400 Years of Molière

January 15, 2022, marked the 400-year anniversary of the birth of French playwright, company director, actor, and poet Molière – the French Shakespeare.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin – known by his stage name Molière – was born in Paris in 1622. He was baptised on January 15, but was probably born a day or two before. He is regarded as France’s greatest writer of comedies, tragicomedies, and comic farces. He also introduced comedic ballets in 1661 as a transitional form of dance performance.

Throughout Paris and France in 2022, celebrations will be staged in places where he acted, mostly in the Comedie-Francaise.

King Louis XIV established the Comedie-Francaise in 1680, seven years after Molière’s death in 1673, at the age of fifty-one. Molière collapsed on stage from tuberculosis while performing one of his plays, Le Malade Imaginaire – The Imaginary Invalid.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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