Jean Baptiste Moliere

A detailed Summary of Jean Baptiste Moliere

JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN MOLIÈRE1622--1673From The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces Vol. 2, 7th edition, ed. Maynard Mack, et. al. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999) Son of a prosperous Paris merchant, Jean-Baptiste Moliere (originally named Poquelin) devoted his entire adult life to the creation of stage illusion, as playwright and as actor. At about the age of twenty-five, he joined a company of traveling players established by the Bejart family; with them he toured the provinces for about twelve years. In 1658 the company was ordered to perform for Louis XIV in Paris; a year later, Molieres first great success, The High-Brow Ladies (Les Precieuses ridicules), was produced. The theatrical company to which he belonged, patronized by the king, became increasingly successful, developing finally (1680) into the Comedie Francaise. In 1662, Moliere married Armande Bejart. He died a few hours after performing in the lead role of his own play The Imaginary Invalid. Moliere wrote both broad farce and comedies of character, in which he caricatured some form of vice or folly by embodying it in a single figure. His targets included the miser, the aspiring but vulgar middle class, female would-be intellectuals, the hypochondriac, and in Tartu

ffe, the religious hypocrite. In Tartuffe (1664), as in his other plays, Moliere employs classic comic devices of plot and character--here, a foolish, stubborn father blocking the course of young love; an impudent servant commenting on her superiors actions; a happy ending involving a marriage facilitated by implausible means. He often uses such devices, however, to comment on his own immediate social scene, imagining how universal patterns play themselves out in a specific historical context. Tartuffe had contemporary relevance so transparent that the Catholic Church forced the king to ban it, although Moliere managed to have it published and produced once more by 1669. The plays emotional energy derives not from the simple discrepancy of man and mask in Tartuffe ("Is not a face quite different from a mask?" inquires the normative character Cleante, who has no trouble making such distinctions) but from the struggle for erotic, psychic, and economic power in which people employ their masks. One can readily imagine modern equivalents for the stresses and strains within Orgons family. Orgon, an aging man with grown children, seeks ways to preserve control. His mother, Madame Pernelle, encourages his efforts, thus fostering her illusion that she still runs things. Orgon identifies his own interests with those of the hypocritical Tartuffe, toward whom he plays a benevolent role. Because Tartuffe fulsomely hails him as benefactor, Orgon feels utterly powerful in relation to his fawning dependent. When he orders his passive daughter Mariane to marry Tartuffe, he reveals his vision of complete domestic autocracy. Tartuffes lust, one of those passions forever eluding human mastery, disturbs Orgons arrangements; in the end, the will of the offstage king orders everything, as though a benevolent god had intervened. To make Tartuffe a specifically religious hypocrite is an act of inventive daring. Or

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