In this biography, Virginia Scott locates Moliere's life and work in the social, literary and theatrical contexts of the period. She offers a narrative account of his life and an overview of his plays in the wider setting of the development of seventeenth-century French drama. Her research extends from Moliere's boyhood and his Jesuit education at the College de Clermont, through the beginning of his theatrical career in Paris and as a vagabond actor in the provinces, to his days as a court dramatist under Louis XIV. He was a controversial playwright, striking out against hypocrisy in religion and medicine, and finally a cynical survivor of the literary, cultural, and marital wars. This full-length biography, the first to be written about Moliere in English since 1930, will appeal to the general reader as well as specialists in French and Theatre Studies.