1656.523.45.4.2

✓

June 25 1987

LIBRARY

Gratis

COPYRIGHT, 1905,

By D. C. HEATH & Co.

3 J3

Printed in U. S. A.

INTRODUCTION

I. CHRONOLOGY OF MOLIÈRE'S LIFE

1622. Birth of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin at Paris, the son of a valet-tapissier du roi.

1643. In spite of a good education his inclinations lead him to the stage. He takes the name of Molière and founds a theatrical company, the Illustre théâtre, which meets with absolute failure.

1646-7. Molière and his company begin a long series of travels in the French provinces, extending over many years, and taking them through all the chief cities of the South. 1653 or 1655. At Lyons Molière plays l'Etourdi. 1656. Le Dépit amoureux given at Béziers.

1658. Return to Paris.

1659. First Parisian success, les Précieuses ridicules, an attack on Preciosity.

1660. Sganarelle.

1661. Don Garcie de Navarre (a failure). L'Ecole des maris. Les Fâcheux.

1662. Molière's unlucky marriage with Armande Béjart. L'Ecole des femmes; hostile criticism.

1663. La Critique de l'Ecole des femmes, a reply to this criticism. L'Impromptu de Versailles.

1664. Le Mariage forcé. La Princesse d'Elide. First three acts of Tartuffe. The play is forbidden.

1665. Don Juan, the portrait of the atheist. L'Amour médecin.

1666. Le Misanthrope. Le Médecin malgré lui. Mélicerte. La Pastorale comique. Le Sicilien.

1667. Tartuffe reappears, somewhat transformed, as l’Imposteur. It is again forbidden.

1668. Amphitryon. Georges Dandin. L'Avare.

1669. Tartuffe finally allowed in its present form. sieur de Pourceaugnac.

Mon

1670. Les Amants magnifiques. Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. 1671. Psyché, in collaboration with Corneille and Quinault. Les Fourberies de Scapin. La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas.

1672. Les Femmes savantes.

1673. Le Malade imaginaire. Molière, long an invalid, is taken with a hemorrhage while acting in the play and dies a few hours later.

II. HISTORY OF THE PLAY

The first three acts of Tartuffe were given at certain festivities of the French Court, on May 12, 1664. The play, even in its incomplete form, aroused the bitterest hostility and intense opposition on the part of the clerical party, who thought they saw, in the satire of religious hypocrisy, an attack upon religion in general. They succeeded, indeed, in getting the play forbidden. Molière, however, finished his comedy, and for some time was in the habit of reading it aloud at small gatherings of people who sympathized with him. Among these was a no less important person than Cardinal Chigi, the papal legate, who was able to distinguish between true piety and hypocrisy. The king, though state reasons obliged him to humor the opposition and to refuse a petition from Molière (the so-called premier placet), nevertheless continued to hold him in high esteem, and let his company take the title of troupe du roi. Rehearsals of the play were, meanwhile, given before persons like the duc d'Orléans and the princesse Palatine.

Emboldened by this state of affairs, on August 5, 1667, Molière brought out a modified version of the play under the title l'Imposteur. Tartuffe had now become Panulphe, and was considerably transformed to spare the susceptibilities of his

critics. These were, however, not mollified. The judge, the président de Lamoignon, forbade the new play. Molière at once sent two of his actors, la Thorillière and la Grange, to bear another request (the second placet) to the king, who was at the time in Flanders with the army. The latter did not deem it advisable to take any steps, and the archbishop of Paris, Hardouin de Péréfixe, proclaimed the most severe religious penalties against the play. It was not until February 5, 1669, when the storm had somewhat blown over, that, as a result of a third petition, Molière was able to bring out Tartuffe in the form which we now possess.

To the same period of strife belongs also Don Juan (1665), a play portraying not the religious hypocrite but the atheist. The two plays deserve to be studied together, and, at any rate, one should not omit to read the tirade on hypocrisy in the second scene of the fifth act of Don Juan.

III. TARTUFFE AS A PORTRAIT

The person of Tartuffe is one of the most striking character studies in French literature, and the play disputes with le Misanthrope and Don Juan the right to be called Molière's masterpiece. So vivid a portrait suggests that there must have been a direct model. This has been sought in a Gabriel de Roquette, bishop of Autun; in a certain Charpy who wormed his way into the affections of a family with deceitful intent; in Lamoignon the judge, and Hardouin de Péréfixe, who forbade the earlier play, and of whom are told anecdotes somewhat like incidents in the final Tartuffe; in Richelieu, Mazarin, Father Joseph, and in Conti, the early friend of Molière, who turned against him on becoming converted.

But stray anecdotes, incidents and rapprochements mean little. The great question remains: Did Molière intend to attack true religion or only pretenders to religion? It was the confusion of these two separate matters which caused the fight

over Tartuffe and its suppression. Certainly Molière meant only to portray the pretender to piety, in spite of critics even today who maintain the contrary; but this portrait is often indistinguishable from that of the sincere bigot. There were bigots among the Jansenists as well as among the Jesuits; yet the numerous passages on casuistry and mental reservations seem to imply that Molière was attacking Jesuit doctrines, rather than those of Arnauld and his sect, notwithstanding the austerity with which the Jansenists frowned on mere amusements. There may be some truth, if the parallel be not pushed too far, in the recent theory of M. Raoul Allier 1 that Molière was attacking the "Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement," popularly known as the "Cabale des Dévots," a secret society (1627–1666) for the protection of the true Church and the persecution of its foes. After all, there is nothing to prevent us from saying that there were hypocrites among the Jesuits, the Jansenists and the members of the Cabale as well, and that Molière meant to attack these hypocrites wherever he found them.

IV. THE HYPOCRITE IN LITERATURE

It is difficult to say to what degree Molière was indebted to previous plays or authors.2 There are similarities with Machiavelli's Mandragola (early sixteenth century), in which a certain Frate Timoteo tricks a husband and his wife; with Aretino's Lo Ipocrito (1542), in which a parasite under the mask of piety makes his way into a family. It is customary to mention also two minor Italian plays, Il Dottor Bacchetone and Il Basilico del Bernagasso.

1 Cf. R. Allier, la Cabale des Dévots, Chap. XIX; the arguments are largely based on the use of the word cabale in the play. — In 1897, venturing into the realm of fancy, Simon Boubée wrote a very dull novel of adventure, la Jeunesse de Tartuffe, in which the hero is an Italian ruffian Onofrio, destined later to become the friend of Orgon.

2 Cf. Caspari, Die Originalität Molières im Tartuffe und im Avare, Diss. Göttingen.