The story of Molière, one of the greatest comic geniuses the world has ever known

Molière’s art, his understanding of theatre and theatrical composition, was practical. Instead of spending 15 years writing, he toured the countryside speaking the lines, thinking the thoughts and feeling the passions of the characters others wrote, writes Kevin Childs

French dramatist and actor Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Molière (1622-1673), circa 1660 (Getty)

It was a first night like no other. The Salle des Gardes of the Palais du Louvre – now known as the Salle des Caryatides after the four female figures who hold up a musicians’ gallery over the main entrance – this great space, already more than 100 years old, in a palace much older and soon to be transformed, was glittering brightly with hundreds of candles in chandeliers and wall brackets. The light glinted on fresh gilding and even fresher paint, which decorated a newly built stage and proscenium, writhing with smiling nymphs and randy shepherds. A makeshift theatre in a grand room, like so many such spaces in France in 1658. The light shone and shivered on the diamond buttons and necklaces of the cavaliers and ladies.

For the 36-year-old actor, entrepreneur, theatre director and budding playwright, this was make or break. He and his troupe of players had spent 13 years touring country inns, draughty châteaux and hôtels de ville, mainly in the south of France, engaging people with cheap magic, rouged cheeks, affecting and affectionate leading ladies – not always welcome, sometimes chased unceremoniously out of town, but gaining an enviable reputation nevertheless. Tragedies and farces were their stock in trade, and as they gained in reputation and the money flowed in, the costumes for the former became more sumptuous while the humour of the latter grew more riotous.