La Grange (actor)
17th-century French actor
La Grange (1635 – 1 March 1692), whose real name was Charles Varlet, was a French actor and a member of the troupe of Molière.
Early life
Charles Varlet was the son of Hector Varlet and Marie de La Grange. The couple married in Paris on 9 May 1634 and moved to Montpellier soon thereafter. Charles was born in 1635 and baptized at Notre-Dame des Tables, Montpellier, on 8 March 1636, at the age of about 9 months. He had a younger brother, Achille Varlet (born 17 December 1636) and sister, Justine-Françoise (born 14 May 1638). After the birth of his sister the family left Montpellier and was in Paris in 1642 (Achille and Justine were baptised at the Église de Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs on 12 February 1642), but not long after the children lost their parents and became orphans.
Career with the Molière company
La Grange joined Molière's company in 1659, soon after they had returned to Paris from touring the provinces. Being young and attractive, he was the jeune premier and generally played Molière's lovers, roles which as Charles Dickens, Jr., has written are "among the least interesting of his personages." Later La Grange played more versatile parts such as the title roles in Racine's Alexandre le Grand (1665) and Molière's Dom Juan (1666), as well as Acaste in Molière's The Misanthrope (1666).
La Grange also acted as the company's secretary and historian, creating a register of all plays performed as well as receipts and other commentary on matters affecting the company. These documents are an important source of information for scholars interested in the period.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q497197. VIAF identifies the subject as 153211225. The Library of Congress control number is no2006019249. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1635, 1692, 1634 and 1636.
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This entry incorporates text from “La Grange (actor)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.