[5] Born into a prosperous family and having studied at the Collège de Clermont (now Lycée Louis-le-Grand), Molière was well suited to begin a life in the theatre.

Thirteen years as an itinerant actor helped him polish his comedic abilities while he began writing, combining Commedia dell'arte elements with the more refined French comedy.

For Tartuffe's impiety, the Catholic Church in France denounced this study of religious hypocrisy, which was followed by a ban by the Parlement, while Dom Juan was withdrawn and never restaged by Molière.

Taking leave of his father, he joined the actress Madeleine Béjart, with whom he had crossed paths before, and founded the Illustre Théâtre with 630 livres.

Historians differ as to whether his father or the lover of a member of his troupe paid his debts; either way, after a 24-hour stint in prison he returned to the acting circuit.

The most noteworthy are L'Étourdi ou les Contretemps (The Bungler) and Le Docteur Amoureux (The Doctor in Love); with these two plays, Molière moved away from the heavy influence of the Italian improvisational Commedia dell'arte, and displayed his talent for mockery.

This friendship later ended when Armand, having contracted syphilis from a courtesan, turned toward religion and joined Molière's enemies in the Parti des Dévots and the Compagnie de Saint Sacrement.

Molière reached Paris in 1658 and performed in front of the King at the Louvre (then for rent as a theatre) in Corneille's tragedy Nicomède and in the farce Le Docteur Amoureux with some success.

He primarily mocks the Académie Française, a group created by Richelieu under a royal patent to establish the rules of the fledgling French theatre.

Molière is often associated with the claim that comedy castigat ridendo mores or "criticises customs through humour" (a phrase in fact coined by his contemporary Jean de Santeuil and sometimes mistaken for a classical Latin proverb).

[17] Later Molière concentrated on writing musical comedies, in which the drama is interrupted by songs and/or dances, but for years the fundamentals of numerous comedy-traditions would remain strong, especially Italian (e.g. the semi-improvisatory style that in the 1750s writers started calling commedia dell'arte), Spanish, and French plays, all also drawing on classical models (e.g. Plautus and Terence), especially the trope of the clever slave/servant.

This view is also evident in his later works and was a source of inspiration for many later authors, including (with different effect), 20th century Nobel Prize winner Luigi Pirandello.

In 1660, the Petit-Bourbon was demolished to make way for the eastern expansion of the Louvre, but Molière's company was allowed to move into the abandoned theatre in the east wing of the Palais-Royal.

These entertainments led Jean-Baptiste Colbert to demand the arrest of Fouquet for wasting public money, and he was condemned to life imprisonment.

This was the so-called Guerre comique (War of Comedy), in which the opposite side was taken by writers like Donneau de Visé, Edmé Boursault, and Montfleury.

A so-called parti des Dévots arose in French high society, who protested against Molière's excessive "realism" and irreverence, which were causing some embarrassment.

The king allegedly suggested that Molière suspend performances of Tartuffe, and the author rapidly wrote Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre to replace it.

But it was a commercial flop, forcing Molière to immediately write Le médecin malgré lui (The Doctor Despite Himself), a satire against the official sciences.

In several of his plays, Molière depicted the physicians of his day as pompous individuals who speak (poor) Latin to impress others with false erudition, and know only clysters and bleedings as (ineffective) remedies.

Le Sicilien ou L'Amour peintre was written for festivities at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and was followed in 1668 by Amphitryon, inspired both by Plautus' work of the same name and Jean Rotrou's successful reconfiguration of the drama.

With Lully, he again used music for Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, for Les Amants magnifiques, and finally for Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Middle Class Gentleman), another of his masterpieces.

It was born from the termination of the legal use of music in theatre, since Lully had patented the opera in France (and taken most of the best available singers for his own performances), so Molière had to go back to his traditional genre.

[21] The comédies-ballets developed accidentally when Molière was enlisted to mount both a play and a ballet in the honor of Louis XIV and found that he did not have a big enough cast to meet these demands.

Similar to the court ballets, both professionally trained dancers and courtiers socialized together at the comédies-ballets - Louis XIV even played the part of an Egyptian in Molière's Le Mariage forcé (1664) and also appeared as Neptune and Apollo in his retirement performance of Les Amants magnifiques (1670).

Afterwards he collapsed again with another, larger haemorrhage before being taken home, where he died a few hours later, without receiving the last rites because two priests refused to visit him while a third arrived too late.

In 1792, his remains were brought to the museum of French monuments, and in 1817, transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, close to those of La Fontaine.

Though conventional thinkers, religious leaders and medical professionals in Molière's time criticised his work, their ideas did not really diminish his widespread success with the public.

"[30] Author Martha Bellinger points out that: [Molière] has been accused of not having a consistent, organic style, of using faulty grammar, of mixing his metaphors, and of using unnecessary words for the purpose of filling out his lines.

The French 1978 film simply titled Molière directed by Ariane Mnouchkine and starring Philippe Caubère presents his complete biography.

The 2000 film Le Roi Danse (The King Dances), in which Molière is played by Tchéky Karyo, shows his collaborations with Jean-Baptiste Lully, as well as his illness and on-stage death.