In the spring of 1660, following the winter opening of Les Précieuses Ridicules of 1659, Chapelle – one of Molière's closest friends who had been a fellow student with him at the Collège de Clermont – sent Molière the following verse which we need to read remembering Molière's place as the powerful head of the leading theater company in France. Obviously the tone of these verses indicates that his role as a surrogate father was being transformed into a different kind of love. Chapelle's little poem reads:

In the next few years Molière fell deeper and deeper under the spell of his teenaged ward. It was during this time he wrote and acted in three plays: Sganarelle; ou, le Cocu Imaginaire (Sganarelle; or, The Imaginary Cuckold), Dom Garcie de Navarre, and L'École des Maris (The School for Husbands). The primary emotion in all three is sexual jealousy. Gone is the free-for-all romp of sexual joy. New directions emerge in both his writing and his acting.

In Sganarelle, he introduced the terror of cuckoldry – even when it is imaginary. Sganarelle is designed to function, like Les Précieuses Ridicules, as an afterpiece to longer plays in the company’s repertory. Moliére again played the Commedia-inspired Sganarelle – now his signature role much like Charlie Chaplin’s tramp – but the role underwent a major transformation and the play exhibited some significant new ideas for his life on stage. Scenically, Moliére had already thought of removing the footlights in an effort to come closer to his audience by removing a barrier between the actors and the public, but now more radically, he put aside the traditional hard leather mask of the farceur in favor of the virtual mask of real-life character.