The Misanthrope and Tartuffe

In brilliant rhymed couplets, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Wilbur renders two of seventeenth-century French playwright Moliere's comic masterpieces into English, capturing not only the form and spirit of the language but also its substance.

The Misanthrope is a searching comic study of falsity, shallowness, and self-righteousness through the character of Alceste, a man whose conscience and sincerity are too rigorous for his time.

In Tartuffe, a wily, opportunistic swindler manipulates...