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Hello and welcome back. How are you doing today? I hope you're keeping well and I hope your reading is going well. Today we are talking about Tartuffe. Fantastic play. But Jean Baptiste Poquelin or Moliere got a lot more than he had bargained for when it came to the first performance of this play. What we have in our hands, when we pour over the script of Tartuffe, is a physicalization of pure scandal, because Tartuffe caused a huge scandal. We have a piece of theatrical history here in our hands, and the same way that we carry the history of our life and the ills we have suffered around in our physiology. A book or a play or a poem, a work of art contains its history encoded into it. And indeed, the history of theatre and literature is ultimately a history of censorship, coming up against it, defeating it, succumbing to it, rolling with it. And if you want to make a study of suppression, oppression, censorship and banning, then you can chart a pretty powerful and insightful course through the great works of literature and how these works came to be. And the conflict that these great artists came up against often contains a story even more exhilarating and profound than the story they've put on stage or on the page. Now we have to guess at what the original Tartuffe looked like, the Tartuffe of the first performance. Because what we see today, what we have today, is not what was performed before King Louis XIV in the palace of Versailles on 12 May, 1664, as part of a series of celebrations, royal spectacles. That play, that first version of Tartuffe, was banned within just three days of the first performance. It was banned swiftly, and great scholars of French dramatic literature have made great efforts to reconstruct the Ur Tartuf. And that means the original. Yeah, the same way we talk of the Ur Hamlet, the lost first version of that tragedy, we can talk of the Ur Tartuf. The original does not survive, nor do we have significant commentary from the troupe about it. Now, the play would sweep through Europe in bootleg manuscript form, aristocrats would read it aloud in salons across the continent. And the French authorities had their work cut out for them when it came to putting a stop to that. But if you wanted to see the play with your own eyes, you'd be waiting half a decade. And by the time you finally could, the play had changed dramatically. Now, there was a very brief revival of the play when Moliere put a rewritten version entitled the Imposter. He put this version on a few years after the first Tartuffe was banned, but that was cottoned on too swiftly and the play in that form was banned too. By the time he was finally able to put the play on stage with serious changes, audiences flocked to it. The banning was good for business because hey, scandal sells. So people flooded in to see what the fuss was all about and Tartuffe ended up being a box office smash hit. And what does that tell you? It tells you that the outrage directed at Monsieur Moliere's play was not from the general public. So who was it from? Well, if we were to cast our eyes across the crowd of that first royal performance, we would see King Louis, the Sun King, of course, and perhaps we could even discern a smile creeping up his face because he loved the play. But we wouldn't see many others smiling. The Queen Mother, Anne of Austria, who was a very devout Catholic, was in the audience too, and she was outraged. And so were many members of La Compagnie du Saint Sacrement, or the Company of the Holy Sacrament. And this was a 30 year old secret society of priests and religious figures, prominent nobles, officials, magistrates and so forth, that aimed at promoting a purer, more pious form of Catholicism in society. This group had set out to combat the evils of the age, which involved systems systematically repressing so called religious disorder in society. And the public opinion of them was not good. They were seen as a conspiratorial society of essentially power hungry vigilantes, which was about right now, around the time of Moliere's penning and performing of Tartuffe. The heights of this company's powers and the persecution they were enacting had begun to wane and dissolve. But there were still prominent members, secret inner circle members who were attaining sway in the court by appealing to the Queen Mother. This was the group that got Tartuf banned and their suppression of Tartuf was their last success on their way out of power and influence. But even after the dissolution of the core group, such was the power of their polemic and targeted propaganda against Moliere that for several years after their dissolution, Tartufe remained off the boards. Why were they so angry about the play? Well, quite frankly, they were angry because they saw themselves. Now this is not what they said, that's not the reason. They said they thought the play was bad for society and anti religious. But we can also see that Moliere was not being subtle in the fact that he was satirizing them or people who looked a lot like them. What Oscar Wilde said about the 19th century is no less true for the 17th century and will continue to be true for a very long time, unless humans experience a fundamental change in their nature. Wilde, who scandalised fin de siecle England and ended up imprisoned, would say that dislike of realism is the rage of seeing one's face in the glass. These members of the sacred Sacrament ultimately were not for the most, most part, pious individuals. They used piety as a ruse, as a Machiavellian chess piece, as a strategy to gain power and influence to obtain favour from the devout Queen Mother. In the first version of the play we see that the monstrous, manipulative, gluttonous, parasitic and hypocritical title character Tartuffe, was actually a member of the clergy. He isn't in the form we see today and we think he was a originally based on specific high profile members of these so called holy men. In the form of the play we have today. Tartuffe is a con man, not an actual clergyman. And also another difference is in the original we did not have the voice of reason in the form of the character Cleant, and we also didn't have that Deus ex machina ending with the King himself saving the day. In the original we see Orgone facilitating his own cuckoldry and the play ended after three acts, whilst our version today has five acts and veers close to complete tragedy. Now, the company of the Holy Sacrament weren't the only ones who were angry. Moliere was angry too. He put so much of himself into this work and this was the culmination of his career, his entire career career. It's one of his greatest works and we can appreciate that today. But he was thoroughly upset that this got banned and he didn't think that was just now. He went back to Spanish legend. With Tartuf banned, he started to pen his own version of the Don Juan story at the King's behest. The King said, I've got to ban this, but why don't you write another story? But that did not last either, and that ended up banned as well. So I think we can understand why Moliere around this time was becoming increasingly unhappy and angry and misanthropic. Moliere advocated for his playful Tartuffe for years. He petitioned the King constantly and he protested that he was not attacking religion or true religious piety, but rather hypocrisy. And whilst this is true, from what we know of the original, we can see that that first performance was much more of an on the nose Basically direct attack against this specific religious group. Moliere hit out at them and they hit back. He got the pushback that was inevitable. He knew who these individuals were. And on their way out with their waning power, they said, well, we're not having this. And it could not have been a surprise to Moliere. Now, in the preface of the 1669 edition, Moliere would write, if the function of comedy is to correct men's vices. And let's pause here for a moment and let's just think, is this true? Really think about that assumption. If the function of comedy is to correct men's vices, is that something that you agree with? Is that the function of comedy? I always personally find it very interesting to read what the artists themselves say about their works. Whether we're talking about Oscar Wilde or Walt Whitman or Leo Tolstoy or Moliere. It's always really interesting to read their aesthetic manifestos because their analysis, their artistic analysis and self analysis is always part of their art form. And we might think, how can you see beyond your art when you are your art too? Now, personally, I can think of several functions, if we want to use the word for comedy, that aren't to do with moral instruction. Festive celebration, for example. That's a nice alternative to didacticism. And it can be hard to sit in a theatre and be preached to unless the playwright is a supreme craftsman and a real genius. And Moliere, luckily, is both of those things. But he's right. One of the functions of comedy, we could say a certain kind of comedy, is to correct men's vices. Whether it works or not is a whole different question. Now I continue to read his preface. Moliere says, if the function of comedy is to correct men's vices, I do not see why any should be exempt. Such a condition in our society would be much more dangerous than the thing itself. And we have seen that the theatre is admirably suited to provide correction. Now that's very profound. It's more dangerous in society to set a precedent for censorship and banning than to allow the thing you want to ban to continue. Consider that every single work we have read together as part of the book club, even the works that solicit almost unanimous adoration, every single work has a group, sometimes large, sometimes small, of detractors who want to see it removed from the earth. And if this standard were set, there would not be any books left. We would have a Fahrenheit 451 situation on our hands. If we give in once, or make an excuse once, or justify it once, you set a precedent and you leave the question. When you do not ban a different book, well, why was this one banned but this one isn't? Are you saying that this one, the themes it wrestles with, which I find offensive, are you saying that this one's not as damaging as this? What about the damage that this one can do? Now, to this point, Moliere would say, I acknowledge that there have been times when comedy was perverted, and what is not perverted every day in this world, there is nothing so innocent that people cannot consider it a crime, no art so beneficial that they are not capable of changing its purpose. Wow, that is so true. And Moliere continues to say in his preface that the most forceful lines of a serious moral statement are usually less powerful than those of satire. And nothing will reform most men better than the depiction of their faults. Again, we might wonder, is this true? Now, I believe the very first part of that statement is true. For example, we can say lying is bad for the individual and society. That's a direct moral statement, and we know that's true. But what impact does that have? Does saying that change us or influence us? Does it have much of an effect upon us? But if you take that moral truth and if you clothe it in drama, and if you allow characters with conflicting desires to come up against each other, all of them obliquely or directly, wrestling with this issue, and if you inject humor and also pathos into your narrative, if you bring some symbolism in, and if you write with a beautiful lilt and sway and cadence, then that truth absolutely will be much more powerful. We remember story, we remember character. They are the vehicles to transport wisdom. Character contains truth. Story contains truth. In France, for example, when someone is being a hypocrite, you will often hear them referred to as a tartuffe. So the name has become synonymous with that idea because it's more impactful. You can see the profundity of that word, that idea, can't you? If you call someone a hypocrite or you call someone a Tartuffe, well, one does not have as many emotional hooks and memories and imagery as the other. We do this for all great writers. In fact, I might say that the mark of a great writer is whether their characters end up becoming abstractions or synonyms used to convey ideas. We can plunder the plays of William Shakespeare, we can go through the novels of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, and we can find characters that today we use as a Symbolic shorthand to convey an idea. Think of any of your favorite characters and you'll see that this is true. But the second part of Moliere's statement there is that nothing will reform most men better than the depiction of their faults. Now, personally, do I believe in the reforming power of art? Now, I waver on this a little bit because I don't think overt moral instruction always works, not in an artistic sense. And I don't think that an artist talking from atop a pedestal always works. But I do think that great plays and poems and novels can result in peak experiences, deep emotional and spiritual transformation. Do I believe you can be reborn and re evaluate your life and find yourself reformed? Do I believe that you can discover all the things you need to write in your life while sitting in the theater watching a great play? Absolutely, I do. The reforming power of art is most certainly there. But I'm not sure that attacking people saying that someone is morally wrong is going to reform them. I'm not sure if shoving someone's faults in their face always works. It might work sometimes. It might work for someone who's primed for it or a certain kind of person, but sometimes you just end up making people more resolute in their behavior because they feel attacked. How many times does it work if you're gonna really show the hypocrisy of someone right to their face? Does anyone feeling the sting of a humiliating attack on their character say, yes, you're right, I am morally abject. I am an immoral person. Thank you so much for pointing that out. I' change. Show me the way, why don't you? Ultimately, the one who can show us the way is always ourselves. But great art facilitates that. And when it does, it's partly because, as Emerson says, we recognize our own rejected thoughts in the art. And sometimes it is easier to take our thoughts from another, especially when they have a certain sense of alienated majesty to them. Now, Moliere continues in his preface, and he says that it is a vigorous blow to vices to expose them to public laughter. We're talking about satire here, comedy as a weapon. And often in Moliere's plays, you are either laughing at someone, a certain type of person, or you are the one being laughed at. Now, perhaps if those most outraged at the play had had the fortune to have been counseled by Jane Austen's Mr. Bennet, then perhaps the play wouldn't have even been banned, because Mr. Bennet says, for what do we live but to make sport for our neighbours? And Laugh at them in turn. I love that. It's a reciprocal humour. So really beautiful worldview. We live to make sport for our neighbours and we're always going to muck up. We can't take ourselves too seriously, let people laugh at us. But hey, when we do that, we also have the luxury of laughing at them too. I kind of like that. Alas, that was not to be. And the priest of Sainte Barthelemy, a man called Roule, would hit back at Moliere's self defense. And he would say that the playwright and the character of Tartuffe alike were demons in human flesh and clothes. Indeed, he wanted the king to strap Moliere to a stake and set it alight. Rule would say, if the purpose of the comedian, as Moliere says it is, is to amend men's lives by amusing them, then Moliere's purpose is to ruin their souls eternally by making them laugh like those serpents whose deathly fangs shed a smile on the faces of those they wound. Very interesting imagery. And I think we can tell that there is a lot of hurt in those words. Moliere has wounded this man because words and performance and story and character, all of this has the power to wound. Why are plays banned and censored? Because the pen is mightier than the sword. The truth can set you free. But what if freedom is not what those in power want for you? What if your freedom is very far from their circle of concern? And we see that the ones upset at Tartuffe are those who would preach piety and morality and virtue only as a means to get what they want. And this is what Tartuffe is all about. So he showed them themselves, he held up a mirror to them. And we can identify in every great work of literature a thesis statement. Yeah. I invite you to do this with every work we explore together. Ask yourself, what is the thesis statement? It's one line. Yeah, maybe two. But challenge yourself to sum up the play or the novel, the short story, the poem, in one line, you want to identify the idea set of related concerns that the artist wishes to explore. Moliere, in this play has dramatized the question of what is hypocrisy? Why are we hypocritical? What's the value in recognizing hypocrisy? What's the danger in not recognizing it? And how can we not be hypocritical? And as we have a comic character study of a man who pretends to be pious in order to gain material wealth, we might ask what the difference between genuine virtue and the fake virtue. How can you tell them apart? We are invited to enter this discussion when we watch and read this play. Now, my assertion is this. Hypocrisy is wanting to be seen doing things rather than actually doing them. If you can't be seen doing good things, what's the point? And indeed, to the hypocrite, it is better to be observed as doing good than actually being good and go unobserved. And hypocrisy can be identified when what someone says is out of line with what they actually do. And so, in that way, hypocrites feign virtue whilst enacting vice. And we learn from the start of the play that this is the kind of man Tartuffe is now. Richard Williams Wilbur, in the introduction to his excellent translation of the play in the Library of America edition. And truly, Wilbur has given those readers without French a real gift here. He has rendered the humorous rhyming couplets beautifully, and he has managed to keep the sound and sense intact, even whilst choosing to render Moliere's French Alexandrine into English iambic pentameter, because this is the default metrical scheme of English poetry. That fits the English breath the way the Alexandrine fits the French poetic breath. Now, Wilbur has questioned whether the play is truly about religious hypocrisy, and he says that whilst Tartuffe at times may suggest or symbolize religious hypocrisy, he himself is not such a person. Yeah, hypocrite is not how we would describe him. He is a versatile parasite or confidence man with a very long criminal record. And to pose as a holy man is not his only modus operandi. So, on the one hand, we can see hypocrisy as being something of a common trait of the human condition. It unites us all. No one is safe from being hypocritical. But interestingly, it's the easiest vice to point out, or it's one of the easiest vices to point out. It's also the easiest vice to spot mistakenly. A lot of people are charged with hypocrisy erroneously because it fits the one leveling the charge. It fits their world view. But the interesting thing about hypocrisy as well is that it can be really difficult to locate, acknowledge and change in oneself. It's very easy to see it all around you. Sometimes it seems like the world is built on hypocrisy, hypocrisy built on lies and deceit, but in oneself, that's hard that's deep self work to discover that and root it out. And really, hypocrisy is a manifestation of deceit. But we can be hypocritical because we have not thought through the implications of what we're saying. So we can be hypocritical accidentally, but we can be hypocritical deliberately when we lie to get what we want. And so, of course, criminals would be hypocritical. Critical, psychopathic narcissists would be pathologically hypocritical, because they are always deceiving. And that's what I think Tartuffe is. I think he is a psychopathic narcissist who is constantly lying to get what he wants. And when I think about lying, when I think about falsehood, I think about what Montaigne said, because Montaigne believed that lying, which is an accursed vice, was the worst of the vices. It is only our words, Montaigne said, which bind us together and make us human. If we realized the horror and weight of lying, we would see that it is more worthy of the stake than other crimes. It seems to me that the only faults which we should vigorously attack as soon as they arise and start to develop, are lying and a little below that, stubbornness. So hypocrisy is a kind of interesting idea. It's like a network of ideas. A lot can branch off from it. Are we talking about hypocrisy? Are we talking about deception? Are they the same thing? Are they a little bit different? And it's interesting to note that Tartuffe is a hypocrite. Yes. And he is ultimately a deceiver, a liar, a swindler. He's a criminal who is an impostor. We see this sense of the word hypocrite right there in the renamed title of the reworked version of the play, which was also banned because Moliere called the play the Impostor. Now, if we look to the very etymology of the word hypocrisy itself, and I encourage you to become a student of etymology, because our ancestors have gifted us wisdom in the words we use every day without thinking, There is history, psychology, philosophy. There's art in individual words. And seeing the family tree of the language you speak in the related languages, seeing the line that a certain word traveled down, how it developed and evolved is fascinating. In the French, the word hypocrisy comes from the Latin, and it means an imitation of a person's speech and gestures. And then after that, it started to take on the meaning of the sin of pretending to have virtue or goodness. But the word also comes out of the Attic Greek hypocrisis, which means acting on the stage. Hypocrisy in Greek means playing a part. And perhaps we think of Jacques in Shakespeare's as yous Like it, all the world's a stage, and one man in his time plays many parts. There's almost a sense of hypocrisy at laughing at hypocrisy, because when we laugh, the underlying assumption is that, well, we don't do that. Isn't it awful what they are doing? But everybody plays a part. What do we designate as hypocritical? And what do we. Not everybody wears a mask, and many different masks, some to different degrees and different effects and aims than others. But when are we not playing a part? Indeed, sometimes we can truly be ourselves when we play a part. And Jean Baptiste Poquelin certainly knew this. He was very unhappy when he was not on stage. He was very melancholy, he was anxious, he had a lot of problems, a lot of despair. But when he was on stage, oh, he could find freedom. He could really be himself. And so it's interesting to wonder as well, do we play a part or several parts more than not, do we play a part even with ourselves? What is the story we're telling ourselves? What is the character we're playing? Can we drop the mask in a moment of quiet and solitude and be honest with ourselves? Perhaps it's even more difficult to drop the mask with ourselves than others. So in the play we see the character of Orgone, who was played by Moliere himself. There was something very attractive about the role of the would be cuckold to Jean Baptiste. Time and time again we see the character of Orgone and his mother, Madame Pernelle, are both taken in by Tartuffe's ruse. And Tartuffe, though his appearance on stage is delayed until halfway through the play. Tartuffe, we learn, is long lodging at Orgone's house. He is gorging himself on food, he's drinking, he's sleeping, and Orgone can't get enough of him. Everything he does is amazing. When he belches, Orgone blesses him. And at the start of the play we see that Orgone's wife, Elmir, his second wife and stepmother to his son and daughter Demise. And Marianne Elmir is ill in bed. She has fever. But we see that Orgone really has no concern about that. All he wants to know is whether Tartuf is okay, how's Tartuffe doing. The picture given us of this individual by the characters before he appears is comically revolting. But we might also wonder, why is he there in the first place? Why is he in Orgon's house? That's a bit strange, isn't it? Well, Orgon has bumped into this pile, overtly charitable man at church and he has invited him to stay. And this isn't that strange because rich bourgeois homes would actually often have a resident live in director of conscience. Yeah, that's what they were called, directors of conscience. A spiritual advisor to guide them. They would have visiting tutors teaching them and their families how to dance, how to play the piano, how to do all sorts of things. They would have tutors for mathematics and the humanities and so forth. But Tartuffe is the spiritual guide. And if you watched the recommended film, do we call it a biopic? The recommended film that I put in the resources section for our introductory lecture on Moliere at the Hardcore Literature Book Club and that's available@patreon.com hardcore literature. We also have lectures on Moliere's the Mishaps and the Learned Ladies and the School for Wives available to enjoy on demand. If you're not a member already, then when you sign up you will find a contents page which contains close to 600 lectures, read throughs and bookish discussions on so many of the greatest works of literature. Works like War and Peace, the Brothers Karamazov, Ulysses, east of Eden, Pride and Prejudice and many, many more. And at time of recording, we're just bringing our Tale of Genji read through to its close and we've kicked off our infinite jest read through. So we would love to have you join us for that. But if you watched my recommended moliere film from 2007, if you watch that film, which takes a lot of poetic license with the so called lost years of Jean Baptiste's life, it's a brilliant film. I really love it. I watched it twice in a row. It has a real Shakespeare in Love quality to it. But what's interesting is you can see that the filmmakers have essentially stitched together bits of Moliere's plays. There are illusions running through it. They wanted to create the effect of a film that could have been written by Moliere himself. And I think they did a really good job. But we see that Moliere in that film is a Tartuffe character and he ends up being the so called spiritual advisor to the husband and father of the house. Now, of course he is just a con man. And this man is actually soliciting Malia to help him make a play for a woman that he wants to woo. This man, of course, is married. So it has to be hush hush. They have to do it secretly. But she, of course, Cotton's onto it pretty quickly. If you haven't watched it, give it a watch. I wouldn't call it super accurate. There are bits in there that are very accurate to his life. Like we see the dramatization of him being thrown in jail for his debts and so forth. But there's a lot of poetic license. But I think during. Know what? I think that's great. I thought the same thing for Shakespeare in Love too. Now, Tartuffe is a man that everybody in the family can see through, except for Orgone and his mother. Your man Tartuffe is full of holy speeches, says Damis Orgon's son. And then he's cut off by his grandmother, who says and practices precisely what he preaches. So she believes that Tartuffe is there to save their souls. And the maid Dorin, my favourite character in the play, says to hear him talk. And he talks all the time. There's nothing one can do that's not a crime. And those who have the greatest cause for guilt and shame, she says, are quickest to besmirch a neighbour's name. And this is something that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount spoke to directly. And we explored the Sermon on the Mount in our lecture on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure at the Hardcore Literature Book Club as part of our chronological read through of the complete works of William Shakespeare. Again, that's@patreon.com hardcoreliterature so if you're interested in exploring that part of Scripture, which in my opinion is one of the great literary set pieces in the history of literature in the canon, you've got the Sermon on the Mount, you've got Dostoevsky's the Grand Inquisitor, you've got Hamlet asking to be or not to be. But in the Sermon on the mount in Matthew 7, we're told that Jesus said, judge not that ye be not judged. So don't judge unless you want to be judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye, thou hypocrite? And I'm quoting from the King James version of the Bible, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. So don't focus on what everybody else is doing. It's very easy to point out what everyone else is doing wrong and never focus on what you're doing wrong. If you can sort yourself out first, you'll be in a much better position to help the world and help everybody around you. But focus on that first, and I think that is solid, solid life advice. Now we see that Orgone's brother in law, Cleante, tries valiantly to make Orgone see and client is the kind of character that we refer to as the raisonneur. In Moliere's plays, you have the voice of reason and we're supposed to see things from their point of view. And we would hope that we are this character Cleanthe, not Orgon, and certainly not Tartuffe. We have a raisonneur in Moliere's works and we also have an imaginaire character, a deluded character. Indeed, many of Moliere's greatest characters are completely and utterly deluded. And when these characters come up against each other, great drama ensues. Now, what is going, going on with Orgone? Why has he managed to have the wool pulled over his eyes so thoroughly? Well, he is naive and foolish, we could say that. But we can also see, and this is subtle at the beginning, at least to modern audiences, though it would have been much more noticeable in Moliere's day. We can see that Orgone has a lot on his mind and he is quite stressed and fearful of potential political persecution. We're told early on that Orgone is a man who has played a part in helping the king with his late troubles. This is an allusion to the Frond, the civil wars that ripped through the land. And this is one of the first mentions of the Frond in French literature. So what might seem innocuous now was quite glaring back then. We also learn that Orgone has a friend called Argasse, who is never seen on stage. And we infer that Argas was anti monarchy, anti Louis xiv, during the Fronde, and he has fled into exile, whilst Orgone has kept hold of some documents for him. What Orgone is doing out of fidelity and a sense of duty to his friend is implicating himself in treason. Hence he is hoping that getting in with this pious individual, this man who has great religious conviction, this tattoo Tartuffe, might be Able to help him, Tartuffe can look after the documents for him. And indeed we learn from Orgone at the end of the play that it was actually Tartuffe who suggested it. He convinced him to put the strongbox of incriminating documents into his care, so that if Orgone were asked about it, he could swear he didn't have it. In Orgone's mind, he's put the documents in the hands of someone he can trust, because who can we trust more than a man from who's lips holy writ flows like wine, except it's not wine. His scriptural talk is a perversion. It's all misquoting and misapplication. He speaks a hodgepodge of religious sounding lines that are good enough to lead or mislead the blind. All this to say Orgone is not only a poor judge of character, but he also isn't completely forthcoming with his true motivations for having Tartufe around, saving the souls of his family members. Is that a motivation? Well, we might say that that would be a nice bonus, but it's not the prime motivation. Rather than have the incriminating documents in the care of a pious individual who can be trusted, Orgone is now in the rather nerve wracking position of having given a swindler something to hold over him and blackmail him with. Which also adds an interesting complication to the character of Tartuffe. Orgone is a poor judge of character, we could say that. But he is also a creator of character. He enables Tartuffe. He is complicit, unaware though he is, in making Tartuffe what he is. This is what Lionel Gossman, in his study of Moliere men and Martin masks, says, Tartuffe creates his Persona. But doesn't Orgon create his Persona too? We might say that Tartuffe is what he is, but we don't want to be the ones that allow people like this to be what they are. And that's what Moliere is saying. Let's point it out, let's not put up with it. Let's not be complicit in another's wrongdoing because of our own murky intentions. Regardless, Orgone early on describes himself as a changed man thanks to Tartuffe. This is often the case when people are being manipulated and deceived effectively. They think that the person who's deceiving them is actually helping them. They're actually helping them be better. They're changing them. Following Tartuffe's precepts has led to Orgone being reborn. And he says that now he can see this dunghill of a world with scorn. That's what he says. Those are Tartuffe's words coming out of Orgone's mouth. But is this a good aim? Is this a good lens? Do we want to see the world as a heap of dung? Victor Frankl would say that if we take man as he is, we make him worse. If we take him as he could be, we promote him, we make him better. So what happens if we consider the world and everyone in it as a heap of dung? Would we make things better or worse? The answer is significantly worse, for ourselves and for everyone around us. But we might also take issue with Orgone's assertion that he is a changed man. And Harold Bloom puts it brilliantly when he says that Moliere will not let anyone in his plays change, whilst Shakespeare's Hamlet, for example, can scarcely get through a line without changing. Now this is really interesting. Where do we as real people sit on that character continuum? Do we change relentless, relentlessly? Do we not change at all? Or are we somewhere in between? Which condition of character do we sit closest to if we had to be reductive, ever changing or ever unchanging? That's a question to keep us preoccupied. Now we can say again, drawing highly relevant wisdom from the Sermon on the Mount, that you will know a tree by its fruits. Every good tree. Tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. And this is one of the most profound truths that I have come to fully accept into my worldview over the years, after repeatedly seeing just how true it is, you will know a person by their followers. And what is the result of Orgone following this? Tartu. Tartuf. Chaos. Domestic chaos. And we laugh because it's a comedy, it's fast paced, it's ludicrous, there are funny jokes and barbs and misunderstandings, but in every joke there is a potential tragedy. If we stripped Tartuffe of its humour, and many have felt the inclination to do this, basically calling it a tragi comedy. If we stripped the play of its humour, what do we see? Well, a man has entered this family and now the father, the husband of the family is completely detached from his wife, his daughter, his son, his brother in law. All he cares about is following this man. We can see the tragedy lurking in his attempts to break up his daughter's relationship. His daughter Marianne wants to marry Valere but she is caught in a real bind because a paradigm of the era was that the far was God's representative on earth. And that was at least if you were a man's daughter until you were given away to your husband, who would then take the role of godly authority on earth. What happens if the one who has godly authority invested in him is a blind buffoon? What happens if this figure of authority, who you must be dutiful to, makes bad decisions? Are you supposed to just follow that when you know the truth? That's Marianne's tragedy. It's a comedy. But there's tragedy there because her father wants her to marry Tartuffe, not Valere. And we see that this even prompts Marianne to think about suicide. If I can't marry the one that I love, if I have to be married to Tartuffe, well, I'll just end it all. And again, this is a comedy, but this is not actually a laughing matter. And as we've said in our discussions, for Shakespeare, a comedy is a tragedy up until the end, and vice versa. Dorin the maid, like everyone else, doesn't understand why Orgone wants Tartuffe to marry Marianne. Why would a man of property wish for a beggar son in law? She asks. And at time of recording we have recently finished reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice at the hardcore Literature Book club, which was one of my personal all time favourite read throughs at the club. That's another work about not seeing truly, about being blinded by our first impressions and our prejudice. That's a novel about pride obscuring our view and the prejudice of rank and distinct. Regency England did not have a monopoly on such preoccupations. A century and a half before Austin and across the Channel the same domestic farces were being played out. We see that Orgone says that despite being poor, Tartuffe is a gentleman and he wants to help him recover his wealth and status which he lost in service of heaven. But Dorin says brilliantly that such pride goes ill with piety. A man whose spirit spurns this dungy earth ought not to brag of lands and noble birth. Oh, the servant girl presumes to save my soul. Orkone says, and we might think, well, Jesus played the role of servant, did he not? He kneeled down and washed his disciples feet. Yes, maybe you should listen to Dorin. And again we might continue to consult the Sermon on the Mount when we consider something else that or says when he is comparing Tartuf and Valere, Marianne's Love. He calls Valere's orthodoxy, his devotion, his religious piety into question, because he hasn't seen him often enough in church. To which Dorin responds, should he go at the same hours as you and kneel nearby just to be sure of being seen? We're told that Tartuffe is one of those calculating souls who offers prayers not to the maker, but as public wares. In Matthew 6. 5, Jesus says, and when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. He talks in the Sermon on the Mount about alms giving, charitable giving, and he says, give in secret, not publicly, so as to receive praise from others. And it's the same with prayers. You say your prayers privately, not to be seen. So Jesus pointed out the same hypocrisy as Moliere does in this play by lambasting the synagogues and those who make a big display of praying within them. Now, when the word synagogue is used, it can actually be used in the sense of any general meeting place in this context, and Jesus wasn't the first person to address this. Jewish writings at the time also point out the hypocrisy of public prayer. Orgone assures Marianne that if she marries tot Tartuffe, her cup will overflow with every pleasure. Notice that he quotes Scripture, but through a layer of removal. What he's doing is quoting Tartuffe's misquoting or misapplication of Psalm 23, which is a prayer to the Lord expressing gratitude. Nowhere in the Psalm is the cup said to be overflowing, overflowing with pleasure. In fact, Christianity puts the resistance of temptation at the center of its doctrine. So this is a Tartuffian misreading. Tartuffe is obsessed with pleasure, the flesh, hedonism, the senses. And isn't it strange that a father would say something like this to his daughter? What exactly is he saying? Your cup's going to overflow with pleasure if you marry Tartuffe. Is he saying, essentially, this man is going to satisfy his daughter sexually? He tells her as well, marry Tartuffe and mortify your flesh. Which is very funny, because whilst those are designed to be two separate actions, marry and then mortify, they sound very much connected in our minds, don't they? Marrying such a man is a mortification, a punishment, not a pleasure for the flesh. Now, obviously, to make matters worse, Tartuffe has been salivating all over Orgone's wife Elmir. And that would be a really great favourite family, wouldn't it? Wed this gluttonous weirdo to your daughter whilst he's getting busy with your wife. And I don't want to be vulgar, but Moliere brings it out of me. And if we can't be crass when discussing a comedy about potential cuckoldry, then when can we be? And talking of cuckoldry, Dorin makes a very interesting point, one that reminds me of the character of Amelia from Shakespeare's Othello. And again, if you'd like to hear my thoughts on that masterpiece, then we have several long form lectures on the tragedy of Othello at the book club. And if you haven't experienced the sublimity of reading Shakespeare's tragic procession, that's Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra back to back, one after the other, then I encourage you to treat yourself to that, because that's the gold standard of reading and viewing experience, experiences. And what does it say about a comedy when it reminds you not of other comedies but of tragedies? If you're a comedian, try aiming for that. Try really exploiting the tragic potential in your comedy and I'm quite sure you'll pen a masterpiece. And tell me as well if this is true or not. The characters in literature are so often the servants, the maids and the subservient figures, are they not? They are the characters that are rather low down on the social pecking order. Auguste de Villiers, de Lille, Lodme would say, as for living, our servants can do that for us. And we see in Moliere and in many of the greatest plays and works of literature, they certainly do. There's a beautiful irony which great playwrights are keen to exploit. There's a beautiful irony in one's social inferior being morally superior and more intelligent. So yes, Orgone, listen to the maid, don't listen to Tartuffe if you want to save your soul. And Dorin knows what she is talking about. And I think we can see why Moliere appealed to Brits in the Restoration era, because Brits have long loved tales of the underdog. If you look at British comedy, you'll see that we identify with the ones lower down on the social order. The tragedy in the comedy is that in life we are often smarter than our bosses. Leave it to the servants to sort out the affairs of these nitwits. Now, Dorin's assertion is that men make cuckolds of themselves. And Amelia in Othello essentially says something like that. She says that men mustn't blame women for what they make them do and for the example they set them. So they are the cause, they are the catalyst for the problem in their relationship. And we see great humor in Moliere's play arises from Orgone really facilitating things so that were his wife actually inclined to sleep with Tartuffe, she very much could. But Dorin makes a wider social point when she talks of men essentially making cuckolds of themselves. The point is, what should we expect if a woman is forced to marry a man she does not love? And again, as we mentioned in our recent Jane Austen discussion over at the hardcore Literature Literature book club, marrying for love was long considered a luxury and a rare good fortune. And marrying for love is only a relatively recent historical phenomenon. Most married for money. Which makes it even more absurd that Marianne's father is trying to get her to marry not only not for love, but not for money either. In fact, we see he's trying to give away his money to Tartuffe by any means necessary. If he loves Tartuffe so much, Dorin says, then Orgone should be the one marrying him. And we think, well, he would if he could. Dorin advises Marianne to delay things in regards to the marriage talk. Yeah, so go with it a little bit, but delay it from going too far. And that will give them some time to sort out a way to bring Tartuffe's dishonesty to Orgone's attention. And this is really interesting. Essentially the advice is, put up a false pretense, wear a mask, be hypocritical yourself, say one thing but mean another to get what you want. The question in this play is, who doesn't wear a mask to get what they want? Sometimes it might be justified. Tartuffe arrives on stage in Act 3, and my goodness, after all the build up, he really doesn't disappoint. And there are a handful of periods in literary and theatrical history that I would personally love to travel back to if I had a time machine, opening season of Shakespeare's Globe and seeing the first performance of Hamlet, for example. I'd love to see the speaking tours of Charles Dickens, but let's add to those the first performance of Tartuffe at Versailles. Could you imagine being in the audience with Tartuffe's first appearance, knowing what we know of how it went? The very first thing that Tartuffe Tartuf does is give Dorin his handkerchief to cover her cleavage up. Because the flesh is weak, he says, which is another perversion of scripture. Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion said that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Tartuf is saying this because he would get aroused if he caught sight of this woman's chest. Dorin hits back and says that it is strange that your soul is so easily affected when mine is not. And then we see Tartufe and Elmir together. Orgone's wife and her stepson Damis is hiding in the closet. He wants to watch how this man behaves. He wants to catch him in the act, because then he will be able to tell his father. We see that when Elmir and Tartuf are together, he has his hands all over her. And whilst he's groping her and fondling her, he protests that his behavior isn't sinful. It is not a sin to look upon the face that the Maker, the author of nature has created, he says. Of course we know that it would be a sin to covet, though. Jesus would say that if you covet your neighbor's wife in your mind, you might as well have done it in reality, because what precedes reality, what precedes action, Thought comes first. That is the origin, isn't it? And Jesus would also say, if you're angry with your brother, you might as well have killed him. And so if you're angry with your brother whilst you're at the temple, you're praying, you should leave and go make amends immediately. Do not continue to be there. Go sort that out. But we see that Tartuf doesn't just want to entertain fantasies of sleeping with Elmir. We might think, well, I suppose that's one thing. He's just looking at her. No, he wants to actually do it too. And so we wonder as well, well, would it not be a sin to sleep with a married woman? Everything he says is incorrect. Elmir asks him, is this not out of character how you're behaving? But we of course know that this is very much in character for Tartuff. I may be pious, he says, but I'm human too. And this is hypocrisy. One rule for others, lenience under the guise of humanity. For him, this is the hypocrites playbook. I'm allowed to be human. And human is a code word for any moral failing you like, and sometimes very serious moral failings. Well, it's nothing. I'm just human. Whilst others are the sinners, the ones who don't do anything nearly as bad as what you're doing. They're not given the permission, they're not allowed the luxury of being human. Now we see Tartuffe keeps trying to go further. He keeps trying to push it. And he tries to persuade Elmir to sleep with him. And he does this by saying that other men kiss and tell and cause a scandal, but she can sleep with him without fear of scandal because he will be discreet. Now Demis, seeing this, wants to tell his father or Ghosn, because he doesn't want his dad to be given horns. This is the iconography of cuckoldry. A cuckold means the husband of an adulterous wife. And the the term comes from the cuckoo bird laying its eggs in another bird's nest. And the symbolism of wearing the horns alludes to the mating habits of stags who forfeit their mates when defeated by another male. It's also seen as an illusion of another man's genitals on the cuckold's head. And in Christian cultures, the devil had horns too. So everywhere you look at it, being a cuckold was the last thing that anybody wanted. And we believe the symbolism comes from a legend about King John. He went out on a shoot, a hunt one day, and he popped into a nearby miller's cottage for refreshment. And with the master of the house away, he and the wife did play. Now, the miller burst in and he saw them both canoodling. So he pulled out his dagger and got ready to kill them both. Both. But the king revealed his identity. And so the miller sheathed his dagger and he just lumped it. He had to just take the insult because it's the king. Now the king, aware that he was in the wrong, gave the miller some land and permission to hold a fair every year. And part of the land became known as Cuckold's Point. And the fair was the Horn Fair. Now Elmir tells Tartufe that she won't tell Orgone that Tartuffe has been trying it on with her as long as as he advocates on behalf of the marriage of Marianne and Valere, because of course her husband will listen to him. Demise, however, wants to tell his father, despite his stepmother's protestations. And unfortunately, very soon he finds out that Orgone believes Tartufe over his own son. In Act 3, Scene 6, when Damis makes the accusation, we get this great speech from Tartuffe where he uses reverse psychology. And I think we can See from this that Tartuffe has narcissistic personality disorder. Yes, brother, I am a wicked man. I fear a wretched sinner, all depraved and twisted, he says, the greatest villain that has ever existed. My life's one heap of crimes which grows each minute. There's nought but foulness and corruption in it. And I perceive that heaven, outraged by me, has chosen this occasion to mortify me. He goes on, and he basically makes demise's charge redundant and ridiculous by blowing it up and admitting it. And this is a really grand form of deflection. This is something that one who really buys into their own sense of grandeur would do. And we might think when someone tells you who they are, believe them. And very often people tell you exactly who they are. And often people are not believed. Everybody tries to look for what's not being said, the motivation below the surface. What are they not saying? Okay, they said this, but maybe that's subterfuge, maybe that's a guise, maybe that's a mistake, maybe that's something else. Consistently, people will tell you exactly who they are over and over and over again, and we ignore it at our own peril. And the thing about narcissists is, narcissists want you to know that they are deceiving you whilst they are doing it, which is kind of strange, isn't it? Doesn't really make sense. That sounds like a paradox. But they do. Narcissists, to themselves, they are the smartest people in the world, and their intelligence is contingent upon your stupidity. And to them, it's really admirable to take advantage of another person's stupidity. That's a really good thing, that's a really smart thing to do. And they want you to know whilst they're doing it, they want you to know you're a fool and they want you to know how smart they are. And they want you to know that they're getting away with it. And so they will tell you. And because they are often charming, they will get away with it. But the thing is, narcissists will only get so far. They'll only be successful in duping some people for so long before they are inevitably found out. Now, unfortunately for Damis, Tartuffe is not found out just yet. And we see that Orgone is furious at his son and he kicks him out of the house, he disowns him, and he takes it even further. And he makes Tartuffe his son and heir and draws up deeds for everything he owns to go to him, we then see the voice of reason, voice of reason personified in the form of Cleanth trying to reason with Tartuffe. Orgone is blind, so we're not going to be able to speak to him. So Cleant is wondering, how can we appeal to the man who's causing the problems? Let's appeal to Tartuffe's good sense. The problem is that if such a man had good sense, none of this would be happening. Cleanth asks Tartuffe, how is it that heaven tells you that it's better for you to stay here whilst the sun is driven away and you to get the wealth while the rightful heir does not? Tartuffe says that he's in charge of heaven's cause, and Cleon basically says, well, why put yourself in charge of that? And it seems like this behavior is vengeful. It's like you're taking vengeance here. What he is permitting demis father to do is very vengeful. And Cleant paraphrases scripture in a way that is accurate where Tartuffe's is not. Cleanth says, leave vengeance to the Lord and we see soon enough that the Lord works through the divine ruler. But first Orgone is going to need to actually see how things are with his own eyes. Elmir, utterly frustrated by all this, tells her husband husband to get down under the table. This is a very iconic scene, very iconic in the history of French theatre. Get under the table, hide yourself and view for yourself how Tartuffe acts with her. And this is very funny. And we get these layers of metatheatricality. Orgone is the hidden voyeur overseeing the truth. But aren't we too? And so though we might wish to be client, we are, if our egos allow us to see it, we are actually or gain. Now the thing is, we often only see truly when we are not directly in the situation. It is so easy when we're going through these great works of imaginative literature to judge the characters. Whether we're talking about a light hearted, fast paced farce like the plays of Moliere or a complex, multi layered novel like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. We judge the characters because we can, because we are removed. We have that luxury. And it is much easier to see things as they are when we are not in it. When we're swept up in things, we can very easily be blind to what others can see. Elmir puts on a mask of her own in trying to make Tartuf believe that she is actually receptive to his advances. And she enacts her decision. Deceit. To reveal the imposter's deceit. She is fighting fire with fire. And Orgone needs to see it, to believe it. But we see when Tartuffe and Elmir are alone, or he thinks they are alone, because indeed Orgone is watching. Tartuf needs to feel it to believe it, not just see it. He needs to feel to believe what Elmir is saying. Because suddenly she's more receptive to his advances. Why? This practice swindler is quite rightly skeptical. He tells her that she needs to prove concretely that she wants him. And so if she has sex with him, that will be good proof. Tartuffe the deceiver knows he needs proof. Not just words, but actions too. What do we say? He's all talk or she's all talk? We know that talk isn't the same as action. Character is action. We are what we repeatedly do. Aristotle talk us this. And we can see from this play that Moliere not only had an intimate knowledge of Aristotle's poetics, but his Nicomachean ethics too. Tartuffe knows that character reveals itself in action. And yet he tries to persuade Elmir that action doesn't matter so long as your intention is pure. That's what he says. Heaven is not averse to compromise. Your conscience can be clear. He says, if your wrongful acts are from pure purity of intention, you can be redeemed if you do bad things, but intend pure things. Now let's think about this. This sounds absurd, yet people really do reason like this and think this. What is intention? Intention is aiming towards something. It's something that is done with purpose. It's having an end in mind. How can you have a pure end in mind and end up in a position that is wrong? How can you aim in one direction but end up in another? This is hypocrisy. You can see what the true intention is here, but you're just trying to get around it. Oh, my intention was pure? No, that is a smokescreen. You're deluding yourself and deceiving others. What good can be intended by this situation? We're talking about a married woman sleeping with another man. Tartuffe tries so many angles to convince Elmir to let him get his end away with her. He says, the sin will be on my head. Yeah, I'll take the blame. And also, there's actually no evil until the act is known. So if no one knows about it, it's not evil. Scandal makes it an offence. It's no Sin to sin in confidence. Can you imagine if this was true? How would the world be if everyone believed this? And if everybody was busy doing wrong things behind closed doors? Things thinking. As long as no one finds out, it's all good. There's no sin, there's no evil, there's no bad action. Because no one knows. Well, perhaps we already know what the world would look like. Perhaps we're already in it. Perhaps that's what Moliere is saying. We see as things start to heat up between Elmir and Tartuffe, we see that she coughs to get her husband's attention. She's saying, are you seeing this? Can you see what he's doing? Have you not seen enough? She coughs and coughs and for some reason Orgone is still under the table. We think, when are you ever going to come out? How much do you need to see? And so Elmir blames her husband for what's about to happen. She basically says, well, what's going down is not going to be my fault then. Which confirms Dorin's view of cuckoldry, despite the comic and farcical and absurd nature of this satisfaction. Satire of manners. Is there not a strong, pulsing river of serious moral concern running through it? Would Orgon really be to blame if Elmir cheats on him? Does his refusal to intercept remove her moral culpability or her freedom to choose to act or not? Now, she didn't want to tell her husband initially. She was hoping that she could use Tartuffe to help her. So stepdaughter. Is that right? Do the ends justify the means? And was Damis noble in rushing in to tell the truth, although he was ejected from the household? We might think that there is something noble about trying to speak the truth in the hopes that your world isn't going to fall apart. What if you didn't? Sometimes things spiral out of control because people didn't speak quick enough. Sometimes you have to speak before it gets to this stage. But I get the sense with this play that the whole family had known the situation pretty much from the get go. And they. They never stopped talking about it anyway. We see as the potential of Orgone becoming a cuckold gets closer to reality. We see Tartuffe basically says that Orgone is so gullible he could literally watch them having sex and he would still doubt his sight. Now Orgone finally confronts Tartuffe and he says with great comic effect that he had long suspected that Tartuffe was being dishonest. And it's Funny, but that is a truthful representation of humans in such situations as these. Because it is face saving. That's what Orgone is doing. He's trying to save face. And face is a sociological concept in which your sense of self is wrapped up in your interaction with society. Novels by Austin and plays by Moliere all hit upon the fact that in polite society, we don't wound each other mortally with weapons, but we can deal a wound to another that is just as piercing and devastating as a physical wound, by attacking their sense of self, by destroying their face. So much of how we behave in the world is wrapped up in us trying to save face. And if we're being polite, save the face of other people too. Because the same way that we don't want to be embarrassed, few really want to embarrass another person. Unless, of course, we're in the theatre watching a Moliere play, in which case all bets are off. Now we see that Orgone goes from one extreme to another when he sees Tartuffe for who he really is. At the outset, he calls himself a changed man. But we might think that Orgone's personal history is strung together with incidents such as we have seen dramatized on stage. Does he ever really change? Or is everything we know about Orgone truly in keeping with his character? Orgone's a man who struggles to see the truth, but he doesn't do things halfway. He doesn't do things with moderation. Mind moderation is not one of his traits. He goes from completely buying into Tartuffe's tricks to then flying to the other extreme. And he suddenly damns all members of religious orders or all religiously pious people. Just think of it, he says. Act five, scene one. Behind that fervent face, a heart so wicked and a soul so base. I took him in a hungry beggar. And then. Enough, by God, I'm through with pious men. Henceforth I'll hate the whole false brotherhood and persecute them worse than Satan could. That's funny. So are you Satan now, Orgon? Why are you using that comparison? And then we see that Cleont wisely says, and I love this. He says that Orgon should take the middle course. Ah, there you go, extravagant as ever. Why can you not be rational? You never manage to take the middle course, it seems, but jump instead between absurd extremes. You've recognized your recent grave mistake in falling victim to a pious fake. Now, to correct that error, must you embrace an even greater error in its place and judge our worthy neighbours as a Whole by what you've learned of one corrupted soul. Come. Just because one rascal made you swallow a show of zeal which turned out to be hollow, shall you conclude that all men are deceivers and that today there are no true believers? So why is it always one extreme or the other? Moliere gives his characters a central ruling passion. He blows it up, he exaggerates it, he distorts it for comic effect. But everybody has these same passions within them. Now, if we're lucky, we have a bundle of them, might have dozens of passions, and some will be more prominent than others, depending on the situation and the time. But we can identify ourselves clothed in these characters on stage. We can identify the people that we know as well. There is something quite therapeutic and cathartic about that. But why is it always one extreme or the other? I suppose moderation isn't sexy, is it? But moderation is virtuous. Moderation is virtue itself. When we think about virtues, we are thinking about those behaviors, those principles that are between two extremes. That's what a virtue is. You've got deficit and surplus, and those are vices. And if you're bang in the middle, then you're virtuous. For example, courage, that's a virtue. But it's between deficit, which is cowardice, and surplus recklessness. And they are both vices. Now for a nice visual metaphor of this Aristotle. In principle, you might want to recall the story of Icarus and Daedalus as detailed in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Icarus, with wings fashioned out of wax and feathers by his architect father, both of whom were trapped on an island, flew too close to the sun. That was his tragedy. Now, if he had flown too low, the waves would have pulled him in, but he flew too close to the sun, so the wings melted and then he fell. And the fall from grace comes from excessive pride. He should have flown a midway course. And that's what we should do to live a virtuous life. Don't judge all of our neighbours as a whole, Cleant says, just because of one corrupted soul. I love that. Can we imagine this play without client? Isn't it actually better off for having him in it? I think so. We could all use a client in our lives. When we are hasty, when we are hurt and scorned and betrayed, we all need a client to help us calibrate properly. And we see that there is some delicious irony in the fifth act, when Orgone tries to convince his mother of Tartuffe's reprehensible nature. He gets a taste of how everyone else felt with him because he has literally seen what this man is like with his own eyes. But his mother, who has seen doubts and disbelieves what he says. The righteous were always maligned, she says, and that's a false equivalent. It's confirmation bias. Does that mean that anyone who is maligned is therefore righteous? Where does bad opinion come from? Is there no cause for bad opinion? She warns her son that appearances deceive and we cannot always trust what we see. But the thing is, she hasn't even seen. So what we have is someone who hasn't seen telling someone who has seen that they cannot trust what they see. Again, maybe this is relatable. So if you cannot trust what you see, what are you basing things on? What are you working from? Often what we see is actually what we think and what we feel we don't see and then think, basing our opinions on what we have observed. We would love to think that we're that rational all of the time, but no, often what's reflected is projected. We look for things to confirm our world view and we phase out anything that doesn't accord with it. And part of the power, the superpower, in fact, because it is a superpower that we gain from deep reading great literature, is that we can significantly improve our vision, our clarity, our sight, awareness and understanding. And. And I think that the experience, the revelation of finally seeing something as it is, when you have long believed something contrary, is a peak experience. It's actually one of the most rewarding and interesting experiences you can have as a human. If you can detach from yourself and philosophize about your position to go from believing one thing to then believing the reverse, or believing something more nuanced and seeing your previous faulty position, that is so rewarding. And more people should make efforts to not deny themselves such a beautiful and life changing experience by putting their ego or sense of identity into something to such a degree that they couldn't modify their worldview. If new information comes to light, one might recall Emerson's advice about consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds. We should dare to be inconsistent. Let's not stay congruent with absolutely everything we say. The world might have changed, we might have changed, things might have changed, and it shows true growth and change to embrace inconsistency. Now, of course, the characters on stage in Moliere's play remain ferociously trapped in one ruling passion from start to finish. But hey, at least orgone has seen things as they are with Tartuffe, and this is liberating. To allow oneself to be wrong is liberating. If one does that, then the whole world opens up before us, wisdom floods into us. And yet it doesn't look like it's going to be a happy ending, does it? Despite finally seeing the truth of things, it looks like it's going to be tragedy for Orgone's family. Tartuf is seizing the estate which has been signed over to him, and he has also shown the incriminating documents entrusted to his care to the king. And now Orgone is facing arrest. And then something very strange happens. We get one of the most startling examples of a Deus ex machina in all of dramatic history. Deus ex machina means God from the machine, though in this case we might call it rex ex machina, because rex means king. Essentially, the Deus ex machina is a plot device where a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly resolved thanks to an unexpected occurrence. And we're not always happy when we see an obvious one. It feels like we've been cheated. And it's not unusual for a comedy to be hastily wrapped up at the end, right, whilst everything is teetering on the brink of destruction. But in Tartuffe, the king, who is offstage and who is supposed to be Louis xiv, apparently has seen through all of this. He's seen that Tartuffe is an awful rascal. In fact, he had recognised him as one notorious by another name, a man who had done so many vicious crimes that one could fill 10 volumes with them and be writing still. And he is prepared, out of his kingly grace and virtue and mercy, to forgive Orgone. And what happens instead is Tartuffe arrested at the very last minute. And the family is saved from tragedy. The king rights all wrongs. Now, one way to see this is as Moliere basically thanking Louis. Louis liked the play and after many years, Moliere could finally perform it. So the Sun King saves the day, right? Well, not really. There are many critics who have seen the Deus ex machina as ironic. And flattery hides the critique, because the King himself didn't save the day for Moliere. For five years he let this play languish in the depths of theatrical sheol. He knew Moliere wasn't attacking religion, but rather false piety, and he loved the play. But he still succumbed to those whose influence was waning and close to irrelevant, and he banned it anyway. If the hyperbolic praise, which was a convention in the theatre. But here it is layered on too thickly, even for the Renaissance era. If this praise was ironic, then perhaps we can understand why Moliere fell out of favour with Louis shortly after this. Because he did. And after so many years of being one of the King's favorites, one can only speculate as to how the king received this version of the play and his emergence in it. He liked the first version, but there was no sense of him being attacked at all. And of course, perhaps he's not being attacked here, perhaps we're reading too far into it. But maybe, maybe there's something more than just flattery and gratitude attitude in that deus ex machina. But what do you think? What do you make of the play Tartuffe? I would really love to hear your thoughts. And you can also see what other lovers of literature have to say about Moliere at the Hardcore Literature Book Club. And if you want to go deeper into Moliere's plays, then as I've said, we have a lecture for the Misanthrope in which we talk about the philosophy and psychology of misanthropy. So that's good fun. And we also meet one of the greatest characters in French theatre and that is Alceste. We also have a lecture for the Learned Ladies and the School for Wives and we have an extensive back catalogue of lectures and read throughs. If you navigate over to patreon.com hardcore literature then choosing the Proust tier will give you instant access to the entire back catalogue and you can enjoy almost 600 discussions and deep dives via our contents page where you will find lectures for works by Tolstoy, Tolstoyevsky, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare of course, Jane Austen, Emily and Charlotte, Bronte, Cervantes, Herman Melville, Steinbeck and many, many more. At time of recording we have just kicked off our next big read which is David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest and the excitement for this work is incredible. There's a real buzz around this book and a really special feeling in the discussions and I can tell that this is going to be one of the most impactful reading experiences we have ever done. So if you don't want to miss that plus more exciting read throughs over the course of this year, then join us@patreon.com hardcore literature and I would like to end by saying a huge thank you for listening today, thank you for being part of the conversation, thank you for being here and thank you for keeping great literature alive with me. I appreciate you deeply and I hope you have a lovely day. Happy reading and bye bye for now.