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MOLIERE MOLINA 719 ety by coteries that ridiculously adopted the tone of the hotel de Rambouillet. The play had a run of four months. At brief intervals followed Sganarelle, ou le cocu imaginaire (1660), a somewhat scandalous farce ; Don Gar- de de Navarre (1661), which failed; ISEcole des maris (1661), in which the leading idea is borrowed from the AdelpM of Terence, and the character of Sganarelle attains its fullest development; and Les fdcheux (1661), the first and one of the finest examples of a come- die d tiroirs, designed to be acted in the in- tervals of a ballet. In 1662 he married Ar- mande Bejart (a sister of the actress in his company), whom the slanders of the time charged with being a daughter of his former mistress. This has been completely disproved by legal documents brought to light in 1821. His three next plays, LEcole desfemmes (1662), La critique de VEcole desfemmes (1663), and L 1 Impromptu de Versailles (1663), increased the animosity against him. The first and sec- ond aroused the suspicions of the religious party, and the third drew upon him the un- scrupulous assaults of the rival troupe at the h6tel de Bourgogne. In 1664, at the brilliant fetes of Versailles, Moliere and his company contributed to the gayeties on four of the sev- en days. He presented La princesse d 1 Slide, a romantic and gorgeous play, and the first three acts of Tartufe, a satire on hypocrites, the success of which when completed was greatly increased by the king's forbidding its representation in Paris. He treated a kin- dred topic in the comedy of Le festin de pierre (1665), which portrays the multiple char- acter of Don Juan. This was preceded by Le manage force, directed against the theologi- ans of the Sorbonne, and followed by L Amour mvdecin, which began the war with the med- ical faculty continued by Moliere through life. Within the next three years followed Le misanthrope, which Frenchmen pronounce his chef d'ceuvre, partly from its faultlessness of style, and partly from its portraitures of Al- ceste, who runs counter to the conventional hypocrisies of social intercourse, and of 061i- mene the coquette and Arsinoe the prude ; Le medecin malgre lui, a rollicking farce, which had the greatest success ; Amphitryon, an imi- tation of Plautus ; LAvare, exhibiting in the character of Harpagon the comical relations of avarice ; and Georges Dandin, designed to expose the mischief resulting from ill-assorted marriages. His Tartufe, the greatest effort of his genius, was also once acted with signal applause at the Palais Royal, but its second representation was immediately forbidden, and within a week the archbishop had threatened excommunication against all who should act, read, or listen to it. In the period between the performance of Tartufe in Paris and the death of Moliere, the less important pieces which he successively produced were the farce of Monsieur de Pourceaugnac ; the Amants magnifiques, in which astrology is satirized ; 567 VOL. XL 46 the Fourberies de Scapin ; and La comtesse d 1 Escarbagnas. To this period belong Le bour- geois gentilhomme (1670) and Les femmes sa- vantes (1672), the former displaying the absurd conceit of plebeians in seeking the culture, man- ners, and acquaintance of the nobility, the lat- ter aimed against pretenders to taste and science. Moliere's dramatic career terminated with the Malade imaginaire. He acted in its fourth representation, and returned to his chamber to die within an hour. A multitude of anec- dotes indicate his nobility, truthfulness, unos- tentatious kindness, and generosity. As an actor he attained high success by his tact and finesse, by dint of study and effort, despite physical disadvantages. He excelled in the most difficult parts, in those of Arnolphe, Or- gon, and Harpagon, and in the original and typical characters of Mascarille and Sganarelle. Though the most inventive of comic poets, few writers have borrowed so freely from others. His imitations of Italian, Spanish, and Latin comedies are constant and undis- guised, and are to be attributed to the occa- sional character of many of his pieces, written in the exigency of the moment at the com- mand and for the entertainment of the court. More than a century after his death, the French academy, which would have received him if he had consented to abandon his profession as a comedian, decided to admit his bust into its chamber with the inscription proposed by Sau- rin : Rien ne manque d sa gloire ; il manquait d la notre. Among the best editions of Mo- liere are those of Auger (9 vols., 1819-'25), Aime-Martin (8 vols., 1833-'6), Moland (Paris, 1871), and Despois (Paris, 1874 et seq.). The best biographies are by Taschereau (Paris, 1825 ; with supplement, 1827) and Bazin (1851). See also Moland, Moliere et la comedie italienne (1867), and Lindau, Moliere (Leipsic, 1872). MOLINA, Luis, a Spanish theologian, born in Cuenca in 1535, died in Madrid, Oct. 12, 1600. He entered the society of Jesus in early life, completed his philosophical and theological studies at Coimbra, and was professor of th'e- ology at Evora in Portugal for 20 years. Among his works are De Justitia et Jure (6 vols., Cuenca, 1592, and Mentz, 1659), and Commentarii in Primam Partem D. Thornm (2 vols., Cuenca, 1593). His fame rests chiefly on his Concordia, in which he undertook to reconcile the freedom of the human will with God's foreknowledge and foreordination. The peculiar system set forth in this work, called scientia media, Molina derived from his Jesuit master Fonseca, who avowed his responsibility for it when it was afterward most bitterly denounced. The doctrine of Molina was soon violently assailed by the Dominicans, and it was even denounced to the inquisition at Val- ladolid. The controversy became a quarrel between two great religious orders, the parti- sans of Molina being called Molinists and their antagonists Thomists, from St. Thomas Aqui- nas. The dispute was at length brought before