Tartuffe

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Tartuffe (full title: Tartuffe, or the Impostor, French: Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur) is a comedy by Molière. It is one of his most famous plays. Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664. Following its first performance the same year at the fêtes held at Versailles, King Louis XIV almost immediately censored the play, probably due to the influence of the archbishop of Paris, Paul Philippe Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe, who was the King's confessor and had been his tutor. As a result of Molière's play, the word "tartuffe" is used in contemporary French and English to designate a hypocrite who ostensibly and exaggeratedly feigns virtue, especially religious virtue. The entire play is written in 1,962 twelve-syllable lines (alexandrines) of rhyming couplets. Orgon's family is up in arms because Orgon and his mother have fallen under the influence of Tartuffe, a pious fraud (and a vagrant prior to Orgon's help). Tartuffe pretends to be pious and to speak with divine authority, and Orgon and his mother no longer take any action without first consulting him.