his view unexpected truths. For instance, “Tartuffe’s monstrous lust, for women, money, power, genuinely endangers the social structure” (Puncher, 2021, p. 137). Moliere’s perception of French society forces one to recognize “the recognizable portraits of the human folly” (Puncher, 2021, p.137). The dramatist also puts a lot of impact on the subject of human rationality being threatened, making the audience realize the absurdity to try to use reason to govern one’s actions in the world.
Reference
Puncher, M. (2021). The Norton anthology of world literature (Vol. 2). W. W. Norton.