Moliere, Tartuffe

Moliere, Tartuffe, transl. & introduced by Richard Wilbur, Harcourt Brace & Co., San Deigo, 1989 (originally 1963)

What such a play as Tartuffe is about, what the characters think, feel, and do, is clearly and amply presented in the dialogue, so that a mere reading-aloud of the lines, without any effort at performance, can provide a complete, if austere, experience of the work. …Moliere’s comedy, because it is so thoroughly “written,” resists the overextension of any thesis. The actor or director who insists on a stimulatingly freakish interpretation will find himself engaged in deliberate misreading and willful distortion, and the audience will not be deceived. (A Note to the Harvest Edition, v)

Tartuffe is only incidentally satiric; what we experience in reading or seeing it, as several modern critics have argued, is not a satire but a “deep” comedy in which (1) a knave tries to control life by cold chicanery, (2) a fool tries to oppress life by unconscious misuse of the highest values, and (3) life, happily, will not have it. (Introduction, viii)

When Orgon says to Cleante, / My mother, children, brother and wife could die,/ And I’m not feel a single moment’s pain,/ he is parodying or perverting a Christian idea which derives from the Gospels and rings out purely in Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”: / Let goods and kindred go,/This mortal life also…./ The trouble with Orgon’s high spirituality is that one cannot obey the first commandment without obeying the second also. Orgon has withdrawn all proper feeling from those about him, and his vicious fatuity creates an atmosphere which is the comic equivalent of King Lear’s. All natural bonds of love and trust are strained or broken; evil is taken for good; truth must to kennel. (ix)

It is true that Tartuffe presents an upper-bourgeois rather than a courtly milieu; there is less deliberate wit and ele-[x]gance than in the dialogue of The Misanthrope, and consequently there is less call for the couplet as a conveyor of epigrammatic effects. Yet there are such effects in Tartuffe, and rhyme and verse are required here for other good reasons: to pay out the long speeches with clarifying emphasis, and at an assimilable rate; to couple farcical sequences to passages of greater weight and resonance; and to give a purely formal pleasure, as when balancing verse-patterns support the “ballet” movement of the close of Act II. (x-xi)

Damis. Your man Tartuffe is full of holy speeches…
/
Madame Pernelle. And practices precisely what he preaches.
He’s a fine man, and should be listened to.
I will not hear him mocked by fools like you.
/
Damis. Good God! Do you expect me to submit
To the tyranny of that carping hypocrite?
Must we forgo all joys and satisfactions
Because that bigot censures all our actions? (1.1.pg. 10)

Dorine. If sin is all that bothers him, why is it
He’s so upset when folk drop in to visit?
Is Heaven so outraged by a social call
That he must prophesy against us all? (1.1.12)

Dorine. That’s what becomes of old coquettes today:
Distressed when all their lovers fall away,
They see no recourse but to play the prude,
And so confer a style on solitude. (1.1.14)

Dorine. Gives him the place of honor when they dine,
Delights to see him gorging like a swine,
Stuffs him with dainties till his guts distend,
And when he belches, cries “God bless you, friend!” (1.2.18)

Dorine. Even Laurent, his lackey, dares to gives
Us arrogant advice on how to live;
He sermonizes us in thundering tones
And confiscates our ribbons and colognes.
Last week he tore a kerchief into pieces
Because he found it pressed in a Life of Jesus:
He said it was a sin to juxtapose
Unholy vanities and holy prose. (1.2.18)

Orgon. Ah, when you meet him, you two will be like brothers!
There’s been no loftier soul since time began.
He is a man who…a man who…an excellent man. (1.5.25)

Orgon. To dwell with us, and free our souls from sin.
He guides our lives, and to protect my honor
Stays by my wife, and keeps an eye upon her;
He tells me whom she sees, and all she does, (1.5.26)

Cleante. There’s true and false in piety, as in bravery,
And just as those whose courage shines the most
In battle, are the least inclined to boast,
So those whose hearts are truly pure and lowly
Don’t make a flashy show of being holy. (1.5.26)
Cleante. There’s true and false in piety, as in bravery,
And just as those whose courage shines the most
In battle, are the least inclined to boast,
So those whose hearts are truly pure and lowly
Don’t make a flashy show of being holy. (1.5.27)

Cleante. True piety isn’t hard to recognize,
And, happily, these present times provide us
With bright examples to instruct and guide us.
…
They’re never ostentatious, never vain,
And their religion’s moderate and humane; (1.5.29)

Dorine. A man whose spirits spurns this dungy earth
Ought not to brag of lands and noble birth;
Such worldly arrogance will hardly square
With meek devotion and the life of prayer.
…But this approach, I see, has drawn a blank;
Let’s speak, then, of his person, not his rank. (2.2.44)

Dorine. A young girl’s virtue is imperilled, Sir,
When such a marriage is imposed on her;
For if one’s bridegroom isn’t to one’s taste,
It’s hardly an inducement to be chaste,
And many a man with horns upon his brow
Has made his wife the thing that she is now.
It’s hard to be a faithful wife, in short,
To certain husbands of a certain sort, [44]
And he who gives his daughter to a man she hates
Must answer for her sins at Heaven’s gates. (2.2.44-45)

Orgon. Just trust your father’s judgment. Oh, I’m aware
That I once promised you to young Valere;
But now I hear he gambles, which greatly shocks me;
What’s more, I’ve doubts about his orthodoxy. (2.2.45)

Tartuffe. A love of heavenly beauty does not preclude
A proper love for earthly pulchritude;
Our senses are quite rightly captivated
By perfect works our Maker has created. (3.3.89)

Tartuffe. How could I look on you, O flawless creature,
And not adore the Author of all Nature,
Feeling a love both passionate and pure
For you, his triumph of self-portraiture?
At first, I trembled lest that love should be
A subtle snare that Hell had laid for me;
I vowed to flee the sight of you, eschewing
A rapture that might prove my soul’s undoing;
But soon, fair being, I became aware
That my deep passion could be made to square
With rectitude, and with my bounden duty.
I thereupon surrendered to your beauty. (3.3.90)

Tartuffe. And if you blame my passion, you must needs
Reproach as well the charms on which it feeds. (3.3.91)

Cleante. And what the Lord commands, we should obey
Without regard to what the world may say.
What! Shall the fear of being misunderstood
Prevent our doing what is right and good? (4.1.110)

Tartuffe. And if I have resigned myself to taking
The gift which my dear Brother insists on making,
I do so only, as he well understands,
Lest so much wealth fall into wicked hands,
Lest those to whom it might descend in time
Turn it to purposes of sin and crime, (4.1.111)

Orgon. A convent! Hah! When crossed in their armours,
All lovesick girls have the same thought as yours.
Get up! The more you loathe the man, and dread him,
The more ennobling it will be to wed him.
Marry Tartuffe, and mortify your flesh! (4.3.115)

Tartuffe. You needn’t try to provoke me; it’s no use.
Those who serve Heaven must expect abuse. (5.7.158)

Officer. We serve a Prince to whom all sham is hateful,
A Prince who sees into our inmost hearts,
And can’t be fooled by any trickster’s arts.
His royal soul, though generous and human,
Views all things with discernment and acumen; (5.7.161)