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After having been author, actor, and director, J.-B. Poquelin became the final possible theatrical form: a character, a name without a body that a writer makes speak and an actor performs.—Michel Delon, “Lectures de Molière au 18ème siècle” InNovember1789theComédie-Françaisepremieredaplaythatcompany members had twice rejected. The three-act drama La Mort de Molière by Michel de Cubières-Palmézeaux underwent important revisions before it was eventually accepted for production in October 1788. It opened thirteenmonthslaterforjustoneperformance —afailurethattheauthorlater blamed onahalf-hearted productionby theroyalcompany. At thetimeof its writing, this play was just one of five biographical plays about Molière written by a French author in the century following Molière’s death and only the second produced at the Comédie-Française.1 Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s four-act drama La Maison de Molière, a revised version of a play first composed in 1776, premiered at the Comédie-Française in October 1787. Olympe de Gouges published Molière chez Ninon, ou le Siècle des grands hommes in 1788, but it was never professionally produced. Molière à Toulouse was performed in that city in 1787, and La Convalescence de Molière a year later in Paris, probably at a private theatre.2 The timing of these prerevolutionary biographical plays, clustered as they are in the 1780s, reflects the rehabilitation of Molière’s reputation after 1760. This trend was also heralded by a competition for his elegy offered by the Académie française (1769), the commemoration of the centenary of his death (1773), the sculpture of Molière by Jean-Antoine HoudonpresentedtotheAcadémiefrançaise(1778),andCailhava’sDiscours prononcé par Molière le jour de sa réception posthume à l’Académie française(1779).TherenewedinterestinMolièrewasalsoreflectedinthe 51life Depicting Molière in Biographical Drama 1777 publication of Louis-François Beffara’s L’Esprit de Molière, a precursor to his groundbreaking Dissertation sur la vie de Molière (1821), the first documentary-based biography of Molière’s life. In the longer view, La Mort de Molière and other plays were the forerunners in a trend to dramatize Molière’s life that to date has resulted in over 150 plays.3 Armies of authors—including George Sand, Jean Anouilh, and Mikhail Bulgakov—havetakenonthetaskofstagingMolièretheman.4 Whilethe fascination with Molière’s life is viewed as largely a nineteenth-century phenomenon, the fashion of representing Molière in drama began in earnest during the Revolution. The plays from that era laid the groundwork for the popularized, “man of the people” image of Molière that dominated the nineteenth century.5 Ten new plays about Molière appeared during the Revolution, most in the later periods of the Directory and Consulate: Charles-Louis Cadet de Gassicourt, Le Souper de Molière, ou la Soirée d’Auteuil (1795); Jacques-Marie Deschamps, Louis-Philipe de Ségur (aîné), and JeanBaptiste -Denis Després, Molière à Lyon (1799); La Servante de Molière (anonymous, 1799); Molière jaloux (anonymous, 1801); A. Creuzé de Lesser, Ninon de l’Enclos, ou l’Epicuréisme (1800); Antoine-François Rigaud and Jacques-André Jacquelin, Molière avec ses amis, ou le Souper d’Auteuil (1801); René-A.-P. de Chazet, Molière chez Ninon, ou la Lecture du Tartuffe (1802); La Jalousie de Molière (anonymous, 1802); PierreYvon Barré, Jean-Baptiste Radet, and Desfontaines (François-Georges FouquesDeshayes),LaChambredeMolière(1803);andFrançois-G.-J.-S. Andrieux, Molière avec ses amis, ou la Soirée d’Auteuil (1804).6 All these plays are one- or two-act vaudevilles, with the exception of Andrieux’s one-act comedy. Only Andrieux’s play was performed at the ComédieFran çaise; the others were performed at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, ThéâtreMareux,ThéâtredelaCité,ThéâtredesTroubadours,Théâtrede Jeunes-Artistes, Théâtre de la rue de Louvois, and Théâtre de la Gaîté. These plays have attracted little historical interest. French literary historian W. D. Howarth dismissed them as a “spate of slight anecdotal one-acters”writtenbyauthorswhooccupied“apositionofworthymediocrity among the active dramatists of the time.”7 While these plays are by no means masterworks of dramatic literature, they are hardly insignificant . They reveal the elements of Molière’s life story that were deemed valuable in the revolutionary context. They challenged the privileging of Depicting Molière in Biographical Drama 4 101 Molière’s literary production over his theatrical activities, reversing...

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