In Moliere’s time, the profession of a comedian was but lightly esteemed in France at this period.  Moliere experienced the inconveniences resulting from this circumstance, even after his splendid literary career had given him undoubted claims to consideration.  Most of our readers no doubt, are acquainted with the anecdote of Belloc, an agreeable poet of the court, who, on hearing one of the servants in the royal household refuse to aid the author of the Tartuffe in making the king’s bed, courteously requested “the poet to accept his services for that purpose.”  Madame Campan’s anecdote of a similar courtesy, on the part of Louis the Fourteenth, is also well known; who, when several of these functionaries refused to sit at table with the comedian, kindly invited him to sit down with him, and, calling in some of his principal courtiers, remarked that “he had requested the pleasure of Moliere’s company at his own table, as it was not thought quite good enough for his officers.”  This rebuke had the desired effect.

Moliere died in 1673, he had been long affected by a pulmonary complaint, and it was only by severe temperance that he was enabled to preserve even a moderate degree of health.  At the commencement of the year, his malady sensibly increased.  At this very season, he composed his Malade Imaginaire; the most whimsical, and perhaps the most amusing of the compositions, in which he has indulged his raillery against the faculty.  On the 17th of February, being the day appointed for its fourth representation, his friends would have dissuaded him from appearing, in consequence of his increasing indisposition.  But he persisted in his design, alleging “that more than fifty poor individuals depended for their daily bread on its performance.”  His life fell a sacrifice to his benevolence.  The exertions which he was compelled to make in playing the principal part of Argan aggravated his distemper, and as he was repeating the word juro, in the concluding ceremony, he fell into a convulsion, which he vainly endeavoured to disguise from the spectators under a forced smile.  He was immediately carried to his house, in the Rue de Richelieu, now No. 34.  A violent fit of coughing, on his arrival, occasioned the rupture of a blood-vessel; and seeing his end approaching, he sent for two ecclesiastics of the parish of St. Eustace, to which he belonged, to administer to him the last offices of religion.  But these worthy persons having refused their assistance, before a third, who had been sent for, could arrive, Moliere, suffocated with the effusion of blood, had expired in the arms of his family.

Moliere died soon after entering upon his fifty-second year.  He is represented to have been somewhat above the middle stature, and well proportioned; his features large, his complexion dark, and his black, bushy eye-brows so flexible, as to admit of his giving an infinitely comic expression to his physiognomy.  He was the best actor of his own generation, and by his counsels, formed the celebrated Baron, the best of the succeeding.  He played all the range of his own characters, from Alceste to Sganarelle; though he seems to have been peculiarly fitted for broad comedy.