January 15
On this date in 1622, playwright and poet
Jean Baptiste Poquelin,
who adopted the stage name Moliere as an actor, was born in Paris. His
father was an upholsterer/valet to the king. Jean Baptiste studied
philosophy in college, started a Parisian acting troupe and toured the
provinces with it for many years, acting, directing and writing. As a
favorite of King Louis XIV, he produced a succession of 12 popular
comedies still being performed, including "The School for Wives" (1662),
"Don Juan" (1665), "Le Misanthrope" (1666), and "Tartuffe" (1667), all
irreverent and increasingly irreligious. "Tartuffe," a satire on
religiosity, originally featured a hypocritical priest. Although Moliere
rewrote Tartuffe's profession to avoid scandal, some religious
officials nevertheless called for Moliere to be burned alive as
punishment for his impiety. Moliere was excommunicated in 1667. He
married actress Armande Bejart, when she was 19, and they had one
daughter, Esprit-Madeleine, in 1665. Becoming ill while playing the lead
in his play, "The Imaginary Invalid" (1673), Moliere insisted on
finishing the show, after which he died. Catholic officials refused to
officiate or formally bury Moliere. It took the intervention of the King
to get him interred under cover of night at a cemetery reserved for
suicides.
D. 1673.
" . . . there is nothing, I think, so odious as the whitewashed
outside of a specious zeal; as those downright imposters, those bigots
whose sacrilegious and deceitful grimaces impose on others with
impunity, and who trifle as they like with all that mankind holds
sacred; those men who, wholly given to mercenary ends, trade upon
godliness, and would purchase honour and reputation at the cost of
hypocritical looks and affected groans; who, seized with strange ardour,
make use of the next world to secure their fortune in this; who, with
great affectation and many prayers, daily preach solitude and retirement
while they themselves live at Court; who know how to reconcile their
zeal with their vices; who are passionate, revengeful, faithless, full
of deceit, and who, to work the destruction of a fellow-man, insolently
cover their fierce resentment with the cause of Heaven."
—Moliere, monolog by Cleante, Tartuffe (1667)
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