A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival
Tartuffe
The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare
Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in
any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the
interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced
on the Festival’s stages.
Insights is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C.
Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director.
Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print Insights, as long as you do not
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Cover photo: Michele Farr (left) and Robert Machray in Tartuffe, 1993
Tartuffe
Contents
Information on the Play
Synopsis4
Characters5
About the Playwright
6
Scholarly Articles on the Play
Slithering Between Illusion and Reality
A Memorable Imposter
Attacking Hypocrisy, Not Religion
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9
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Synopsis: Tartuffe
Madame Pernelle is visiting her son Orgon’s house and uses the opportunity to criticize all the members
of the household and to praise their boarder, Tartuffe, because he is a man of such holiness and zeal. The
others object to Tartuffe, maintaining that he is false and hypocritical, but Madame Pernelle will not entertain such thoughts. Instead, as she leaves, she admonishes everyone to follow Tartuffe’s precepts.
After Madame Pernelle leaves, Cléante, who is Orgon’s brother-in-law, and Dorine, Orgon’s daughter’s maid, discuss the situation and their boarder and agree that Tartuffe has beguiled not only Madame
Pernelle, but Orgon as well. Orgon’s son, Damis, adds to the situation by wondering out loud if his father,
after being influenced by Tartuffe, will still allow his daughter, Mariane, to marry her love, Valère. Damis is
also concerned because he wants to marry Valère’s sister; thus he asks Cléante to question Orgon about his
earlier promise to allow the marriage to take place.
Orgon arrives and seems much more concerned about the welfare of Tartuffe than anything else around
him, including his wife’s illness. Cléante tries to discuss Tartuffe with Orgon, but fails and discovers that
Orgon is only interested in singing Tartuffe’s praises. When he questions Orgon about the intended wedding, he dodges the issues and refuses to give a direct answer; however, when his daughter arrives, Orgon
tells her that he wants to ally Tartuffe with his house and that this can best be done by Mariane’s marrying
Tartuffe. Mariane is so shocked that she cannot believe her ears.
After Orgon departs, Dorine, the maid, reprimands Mariane for not having refused to marry Tartuffe.
Mariane’s beloved, Valère, arrives and accuses her of consenting to the marriage. Dorine listens to them
argue and then, after they are reconciled, promises to help them expose Tartuffe’s hypocrisy.
Damis, incensed about Tartuffe, is also determined to reveal Tartuffe’s hypocrisy, and, as he hears
Tartuffe’s approach, he hides in the closest. Elmire, Orgon’s wife, arrives, and Tartuffe, thinking they are
alone, makes some professions of love to her and suggests that they become lovers. Having heard Tartuffe’s
plans, Damis reveals himself and threatens to expose Tartuffe. When Orgon arrives, Damis tries to inform
his father about Tartuffe’s proposition, but Orgon is so blind that he thinks his own son is evil in trying to
defame Tartuffe’s good name—and he immediately disinherits his son. As Orgon and Tartuffe leave, Orgon
reveals his plans to make Tartuffe his sole heir and also his son-in-law.
Cléante later confronts Tartuffe and tries to reason with him, but Tartuffe will only respond in religious
clichés, and, as soon as the opportunity presents itself, he hastily excuses himself from the room. Orgon and
Elmire arrive, and when she hears Orgon’s plans, she extracts a promise from him to hide in some concealed
place and observe Tartuffe’s actions. Orgon consents, and Elmire sends for Tartuffe. When he arrives, he
is accosted by Elmire, and soon he begins to make not only declarations of love to her but also derogatory
comments about Orgon.
Finally convinced of Tartuffe’s hypocrisy, Orgon emerges and orders him from the household. Tartuffe
then reveals that legally he is now the owner of the house, since Orgon has signed over all his property.
Alone with his wife, Orgon reveals that he is frightened because, earlier, he had entrusted some secret documents to Tartuffe’s care--documents which could ruin Orgon’s trusted position in the court.
When Orgon’s mother arrives, he cannot convince her that Tartuffe is a hypocrite; it is only when news
arrives that Tartuffe is having the entire family evicted that Madame Pernelle is convinced. Tartuffe brings
with him officers of the court, but, as the family is about to be evicted, an officer reveals that the king has
seen through the hypocrisy of Tartuffe and has ordered him to be imprisoned for this and for other crimes.
The king has also restored to Orgon all his rightful property.
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Characters: Tartuffe
MADAME PERNELLE, Orgon’s mother, is totally deluded by Tartuffe until near the end of the
play.
ORGON, husband of Elmire, son of Madame Pernelle, and father of Mariane and Damis, is the central character of the play and comes entirely under the influence of the hypocrite Tartuffe. Yet,
whereas Tartuffe is the obvious hypocrite and scoundrel, Orgon is a much more complex character. Thus, Orgon’s religious fanaticism seems more directly correlated to his basic nature, which is
characterized by Cléante as being extravagant and uncontrolled in all respects. Thus, having once
adopted a life of piety, Orgon tries to become the epitome of the pious person and goes to absurd
extremes both in his words and deeds. In contrast, when he discovers the hypocrisy of Tartuffe,
he reverses himself and determines to hate and persecute all pious men.
ELMIRE, Orgon’s second wife, is reasonable and represents the opposite of her husband throughout
most of the play.
DAMIS, Orgon’s son and Elmire’s stepson, uses his common sense to see through Tartuffe, but when
he tries to prove him a hypocrite to his father, he is disinherited.
MARIANE, Orgon’s daughter, is in love with Valère and is being forced by her father to marry
Tartuffe.
VALÈRE, Mariane’s suitor, is rejected by Orgon in favor of Tartuffe.
CLÉANTE, Orgon’s brother-in-law, tries, usually unsuccessfully, to get everyone to view things with
calm and reason.
TARTUFFE, a hypocrite, is a superb scoundrel who can don any pose and become a master of it.
As a religious ascetic, he convinces Orgon and Madame Pernelle that he is a devoutly pious and
humble man; his obvious hypocrisy, however, is apparent to the audience. Tartuffe’s superiority
lies in the fact that he can accurately analyze the weaknesses of his victims and then exploit these
flaws for his own advantage. He is no simple or ignorant charlatan; instead, he is an alert and
adept hypocrite who uses every means to bring about his success.
DORINE, Mariane’s maid, is a stock character found in many of Molière’s comedies and, in fact, has
become a type found in comedies of all periods. She is the wise servant who sees through all pretense, and, while being the inferior in terms of social position, she is the superior in any contest of
wits.
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About the Playwright: Moliere
From Insights, 1993
Molière is generally considered to have been the greatest comic dramatist of France and the
author of some of the most brilliant comedies in all of theatrical history.
His real name was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, and he was born in Paris in l622, the son of an
upholsterer who prospered by rendering his services to the French court. Educated at a Jesuit
school where he was graded as an excellent scholar, the young Jean-Baptiste declined to take up
his father’s vocation, flirted with a study of law, and fell in with a troupe of players with whom he
acted for thirteen years through the provincial towns of France, often in skits of his own authorship derived from old Italian comedies and stock farces which later, in Paris, he quickly polished
and expanded into the plays that have come down to us. It was during this early career as an actor
that he adopted the name Molière.
In l658 his troupe came to Paris and had a chance to appear before King Louis XIV and his
court. They began their performance with a short poetic tragedy of Corneille. The troupe was
so much more suited to comedy than to the bombastic tragic style of the time that the reception
was disastrous--until Molière modestly introduced a farce of his own, The Doctor in Love, and
theatrical history was made. Molière and his company (of which he was the leading actor, director, manager, and playwright) immediately were “taken up” by the court and subsequently quickly
became a popular success throughout the country.
During the next fifteen years, until his death form overwork, Molière poured out his great
stream of twenty-seven plays, acted in them, directed them, and choreographed them--for he
combined many of the plays with music and ballet to achieve a unification of all theatrical arts
in a form that did not continue after his death but flowered again in opera l25 years later, and in
American musical comedies 300 years later.
Molière enjoyed such royal support from King Louis XIV that on several occasions when his
plays were premiering at court the king participated in them, acting small roles and in some cases
dancing in the ballets. The king was a great ally (he even stood as godfather to Molière’s second
child), and protected Molière and his troupe from the wrath evoked by their scathing portraits of
French society. In the nineteenth century, the English historian Lord Morley commented that the
best claim to lasting fame of Louis XIV was “the protection he extended to Molière.”
Molière saw to it that comedy came to rival tragedy in importance in French theatre. The
best known of his plays today are The Affected Young Ladies (l658), which was the first modern social satire, holding up to ridicule the affectations of the overly-elegant women of courtly
society of the time; The School for Wives (l662), a sequel to The School for Husbands that was
even even more successful than the predecessor; Tartuffe (l664), the masterpiece that so vividly
painted a hypocrite that the character’s name has become a synonym for hypocrisy in all languages; The Misanthrope (l666), a truly original play, an illustrious portrait of a man of integrity;
The Doctor in Spite of Himself (l666); The Miser (l668); The Would-Be Gentleman (l67l);
The Learned Ladies (l672); and The Imaginary Invalid (l673), which was presented by the Utah
Shakespeare Festival in 1989, the inaugural season of the Randall L. Jones Theatre.
These plays are still presented with great frequency in the United States and other Englishspeaking countries, and they are standard fare in France today, especially at the Comédie
Francaise, the greatest national theatre of modern France, which was founded soon after Molière’s
death by the joining of his own company with two others. In honor of the towering dramatist, the
Comédie Francaise is often called “the House of Molière.”
The Imaginary Invalid was not only Molière’s last play, but a turning of his slapstick upon
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himself as a man who felt himself to be really ill, and probably dying, but who could not be sure that
he was not hypochondriacally deluding himself about his health. In 1673, during his fourth performance in the comedy’s title role, Molière proved he wasn’t imagining himself to be sick by falling into a
convulsion and dying later that night.
Other Molière plays include The Deaf One (1658), Lover’s Spite (1658), The Tiresome Ones
(1661), Don Garcia of Navarre (1661), On Criticism of the School for Wives (1662), The Impromptu of
Versailles (1663), The Forced Marriage (1664), The Princess of Elide (1664), Don Juan (1665), Love
Is the Doctor (1665), The Sicilian (1667), George Dandin (1668), Amphitryon (1668), Monsieur de
Pourceaugnac (1669), Psyche (1671), and The Rascalities of Scapin (1671).
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Slithering Between Illusion and Reality
Some translations subtitle Tartuffe “the Hypocrite”; others, “the Impostor.” Either way, the title character of Molière’s 1664 comedy of humors slithers between what is and what appears to be. While illusion and reality constitute a universal theme of literature, the particularly appropriate metaphor by which
Molière labels his sanctimonious fraud adds a tantalizing dimension to Tartuffe’s black, subtle, subterranean soul. His very name bespeaks a linguistic history that associates hidden meanings, trifling, cheating,
falsehood, and hypocrisy with a mysterious underground fungus.
The name Tartuffe means “truffle”--unfortunately, not the chocolate kind. The Oxford English
Dictionary (OED) cites the first use of truffle for a chocolate confection in the 1926-27 U.S. Army and
Navy Stores Catalog. The truffle Molière knew is a subterranean fungus of knobby, shriveled appearance,
which cannot be located by sight or logic, but only, as John Evelyn wrote in 1644, “by an hogg train’d to it.”
Even now, wrote gastronome Craig Claiborne in the 1970 Time-Life volume of Classic French Cooking,
“no one knows exactly how they grow, and no one has been able to cultivate them successfully” (53).
Truffles were introduced, along with mushrooms, into French cuisine by Catherine de Medici in the
sixteenth century and elevated to their current elegant status by La Varenne, a chef whose culinary creations delighted Molière’s king, Louis XIV. In fact, more than once Louis adorned festivities for which La
Varenne oversaw the cuisine and Molière the entertainment.
Tartuffe derives from provincial Italian forms similar to tartoufli, “little truffle,” which in German
became Kartoffel, “potato,” another product of the mysterious underground. As a common noun, tartuffe
entered the English language shortly after the production of Molière’s play as an epithet meaning “a hypocritical pretender, especially to religion.” The OED cites a character, Tartuffo, from an Italian play, as perhaps Molière’s source and states that both Old French and Italian used their respective cognates to mean
“truffle,” the subterranean fungus, or by extension “any hidden production”—like a potato or a hypocrite.
Molière’s aptly named Tartuffe, like the lowly fungus, is the center of attention even when not in sight.
Prior to his humble, penitent appearance, he has been the exclusive topic of conversation--sometimes cautionary, sometimes caustic--between the grandmother and the rest of the family, the brother-in-law and the
maid, the daughter and her stepmother, the stepmother and her brother, the son and the maid, the daughter and her beloved, and everybody and the myopic, monomaniacal father, Orgon. Only Orgon and his
mother fail to sniff out the black fungus, Tartuffe, who consequently trifles with their purses and affections.
ince before Molière’s time, the French have honored the aphrodisiac properties of truffles. BrillatSavarin, author of The Physiology of Taste, wrote in 1725, “Whosoever pronounces the word truffle gives
voice to . . . erotic and gastronomical dreams equally in the sex that wears skirts and the one that sprouts a
beard” (96). He set out to investigate the “amorous effect” of truffles and found them a believable excuse
for risqué behavior. Appropriately, Molière gave Tartuffe a raging propensity for the flesh.
The first English use of truffle was a verb meaning “to cozen, to cheat, to deceive, to fool.” Trifle, as in
“trifle with one’s affections,” showed variant spellings with u in the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries,
when it was adapted from an Old French word meaning “mockery, trumpery,” and the fungus. Tartuffe’s
attempted seduction of Elmire could be called “trifling” or “truffling” with her, just as he “truffled” with
Orgon’s generosity and trust—or as he nearly “tartuffed” them all.
What better name for an impostor? It suited the nineteenth-century English enough to inspire tartufferie, tartuffism, tartuffian, and tartuffish to describe hypocrisy of various sorts. Ironically, the character
Tartuffe remains hidden from the audience until Act 3, and the play proved so odious to both ecclesiastical
and political authorities that it remained unproduced until 1669, five years after its completion. Thus, both
the play and its title character smack of “tartuffism” or “tartuffery”--one as “tartuffer,” the other as “tartuffee.”
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A Memorable Imposter
By James Mills
From Midsummer Magazine, 1993
Molière first presented Le Tartuffe at the “Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle,” a royal extravaganza
held at Versailles under the auspices of Louis XIV, as the second featured play after his Princess of Elide.
Performed on May 12, 1664, on the sixth day of the fête, under the title, Tartuffe or the Impostor, the
unfinished three-act play initially received the king’s approval, but not that of the church, which condemned its treatment of the “subject of abuse and religious zeal by a confidence man and his victim”
(Hallam Walker, Molière [Boston: G. K. Hall, 1971], 81). Its portrayal of credulity, distorted faith, and
blind obedience earned the censure of the archbishop of Paris, who was irate over its possible bad effects on
society, as well as the disapproval of the Queen Mother, who similarly expressed her strong dismay.
Molière was obliged to battle for the next five years against great odds to have his play accepted and was
reduced to giving private readings because of legal sanctions against it. In an attempt to curry favor, he offered
a revised version in five acts in 1665, which was rejected. In 1667 he presented another version under the title,
Panulfe or the Impostor, in which he attempted to mollify his enemies by modifying Tartuffe’s near clerical
garb and changing his name to Panulfe. However, his efforts were in vain, for the play was suppressed by the
archbishop of Paris who forbade involvement with it on pain of excommunication.
It was not until 1669 that the present format was offered on stage in a published version with official
approval at the Palais-Royal Theatre. Although scholars disagree as to what was contained in the earlier
versions, most feel that they differed substantially from the 1669 play ( James F. Gaines, Social Structures in
Molière’s Theatre [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984], 199).
It was during the “Quarrel of Tartuffe” that Molière came to realize that he was no longer able to count
fully on the political backing of the king nor the moral support of the public (Ronald W. Tobin, “Tarte à la
crème”—Comedy and Gastronomy in Molière’s Theatre [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990],
46). However, this period also witnessed the appearance of the masterpieces of his maturity: Dom Juan
(1665),The Misanthrope (1666), Amphitryon (1668), George Dandin (1668), and The Miser (1668).
Tartuffe is a contemporary play that mirrors the religious struggles of the seventeenth century. Only
recently (1647-1650), there had been violent conflicts called “Frondes” during which religious groups sided
with the various factions of nobles vying for power. And France still felt the repercussions of the bloody
civil strife between Catholics and Huguenots that witnessed the massacres on Saint Bartholomew’s Day
in 1572 and continued in Molière’s time with the ongoing harassment of the Protestants. The Jesuits continued to oppose the heretical Jansenists, a conflict whose fires had been recently stoked by Blaise Pascal’s
Provincial Letters (1656-1657) which served as an apologia for the Jansenists and as an indictment of the
Jesuits. Gallicans, who sought greater French autonomy from Rome, opposed the Ultramontanists, who
gave primary allegiance to the Pope. Quietists fought to worship in private without church control, while
various cults practiced their secret rites, including black magic, at all levels of French society.
Religion and politics were inextricably bound together, with the way to temporal power being ecclesiastical. Cardinal Richelieu had cemented that symbiotic relationship during the reign of Louis XIII, while
Cardinal Mazarin, who had just died in 1661, had continued the centralization of power during the early
ascendancy of the maturing Louis XIV.
The sources for Tartuffe are unclear. Although Philip Wadsworth indicates that Flaminio Scala’s Il
Pedante, published in 1611, is the only serious source still considered, he nevertheless dismisses it and suggests instead that a novel by D’Audiguier and a Spanish novella adapted in French by Scarron are more
contemporary to Molière and offer many of the same features as those found in Tartuffe (Molière and the
Italian Theatrical Tradition [French Literature Publications Company, 1977], 20-23).
Molière spent fifteen years on the road working his early plays and sketches for commedia dell’arte
skits. The Italians and Spaniards taught him elegance and cynicism, as well as the use of disguises, trap
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doors, stock characters, and mysterious happenings. Reflections of his formative training appear in Tartuffe
in his use of such theatrical devises as Orgon hiding under the table, the clowning of Dorine, and the quarrel between Mariane and Valère.
He made fun of royalty, criticized society, admired the common sense of the lower classes, saw the similarities in life, presented a nobility that was not always admirable, and offered his own views of life. Finely
wrought comedy was for Molière a disrespectful attitude to a potentially tragic situation (Albert Bermal,
trans, One-Act Comedies of Molière, [New York: The World Publishing Company, 1964], 5).
The themes of knowledge and blind ignorance, reality and appearances, and love and its distortions
served as social criticism designed to educate society (Walker, 83). Tartuffe is an essentialist view of men
and women. It has to do with “a city morality, where life is more a matter of perpetual contact with others
than with nature or things” (Percy A. Chapman, The Spirit of Molière [Russell and Russell, Inc., 1965],
232). Ultimately, the whole play tends to be greater than the sum of its parts as its appeal is largely attributable to its coherence and wholeness as a comic structure (Wadsworth, 112 113).
Tartuffe is probably Molière’s most sinister character. While the name is apparently from the Italian
tartufulo, meaning “truffle,” there is a subtle hint of deception in the French verb truffer, which could mean
“tromper,” or “to deceive” (Gaston Hall, Molière: Tartuffe [London: Arnold, 1960], 24).
The play’s ominous quality has been emphasized by Harold Knutson, who has discussed its sense of
imminent defeat and ritual death. He sees a symbolic death for Mariane when she ponders extinction at
the prospect of a forced marriage to Tartuffe and metaphoric suicide in her pleas to enter a convent. Orgon
“murders” Damis when he replaces him with Tartuffe as his legal heir. Ironically, he, in turn, experiences
ritual death when he tries to expel Tartuffe only to have the latter demand that he leave his own home.
The overall mood is one of perfidy, betrayal, and despair (Molière, an Archetypal Approach, [Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1976], 77 78).
It is significant that Du Croisy, the actor who usually played comic roles, played Tartuffe, while Molière
played Orgon. Where Tartuffe is “a country boor aping Town manners, especially in his effort to play
l’honnête homme amoureux” (Knutson, The Triumph of Wit [Columbus: Ohio State University Press,
1988], 91), Orgon has high social standing, is wealthy, owns his own home, has an abundance of money, is
a man of power, and perhaps a royal officer or officier de longue robe, either of the sovereign courts or the
financial administration (Gaines, 200 206).
In fact, Lionel Gossman treats Orgon as the pivot of the play and suggests that a true understanding of
it is based on the relationship of the blind obedience of Orgon and the hypocritical wickedness of Tartuffe.
He observes that “dupe and deceiver—and which is which?—are seen to be partners in the same enterprise”
(Men and Masks, A Study of Molière [Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1963], 101). It is his opinion that
Orgon, a Christian who is unable to give love or receive it, views Tartuffe as a kind of Christ-figure and is not
interested in the real qualities of his guest but only in the authority that he commands (104).
This is a play about authority and power, and the reality is that “Orgon himself is largely responsible
for Tartuffe’s imposture” (Gossman, 112). Even Madam Pernelle, who is possessive and tyrannical, seeks to
usurp her own son’s place in his home and covets power over others through Tartuffe.
It also has to do with the family and its potential destruction by an intruder. The play takes place
indoors with the word, “céans,” which means “on these premises,” being used an unprecedented fourteen
times. It is Molière’s first realistic picture of a bourgeois interior. It revolves around a traditional bourgeois
family consisting of three generations, as well as extended family. The unity of the family, a symbol for continuity and social renewal, is temporarily threatened and destabilized by the presence of the intruder.
Molière’s intent was not to destroy society but to teach the lesson that false power and false piety were
not for the public good. When the officer of the king arrives during the dénouement, he enters a home filled
with confusion, usurpation, treachery, and despair. It is his duty to restore order in the name of Louis XIV. He
functions as deus ex machina, or rex ex machina, in order to reinforce the ultimate power of the monarch over
his people to restore authority to where it properly belongs in an orderly society (Tobin, 113).
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Ironically, while Tartuffe seeks honor and glory in Orgon’s home, it is the king who symbolically takes
it away from him to return it to Orgon, and, indirectly, to himself. Yet, as Knutson points out: “Whatever
the comic force of many scenes, the ominous mood that hangs over the play remains with us long after the
dénouement. A cancer of bondage and corruption has set into the play’s society, and, even after it is extirpated at the comic reversal, the concluding verses speak more of relief and gratitude than of exultation and
victory” (Archetypal, 76).
Molière’s was a vision of reconciliation, with the family unit serving as an emblem for societal harmony.
His was a ritual view of comedy that celebrated regeneration. It is nevertheless ironic that in Tartuffe the
dénouement is the fantasy, while the body of the play represents the reality of life. In other words, the
komos reveals the fantasy, while it is the tragic that is the real world. Ultimately, Molière sought to paint
a France “in which some sort of compromise is hit upon between vigor of personality, stability of custom,
and enlightened acceptance of authority” (Chapman, 248). In Tartuffe he succeeds in creating one of his
most successful and best-loved masterpieces and one of his most memorable characters, even if he is an
impostor.
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11
Attacking Hypocrisy, Not Religion
By Jerry L. Crawford
From Insights, 1993
What Shakespeare is to the English, Molière is to the French. While there are differences between
them, there are also similarities: both were practical men of the theatre; both were actors as well as playwrights; both had incredible insight into human life; both had a breath-taking mastery over language. As a
writer of comedy, however, Molière is more closely akin to Aristophanes, Ben Jonson, and George Bernard
Shaw than he is to Shakespeare, for his comedies not only entertain, but they also sparkle with satire and
devastating criticism of society.
Civilization has never reached a higher degree of sophistication than it did in the Court of King Louis
XIV during the time of Molière. One of the more admirable features of this court was its stress on the
intellect. In theory (although there were glaring exceptions in practice) man was expected to be reasonable.
Bad temper and violence were properties of the lower classes; whereas, logic and laughter were the critical
tools of the aristocrats; and although Molière was not an aristocrat, he possessed the qualities aristocrats
most admired: wit, brilliance, taste, and balance. Yet, in spite of Molière’s favorable reputation and in spite
of support from the king himself, Tartuffe created a storm of protest that has seldom been equaled, and the
battle to gain public presentation raged for almost five years.
From our present point of view, the violent opposition that Tartuffe engendered seems surprising.
Critics insisted that the play was an attack upon religion, but Molière quite rightly maintained that he was
attacking hypocrisy, not religion. As a matter of fact, Clèante, the character who speaks most clearly for the
author, is as distressed when Orgon reacts violently against the whole “religious brotherhood” as he was
when Orgon was doting with blind faith upon the religious hypocrite, Tartuffe. Clèante exclaims accusingly: “Ah, there you go—extravagant as ever! / Why can you not be rational? You never / Manage to take
the middle course, it seems, / But jump instead between absurd extremes.”
Indeed, Clèante, the shrewd little maid, Dorine, the sensible young wife, Elmire, and the whole action
of the play itself make it abundantly clear that Molière is against extremes, that he is satirizing not faith but
“blind faith”--the same irrational, unseeing faith that still generates problems today. Although in Tartuffe
the playwright’s immediate focus is upon faith as it related to the church, the extensions of that focus are
dramatic and manifold. Today it is the political rather than religious world that the eyeless, almost fanatic
faith of the “true believer” is so vexatious and disturbing--a world in which “isms” provide painful evidence
of the common man’s passion to believe blindly, to fight blindly for his belief, and to turn a deaf ear to anything that threatens--and perhaps ought to threaten--that belief.
As Tartuffe so dramatically exemplifies, once blind faith has entered the scene, it becomes a weakness of
character to waver, strength of character to persist--even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary. In
fact, strong evidence to the contrary is usually translated by the mind as temptation, and the true believer
would rather die than yield. What is much worse, he does not hesitate to cause others to die--all in the firm
and righteous conviction that he is showing courage and strength of character. War and most of the other
really hideous crimes are seldom the machinations of rascals and renegades, but usually the handiwork of
dedicated, self sacrificing true believers like Orgon and his dear old mother, Madame Pernelle. Professional
hypocrites like Tartuffe seem instinctively to sense this and prey upon willing victims. It matters little
whether their belief relates to religion, philosophy, politics, poetry, or art.
It was, therefore, a case of foolish, mistaken identity for Molière’s critics to see Tartuffe himself as a
symbol of religion. He is an obvious opportunist, a renegade, and a con man, who will play any kind of a
trick to gain his desires. Religious piety simply happens to be the cloak that best conceals his motives from
the gullible Orgon. He is smart enough, and actor enough, to make the most of his opportunities.
So deep has been the concern about the meaning of Tartuffe that its brilliance as exciting and thoroughly entertaining theatre is often forgotten. The characters are especially alive; the plot is skillfully
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Utah Shakespeare Festival
351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880
constructed; the action is charged with suspense; and the characters use delightfully comedic language.
Regardless, it is difficult in this day and age to comprehend the opposition from both the ecclesiastical
and secular authorities that Tartuffe encountered when originally written. A powerful religious fraternity
of laymen, known at the time as the Compagnie du Saint Sacrement (and later as the Cabale des Devots)
seemed to identify itself with the pious hypocrisy ridiculed in the play, and it was natural for this sensitive
group to take strong exception. The eventual success of Tartuffe made it the drama celebre of the author’s
career, and it is interesting to note that the offended organization was dissolved shortly after the public premiere of the play.
In comedy of humors (made popular earlier in England in the work of Ben Jonson), a ridicule is aimed
not so much at the follies of society (as it is directed in satire to a large extent and in comedy of manners
to some extent), but rather at the foibles of individuals within a society. The concentration is on human
behavior that strays from an acceptable “mean” and veers toward an extreme in either direction. The dramatic technique in this type of comedy in part involves the selection of a dominate human trait, preferably a foolish or dangerous one, and developing that trait in an exaggerated fashion in one of the leading
characters, who is, it would follow, more often than not, an eccentric. Nearly all of Molière’s plays can be
properly labeled comedies of humors. Tartuffe is not an exception. In this play, there are really two leading
characters, Tartuffe and Orgon. In the former we find the embodiment of religious hypocrisy, in the latter
we find stupidity incarnate. Even some of the minor characters, such as Dorine, whose insolence probably
is unsurpassed by that of any servant in the world of comedy (save Mosca in Volpone), are supplied with
distinct human peculiarities. Molière is not particularly concerned with why his characters behave the way
they do. The influences of heredity and environment (later to become such importance considerations
in the naturalistic movement) are virtually ignored. Molière has simply observed his fellow man and has
probed deeply into his idiosyncrasies. But his probing is always in the comic spirit, and exaggeration of
character, one of the main controls in comedy of humors, is fully employed for the evocation of laughter.
The play has been faulted by some for its rather unbelievable denouement, in which Tartuffe is discovered to be a notorious criminal. But unprepared-for endings and the use of a deus ex machina never disturbed Molière and apparently delighted rather than bothered the sensibilities of his audiences. In the case
of Tartuffe, the additional poetic justice and the restoration of normalcy in a complicated situation make
the contrived solution not only palatable but even pleasing.
When skillfully performed by professionals or by gifted amateurs, Tartuffe can provide a rare entertainment in the theatre.
Utah Shakespeare Festival
351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880
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