LETTER–To Monsieur de Moliere, Valet de Chambre du Roi
byLetter to Monsieur de Molière, Valet de Chambre du Roi opens with a gracious nod to the dual magnificence of French theatre and monarchy, suggesting that your elevation of comedy runs parallel to Louis XIV’s refinement of the state. While kings may command armies and build empires, you, through satire and sharp human insight, built a mirror—one that society still cannot ignore. What you did for laughter was not to make it cheap, but to shape it as a tool for reflection, even reform. In your plays, foolishness was exposed not through cruelty, but by revealing its origins—vanity, pride, superstition. And yet, your characters remain lovable because you never forgot they were human first. This tone of benevolent mockery gave your satire longevity. Today, even across the Channel, your genius echoes in English dialogue, where sharp wit and moral lessons often try, and sometimes fail, to meet the clarity you delivered with such elegance.
Your critics often claimed your wit stung too sharply, but history has proven otherwise. What you offered was not cruelty, but clarity wrapped in charm. You spared no institution when it failed to reflect reason, especially when religious authority masked ignorance or hypocrisy. In this, you were not irreverent but deeply moral. You demanded that belief be more than performance. When Tartuffe struck its nerve, it wasn’t because you insulted faith—it was because you exposed false piety. You saw belief and comedy as unlikely allies, both revealing truth when practiced with sincerity. Even Pascal, with all his gravity, could not persuade as persuasively as your stage. Where he offered divine fear, you offered human understanding—and audiences chose your path with laughter rather than dread.
Your characters still walk among us. Alceste, weary of social pretense, might now attend modern dinner parties with the same dismay. Harpagon, obsessed with gold, lives in boardrooms and budget meetings. Even Don Juan, ever charming, still whispers promises he never means to keep. You gave us these archetypes not as final judgments but as questions. What are we really chasing? Whose approval are we performing for? In making us laugh, you slowed us down—just long enough to see ourselves in your fools. This gift cannot be overstated. It is comedy not as decoration, but as diagnosis.
And yet, for all the sharpness in your pen, you remained soft toward suffering. You never made jest of pain itself—only of those who inflicted or exaggerated it. Even your ridiculed characters retain a thread of dignity. Your Monsieur Jourdain is not mocked for dreaming, but for misunderstanding the source of his joy. You ridiculed the illusion, not the dreamer. In that, you remind today’s writers that satire, to endure, must first care. You saw people not as problems but as stories, sometimes comical, often tragic, and always worth listening to. The line between laughter and empathy was never so thin—and never so well walked—as when drawn by your hand.
Today, the term “Molieriste” is worn proudly by many who claim to honor your work, yet too often it is your name they polish, not your message. There is a certain irony in how scholars examine your choice of paper or furniture, while ignoring the flesh and breath in your dialogue. You would have satirized them better than any biographer. A man obsessed with how Molière laced his boots would surely become your next Orgon. And what a play it would be—about reverence so distracted by detail it forgets to laugh. Perhaps it’s the curse of true brilliance: to be studied more than understood. But even if the world sometimes forgets the point, your plays remind it. They are still staged not because they are old, but because they are alive.
The world you left behind has changed much, but its vanities remain the same. And for as long as pretense exists, your comedy will remain not just relevant—but necessary. You never asked your audience to be perfect. You only asked them to see. And in that simple request, disguised in wit and woven into characters, you created a legacy that resists decay. In every curtain that rises on Le Misanthrope or The Imaginary Invalid, there is a whisper of your voice—light, pointed, and unafraid. You are not simply remembered. You are still heard.