In this verse translation of one of Moliere's most unusual plays, the characters are not the usual gallery of 17th-century Frenchmen, but ancient Greeks and Greco-Roman gods. Combining bits of vaudeville, fantasy, high comedy, farce, and even opera, the play depicts Jupiter's successful ruse to bed the wife of the Theban general Amphitryon. Moliere takes aim at the high-handed amorality of the powerful, and the warping effects of servility. Translated by the poet Richard Wilbur, whose translations of Racine and Moliere set a new standard in verse translation.