In the last seven years of his life and in spite of continually failing health, Molière wrote fourteen plays, mostly to fulfill the desires of the king. Of these fourteen plays, seven were rewarded with an ongoing life into modern times. It is an amazing accomplishment: these seven plays were all fascinating explorations of a radically new style; five were unique and incomparable comic gems; one, the last written, has been termed an out and out masterpiece. Under much pressure from the king's unending demands for entertainment, Molière goes back further, before his days as Sganarelle in the provinces, to his roots in the dusty classrooms of Clermont and the unfettered boyhood renderings in Latin of works by Plautus for much-needed inspiration. Early in 1668 he used Plautus' Amphitruo as the basis for his own French Amphitryon. This is a play by Molière that reads as well as it plays and the irony is: its theme is the mystery found in the art of acting. How can someone be someone else and also at the very same time be one's own self? And which representation is the truer? And perhaps in a nod to his contemporary, Descartes, which part contains the soul? How can the public representative be so admired and adored while at the same time the private performer is so beset with carping critics, angry creditors and a cold, indifferent wife?