Denise Benoît (10 September 1919 – 29 May 1973) was a French actress and singer, active across a wide range of genres on the stage, radio and television..
'Students of the French language will find in this wide-ranging text-book a mass of information and ideas.
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Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, is often considered to be for Francophones what Shakespeare is for English speakers. The actor-playwright was born four centuries ago on January 15, 1622—an event I celebrated in The New Criterion’s September 2022 issue.
This autumn and continuing until Molière’s birthday in January 2023, France’s Bibliothèque Nationale is presenting “Molière, the Game of True and False,” an exhibition on the realities and myths of the playwright at the library’s recently restored Richelieu site, a seventeenth-century estate turned research center near the house where Molière lived and died.1
The exhibition strives to separate the myths and facts of Molière’s life.
The show and its catalogue reveal certain elements of Molière’s life, long taken for granted, to be mere fables. For example, while Louis XIV was Molière’s patron and attempted to assist him when he ran afoul of the church, it appears untrue that the king invited hi