by Ranjit Bolt
Unfriendly critics have attacked Molière because his characters do not develop. While they come vividly to life as recognisable individuals, they do not learn from experience and alter as they do so. They are what they are and they stay like that all through the play. Macbeth, Lear or Hamlet are very different men at the end of their plays from what they were at the beginning. Molière’s characters are less like that. They are closer to Ben Jonson’s ‘humours’ than they are to Shakespeare’s individuals. Yet it is hardly a helpful criticism. There is not much point in belabouring Molière for not writing the kind of play a particular critic prefers. Molière’s plays are about ideas. His gift was to embody these ideas in gloriously funny and believable people and to create ludicrous situations which allow these characters and the ideas they stand for to come into conflict with those around them. Planchon said that what he most liked about Molière was that his plays were not about individual personalities but about situations. Orgon in Tartuffe does not really learn anything. At the end of the play he is clearly going to be as fanatical about disliking the overtly religious as he has been fanatical about supporting them. Experience has not really altered him at all. The play is really about Orgon’s tendency to get obsessed with his current enthusiasm, and his inability to see the effect this has on others. Molière himself acted the role of Orgon, not Tartuffe.
Whereas adultery had certainly provided subject matter for dramatic tragedies, as Planchon has pointed out, Tartuffe is the first French play to annexe adultery for comedy. Yet it is a very twisted kind of adultery. Orgon is bringing, not another woman to invade the closed circle of his family, but another man. And on the surface, his reasons have nothing to do with the physical or sensual world, on the contrary, it is because he wishes to be more saintly, more virtuous, that Orgon is in effect indulging in what in any other set of circumstances could only be seen as straightforward adultery. This immediately sets up a glorious array of comic contradictions. The family all behave just as they might if Orgon had fallen for a woman. They show the same resentment at this invasion of their family circle, and yet the ground is cut off beneath their feet. It is they who in normal circumstances should be wallowing in righteous and very moral indignation, and yet for them the righteous attitudes have all somehow been filched by the intruder!
The play is also about power: the power of money and a father’s power in controlling his family. It has all the thrills and spills of watching how a criminal and gifted con-man, Tartuffe, gets his hands on the father’s power, both his money, his daughter and, although foiled at last in the attempt, ultimately power over his wife. Tartuffe is wonderfully satisfying as a dramatic villain. There is the engaging difference between what he says and what he actually wants and achieves. Why does an audience so enjoy seeing the supposedly good and pious unmasked as being nothing of the kind? Why is Clinton misbehaving in the White House such good copy for the media, when red light districts in every city could provide much more lurid encounters?
Finally there is the last act, when just as the villain triumphs, almost as a god descending from the heavens, an all-seeing and an all-powerful monarch rights the wrongs, pardons Orgon for his foolish ways (he has strayed like a lost sheep) and punishes the wicked. Louis XIV had about as much power in a seventeenth century France, and in the play Tartuffe, as Creon has in Thebes in Sophocles’ Antigone. Both are absolute rulers. The difference between the two audiences for these plays says much about western culture. Five centuries before the birth of Christ, the ancient Greek audience for Sophocles’ play sat thanking its lucky stars that Athens was a democracy, and that tyrants like Creon were no longer permitted there. The seventeenth century French audience were all too aware of their king’s very real power. It is only we, snugly ensconced in the twenty-first century, that can feel much as those Athenians did. Or can we? Parallels with an all-seeing, all-powerful state make us perhaps uncomfortably aware that in many ways we are closer to that seventeenth century French audience, and that Molière is still depressingly relevant. Social security officers can take away our children, security files may well have grossly inaccurate but damaging accounts of our activities, minor offences can give us a criminal record, our DNA is stored to be checked at any time. Paranoia? At least we are still able to empathise with Orgon, who has been pardoned this time – but perhaps the King may not be so understanding next time around.
Only after a painful elapse of time, and after two splendid petitions to the King from Molière, was the ban finally lifted and the play allowed to be performed in Paris in 1669. It was an instant success, and has since remained the most frequently performed of Molière’s plays at the Comédie Française.
Nicholas Dromgoole
London, 2002
Characters
ORGON
a gentleman
MARIANE
his daughter
ELMIRE
his wife
DAMIS
his son
MME PERNELLE
his mother
CLEANTE
Elmire’s brother
DORINE
their maid
VALERE
betrothed to Mariane
TARTUFFE
a religious fraud
LAURENT
his acolyte
MONSIEUR LOYAL
a bailiff
An OFFICER
of the court
FLIPOTE
Mme Pernelle’s maid
This translation of Tartuffe was first performed at the Royal National Theatre on 23 February 2002, with the following cast:
MME PERNELLE, Margaret Tyzack
ORGON, David Threlfall
ELMIRE, Clare Holman
DAMIS, Tom Goodman-Hill
MARIANE, Melanie Clark Pullen
VALERE, Sam Troughton
CLEANTE, Julian Wadham
TARTUFFE, Martin Clunes
DORINE, Debra Gillett
MONSIEUR LOYAL, Nicholas Day
THE OFFICER, Martin Chamberlain
FLIPOTE, Marianne Morley
LAURENT, Scott Frazer
POLICEMEN, Andrew McDonald, Richard Hollis
KING LOUIS XIV, Nick Sampson
Other members of the cast:
Sarah Hay, Suzanne Heathcote, Deborah Winckles
Director, Lindsay Posner
Designer, Ashley Martin-Davis
Lighting Designer, Wolfgang Goebbel
Music, Gary Yershon
Director of Movement, Jane Gibson
Sound Designer, Christopher Shutt
Musicians, Mark Bousie, Walter Fabeck
ACT ONE
A room in Orgon’s house. MME PERNELLE, ELMIRE, DAMIS, MARIANE,
CLEANTE, DORINE, FLIPOTE.
MME PERNELLE: That’s it. I’m leaving. Come, Flipote.
My goat’s been well and truly got.
ELMIRE: Please wait. We can’t keep up with you.
MME PERNELLE: That’s because I don’t want you to.
These antics chill me to the core.
ELMIRE: What do you have to rush off for?
We show respect. You have your due.
MME PERNELLE: I’m horrified by all of you.
I’m leaving in extreme distress –
I’ve never liked this household less.
Who listens to a word I say?
Or does the smallest thing my way?
It’s more than I have strength to bear
This chaos drives me to despair!
When will you people ever learn
To hold your tongues, or speak in turn,
Respecting person, time, and place?
Your slipshod ways are a disgrace!
DORINE: If –
MME PERNELLE: You’re a servant, and as such,
You tend to think, and talk, too much.
When will your insolence be checked?
When will you learn to show respect
And not keep sticking in your oar?
DAMIS: But
–
MME PERNELLE: You annoy me even more.
You’re nothing but a cloth-eared clot,
I’m your grandmother, am I not?
I ought to know. You were a brat,
I often told your father that,
I warned him, too, what lay ahead:
‘He’ll be a constant cross,’ I said.
‘He’ll cause you endless stress and strain.’
MARIANE: You want my view?
MME PERNELLE: Not you again!
His sister – oh, you’re so discreet,
And butter-wouldn’t-melt and sweet
But you have cost me no less sleep:
Still waters, as they say, run deep,
Behind that smooth front, what goes on?
The thought is a disturbing one.
Devious – that’s the word for you.
ELMIRE: But mother-in-law...
MME PERNELLE: I blame you, too.
You are the stepmother from Hell,
You don’t do right, you don’t live well,
You’re a fine model for these two!
They will improve by copying you!
– Their mother wasn’t half as bad,
Your spendthrift habits make me mad,
Look how expensively you dress,
You’re got up now like some princess!
A wife can’t need such fripperies,
There’s nobody she has to please
Besides her husband. That being so
Why primp and prance, I’d like to know.
CLEANTE: But surely, in the present case...
MME PERNELLE: Her brother...yeees...you have a place
In my esteem – I’m fond of you
And sometimes share your point of view –
I’ve heard you say things that were sane.
And yet, to me, this much is plain:
If my poor son had any nous
He would debar you from his house:
You stand on shaky moral ground,
The mode of life that you expound
Is one that no one should pursue –
No decent person, in my view.
Forgive my speaking as I find
But when there’s something on my mind
I say just what I have to say
And mincing words is not my way.
DAMIS: Your friend Tartuffe would jump for joy...
MME PERNELLE: You should pay him more heed, my boy.
Tartuffe’s a good man – no, the best,
And if there’s one thing I detest
It is to see a fool like you
Carping at him the way you do.
DAMIS: The man is a censorious fraud
And yet he’s treated like a lord!
He’s seized control, that’s what he’s done –
No one can have an ounce of fun
Do anything but sleep and eat
Unless Tartuffe has ‘deemed it meet ’.
DORINE: Name just one thing he hasn’t banned,
Condemned as ‘sinful’, out of hand –
We have some harmless pleasure planned
And straight off he prohibits it,
The pious, pompous, puffed-up git!
MME PERNELLE: How else are you to get to Heaven?
He should ban six things out of seven
And you should love him, all of you –
In fact, my son should force you to.
DAMIS: He couldn’t, grandma. Nothing can
Alter my feelings for that man:
I hate him, and because I do
I say so: to thyself be true –
That’s my creed. He enrages me
And, to be honest, I foresee
Dire trouble: I’ll do something rash.
That swine and I are sure to clash.
DORINE: Who is he? No one seems to know.
That hasn’t stopped him, has it, though?
He lords it over us, he does,
A guest? he bloody governs us!
He won’t give over now he’s parked
His big fat arse. He’s got me narked.
I ask you, what was he before?
Apart from miserable and poor?
His clothes were worth about ten sous,
He wasn’t even wearing shoes
But he’s forgotten all that now –
Bossing us all about and...ow!
This, as MME PERNELLE hits her.
MME PERNELLE: If only what you said were true:
I wish he had control of you
And you obeyed his pious laws.
DORINE: He’s pulled the wool right over yours
But our eyes see a hypocrite.
I wish you’d take my word for it –
Him and Laurent, his serving lad,
They’re bad eggs both, extremely bad –
It scarcely needs to be discussed,
It’s obvious: they’re the kind you trust
No further than they can be thrown.
MME PERNELLE: How dare you take this bumptious tone!
The servant isn’t my concern
And what he’s like I’ve yet to learn –
I know the master through and through,
And he’s a saint, I promise you.
This fierce hostility of yours
Springs from an all too obvious cause:
His censure makes you self-aware,
He lays your many failings bare –
But it’s not you he’s angry with,
It’s sin itself he can’t forgive,
So let him lecture and protest,
It’s all in Heaven’s interest.
DORINE: But what I still can’t comprehend
Is why our sanctimonious friend
Will not allow us to receive.
What is he hoping to achieve
By forcing us to say we’re out
And stopping people calling? Nowt.
Yet he makes such a song and dance.
You don’t suppose, by any chance,
He’s jealous – of Madame? Perhaps
The sight of her with other chaps
Is just too much for him to bear?
Yeeees, there’s a whiff of something there.
MME PERNELLE: Why can’t you hold your tongue, Dorine?
Your viewpoint isn’t worth a bean.
You plunge straight in. You don’t think first.
These visitors with which you’re cursed,
The awful pother they create,
The constant coaches at your gate,
The servants with their dreadful racket,
No one who lives round here can hack it.
You say it’s harmless fun. Maybe.
But people talk, which worries me.
CLEANTE: Oh, let them chatter – need we mind?
Wouldn’t it be a dreadful bind
If nothing but a foolish fear
Of gossip kept us prisoners here,
Cut off from all our friends? What’s more,
Suppose we could keep Tartuffe’s law?
Tongues would still wag, it’s what tongues do,
Scandal will find a passage through
No matter how secure a wall
We built against it – hang them all!
Their talk won’t bother us a bit
As long as there’s no grounds for it –
Provided we’ve done nothing wrong
They’re free to babble all day long.
DORINE: Is it that blabbermouth Daphne?
The woman just across the way?
Her and her husband? Am I right?
They’re slandering us, as well they might,
Since they are always talked about;
They’re sniffing other scandal out,
Shame’s not so shameful if it’s shared,
Two sets of dirty sheets compared
Don’t look as dirty as one set –
That’s what’s behind all this, I’ll bet.
MME PERNELLE: Tha
t makes no difference, dunderhead!
What of Orante? She’s always led
A pious life, a paragon
She is, or pretty close to one,
Her thoughts are fixed on God – and she
(So folk have been informing me)
Condemns this house, and execrates
The goings-on behind its gates.
DORINE: It’s not a house that she’d condone,
Being an ancient, hideous crone.
It’s age that’s made that woman chaste,
And even if she had a taste
For sin, and hankered for a beau
(As well she may, for all I know)
Her body wouldn’t play along:
She’s not equipped for doing wrong.
She’s knocked about, though, in her time –
You bet your life that, in her prime,
She put her...points to proper use.
But now her flesh is hanging loose,
She gets new wrinkles every day,
Her dazzling charms have ebbed away,
Skedaddled, never to return,
So what’s she do? Pretends to spurn
A world that has in fact spurned her.
Her prudishness is, as it were,
Worn, like a sombre veil, to hide
A beauty that has putrefied.
Yes, she’s austere, as well behoves
A woman men have left in droves.
Of course she criticises us.
What d’you expect? She’s envious –
Of those who have their charms intact;
She seems so pious, but in fact
She’s simply spoiling people’s fun,
’Cos she, poor cow, is having none.
MME PERNELLE: What nonsense, girl!
(To ELMIRE.) You see, my dear,
