Author of Audiobooks - Molière

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. Among Molière's best-known works is Tartuffe or The Hypocrite, written in...

Four most fashionable doctors are called in by Sganarelle to cure his daughter, but instead they argue about everything and Sganarelle is driven to the streets where he finds a quack and his daughter's disguised lover. Moliere: "This is only a...

Two young people, Henriette and Clitandre, are in love, but in order to marry, they must overcome an obstacle: the attitude of Henriette's family. Her sensible father and uncle are in favour of the marriage; but unfortunately her father is under the...

In 1661 and 1662 Moliere presented the plays The School for Husbands and then The School for Wives (this one). "The central situations of the two have much in common: the arbitrary and jealous lover to whom circumstances have given almost the...

This is a very different Moliere, not the usual satire of everyday life. It is instead a classical tale based on the ancient story of Psyche and Cupid, and was performed for Louis XIV with ballet interludes to music by Jean-Baptiste Lully (which we...

Scapin is a liar, a schemer, an arrogant meddler who thinks he can make people do anything. And yet sometimes he acts in the cause of good. Here he attempts to help out some secret lovers whose parents would prefer they don't marry. - Summary by...

The Imaginary Invalid (French: Le Malade imaginaire) is a three-act comédie-ballet by the French playwright Molière. It was first performed in 1673 and was the last work he wrote. In an ironic twist of fate, Molière collapsed during his fourth...

"The King [Louis XIV], who will have nothing but what is magnificent in all he undertakes, wished to give his court an entertainment which should comprise all that the stage can furnish. To facilitate the execution of so vast an idea, and to link...

The Physician In Spite of Himself … is written in a most unbounded spirit of mirth, the matrimonial breezes wafting a certain amount of refreshing coolness throughout it all. The way in which Sganarelle is dubbed, or rather drubbed a doctor, is...

In 1661 and 1662 Moliere presented the plays The School for Husbands (this one) and then The School for Wives. "The central situations of the two have much in common: the arbitrary and jealous lover to whom circumstances have given almost the...

The setup here is that Moliere and his troupe have been sent for by the King to come perform at Versailles. But instead of the piece they had prepared, the King has just asked for an entirely new piece - to be ready later that same day! So all the...

The Bourgeois Gentleman of the title is a middle-class social climber, assured that by learning all the arts of a true and noble gentleman, he shall truly become one. This enables Moliere to satire both the pretentious middle class and the snobbish...

Alceste, the misanthrope, hates everyone including himself. But unlike in many pure farces with their cliche stock characters, the characters here are much more well rounded, and who knows - Alceste might actually grow and change throughout the...

"The characters are well delineated, and fathers, lovers, mistresses, and servants all move about amidst a complication of errors from which there is no visible disentangling. The conversation between Valère and Ascanio in man's clothes, the mutual...

The Miser is a comedy of manners about a rich moneylender named Harpagon. His feisty children long to escape from his penny-pinching household and marry their respective lovers. Although the 17th-century French upper classes presumably objected to...

"The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle having been ratified ... and peace being assured ... Louis XIV resolved to give a festival in his favorite gardens of Versailles. Moliere's comedy, George Dandin, formed the chief entertainment." The plot: A wife comes...

Moliere: "Never was any Dramatic performance so hurried as this; and it is a thing, I believe, quite new, to have a comedy planned, finished, got up, and played in a fortnight. I do not say this to boast of an impromptu, or to pretend to any...

A very early Moliere. From the Translator: "In this piece the plot is carried on ... by a servant, Mascarille, who is the first original personage Molière has created; he is not a mere imitation of the valets of the Italian or classical comedy; he...

Nothing can be more unlike The Pretentious Young Ladies or Sganarelle than Molière's Don Garcia of Navarre. The Théâtre du Palais-Royal had opened on the 20th January, 1661, with The Love-Tiff and Sganarelle, but as the young wife of Louis XIV.,...

Moliere, on the way to the Ballet of the Muses, a court festival, started to write a new Heroic Pastoral. "He chose for his subject a similar one to the history of Florizel and Perdita in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale…. The charm of his writing, the...

'Monsieur de Pourceaugnac', acted on October 6, 1669, is nothing but a farce. But Molière excels in farce as well as in higher comedy, and 'Monsieur de Pourceaugnac' is one of the best of its kind. The attacks upon the doctors of the time are not...

"The history of Amphitryon and Alcmene, or rather the myth of the birth of Hercules, is certainly very old, and is to be found in the literature of different nations." Under Moliere's touch, it becomes "One of the most charming and natural comedies...

Don Juan "contains, perhaps, more severe attacks upon hypocrisy than does even Tartuffe. It depicts the hero as a man who, rich, noble, powerful, and bold, respects neither heaven nor earth, and knows no bounds to the gratification of his desires or...

In the month of May 1664, Louis XIV entertained the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria, and his own wife , Maria Theresa, with a brilliant and sumptuous fete at Versailles.... The second day was distinguished by the representation of The Pricess of Elis...