First published as an Oxford World's Classics paperback, 2001.

The Misanthrope * The Doctor in Spite of Himself * The Miser * The Would-Be Gentleman * The Mischievous Machinations of Scapin * The Learned Women * The Imaginary Invalid “The comedy,” Molière once quipped, “is excellent, and they who deride it deserve to be derided.” Written during the triumphant final years of Molière’s career, these seven works represent the mature flowering of his artistry and the most profound development of his vision of humanity. They are essential to appreciating the full genius of this greatest and best-loved French comic author. With an Introduction by Donald M. Frame and an Afterword by Lewis C. Seifert

Translates seven plays of Molière and comments upon the background of each dramatization.

Seven plays by the genius of French theater. Including The Ridiculous Precieuses, The School for Husbands, The School for Wives, Don Juan, The Versailles Impromptu, and The Critique of the School for Wives, this collection showcases the talent of perhaps the greatest and best-loved French playwright. Translated and with an Introduction by Donald M. Frame With a Foreword by Virginia Scott And a New Afterword by Charles Newell

The 'greatest hits' of French classical theatre, in vivid and acclaimed new Penguin translations by John Edmunds and with editorial apparatus by Joseph Harris. The plays in this volume - Cinna, The Misanthrope, Andromache and Phaedra - span only thirty-seven years, but make up the defining period of French theatre. In Corneille's Cinna (1640), absolute power is explored in ancient Rome, while Molière's The Misanthrope (1666), the only comedy in this collection, sees its anti-hero outcast for his refusal to conform to social conventions. Here also are two key plays by Racine: Andromache (1667), recounting the tragedy of Hector's widow after the Trojan War, and Phaedre (1677), showing a mother crossing the bounds of love with her son. This translation of Phaedra was originally broadcast on Radio Three with a cast including Prunella Scales and Timothy West, and was praised by playwright Harold Pinter. This is the first time it has been published. The edition also includes an introduction by Joseph Harris, genealogical tables, pronunciation guides, critiques and prefaces, as well as a chronology and suggested further reading. After a varied career as an actor, teacher, and BBC TV national newsreader, John Edmunds became the founder-director of Aberystwyth University's department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies. Joseph Harris is Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London and author of Hidden Agendas: Cross-Dressing in Seventeenth-Century France (2005).

For the 400th anniversary of Moliere's birth, Richard Wilbur's unsurpassed translations of Molière's plays--themselves towering achievements in English verse--are brought together by Library of America in a two-volume edition One of the most accomplished American poets of his generation, Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) was also a prolific translator of French and Russian literature. His verse translations of Molière's plays are especially admired by readers and are still performed today in theaters around the world. "Wilbur," the critic John Simon once wrote, "makes Molière into as great an English verse playwright as he was a French one." Now, for the first time, all ten of Wilbur's unsurpassed translations of Molière's plays are brought together in two-volume Library of America edition, fulfilling the poet's vision for the translations. The second volume includes the elusive masterpiece, The Misanthrope, often said to occupy the same space in comedy as Shakespeare's Hamlet does in tragedy; the fantastic farce Amphitryon, about how Jupiter and Mercury commandeer the identities of two mortals ; Tartuffe, Molière's biting satire of religious hypocrisy; and The Learned Ladies, like Tarfuffe, a drama of a household turned suddenly upside down. This volume includes the original introductions by Richard Wilbur and a foreword by Adam Gopnik on the exquisite art of Wilbur's translations.