Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière
France's greatest comic playwright, Molière skewered hypocrisy, pretension, and religious cant with devastating wit. He ran his own theater company and performed in his own plays until collapsing on stage and dying. His comedies remain the cornerstone of the French theatrical repertoire.
Works
- TartuffeComedy of religious hypocrisy exposed through a false pious impostor
- The MisanthropeComedy satirizing a man's bitter refusal of social conventions
- The MiserComedy of a wealthy miser and his obsessive accumulation of money
- Don JuanComedy of a nobleman's seductions and his supernatural comeuppance
- The Bourgeois GentlemanComedy of a merchant's absurd aspirations to nobility and culture