That first year in Paris, they did poorly. Playing tragedies, these comedians may have looked like the proverbial image of a herd of deer caught in the headlights. They were no competition for the well-known tragedians at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Molière was pilloried when he played tragedy. A rival actor of the time, Montfleury, maliciously described Molière's talents as a tragedian:

The plays that had the best attendance were the two comedies he had written while in the provinces: L'Étourdi (The Blunderer) and Le DÉpit Amoureux (The Lovers' Quarrel).

One can imagine Molière, remembering that people had flocked to his comedies in the provinces, coming to recognize that comedy was his special talent; it's also easy to imagine him, as he walked around the familiar haunts of Paris, “a grave, deliberate, somber man,” coming to realize that Paris was now to be his subject. He must have watched the passers-by with their secret dreams and foibles hidden beneath their coats and wondered how he could exaggerate those dreams and foibles for laughter's sake as he had done in his farces about country doctors, provincial lawyers and peasant pedants.