The Tartuffe Controversy

The script of Tartuffe which we have today is the last of three separate versions which stirred great controversy.

Three acts of the first Tartuffe were presented in 1664 at Versailles as part of Pleasures of the Enchanted Garden. In this original version, Tartuffe was probably a cleric, or at least costumed in such a way to imply some connection with the church. This alone would have scandalized his audience, as ecclesiastical costume onstage would have been a shocking novelty in France at the time. Powerful men in the secretive "cabal of the devout" were offended by the play. The archbishop of Paris and the first president of parliament were aggressively opposed to the production. A full production of the play was prohibited by the interdict of the King.

This was not the first objection to one of Molière's plays. There had been a bitter and violent opposition to his L'Ecole des Femmes. Molière suspected the shadowy "cabal of the devout." This was a secret organization that had been growing in power for decades before Tartuffe was written. The cabal had been founded by men sympathetic to the Jansenists, but who were pragmatic enough to throw in with the Jesuits in their ascension. Their purpose was to strengthen the authority of the church. Convinced of the piety of their purpose, they were willing to use whatever means were necessary to achieve their goal. The existence of the cabal of the devout was unconfirmed, but pervasive-rather like the Mafia in our own day. And like that modern counterpart, it was suspected whenever puritan intolerance raised its head.

Oddly, the Italian theatre, so much closer to Rome, saw many priests, corrupt and otherwise, on its stage, to name one extreme example, the priest in Machiavelli's La mandragola. A few of these Italian plays had been performed in France without objection. In fact, just a few days after the royal interdict, the Italian Comedians, whose patron was the powerful Cardinal Mazarin, played Scaramouche 'Ermite at court. The King supposedly said to Condé, "I should like to know why those who are so scandalized by Molière's play do not object to this Scaramouche?" Condè is said to have replied: "This Scaramouche shows up religion and heaven, about which these gentlemen care nothing; but Molière's play shows them up, something they will not permit."

It is clear that the king himself saw nothing scandalous in the play. When a Parisian priest published a violent diatribe against the author, Louis listened to Molière's protest and censured the libel of the priest

Some theorists assume that the subplot of Marianne's fate was not in the original. But, if Tartuffe were in fact a priest, Orgon's plan to give Tartuffe his daughter's hand would have been truly shocking since priests were not supposed to marry and may have justified the interdict. The prohibition may have been more a matter of domestic tranquility. The queen and the queen-mother, both Spaniards and devout Catholics, may have taken offense at something in the first version, and urged Louis to ban it.
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Molière took every opportunity to advance his play. When a nephew of Alexander VII came to Fontainebleau as a papal legate, Molière read Tartuffe to the delegation that accompanied the pope's ambassador. The delegation included a number of important churchmen including a cardinal, and they did not disapprove of the play.

Still, the interdiction stood. As Rabelais had done before him, Molière repeatedly read the play before influential people to gather support and demonstrate that the play was not subversive and was therefore worthy of production. No one protested these readings, so Molière managed three private performances of the entire play at family residences of Condé. Still the king did not lift the interdict, even though he asked his brother Monsieur for the company in 1665 and gave it an annual pension of 6000 livres, and bestowed on it the title of "the company of the king."

In 1667, with the king at the head of his army in Flanders, Molière staged the second version of the play at the Palais-Royal. Tartuffe was now L'Imposteur, and the title character, Panulphe. Perhaps Molière was under the misconception that the interdiction had been lifted. Or, it may have been a case of "when the cat's away..." The next morning the first president of parliament, acting as the ruler in Paris during the king's absence, banned the play. In less than a week, the Archbishop of Paris banned the public or private performance, reading or recitation of the play under penalty of excommunication. "…the mice will play."

Molière responded by sending La Grange with a petition to the king, seeking the lifting of his interdiction. Louis promised he would consider the matter on his return from the war. And there matters stood until the Sun King at last gave his imprimatur for the uninterrupted public performance of Tartuffe. Finally in February 1669, the third version of the play was performed. It was an immediate success, playing an unprecedented 44 performances. And the rest, as they say, is history.