About the book: 1664 / Just as all Russian literature, according to F. M. Dostoevsky, emerged from Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” so the entire world comedy of modern times emerged from the plays of the brilliant French playwright Jean-Baptiste Moliere (1622-1673). “My hero’s plays will be played for three centuries on all stages of the world,” wrote Mikhail Bulgakov in his novel about Moliere, “and it is unknown when they will stop playing.” His characters haven't faded at all. It seems that Jourdain ("The Bourgeois in the Nobility"), Argan ("The Imaginary Invalid"), Tartuffe ("Tartuffe, or the Deceiver") are all our good acquaintances. An important pattern: the better Moliere’s new comedy was, the more enormous a scandal it caused at the court of Louis XIV. Recognizing themselves, Tartuffe and Jourdain prohibited, expelled their images from the stage and demanded reprisals against the author. Well, in these manifestations, Moliere’s heroes are also not at all outdated. But the review of Moliere’s contemporary about one of his reviled plays is still relevant: “Everyone found it pitiful, and everyone was in a hurry to see it".