Molière was born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin and had his first great Parisian success in 1659, under the protection of the king's brother. It took him five years of battle to stage Tartuffe, which the devout kept having banned. A convulsion seized him on stage, on 17 February 1673, during the fourth performance of The Imaginary Invalid. The parish priest refused consecrated ground to an actor who had died unconfessed.
The story
In 1659 Les Précieuses ridicules gave Jean-Baptiste Poquelin his first great Paris success, at the théâtre du Petit-Bourbon, under the protection of Monsieur, the king's brother. Three years later he married Armande Béjart, Madeleine's daughter and twenty years his junior — a marriage that would often be an unhappy one.
It took him five years of fighting to get Tartuffe staged; the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement had it banned. In the end he won his licence: the king decided in his favour.
On 17 February 1673, at the fourth performance of Le Malade imaginaire, he was seized by a convulsion on stage. He died before his wife and the priests could reach him: two refused to come, the third arrived just after he had breathed his last.
The parish priest of Saint-Eustache refused Christian burial to an actor who had died unconfessed. On the king's intervention Molière was buried at night, “sans aucune pompe ni service solennel et hors des heures du jour” — with no pomp, no solemn service and outside the hours of daylight — in the unconsecrated part of the Saint-Joseph cemetery, among the suicides and the unbaptised children. That cemetery went in 1796 and its contents went to the catacombs.
That is where the doubt comes from. In 1817 the Père-Lachaise administration, with a cemetery thirteen years old and shunned by Parisians, staged the solemn transfer of Molière and La Fontaine; it worked, and the cemetery became the most sought-after in Paris. But the Friends of the cemetery write it without mincing words: the monument holds a body that has no chance of being his.
The grave
A stone sarcophagus in the antique style, sculptor unknown, adorned with a bronze bas-relief of a grotesque mask, set on a plinth shared with La Fontaine's and bordered by a railing — Molière occupies the one on the left as you face the monument. The Latin inscription credits the transfer to the prefect Chabrol de Volvic and gives the playwright's death as 1673, at the age of fifty-one. The perpetual plot is maintained free of charge by the City of Paris.
On site, do not miss
Face the two tombs and look for what sets them apart: apart from the name, nothing. It is the only place in the cemetery where two glories of the Grand Siècle received exactly the same thing.
Visitors' questions
Where is Molière's tomb at Père-Lachaise?
In Division 25, on a shared base with Jean de La Fontaine, along the path that climbs from the main avenue. The two stone sarcophagi, enclosed by railings, are among the cemetery's best-known landmarks.
Jean de La Fontaine, Division 25Is Molière really buried here?
Nothing is certain. Buried at night in 1673 at the Saint-Joseph cemetery, he was exhumed during the Revolution, and the bones transferred here in 1817 have never been formally identified. The monument stands as much as a tribute as a burial place.
The cemetery's early yearsWhy was Molière transferred to Père-Lachaise?
To launch the cemetery. Opened in 1804, it remained almost empty, judged too far from Paris. The highly staged arrival of Molière and La Fontaine in 1817 transformed its reputation within months — the first great publicity stunt in the history of the funeral trade.
Delille, the first grand funeralWhat other figures of the stage rest at Père-Lachaise?
The tragedian Talma in Division 12, the actresses Louise Contat and Mademoiselle Raucourt in Division 20, Sarah Bernhardt in Division 44: from Molière to the present day, the company is nearly complete.
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