As the most successful comic dramatist at the court of Louis XIV, Moli?re was certainly known to his London counterparts. During his early acting years in a touring troupe, the English theatres had been closed by the Civil Wars, but after 1660 viable plays were in great demand, and Moli?re was translated almost at once. Dryden, Behn, Fielding and many others took him up. All the same, his plays only began to be printed in English as immutable classics...