Moliere: a Play in Five Acts

George Sand, the nineteenth-century French feminist and writer (1804-1876), wrote many well-known novels, but her dramatic work, although equally compelling, is much less known to modern audiences. Molière is one of the best plays about a literary figure ever written, and is one of the few dramas about the playwright that isn't limited to a single incident or aspect of his life. Sand absolves Molière of any wrongdoing, while dramatizing the tensions between the man and his much younger wife, Armande Béjart. Sand reflects the French attitude toward Molière by making him almost a secular saint of the dramatic world. Witty, stirring, and full of life, Sand's play is a hidden gem that deserves to be performed anew.