These are the best of Moliere's masterful one-acts, blending broad farce and pointed wit to express his never-ending delight in human foibles. But Moliere is more than just the "master of the laugh," for behind the comic gestures of these matchless rogues, tight-fisted masters, possessive lovers and elegant ladies lurk fears, insecurities and their consequences. Includes: The Jealous Husband, The Flying Doctor, Two Precious Maidens Ridiculed, The Imaginary Cuckold, The Rehearsal at Versailles, The Forced Marriage, The Seductive Mistress.

Included in this compilation are: "The Romantic Ladies," "The Misanthrope," "Don Juan," "Tartuffe," "George Dandin," "The Would-Be Gentleman," "The School for Wives," "The School for Wives Criticized," and "The Miser."

The Sicilian or love the painter - Tartuffe or The Impostor - A Doctor in spite of himself - The imaginary invalid id_____________

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Originally published in 1963. Molière's plays rank among the great comic achievements in the history of the stage. Yet few attempts have been made to understand them as expressing the historical context of the author's time. Most frequently they have been interpreted from the point of view of purely literary history, while the characters have been seen as universal comic types. Lionel Gossman reappraises Molière's comedy in the light of historical experience and interprets it in terms of the conditions from which it emerged. He brings it into the mainstream of seventeenth-century French literature and shows that Molière was concerned with the same things that concerned Descartes, Corneille, Racine, or Pascal. Five comedies (Amphitryon, Dom Juan, Le Misanthrope, Le Tartuffe, and George Dandin) are studied in the first part of the book. A number of basic structures are found to be common to all of them, and these give the author his point of departure for the second part of the book. In the second part, Gossman examines Molière's position with respect to other major seventeenth-century French writers. The comic vision of Molière, Gossman argues, no less than the tragic vision of Pascal or of Racine, expresses a particular relation to the social structure of the time. The subject matter of Molière's comedy is thus, in the author's view, not universal human nature but the men and women of the society in which Molière lived. Indeed, Gossman goes on to argue that the development of society after Molière made it difficult, and in the end impossible, for later writers to see the world in the comic light that illuminated Molière's writing. Even in certain of Molière's own works, in fact, the comic vision shades into something close to Romantic irony.