Moliere, Tartuffe
Moliere’s Tartuffe
France, 1664
Introduction
The first thing that strikes us as 21st century readers is simply how powerful the King is. Remember that Shakespeare couldn’t put women on the stage; in 17th century France there were specific rules monitoring drama and how it got performed. Moliere, as a playwright, is subject to these laws, as the deus ex machina technique that ends the play clearly illustrates. Censorship could shut down this play and end Moliere’s career. We see him attempting to flatter the prince to curry favor and maintain his theatrical career.
In his Preface to this play, he uses blatant flattery, writing: “enlightened kings such as you do not need to be told what is wished of them: like God they see what we need and know better than we what they should give us.” He is literally comparing the king to the Judeo-Christian deity. He carefully separates his play, however, from actual corruptions of religion, arguing that the play’s goal, indeed the goal of comedy itself, is to “correct men by amusing them.”
Clearly the Judeo-Christian God and whoever had access to him had great power in this society. The power that Catholic priests wielded by way of hearing confessions and granting penances contributed to their importance in this society. Tartuffe is not a priest, but clearly is associated with Catholicism, which was the dominant religion in Europe at the time, the dominant religion in France, and a political force that bolstered the power of the French crown at the time as well. Seventeenth-century France subscribed to the theory of Divine Right of Kings. A king’s power derived from the almighty who had deemed him King, who had created him a man with the qualities of a monarch, presumably better than “regular” people. So political power, monarchy, was allied with the Judeo-Christian God, and that alliance justified whatever liberties the King could take with his subjects. In a similar way, France was politically allied with the Vatican, the Catholic Church, still a significant political presence in Europe, but not as strong, perhaps, as it had been before the Protestant Reformation.
All this history is to illustrate how power operates in this play, and how power over the behavior of others gets allied with religion. The moral “high ground” wins every time, so the person who appears to be holiest, wields a great deal of power in this play. Consider how each character manipulates power in this play to try to get what he or she wants.
Consider is the aesthetics of the play.
- Notice that it rhymes; the entire play was originally written in verse.
- Notice also that it follows conventions of Ancient Greek theater in maintaining the “Three Unities” of time, place and action. In other words, it takes place in real time (no “Meanwhile, back in Verona . . .”); it occurs all in once place; and it has continuous action. Greek drama advocated this type of aesthetic; Shakespeare famously deviates from it, to the delight of