Word: poquelin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Seventeenth-Century Moliére (real name: Jean Baptiste Poquelin) might have been a little startled at what has happened to his doltish M. Jourdain, who was already an outrageous enough butt. Everybody swindled and snickered at him-the dancing masters and fencing masters hired to teach him the graces; the count who was to present him at court; the marquise with whom he craved a modish liaison. But Moliére's butt-who suddenly learned with rapture that he had been speaking prose all his life-was a passably solid character. When Zany Clark gets through with...
Jean Baptiste Poquelin, son of respectable parents, assumed the name "Móliere" when he joined an unrespectable troupe of vagabond players. For 13 years he mimed through the provinces, died at 51, coughing and spitting blood, less than an hour after playing the title role in his Le Malade Imaginaire. Concludes Dr. Moorman: "Móliere rendered a great service to humanity through his satirical arraignment of the medical profession. The antiquated and extravagant practices of the Paris Faculty . . . inflamed his genius for reform. . . . Soon after Moliere's death, Paris was leading the world in medical thought...