This is the first comedy that Molière presented in Paris: it consists of several minor plots that are quite independent of each other. It is a taste of the Italian and Spanish theater that was prevalent in Paris at the time when comedies were nothing more than a canvas of paradoxical adventures, where no one had yet attempted the slightest sketching of morals.

The theater was not what it ought to be, that is, the representation of human life. The humiliating habit of the powerful to have so-called madmen at their service had sullied the theater. Good comedy was still unknown in France, as high society and its codes of conduct, the unique sources of good comedic elements, had just been born.

Molière, only after he deeply observed the court and Paris and truly understood the people, managed to represent them with such true and enduring colors.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]