"One of the most accomplished American poets of his generation, Richard Wilbur was also an accomplished translator of French and Russian literature. His acclaimed verse renderings of Molie?re's plays--'among the finest translations of anyone by anyone that we possess' in the words of New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik--are still enchanting audiences around the world. Library of America's deluxe two-volume edition brings together for the first time all ten of Wilbur's Molie?re translations, a project Wilbur always envisioned. It features Wilbur's original introductions to the plays, a new foreword by Adam Gopnik on the miraculous convergence of Wilbur's 20th-century American and Molie?re's 17th-century French sensibilities, and a fascinating interview with Wilbur about translating Molie?re conducted in 2009 by Dana Gioia. This first volume collects Molie?re's early farces The Bungler, Lover's Quarrels, and Sganarelle, or The Imaginary Cuckhold; the comedies The School for Husbands and The School for Wives, about the efforts of middle-aged men to control their young wives or fiance?s, which delighted theatergoers in Molie?re's seventeenth-century France and continue to do so today; and Don Juan, Molie?re's retelling of the story of the legendary seducer, performed only briefly in the playwright's lifetime before pious censure forced it to close"--