On Saturday, November 15, the Great Books and World Classics discussion group, hosted by Mensa in Georgia and Northern New Jersey Mensa, discussed Molière’s comedic play Tartuffe; ou, l’imposteur (“Tartuffe; or, The Imposter”). The play is hilarious but would probably merit a PG-13 or R rating today. Here’s a version in the original French:
Here’s an English version by the Royal Shakespeare Company:
Who Was Molière?
Molière was the stage name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673). A playwright, actor, and poet, he is one of the greatest of French writers. In fact, French is often described as “the language of Molière.” He was born into a prosperous bourgeois family and studied at the Collège de Clermont, which is now the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. (Note that in French, the word “collège” is equivalent to a middle school or high school in the United States.) Molière worked as a traveling actor for 13 years. He then began writing plays that incorporated elements from the Commedia dell’arte (a popular form of professional theater from Italy). Commedia dell’arte features standardized archetypal characters that recur across productions and are identified by their names, costumes, and functions in the comedy.
Molière’s plays were so popular in French high society that he gained aristocratic patrons, including Phillippe I, Duke of Orleans (brother of Louis XIV, the “Sun King”). Molière was eventually granted use of the theater in the Palais-Royal. He was granted a royal pension, and his troupe became “The King’s Troupe.”
Molière continued to act to the end of his life. Molière was playing the title role of a hypochondriac in The Imaginary Invalid. During his final performance, he was struck by a coughing fit and pulmonary hemorrhage, due to pulmonary tuberculosis. He finished the performance but died later that day.
Molière’s surviving works include comedies, farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets (comparable to modern Broadway musicals), and more.
The play Tartuffe
The play was written in Alexandrine verse, which consists of rhyming couplets (pairs) of 12-syllable lines. In its classic form of Alexandrine verse, each line is divided into two parts (hemistichs) of 6 syllables; the hemistichs are separated by a pause (caesura).
Like a Commedia dell’arte play, the characters in Tartuffe represent clear archetypes, whose nature is implied by their names:
- The name Tartuffe may have been derived from the word for truffle (something hidden, or a diseased product of the earth). Tartufo is said to have been the name of a hypocritical character in Italian comedy.
- The name Orgon is similar to the word organ, which means instrument. (Tartuffe is playing Orgon like an instrument.) Orgon is a wealthy middle-class landowner who has done great service to the king years ago. Unfortunately, he lacks the ability to make good judgments for himself and his family because of his dichotomous (“black and white”) thinking.
- Madame Pernelle is Orgon’s mother. The name Pernelle is related to the word pernicieux (pernicious), which means insidiously harmful. Her bad influence is the underlying cause of the conflict in the play.
- Elmire is Orgon’s second wife. The name Elmire implies nobility, and Elmire does have the traits expected of a noblewoman: she dresses extravagantly but she is also brave.
- Elmire’s brother Cléante represents the voice of rational morality. His name seems to be related to the word “clarté” (clarity).
- The maid Dorine, whose name means “golden,” is worth her weight in gold because she represents common sense.
- Mariane is Orgon’s daughter by his first wife. Mariane is clearly intended to be a good character, since her namesakes were the mother and grandmother of Christ.
- Damis is Mariane’s fiancé. The name Damis is of Greek origin and it implies strength and the ability to subdue. Damis rashly wants to use violence to solve problems, but Cléante’s good judgment prevails.
Like many Commedia dell’arte plays, Tartuffe deals with the themes of love, sex, jealousy, and old age. A foolish old man is thwarting the young couple’s plan to marry because he has been bamboozled by a conman.
Tartuffe was first performed in 1664. However, the Louis XIV suppressed it:
although it was found to be extremely diverting, the king recognized so much conformity between those that a true devotion leads on the path to heaven and those that a vain ostentation of some good works does not prevent from committing some bad ones, that his extreme delicacy to religious matters can not suffer this resemblance of vice to virtue, which could be mistaken for each other; although one does not doubt the good intentions of the author, even so he forbids it in public, and deprived himself of this pleasure, in order not to allow it to be abused by others, less capable of making a just discernment of it
What You Can Learn From Tartuffe
The play is a comedy, and it’s still funny today. It’s too bawdy for children, but it could be a bit upsetting for anyone who has a family member who has become enmeshed in a dangerous religious cult of any kind. The play has timely messages for us today:
- Beware of any beggar who can somehow afford to retain a servant, or anyone who shows signs of being something other than what he is.
- One should listen to adults who are endowed with reason and common sense, rather than just blindly following what one was taught in childhood. Orgon could not serve the normal role of master of his own house because he was listening only to his mother.
- Confidence artists will use religious rhetoric for the same reason that guys play the guitar on the MTV: they want money for nothing and their chicks for free.
- It’s a mistake to worship a supposedly pious human being, but it’s equally a mistake to distrust all pious people, since many genuinely pious people are good. You simply have to judge individuals on their overall behavior, not on their displays of piety.
- Orgon was vulnerable for two reasons: his poor reasoning skills and an underlying fear that he deserved punishment for a sin he had committed.
- You cannot talk someone out of their devotion to a bad cult. But sooner or later they may experience something that will break the spell. The challenge is to maintain a relationship with them until that happens.
- If you live in a civilized society, you don’t need to (and shouldn’t) use violence instrumentally (i.e., to achieve some goal, such as revenge, as opposed to just defending yourself).
- The king (i.e., the state) has the responsibility to protect the people from conmen, who tend to be serial offenders. In the modern day, governments can (and should) protect the public from dangerous religious cults. They can do this without interfering with religious liberty, simply by enforcing ordinary laws. The leaders of dangerous cults typically commit all sorts of crimes (fraud, embezzlement, blackmail, labor law violations, and sexual offenses, particularly against underage victims).
Cléante makes the point that Tartuffe is a bad man who makes a show of piety, but not all people who make a show of piety are bad. If you want a dramatization of a real-life person who was both pious and good, watch the Scarlet and the Black:
It is about Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a real-life Catholic priest (priesthood is a public display of piety) who did all sorts of really good things in secret, saving countless people (Jews, escaped Allied POWs, and anti-fascists) from the Gestapo. He was sometimes called The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican, an allusion to Baroness Orczy’s novel The Scarlet Pimpernel, about a fictional British aristocrat who saved French aristocrats from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror that followed the French Revolution.