Tartuffe Unmasked - By Janice Paran

Louis XIV as a young man.  Painting by Charles Le Brun (1619-90).

Tartuffe, the play, has proved every bit as slippery as its title character since its first recorded performance at the court of Louis XIV in 1664. Promptly—some would say defensively—interpreted by prominent clerics as an attack upon religion, the unfinished play was quickly banned, though Louis himself evidently took no exception to it, and Molière repeatedly insisted, in a petition to his royal patron, that his aim was to ridicule religious hypocrisy, not religious belief.

Such was the hue and cry at court, though, from vested religious interests (Louis’ mother, a devout Catholic, was reportedly among those who were not amused) that the 24-year-old monarch had little choice but to forbid further performances. Molière lay low for a time, revising the play and reading it aloud among friends—including some well-placed ones—until he felt confident enough, in 1667, to unveil a modified version called The Imposter. The new title was manifestly a strategy to defuse criticism of the play on religious grounds, and the character of Tartuffe, no longer dressed in clerical garb, was re-named Panulphe.

Prohibition against The Imposter by the Archbishop of Paris (August 11, 1667)

No dice. The Parisian parliament shut down the play after a single performance, and the Archbishop of Paris issued an order forbidding anyone “to perform under whatever title this play, to read it or hear it read, in public or in private, under pain of excommunication.” Two of Molière’s actors bore another petition to the King, who was with the army in Flanders, but to no avail. Finally, in 1669, following a third petition, Tartuffe, or The Imposter was allowed to open in its present form. It was enthusiastically received and it made more money than any other play Molière wrote, which must have been some balm to its beleaguered author.

Molière’s second petition to King Louis XIV regarding the production of Tartuffe.

If Tartuffe has found steady employment in the classical repertoire ever since (and a debt of gratitude is owed to Richard Wilbur, whose 1963 translation of the play into rhyming English verse gave American audiences a taste of what they’d been missing), it has nonetheless continued to raise fundamental questions about its subject matter, style, tone and focus. Who is Tartuffe? Pompous poseur or charismatic schemer? Malevolent opportunist or self-loathing striver?  And—just as importantly—who is Orgon, the play’s oft-overlooked center of gravity? Dupe, accomplice, enabler, alter ego, or none of the above? Molière’s tabloid tale of a family held hostage by the machinations of a con man is both enduringly dishy and gratifyingly malleable—diverting and disturbing by turns, it probes, with aggressive acumen, the dynamics of power.

The play’s magnetic instability has allowed for its continual re-discovery. It has provided a sturdy star vehicle for generations of performers at France’s national theater, the Comédie Française; satisfied producers in quest of high-concept farce, social satire or psychological truth; and attracted pioneering directors attuned to its pathologies. Louis Jouvet’s landmark 1950 French production, for instance, offered up an introspective, even tortured, Tartuffe in the grip of his own obsessions, while a provocative 1984 staging at Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre, directed by Lucian Pintilie, set the play’s duplicities against a backdrop of state-sponsored totalitarianism.

Roger Planchon, the visionary French director whose own mountings of the play in 1962 and 1973 recast its domestic strife in a political light, acknowledged the challenge and opportunity of tackling such a well-known piece: “When I decided to stage Tartuffe I studied all the previous productions. That’s when I realized that there is no such thing as tradition.”