Boursault, Edmé (1638–1701)

French dramatist. He wrote three comedies, Le Mercure galant 1683, Esope à la ville 1690, and Esope à la cour 1701, but is chiefly remembered for his quarrels with the writer Boileau and the playwrights Racine and Molière.

Thinking that the character of the pedantic poet Lysidas in Molière's Critique de l'école des femmes 1663 was intended to represent him, he counterattacked with Le Portrait du peintre, to which Molière replied by ridiculing Boursault in L'Impromptu de Versailles.