Tartuffe Education Pack

Education Pack to accompany The Watermill Theatre’s 2006 production of Molière’s Tartuffe at The Watermill Theatre and on tour. Contents Page 2 Contents and Introduction Pages 3-4 About Molière – Robert Cohen Page 5 The Plays of Molière Page 6 Interview with Ranjit Bolt, translator and adaptor Page 7 French Resource: From Molière’s Preface to Tartuffe Page 8-9 Interview with Joseph Chance, Damis Pages 10-12 In the Shadow of the Sun King – Elaine Peake Pages 13-15 Interview with Jonathan Munby, director Introduction This education pack is designed to complement your trip to see our 2006 production of Tartuffe. All the text is designed to be easily photocopiable. You will find information and exercises aimed at students of Drama and French. If you have any comments on either the show or the education pack please email them to me at [email protected] . Will Wollen Assistant Outreach Director The Watermill Theatre 2 About Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known to the world as Molière, was born in 1622, the son of a wealthy tapestry merchant. He was educated by the Jesuits at the College de Clermont, studied under the great Epicurean philosopher and scientist Gassendi, and finally trained to be a lawyer. He had little enthusiasm for his studies, preferring to spend his time visiting the theatre. His law career ended in 1642, when he met the actors Joseph and Madeleine Béjart, and the following year he rejected the position which his father had set up for him at court, changed his name to Molière and ran away with the Béjarts to form a theatre company, the Illustre Théâtre. His only success, though, was in an affair with Madeleine; his stage performances earned him nothing but bankruptcy and brief imprisonment for the company’s debts. Undeterred, and bailed out by his father, Molière joined Charles Dufresne’s company. Under the patronage of the Duke of Epernon, he spent the next 12 years touring the south of France, building a reputation as a comic actor and eventually taking over the troupe. He had ambitions to be a great tragic actor, but provincial audiences demanded comedy, so it was during this period that he wrote his earliest surviving plays, three farces influenced by the Italian commedia dell’arte : The Blunderer , Lovers’ Quarrels and The Flying Doctor . On 24 October 1658, the company performed Corneille’s Nicomède at the Louvre for the court of the young King Louis XIV. The audience was unimpressed, and in a bid to rescue the evening, Molière presented one of his own farces. The gamble worked: King Louis authorised the company’s establishment at the Théâtre du Petit-Bourbon in Paris, and his 18-year-old brother, the Duke of Anjou, became the company’s protector. Public acclaim for Molière came with the premiere of The Affected Ladies, followed in 1660 by Sganarelle . The triumph of the latter was overshadowed, however, first by criticism that Molière’s works were too lightweight, and then by the sudden, unannounced closure and demolition of the Petit-Bourbon Theatre by the King’s chief architect. The King, though, quickly installed the company in his own theatre at the Palais-Royal. In 1661, Molière wrote a tragedy, Don Garcia of Navarre , which he considered his finest work, but its subsequent rejection by the public hurt him deeply and he never tackled the genre again. Shortly afterwards, The School for Wives provoked a war of words and pamphlets from the actors of the rival Hôtel de Burgogne. The story—of an old bachelor who brings up his ward in complete seclusion, hoping to make her his own obedient wife—gave the anti-Molière faction priceless propaganda. The playwright had married a bride 20 years his junior, Armande Béjart, who was officially the sister of her husband’s old flame Madeleine, but rumour had it that the two women were actually mother and daughter. Some even went as far as to suggest that Molière was the father of his bride. Fortunately for him, the King seemed quite unperturbed by these stories, and, in 1663, expressed his approval of Molière’s work by granting him a pension, the first ever bestowed on an actor. The next January, he stood godfather to the happy couple’s first child, Louis. But the year 1664, when Tartuffe received its royal premiere at Versailles, was not a good one. The play went down very nicely among the courtiers, but the Church’s leading hypocrites—notably the Jansenist sect—were not slow to recognise their reflections in this vicious satire on religious hypocrisy. Under their influence, the King reluctantly banned the play from public performance. Molière’s humiliation was quickly compounded by grief when, on 10 November 1664, the baby Louis died. 3 The following year brought another, though less serious, run in with the Church, this time over Don Juan . Although the play ends with its cynical, decadent hero being consigned to the flames of hell, the holy ones objected to some of his earlier speeches, which condemned others’ hypocrisy with a powerful and eloquent logic. However, the complainants failed to obtain a ban on this occasion, and Molière was free to take aim at another target: the medical profession. Love’s the Best Doctor ridiculed the incompetence and quackery which (in the dramatist’s opinion) was all- pervasive among doctors of the time, and which they sought to cover up with their pompous attitudes and astronomical fees. It was a subject to which he would keep returning, notably in The Doctor Despite Himself and The Hypochondriac . In the meantime, the success of Love’s the Best Doctor was followed by a happy medical event for the playwright—the birth of a daughter, Esprit Madeleine—and an equally happy financial one, which saw the King bestow his personal protection on Molière’s company. “The King’s Troupe at the Palais-Royal” were now to receive 6,000 livres annual pension. However, Molière’s fortunes continued to be frustratingly mixed. The Misanthrope and The Miser , today considered two of his greatest achievements, were both unsuccessful when first performed. The Misanthrope , which premiered at the Palais-Royal in June 1666, was hampered from the start by a lack of support from the King, who was mourning the recent death of his wife. Many of those who did see it, however, were unsatisfied by the tale of Alceste’s love for the coquettish young widow Célimène: there was felt to be too much philosophy and not enough action. What’s more, it failed despite the kind of sensational casting which today would ensure maximum publicity in the pages of the tabloids. Molière played Alceste to Armande’s Célimène, at a time when their off-stage marriage was on the rocks and they were living apart. Eliante was played by Catherine de Brie, the original Agnès in The School for Wives and currently the playwright’s mistress; and in the role of Arsinoe was Mlle du Parc, one of Molière’s unsuccessful conquests. The following year, 1667, another chapter in the convoluted history of Tartuffe was opened and swiftly shut. A revised version was premiered on 5 August, and on 6 August the play was banned once more, this time by the Parliamentary President. For good measure, the Archbishop of Paris issued a decree against this “very dangerous” play, prohibiting all people in his diocese from presenting it, or “from reading it or hearing it read, either in public or in private, under whatever name or pretext, on pain of excommunication”. It was to be another two years before the King worked up the courage to defy the Church, but finally, in 1669, a royal decree was issued, allowing for the resumption of Tartuffe . The re-opening at the Palais-Royal was triumphant, perhaps the crowning triumph of Molière’s career, for, not only was it a roaring success with the paying public, but it also represented a great victory over the powerful forces of the Church. It was to be his last great victory. Although Molière continued to write and act with his usual vigour, and although he enjoyed successes with The Bourgeois Gentleman (1670—another attack on the pretensions of the middle classes) and The Learned Ladies (1672), his last few years brought him little happiness. His health was in decline, due to the effects of overwork on an already fragile constitution; his marriage was dealt another unwelcome blow when his third child was born in September 1672, only to die a few days later; and, as plebeian audiences began to dwindle, the King, one of the few constants in his life, decided to withdraw his support from “The King’s Troupe”. Molière opened his final play, The Hypochondriac , on 10 February 1673. The subject of the play, being another attack on the medical profession, was highly appropriate, as he was clearly dying even as he acted. His persistent coughing added to the comic reality, and during the fourth performance of the run, he suffered a convulsion, which he disguised as a grimace. Professional to the last, he struggled through to the end of the performance, before being taken home. He died later that night on 17 February 1673. As soon as the curtain had fallen on Molière’s life, the final act in his battle with the Church was acted out. Owing to a longstanding tradition which forbade the burial of actors in consecrated ground, the holy hypocrites very nearly had the last laugh. But they reckoned without the persistence of Armande, who pleaded with her husband’s old patron, the King, and got him to intervene personally with the Archbishop of Paris.

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