Working through an official system of academies, as well as through a more informal institution known as the Little Academy (Petite Académie), Louis XIV’s finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert controlled a wide-ranging propaganda of absolutism or, in the language of the time, a memorialising of the monarch’s gloire. This chapter investigates the strategy and mechanisms by which Colbert and his collaborators deployed the arts as an instrument of the state. It explores the ways in which Molière’s comedies and comedy-ballets developed out of an established system of courtly propaganda in the court ballet of the 1650s and 1660s, and examines changes instituted by Colbert in the 1660s. Finally, it examines Molière’s ambivalent response to the absolutist enterprise as expressed through these changes.

Molière’s comedy ballets were devised to glorify Louis XIV and were often performed in the grounds of royal palaces, where the decors created spectacle by means of effects involving doubling and continuity with the surrounding area. This is true of La Princesse d’Élide and George Dandin, both performed in the Petit Parc at Versailles; Les Amants magnifiques, given at Saint-Germain-en-Laye; and Psyché, which was staged in the Salle des Machines in the Tuileries. This courtier-like celebration of the prince’s domain and his fairy-tale magic via Vigarani’s stagings was haunted by the memory of the sumptuous festivity Fouquet had offered the King in his gardens at Vaux shortly before his fall from favour, which had itself been inspired by Apolidon’s enchanted castle in Renaissance texts. It suggested that the domain of the powerful could only be imagined and created by means of the performance of fantasies that stimulated adhesion.

The court assembled around the prince consisted of his family and ministers, but also attracted all those who might need to seek royal authority for their own affairs. Molière was one of the King’s officers and was well acquainted with this milieu, which took form throughout the seventeenth century. During the first decades of his reign in particular, Louis XIV used entertainment to keep the members of his entourage in place by offering them opportunities to meet and experience his power in a pleasant way. The Parisian theatre troupes were regularly invited to appear before the King and Molière displayed a notable talent not only in presenting his own plays but also in combining within a single spectacle – the comedy-ballets, which were the highlights of these usually composite entertainments, and which were particularly well-suited to their context – spoken drama with music, meals, balls, and even fireworks. Devised to suit the individual circumstances, theatre could thereby offer a welcome moment of relaxation, particularly during the carnival period – a true breathing space in this environment where all was constrained according to the power relations in operation.

It did not take long for Molière’s plays to travel across the Channel, but the forms in which they appeared on the early modern English stage and page were varied. The first translations of the 1660s were marked by a hybridising tendency in which one or more Molière plots were absorbed into composite plays, thereby satisfying the English taste for dramatic variety. Although this trend dwindled in favour of single-play translations, the hybridising approach was not abandoned altogether – comedy-ballets, as compound forms, were still blended. Even where single plays were translated, it was common for extra characters and small subplots to be added. But what one hand giveth the other taketh away: rhyme was, at this time, described as ‘an effeminate practice’ and, except for Dryden’s Amphitryon, was largely eschewed for its unnaturalness. Early translations of Molière were occasionally undertaken by women; Aphra Behn and Susanna Centlivre took up the medical satires and their work reveals that translation could be used to explore gender-based power imbalances. In the early eighteenth century, there was a notable drive towards preserving Molière’s plays in monumental collected editions, but these were seen as a complement to continued translation experimentation.

Providing an overview of health, medicine and medical practitioners in France at the time of Molière, this chapter shows that, unsurprisingly, medical treatment and access to trained practitioners depended on social status and geographical location, although life expectancy for adults was not as uneven as we might expect. While humoral medicine continued to dominate, key advances were accepted over time, and the publication of medical works in the vernacular disseminated knowledge among literate lay persons. The challenge is to recognise what Molière’s audiences would have found credible or risible. His depiction of illness and medicine belongs to the traditions of farce, comedy-ballet and extravagant entertainments, and should not be read as a reflection on his own health or treatment by doctors. Two farces (Le Médecin volant, Le Médecin malgré lui) and a farcical scene in Dom Juan derive broad humour from a character grotesquely impersonating a physician. In contrast, three comedy-ballets (L’Amour médecin, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Le Malade imaginaire) feature genuine physicians treating patients whom they seek to exploit for financial gain if they are delusional and gullible. Yet music, dance and entertainment are also artfully contrived to restore health, at least in the world of the theatre.

Livrets were distributed to the spectators of all of Molière’s plays created at court and involving music, from Le Mariage forcé (1664) to La Comtesse d’Escarbagnas (1671). They explained the action, described the decors, costumes and dances, and gave the names of those dancing. This chapter explore three ways of reading these livrets. First, they are precious traces of the conditions in which the plays were created within court entertainments. Second, they constitute a specific branch of theatre publishing with its own aesthetics – involving a combination of different art forms and an accumulation of different pleasures – and its own audience, which is designated as an elite. Finally, because they contribute to the representation of monarchical power, they are a way of demonstrating a close relationship with this power and of recording it in the long-lived form of print. All this makes them an ideal site in which to observe the ways in which theatrical practices were institutionalised in the second half of the seventeenth century, and the central role Molière and his troupe played in this process.

Molière’s comedy-ballets and the tragedy-ballet Psyché, many written in haste, form a heterogenous whole, but we must not forget the habitual presence of music in theatre of the time. Molière, himself an amateur musician, gave himself a number of roles involving singing, and music – that attribute of a cultivated, city-based society – is discussed in his plays, often ironically. Comedy-ballet – inspired musically by the court ballet – was a princely spectacle performed in the royal residences, and Molière benefitted from exceptional financial, technical and musical resources. He may have been given a free choice regarding their subjects, but he relied heavily on instrumentalists and dancers from the royal institutions, many of whom had participated in the great ballets of previous years, and his comedy-ballets gained from their qualities. Comedy-ballet was, therefore, devised in view of the effects desired and the means at his disposal. Most were organised around scenes or characters taken by Molière and Lully from a topical repertoire and composed according to a variety of writing conventions. Certain scenes were suggested to Molière by Lully, and some comedy-ballets were entirely devised around musical scenes in the same way as was the case for ballets.