INTRODUCTORY NOTE
JEAN BAPTISTE POQUELIN, better known by his stage name of Moli?re, stands without a rival at the head of French comedy. Born at Paris in January, 1622, where his father held a position in the royal household, he was educated at the Jesuit Coll?ge de Clermont, and for some time studied law, which he soon abandoned for the stage. His life was spent in Paris and in the provinces, acting, directing performances, managing theaters, and writing plays. He had his share of applause from the king and from the public; but the satire in his comedies made him many enemies, and he was the object of the most venomous attacks and the most impossible slanders. Nor did he find much solace at home; for he married unfortunately, and the unhappiness that followed increased the bitterness that public hostility had brought into his life. On February 17, 1673, while acting in “La Malade Imaginaire,” the last of his masterpieces, he was seized with illness and died a few hours later.
The first of the greater works of Moli?re was “Les Précieuses Ridicules,” produced in 1659. In this brilliant piece Moli?re lifted French comedy to a new level and gave it a new purpose—the satirizing of contemporary manners and affectations by frank portrayal and criticism. In the great plays that followed, “The School for Husbands” and “The School for Wives,” “The Misanthrope” and “The Hypocrite” (Tartuffe), “The Miser” and “The Hypochondriac,” “The Learned Ladies,” “The Doctor in Spite of Himself,” “The Citizen Turned Gentleman,” and many others, he exposed mercilessly one after another the vices and foibles of the day.
His characteristic qualities are nowhere better exhibited than in “Tartuffe.” Compared with such characterization as Shakespeare's, Moli?re's method of portraying life may seem to be lacking in complexity; but it is precisely the simplicity with which creations like Tartuffe embody the weakness or vice they represent that has given them their place as universally types of human nature.
TARTUFFE A COMEDY
CHARACTERSACTORS
MADAME PERNELLE, mother of Orgon LOUIS BEJART
ORGON, husband of Elmire MOLI?RE
ELMIRE, wife of Orgon MLLE. MOLI?RE
DAMIS, son of Orgon HUBERT
MARIANE, daughter of Orgon, in love with VALÈRE MLLE. DEBRIE
VALÈRE, in love with Mariane LA GRANGE
CLEANTE, brother-in-law of Orgon LA THORILLIERE
TARTUFFE，a hypocrite DU CROISY
DORINE, Mariane's maid MADELEINE BEJART
M. LOYAL, a bailiff DEBRIE
A Police Officer
FLIPOTTE, Madame Pernelle's servant
The scene is at Paris