Four centuries have passed since the birth of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622–1673), known to the world as Molière, but even today his plays remain on theater stages and are published in huge editions. Long classified as masterpieces of European literature, Molière's works continue to charm with their sparkling humor, psychological depth of characters, and masterful precision of observation, reflected in the images of his famous archetypal characters— the deceiver Tartuffe, the bourgeois gentleman Jourdain, the miser Harpagon... Molière wrote over thirty plays in total, which were highly praised during the master’s lifetime, earning him the patronage of the “Sun King” Louis XIV, and had a colossal influence on the entire subsequent European dramaturgy. This edition includes Molière's most celebrated plays: “Tartuffe, or The Impostor,” “Don Juan, or The Stone Feast,” “The Misanthrope,” “The Doctor in Spite of Himself,” “The Miser,” “The Bourgeois Gentleman,” “The Ill-Tempered Drummer,” “The Imaginary Invalid,” published alongside illustrations by the renowned book graphic artist Grigory Georgievich Philipovsky (1909–1987). “So great that each time you read him, you are amazed. He is unique in his kind, his plays border on the tragic and completely captivate you; no one dares to imitate him… Every year, I read several of Molière’s plays… We, small people, cannot long hold within us the greatness of such creations and therefore must sometimes return to them to refresh our impression” (I. V. Goethe).
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