The more we know about the art of the theater and the more we study the plays of Molière the more clearly do we perceive that he was compelled to do persistently what Sheridan did only once. The company at the Palais Royal was loyal to Molière; nearly all its leading members came to Paris with him and remained with him until his death fifteen years later. This company was strictly limited in number; and as it had a permanent repertory and stood ready to appear in any of its more successful plays at a moment’s notice, outside actors could not be engaged for any special part,—even if there had then been in Paris any available performers at liberty. Molière could not have more parts in any of his pieces than there were members of the company; and he could not put into any of his pieces any character for which there was not a competent performer in the company. No doubt, he must at times have felt this to be a grievous limitation. That he never deals with maternal love may be accounted for by the fact that he had no woman to play agreeable “old women,”—the disagreeable elderly females being still played by men, in accord with the medieval tradition. We know the name of the male actor who appeared as Madame Pernelle in ‘Tartuffe,’ as the wife in the ‘Bourgeois Gentilhomme’ and as the Comtesse d’Escarbagnas. Molière wrote many parts for his own acting; and as he was troubled with a frequent cough, he sometimes makes coughing a characteristic of the person he was to act. His brother-in-law, Béjart, was lame; and so Molière describes a character written for this actor as having a limp. His sister-in-law, Madeleine Béjart, was an actress of authority; and so the serving maids he wrote for her are domineering and provocative. But when she died and her place was taken by a younger actress with an infectious laugh, the serving maids in all the plays that Molière wrote thereafter are not authoritative, and they are given occasion for repeated cachinnation. And as this recruit, Mlle. Beauval, had a clever little daughter, Molière did not hesitate to compose a part for a child in his ‘Malade Imaginaire.’ When we have familiarized ourselves with the record of the leading man, La Grange, of Madeleine Béjart, of Catherine de Brie, and of Armande Béjart (Molière’s wife), we find it difficult to study the swift succession of comedies without constantly feeling the presence of the actors inside the characters written for them. We recognize that it was not a matter of choice this fitting of the parts to the performers; it was a matter of necessity; and even if it may have irked him at times, Molière made the best of it and probably found his profit in it.