Under French law at the time, actors were not allowed to be buried in the sacred ground of a cemetery. The collaboration with Lully ended with a tragédie et ballet, Psyché, written in collaboration with Pierre Corneille and Philippe Quinault. It fuses elements of Renaissance chronicles, fictional and historical sources, recent historical events (the Napoleonic regime in Italy, the Battle of Waterloo, the Austrian occupation of Milan), and an imaginative, almost dreamlike transposition of contemporary reality into fictional terms.

In 1631, his father Jean Poquelin purchased from the court of Louis XIII the posts of " valet de chambre ordinaire et tapissier du Roi" ("valet of the King's chamber and keeper of carpets and upholstery"). Performing a classic play by Pierre Corneille and a farce of his own, The Doctor in Love, Molière was granted the use of salle du Petit-Bourbon near the Louvre, a spacious room appointed for theatrical performances. Viewing himself as an unsentimental opportunist, he employs seduction as a means to advancement, first with Madame de Rênal, whose children he is employed to tutor. He was awarded the title of Troupe de Monsieur ( Monsieur being the honorific for the king's brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans). The premiere of Molière's Les Précieuses Ridicules ( The Affected Young Ladies) took place at the Petit-Bourbon on 18 November 1659.Therefore, Stendhal carefully checks and controls the expression of Julien's emotions as he does his own.

This friendship later ended when Armand, having contracted syphilis from a courtesan, turned toward religion and joined Molière's enemies in the Parti des Dévots and the Compagnie de Saint Sacrement. As a literary critic, such as in Racine and Shakespeare, Stendhal championed the Romantic aesthetic by unfavorably comparing the rules and strictures of Jean Racine's classicism to the freer verse and settings of Shakespeare, and supporting the writing of plays in prose.

Les précieuses ridicules won Molière the attention and the criticism of many, but it was not a popular success.