The Middle-Class Gentleman

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, (The Bourgeois Gentleman or The Middle-Class Aristocrat or The Would-Be Noble) is a five-act comédie-ballet — a play intermingled with music, dance and singing — written by Molière, first presented on 14 October 1670 before the court of Louis XIV at the Château of Chambord by Molière''s troupe of actors. Le Bourgeois gentilhomme satirizes attempts at social climbing and the bourgeois personality, poking fun both at the vulgar, pretentious middle-class and the vain, snobbish aristocracy. The title is meant as an oxymoron: in Molière''s France, a ''gentleman'' was by definition nobly born, and thus there could be no such thing as a bourgeois gentleman. The play is in prose (except for the ballet openings which are in verse).