The Ridiculous Prizes is the English title given to Les Précieuses ridicules, an early one-act comedy by Molière. Two young women from the provinces, raised on fashionable romances and refined manners, scorn the honest suitors their father has chosen as too plain. The rejected men take revenge by sending their servants disguised as grand gentlemen, whose flowery speech delights the women. The play pokes fun at affectation and social pretension. Its success in Paris helped establish Molière's reputation as a comic writer.