Antoine Jacob

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Antoine Jacob de Montfleury (1640-1685), known as Montfleury, was a French actor and playwright who was a chief rival of Molière.

He was the son of Zacharie Jacob, who was the first to adopt Montfleury as a stage name, and had achieved great fame as an actor and playwright himself. Both were associated with the Hôtel de Bourgogne theatre troupe, an institution supported by King Louis XIV.

Antoine worked as a lawyer at first. His first notable play, The Impromptu of the Hôtel de Condé, was written as a tit-for-tat response to one Molière had staged mocking his father Zacharie. The latter would subsequently deepen the feud, shortly before his own death, by accusing Molière of incest.

Antoine made his name as a playwright with La Femme juge et partie, which ran simultaneously with Tartuffe and was accorded the respect of an equal work by contemporaries. But Montfleury remained committed to Spanish theatre styles after Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca, while Molière was recreating the Italian comedy of manners in a French mold.

Montfleury was also a rival of Cyrano de Bergerac, who once insulted Montfleury's girth in a letter, an incident which was dramatized by Edmond Rostand in his play Cyrano de Bergerac.