Les amants magnifiques

Les Amants magnifiques (The Magnificent Lovers) is a comédie-ballet by Molière, with a score by Jean-Baptiste Lully and choreography by Pierre Beauchamp. It was composed for the February 1670 carnival during the Divertissement royal festivities - Louis XIV's appearance in that production was his last appearance onstage as a dancer. Its plot is novelistic and sentimental, with two rival princes arguing over a young princess, who herself loves a soldier of fortune, not from the nobility but not without glory, who loves her back. The soldier saves her from a wild boar and is thus allowed to marry her. Molière also uses the play to critique astrology, particularly in the character of Anaxarque, a fraudulent astrologer. G Couton wrote of the play that it "gave a lesson in reason to a court and a civilisation much in need of it".