Frontispiece for The School for Wives Criticized (1682 edition)

Molière’s dramatic roots lie in Old French farce, the unscripted popular plays that featured broad characters with robust attitudes and vulgar ways, emphasized a strong physical style of performance, and were an entertainment staple in the town marketplace and on the fairground.  He was, likewise, greatly influenced by his interaction with the Italian commedia dell'arte performers who were known for both their improvisational skills and highly physical playing, and for the everyday truth they brought to their lively theatrical presentations.  The “new brand” of French comedy, which Molière developed and perfected, featured the vivacity and physicality of farce, tempered by a commedia-inspired naturalness of character. 

What is at the heart of Molière's dramatic style, and what made his plays unique for their time, is their satirical bent, brilliant intellect, sharp wit, emphasis on the ironic, and a strong sense of what the dramatist himself viewed as morality.  He held a mirror up to both human nature and French society to reflect the comic glory (or horror) of their frailty, stupidity, iniquity and hypocrisy.  “Le ridicule” is the literary term frequently applied to the dramatic strategy employed by Molière.  Its rhetorical goal is to criticize or condemn a person, institution or idea by making he/she/it laughable and ridiculous. 

Molière became a master of “le ridicule,” so much so that in the process of making his audiences laugh, he made a multitude of serious enemies.  Writing first for the polite court and specifically for the pleasure of King Louis XIV, he also pleased the popular Parisian audience who attended the public theater.  However, he only accepted criticism from the most learned critics.  Quarrels flared up around every new comedy Molière presented.  These quarrels, referred to by theater historians as "The Comic War,” were fought not with fists or weapons, but with pens, and often took the form of plays. 

Two of the battles instigated by Molière in the Comic War, The School for Wives Criticized and The Impromptu at Versailles, were mounted first on the page and then on the stage.  The former is the dramatist's self-critique and defense of his own The School for Wives in which he presents a group of social intimates who casually debate the play while waiting to dine.  In the course of their conversation, the playwright showcases, and subsequently dismisses, every criticism weighed by his actual detractors:  the vulgar rabble liked it; it was immoral, immodest and obscene; the actors from rival theaters denounced it; the play didn't follow the Neoclassical "rules"; there was no action; Molière overacted, etc. The play’s most important moment of defense also best addresses the controversial target and moral objectives of Molière's new dramatic style:

Frontispiece for The Impromptu at Versailles (1682 edition)

[…] Satire of this kind is aimed directly at habits, and only hits individuals by rebound.  Let us not apply to ourselves the points of general censure; let us profit by the lesson, if possible, without assuming that we are spoken against.  All the ridiculous delineations which are drawn on the stage should be looked on by everyone without annoyance.  They are public mirrors, in which we must never pretend to see ourselves.  To bruit it about that we are offended at being hit, is to state openly that we are at fault. (Scene  VII.) Molière was adamant that the butts of his brand of le ridicule were always behaviors and not specific persons.  He targeted agents of excess—a misanthrope, a religious hypocrite, a libertine, a miser—all characters absurd, unbearable, and scandalous in their unreasonable conduct and actions.

The Impromptu at Versailles was written at the command of and for the pleasure of Louis XIV.  The King wanted to see how Molière would dramatically respond to the Hôtel du Bourgogne's production of The Painter's Portrait, a comedy they commissioned as a direct assault on Molière and The School for Wives. Impromptu, as the title suggests, was composed with little or no preparation and cast Molière and the individual members of his acting troupe as themselves in staged rehearsal, moments before the players are to act a new dramatic piece before the King.  Perhaps contrary to the expectations of the King, the playwright took the relative high road in his response to his rivals’ lampoon of him:

I do not mean to make any reply to all their criticisms and counter-criticisms. Let them say all the evil they can of my pieces; I am quite willing. (Scene III.)

Undoubtedly, the playwright sparked a bit of controversy in not being controversial.
Yet he did not surrender his satirical edge completely, as he took time in the course of Impromptu to spoof, via direct impersonation, the actors and actresses of the Hôtel du Bourgogne. Molière's virtuosic presentation must have brought the palace down. 

Impromptu's moments of mimicry, combined with "Molière” the character's directorial notes to his troupe, provide a twenty-first century audience with an understanding of the formal, gestural and declamatory acting style of the time.  The play also provides insight into the new, understated theatrical style introduced by the innovative, “early” director.  We know from the Impromptu that le naturel became the principle which most informed Moliere’s and his troupe's approach:  natural tone of voice, naturalness in gesture and movement, balance, etc.  Actors of the new style were encouraged to catch the spirit of his or her role by imaging that she or he was that person.  Molière urged his troupe not to simply stand and deliver their lines, but to sit and speak while sitting:  "…the Marquises must sometimes get up and sometimes sit down again in accordance with their natural restlessness." (Scene III.)  This sort of truth in acting seems so basic in the year 2007, but le naturel was a new-fangled approach to comedy in a theater that had heretofore valued the robust and flamboyant artifice of French tragedy.

Impromptu proved to be Molière's final foray in the Comic War, although he would continue to be assaulted by his enemies, especially those who enjoyed lampooning his inability to captivate audiences with his tragic performances.  The actor-dramatist-manager remained conflict-ridden because of his controversial plays—such as Tartuffe—which he wrote and produced until his sudden death and disgraceful interment.