Samuel Chappuzeau

Chappuzeau's play Le Cercle des Femmes is widely regarded as one of the main sources for Molière's masterpiece Les Précieuses Ridicules, but his influence on the "Golden Age of French Drama" has in the past been seriously underestimated.

Though his family originated in Poitiers, where his grandfather François was a 'procureur' and owned hemp fields and a vineyard, Chappuzeau was born in Paris, where his father Charles was a lawyer and member of the Noblesse de Robe.

After a period in which he accompanied a young nobleman on journeys to Scotland and England, he traveled to the Netherlands in 1648 and spent some time in the Hague, where he was friends with some of the leading scholars of the day, among them Comenius, Claude Saumaise, and Constantijn Huygens.

(Laurent later became horologer, or clockmaker, to the Elector of Hanover) In 1656 he returned to Amsterdam to live, where his second son Christophe was born, and in 1659, he was appointed tutor to the young Prince William III of Orange, who later became King of England.

During this happy period, two more children were born, and Chappuzeau witnessed the festivities on the event of the Restoration of the English Monarchy, addressing an ode to the new King on board HMS Royal Charles.

During this period, he worked constantly on his encyclopedia (Nouveau Dictionaire, never published and now lost), corresponding with leading scholars throughout Europe, including Pierre Bayle and also Gottfried Leibniz, who visited him at his home in Celle.