My introduction to Molière came through an ecstatic experience as a member of an audience. Since it was the beginning of my long obsession with Jean-Baptiste Poquelin dit Molière, I share it as a springboard into my subject.

In the late forties I was in Paris on the GI Bill. By a great stroke of luck I had rented a room in Montmartre behind the Sacré Coeur. It was owned by an actress, Mademoiselle Nadine Marziano, a pensionnaire at the Comédie-Française, who became my friend and mentor. She told me that a famous actor she greatly admired was making his return to the theater after his absence during the war. She, a Swiss citizen, had played in the repertory during the German occupation, while many French actors had left the public view for various personal and political reasons. Monsieur Aimé Clariond, who had left the company to work heroically in the World War II French underground Resistance, was returning that night for the first time to perform his pre-war role as Alceste in Molière's Le Misanthrope, a role for which he had been highly acclaimed. I accepted her invitation to join her at the theater.

The square in front of the Comédie-Française was swarming with people; the lobby was packed; throngs crowded around le contrôle – a high counter that served as a VIP box office, behind which sat three black-suited officials presiding like minor Brechtian gods over everyone's fate.