Molière's talents as both a writer and an actor were so great that at the height of his career he was often confused with the characters of his plays, whether cuckolded and browbeaten husbands, crafty servants, or, in the eyes of the antitheatricalists, the devil incarnate. As an author he was never far from the characters he invented, whether he interpreted their roles or not. In this multiple genius, Molière was rare among playwrights whose works have survived in published form. For unlike either Pierre Corneille or Jean Racine, the two other well-known dramatic writers of his epoch, Molière was not simply a writer of plays but also a practitioner of theater, intimately involved in the life of the stage as both actor and troupe director. While Molière is most commonly celebrated as the dramatist who took forms of farce...