Working through an official system of academies, as well as through a more informal institution known as the Little Academy (Petite Académie), Louis XIV’s finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert controlled a wide-ranging propaganda of absolutism or, in the language of the time, a memorialising of the monarch’s gloire. This chapter investigates the strategy and mechanisms by which Colbert and his collaborators deployed the arts as an instrument of the state. It explores the ways in which Molière’s comedies and comedy-ballets developed out of an established system of courtly propaganda in the court ballet of the 1650s and 1660s, and examines changes instituted by Colbert in the 1660s. Finally, it examines Molière’s ambivalent response to the absolutist enterprise as expressed through these changes.

Molière’s comedy-ballets and the tragedy-ballet Psyché, many written in haste, form a heterogenous whole, but we must not forget the habitual presence of music in theatre of the time. Molière, himself an amateur musician, gave himself a number of roles involving singing, and music – that attribute of a cultivated, city-based society – is discussed in his plays, often ironically. Comedy-ballet – inspired musically by the court ballet – was a princely spectacle performed in the royal residences, and Molière benefitted from exceptional financial, technical and musical resources. He may have been given a free choice regarding their subjects, but he relied heavily on instrumentalists and dancers from the royal institutions, many of whom had participated in the great ballets of previous years, and his comedy-ballets gained from their qualities. Comedy-ballet was, therefore, devised in view of the effects desired and the means at his disposal. Most were organised around scenes or characters taken by Molière and Lully from a topical repertoire and composed according to a variety of writing conventions. Certain scenes were suggested to Molière by Lully, and some comedy-ballets were entirely devised around musical scenes in the same way as was the case for ballets.