Molière

Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, gave up a comfortable Paris upholstery business to found a theatre company, toured the provinces for thirteen years, and returned to win the patronage of Louis XIV. As actor, manager and playwright he wrote the comedies that fixed the types of French social satire: the hypocrite of Tartuffe, the misanthrope, the miser, the would-be gentleman, the imaginary invalid. He collapsed on stage playing the last of these and died that night. The Great Books set gives him eight plays, more than any dramatist after Shakespeare.