yness about the character of Agnes is its
only drawback. This gave occasion to the brilliant and most amusing
_Critique de L'Ecole des Femmes_, 1663. Here the author is once more the
satirist of contemporary society, which he introduces as criticising his
own work. _L'Impromptu de Versailles_ (same date), according to a
curious habit which Moliere did not originate, brings the author himself
and his troupe in their own names and persons before the spectator. _Le
Mariage Force_, 1664, a slight piece, was worked up into a ballet for
the court. _La Princesse d'Elide_ (same date) is Moliere's most
important court piece, or _comedie-ballet_, and, though necessarily
artificial, has great beauty. Next in point of composition came _The
Hypocrite_, that is to say _Tartuffe_, but the difficulties which this
met with made _Le Festin de Pierre_, 1665, appear first. This is a
tragi-comic working up of the Don Juan story, and is of a different
class from any other of Moliere's comedies. It has been thought, but
without sufficient ground, that Moliere here gave expression to a
modified form of the freethinking which was so common at the time. It
may, perhaps, be more truly regarded as an excursion into romantic
comedy--the comedy which, like Shakespeare's work, is not directly
satiric on society or on individuals, but tells stories poetically and
in dramatic form with comic touches. It is noteworthy that Don Juan is
of all Moliere's heroes least exposed to the charge of being an
abstraction rather than a man. The pleasant trifle, _L'Amour Medecin_
(same date), was succeeded by _Le Misanthrope_, 1666. Here Moliere's
special vein of satire was worked most deeply and to most profit, though
the reproach that the handling is somewhat too serious for comedy is not
undeserved. Alceste the impatient but not cynical hero, Celimene the
coquette, Oronte the fop, Eliante the reasonable woman, Arsinoe the
mischief-maker, are all immortal types. The admirable farce-comedy of
the _Medecin malgre Lui_ (same date), founded upon an old _fabliau_,
followed, and this was succeeded almost immediately by the graceful
pastoral of _Melicerte_, the amusing _Pastorale Comique_, and the slight
sketch of _Le Sicilien, ou L'Amour Peintre_. At last, in 1667,
_Tartuffe_ got itself represented. It is a vigorous and almost ferocious
satire on religious pretension masking vice, and many of its separate
strokes are of the dramatist's happiest. Here however, more than
el