In terms of literary reputation, Molière is to French as Shakespeare is to English. After thirteen years as a travelling actor, he began to write comedies, farces, tragicomedies and even comédie-ballets. His comedy The School for Wives shocked Paris in that nothing appeared to be sacrosanct in his humour. The clergy managed to ban Tartuffe, his satire on religious hypocrisy, for five years. Dom Juan fared even worse: the scandalous tragi-comedy that ridiculed clerical doctrine and celebrated immorality infuriated the Roman Catholic Church who banned it after only 15 performances until changes were made.
Dom Juan is a story that has been retold many times. Molière based his black comedy on a Spanish play, The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest, which was then thirty-five years old. Subsequently the story formed the basis of a 1735 Goldoni play, Mozart’s 1787 opera Don Giovanni, Pushkin’s 1830 short play The Stoney Guest, Byron’s 1821 epic poem Don Juan, George Bernard Shaw’s 1903 drama Man and Superman and Bertold Brecht’s 1950’s adaptation to name just some.