oted as Frances most important tragic playwright. Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who took the stage name of Moliere to spare his family embarrassment when he became the manager and leading actor of a struggling theatrical troupe, began his career by adapting Italian farces for the French stage, imitating the improvisational style and character types of the commedia dell'arte. When finally he branched out from farce to write his own comic satires, he both delighted and scandalized his Parisian audiences. His satire was by no means tender; Tartuffe (1664) attacked false religiosity, and the darkly philosophical Don Juan (1665) provoked a number of powerful enemies. Yet his comedies of character, such as The Misanthrope (1666), The Miser (1668), and The Imaginary Invalid (1673), together with the neoclassical comedy Amphitryon (1668), the comedy-ballet The Bourgeois Gentleman (1670), and his continuing output of farces established him as France's leading comic playwright, a position that has gone unchallenged to this day. Moliere died at the age of 51 onstage at the opening performance of The Imaginary Invalid. He was not buried because he was an actor as well as a playwright, and all actors had been excommunicated from the church since the middle ages....
