Tartuffe, or The Impostor, or The Hypocrite (/tɑːrˈtʊf,-ˈtuːf/;[1]French: Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur, pronounced[taʁtyfulɛ̃pɔstœʁ]), first performed in 1664, is a theatrical comedy by Molière. The characters of Tartuffe, Elmire, and Orgon are considered among the greatest classical theatre roles.
History
Molière performed his first version of Tartuffe in 1664. Almost immediately following its performance that same year at Versailles' grand fêtes (The Party of the Delights of the Enchanted Island/Les fêtes des plaisirs de l'ile enchantée), King Louis XIV suppressed it, probably under the influence of the archbishop of Paris, Paul Philippe Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe, the King's confessor and former tutor.[2] While the king had little personal interest in suppressing the play, he did so because, as stated in the official account of the fête:
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.[2]: 76
As a result of Molière's play, contemporary French and English both use the word "tartuffe" to designate a hypocrite who ostensibly and exaggeratedly feigns virtue, especially religious virtue. The play is written entirely in twelve-syllable lines (alexandrines) of rhyming couplets—1,962 lines total.[3]
Brother of Elmire, brother-in-law of Orgon (the play's raisonneur)
Mariane: Mlle de Brie
Daughter of Orgon, the fiancée of Valère and sister of Damis
Damis: André Hubert
Son of Orgon and brother of Mariane
Laurent
Servant of Tartuffe (non-speaking character)
Argas
Friend of Orgon who was anti-Louis XIV during the Fronde (mentioned but not seen).
Flipote
Servant of Madame Pernelle (non-speaking character)
Monsieur Loyal: Mr. De Brie
A bailiff
A King's Officer/The Exempt
An officer of the king
Plot
Orgon's family is up in arms because Orgon and his mother have fallen under the influence of Tartuffe, a pious fraud (and a vagrant prior to Orgon's help). Tartuffe pretends to be pious and to speak with divine authority, and Orgon and his mother no longer take any action without first consulting him.
Tartuffe's antics do not fool the rest of the family or their friends; they detest him. Orgon raises the stakes when he announces that Tartuffe will marry Orgon's daughter Mariane (who is already engaged to Valère). Mariane becomes very upset at this news, and the rest of the family realizes how deeply Tartuffe has embedded himself into the family.
In an effort to show Orgon how awful Tartuffe really is, the family devises a scheme to trap Tartuffe into confessing to Elmire (Orgon's wife) his desire for her. As a pious man and a guest, he should have no such feelings for the lady of the house, and the family hopes that after such a confession, Orgon will throw Tartuffe out of the house. Indeed, Tartuffe does try to seduce Elmire, but their interview is interrupted when Orgon's son Damis, who has been eavesdropping, is no longer able to control his boiling indignation and jumps out of his hiding place to denounce Tartuffe.
Frontispiece and title page of Tartuffe or The Imposter from a 1739 collected edition of his works in French and English, printed by John Watts. The engraving depicts the amoral Tartuffe being deceitfully seduced by Elmire, the wife of his host, Orgon who hides under a table.
Tartuffe is at first shocked but recovers very well. When Orgon enters the room and Damis triumphantly tells him what happened, Tartuffe uses reverse psychology and accuses himself of being the worst sinner:
Oui, mon frère, je suis un méchant, un coupable. Un malheureux pécheur tout plein d'iniquité
Yes, my brother, I am wicked, guilty.
A miserable sinner just full of iniquity.[4]
Orgon is convinced that Damis was lying and banishes him from the house. Tartuffe even convinces Orgon to order that, to teach Damis a lesson, Tartuffe should be around Elmire more than ever. As a gift to Tartuffe and further punishment to Damis and the rest of his family, Orgon signs over all his worldly possessions to Tartuffe.
In a later scene, Elmire challenges Orgon to be witness to a meeting between her and Tartuffe. Orgon, ever easily convinced, decides to hide under a table in the same room, confident that Elmire is wrong. He overhears Elmire resisting Tartuffe's very forward advances. When Tartuffe has incriminated himself definitively and is dangerously close to violating Elmire, Orgon comes out from under the table and orders Tartuffe out of his house. The wily guest means to stay, and Tartuffe finally shows his hand. It turns out that earlier, before the events of the play, Orgon had admitted to Tartuffe that he had possession of a box of incriminating letters (written by a friend, not by him). Tartuffe had taken charge and possession of this box, and now tells Orgon that he (Orgon) will be the one to leave. Tartuffe takes his temporary leave. Orgon's family tries to decide what to do. Very soon, Monsieur Loyal shows up with a message from Tartuffe and the court itself; they must exit the house because it now belongs to Tartuffe. Dorine makes fun of Monsieur Loyal's name, mocking his fake loyalty. Even Madame Pernelle, who had refused to believe any ill about Tartuffe even in the face of her son's actually witnessing it, has become convinced of Tartuffe's duplicity.
No sooner does Monsieur Loyal leave than Valère rushes in with the news that Tartuffe has denounced Orgon for aiding and assisting a traitor by keeping the incriminating letters and that Orgon is about to be arrested. Before Orgon can flee, Tartuffe arrives with an officer, but to his surprise, the officer arrests him instead. The officer explains that the enlightened King Louis XIV—who is not mentioned by name—has heard of the injustices happening in the house and, appalled by Tartuffe's treachery towards Orgon, has ordered Tartuffe's arrest instead.
It is revealed that Tartuffe has a long criminal history and has often changed his name to avoid being caught. As a reward for Orgon's previous good services, the king not only forgives him for keeping the letters but also invalidates the deed that gave Tartuffe possession of Orgon's house and possessions. The entire family is thankful that it has escaped the mortification of both Orgon's potential disgrace and their dispossession.
The drama ends well, and Orgon announces the upcoming wedding of Valère and Mariane. The surprise twist ending, in which everything is set right by the unexpected benevolent intervention of the heretofore unseen king, is considered a notable modern-day example of the classical theatrical plot device deus ex machina.
Controversy
Though Tartuffe was received well by the public and even by Louis XIV, it immediately sparked conflict amongst many different groups who were offended by the play's portrayal of someone who was outwardly pious but fundamentally mercenary, lecherous, and deceitful; and who uses their profession of piety to prey on others. The factions opposed to Molière's work included part of the hierarchy of the French Roman Catholic Church, members of upper-class French society, and the illegal underground organization called the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement. Tartuffe's popularity was cut short when the archbishop of ParisPéréfixe issued an edict threatening excommunication for anyone who watched, performed in, or read the play. Molière attempted to assuage church officials by rewriting his play to seem more secular and less critical of religion, but the archbishop and other leading officials would not budge. The revised, second version of the play was called L'Imposteur and had a main character named Panulphe instead of Tartuffe, the only performance of which occurred in the Palais-Royal theatre on 5 August 1667. Immediately the following day, on 6 August, as the king was away from Paris, Guillaume de Lamoignon, first president of the Paris Parlement, censored public performances.[5]
Even throughout Molière's conflict with the church, Louis XIV continued to support the playwright; it is possible that without the King's support, Molière might have been excommunicated. Although public performances of the play were banned, private performances for the French aristocracy did occur.[6] In 1669, after Molière's detractors lost much of their influence, he was finally allowed to perform the final version of his play. However, due to all the controversy surrounding Tartuffe, Molière mostly refrained from writing such incisive plays as this one again.[7]
An ally of Molière (believed by Robert McBride to be François de La Mothe Le Vayer, but a hotly-debated point)[8][9] responded to criticism of Tartuffe in 1667 with a Lettre sur la comédie de l'Imposteur. The anonymous author sought to defend the play[a] to the public by describing the plot in detail and then rebutting two common arguments made for why the play was banned. The first being that theatrical works should not discuss religion at all; the second being that Tartuffe's actions on stage, followed by his pious speech, would make the audience think that they were to act as Tartuffe did. This section of letter contradicts the latter by describing how Tartuffe's actions are worthy of ridicule, in essence comic, and therefore by no means an endorsement.[citation needed]
The comic is the outward and visible form that nature's bounty has attached to everything unreasonable, so that we should see, and avoid it. To know the comic we must know the rational, of which it denotes the absence and we must see wherein the rational consists ... incongruity is the heart of the comic ... it follows that all lying, disguise, cheating, dissimulation, all outward show different from the reality, all contradiction in fact between actions that proceed from a single source, all this is in essence comic.[10]
Centuries later, when the satiricalanticlerical magazine La Calotte started publication in 1906, its first editorial asserted that Laughter is the only weapon feared by the soldiers of Tartuffe; the new magazine proposed to effectively deploy that weapon, with articles and cartoons mercilessly lampooning the Catholic Church and its clergy.[11][12][13]
Production history
The original version of the play was in three acts and was first staged on 12 May 1664 at the Palace of Versailles' Cour de Marbre[14] as part of festivities known as Les Plaisirs de l'île enchantée. Because of the attacks on the play and the ban that was placed on it, this version was never published, and no text has survived, giving rise to much speculation as to whether it was a work in progress or a finished piece. Many writers believe it consisted of the first three acts of the final version, while John Cairncross has proposed that acts 1, 3, and 4 were performed.[15] Although the original version could not be played publicly, it could be given privately,[15] and it was seen on 25 September 1664 in Villers-Cotterêts, for Louis' brother Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, aka Monsieur and 29 November 1664 at the Château du Raincy, for the veteran of the Fronde, Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti.[16]
The second version, L'Imposteur, was in five acts and performed only once, on 5 August 1667 in the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. On 11 August, before any additional performances, the Archbishop of Paris Péréfixe banned this version also. The largely-final, revised third version in five acts, under the title Tartuffe, ou L'Imposteur, appeared on 5 February 1669 at the Palais-Royal theatre and was highly successful.[15] This version was published[17] and is the one that is generally performed today.[15]
Modern productions
Since Molière's time, Tartuffe has stayed on the repertoire of the Comédie-Française, where it is its most performed play.[18]
Charles Randolph-Wright staged a production of Tartuffe, July 1999, at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, which was set among affluent African Americans of Durham, North Carolina, in the 1950s.[24]
In 2021, Singapore theatre company W!ld Rice commissioned a new version by Singaporean playwright Joel Tan, which premiered in 2022. Tan's version adds a new plot twist: Valère's engagement to Mariane is a lavender marriage to cover up his torrid affair with Damis and her desire to become an independent woman.
In 2022, a feminist reimagining written by Flora Davies and Siân Lawrence was presented at Oxford's BT Studio by Green Sun Productions to great acclaim. This adaptation sets the action within a fictional feminist consultancy firm; Orgon and Elmire become Co-CEOs and Tartuffe a new hire in the office. The production transferred to the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2023.
The 2007 French filmMolière contains many references, both direct and indirect, to Tartuffe, the most notable of which is that the character of Molière masquerades as a priest and calls himself "Tartuffe". The end of the film implies that Molière went on to write Tartuffe based on his experiences in the film.[citation needed]
American Stage Theatre Company in St. Petersburg, Florida, adapted Tartuffe in 2016, staged in modern-day as a political satire, with Orgon, as a wealthy American businessman who entrusts his reputation and his fortune to up-and-coming politician, Tartuffe.[34]
An adaptation in English rhyming couplets set in London in 2017 by Andrew Hilton and Dominic Power, premiered by Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory and Tobacco Factory Theatres in Bristol, April–May 2017. Tartuffe a bogus business guru preying on old-school Tory politician in mid-life crisis.[citation needed]
In 2022, a feminist reimagining written by Flora Davies and Siân Lawrence was presented at Oxford's BT Studio by Green Sun Productions to great acclaim.[37] This adaptation sets the action within a fictional feminist consultancy firm; Orgon and Elmire become Co-CEOs and Tartuffe a new hire in the office. The production transferred to the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2023.[38]
Television
Productions for French television were filmed in 1971, 1975, 1980, 1983 and 1998.[citation needed]
The BBC adapted the Bill Alexander production for the Royal Shakespeare Company. This television version was first screened in the UK during November 1985 in the Theatre Night series with most of the original cast, including Antony Sher, Nigel Hawthorne, Stephanie Fayerman and Alison Steadman, reprising their stage roles (see "Modern Productions" above) (Lesley Sharp replaced Katy Behean as Mariane and Michael Maloney replaced Mark Rylance as Damis). While this television version does derive from the RSC's 1983 stage production, IMDb is inaccurate in dating this videotaped version from that year. The BFI Film & TV Database indicates the start date for this programme's production was in 1984, while the copyright date is for 1985.[41]
In 2009, BBC Radio 3 broadcast an adaptation directed by Gemma Bodinetz and translated by Roger McGough, based on the 2008 Liverpool Playhouse production (see "Modern Productions" above), with John Ramm as Tartuffe, Joseph Alessi as Orgon, Simon Coates as Cleante, Annabelle Dowler as Dorine, Rebecca Lacey as Elmire, Robert Hastie as Damis and Emily Pithon as Marianne.[45]
^Prest, Julia (2016). "Failed Seductions and the Female Spectator: Pleasure and Polemic in the Lettre sur la comédie de l'Imposteur". Yale French Studies (130): 10–23. JSTOR44512289.
^Pitts, Vincent J. (2000). La Grande Mademoiselle at the Court of France: 1627—1693. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 250. ISBN0-8018-6466-6.
^Pavlovski, Linda, ed. (2001). "Molière: Introduction". Drama Criticism. 13 (2006 ed.). Gale Group, Inc. Retrieved 26 November 2007 – via eNotes.com.
^McBride, Robert (2005). Moliere Et Son Premier Tartuffe. Manchester University Press. ISBN0907310575.
^Prest, Julia (2016). "Failed Seductions and the Female Spectator: Pleasure and Polemic in the Lettre sur la comédie de l'Imposteur". Yale French Studies (130): 11. JSTOR44512289. Scholars have been slow to accept this attribution, however, and other names that are commonly put forward are Jean Donneau de Visé and Claude- Emmanuel Huillier, better known as Chapelle.
^Engelberts, Matthijs (2018), "Molière's Tartuffe and French National Identity: Reconfiguring the King, the People and the Church", Reconsidering National Plays in Europe, Springer International Publishing, pp. 211–243, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75334-8_8, ISBN9783319753331
Benedetti, Jean. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN0-413-52520-1.
Garreau, Joseph E. (1984). "Molière", vol. 3, pp. 397–418, in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, Stanley Hochman, editor in chief. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN9780070791695.
Koppisch, Michael S. (2002). "Tartuffe, Le, ou l'Imposteur", pp. 450–456, in The Molière Encyclopedia, edited by James F. Gaines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN9780313312557.
Brockett, Oscar. 1964. "THE THEATER, an Introduction" published Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston. Inclusive of University of Iowa production, "Tartuffe", includes "The Set Designer", set design and Thesis, a three hundred year commemoration, "A Project in Scene Design and Stage Lighting for Moliere's Tartuffe", by Charles M. Watson, State University of Iowa, 1964.
The Misanthrope and Tartuffe by Molière, and Richard Wilbur 1965, 1993. A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York.
The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and other Plays, by Molière, and Maya Slater 2001, Oxfords World Classics, Oxford University Press, Clays Ltd. 2008
