L’Impromptu de Versailles, de la défense à l’apothéose

By returning to the specific circumstances of the premiere of L’Impromptu de Versailles, the article shows that the play presents a many-faceted « portrait of the painter » (head of the troupe, author, actor, private person). It reaffirms the genre of the « Moliéresque » comedy, invented by La Critique de L’École des femmes and taken up in the texts of the « Quarrel », and it definitively shifts the stakes of the debate to Molière himself, the first star playwright.