In this issue TDR celebrates Molière the farceur. Lest we seem in this to be claiming credit for original insight, we are also printing the essay which “started the trend“—that is, the trend away from the nineteenth-century view of Molière as a writer of drames and towards a view which recognizes the key role of farce even in Molière's most serious plays. This is Gustave Lanson's essay “Molière et la farce,” which first appeared in the Revue de Paris in May, 1901. Lanson also helps us to distinguish farce from the comic tradition generally, and particularly from the tradition of Roman comedy. Molière was most decisively influenced, not by literature in the tradition of Rome, but by theatre in the tradition of France.