Louis JOUVET (1887-1951). Autograph manuscript signed, Lettre de Boileau à Racine sur la mort de Molière, [1904]; 3pages and a quarter in-fol. Early essay on Molière. Jouvet was then a student in "Seconde moderne" (at the Collège Notre-Dame de Rethel) and here wrote a "Dissertation française". The teacher who corrected the paper didn't like it much, giving Jouvet only 9 out of 20. He acknowledged Jouvet's "liveliness", but criticized him for "spelling mistakes, nonsense, instead of a praise better established on facts". However, Jouvet already had a fairly good knowledge of the theater... "Consider, Monsieur, what comedy was like before Le Menteur, and even before Molière's arrival on the scene; here, it is still the Spanish and Italian buffoons, the Tabarins and the Turlupins, who are the only ones busy distracting the public [...] barely among these farces and buffooneries appear a few plays like Les Visionnaires, which seem to want to break away from this triviality. [...] Molière made good taste reign on the stage, borrowing from everyone, taking his good everywhere [...] giving lessons and painting both his century and the whole of humanity. What admirable paintings of character, the miser, the coquette, the prude, the Misanthrope, the Tartufe, immortal portraits, always true"... etc.