Whilst waiting for permission to have Tartufe played, Moliere had brought out le Medecin malgre lui, Amphitryon, Georges Dandin, and l’Avare, lavishing freely upon them the inexhaustible resources of his genius, which was ever ready to supply the wants of kingly and princely entertainments. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac was played for the first time at Chambord, on the 6th of October, 1669; a year afterwards, on the same stage, appeared Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, with the interludes and music of Lulli.  The piece was a direct attack upon one of the most frequent absurdities of his day; many of the courtiers felt in their hearts that they were attacked; there was a burst of wrath at the first representation, by which the king had not appeared to be struck.  Moliere thought it was all over with him.  Louis XIV. desired to see the piece a second time.  “You have never written anything yet which has amused me so much; your comedy is excellent,” said he to the poet; the court was at once seized with a fit of admiration.

The king had lavished his benefits upon Moliere, who had an hereditary post near him as groom-of-the-chamber; he had given him a pension of seven thousand livres, and the license of the king’s theatre; he had been pleased to stand godfather to one of his children, to whom the Duchess of Orleans was godmother; he had protected him against the superciliousness of certain servants of his bedchamber, but all the monarch’s puissance and constant favors could not obliterate public prejudice, and give the comedian whom they saw every day on the boards the position and rank which his genius deserved.  Moliere’s friends urged him to give up the stage.  “Your health is going,” Boileau would say to him, “because the duties of a comedian exhaust you.  Why not give it up?” “Alas!” replied Moliere, with a sigh, “it is a point of honor that prevents me.”  “A what?” rejoined Boileau; “what! to smear your face with a mustache as Sganarelle, and come on the stage to be thrashed with a stick?  That is a pretty point of honor for a philosopher like you!”

Moliere might probably have followed the advice of Boileau, he might probably have listened to the silent warnings of his failing powers, if he had not been unfortunate and sad.  Unhappy in his marriage, justly jealous and yet passionately fond of his wife, without any consolation within him against the bitternesses and vexations of his life, he sought in work and incessant activity the only distractions which had any charm for a high spirit, constantly wounded in its affections and its legitimate pride:  Psyche, Les Fourberies de Scapin, La Comtesse d’Escarbagnas, betrayed nothing of their author’s increasing sadness or suffering. Les Femmes Savantes had at first but little success; the piece was considered heavy; the marvellous nicety of the portraits, the correctness of the judgments, the delicacy and elegance of the dialogue, were not appreciated until later on.