After his death, Moliere was gradually recognized in France as that country's most important dramatist. Along with this realization came a desire to write plays ABOUT the writer, his life on the stage, and his interaction with the other dramatists of his age, and also with King Louis XIV. Even Alexandre Dumas featured Moliere as a character in his historical play, The Young Louis XIV. Moliere himself was such a large, dynamic figure in real life that he made a perfect foil for later dramatists. Here are five plays by and about Moliere: Moliere at Ninon's, or, The Reading of Tartuffe, by Rene...

Based on the classic novel by Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary tells the tale of Emma Bovary, who is romantic by nature, and believes herself the equal of the heroines depicted in the romantic novels she reads. When she moves to a rural town in France, she finds herself utterly bored by country and small-town life. Although her husband is a good man, Emma has no respect for him. Eventually she takes a lover, and wants him to give up everything for her, so they can run away together--but he fails to appear on the day set for their elopement. She then finds solace in the arms of a third man, but...