Tartuffe, Molire did not necessarily vilify the doctrine or work of the Catholic Church itself; he merely created a character that illicitly used that doctrine outside the framework of the Church. Tartuffe was not a priest gone bad but simply someone that sold religion to the unwary.It would seem, peering into a shadowy past, that the French Catholic Church might have been able to weather the storm of Tartuffe. Surely the play did not strengthen the Catholic Church's place in the world, but it was not necessarily a fatal blow to the grip of the Church on Louis XIV. It might even be that the Church hurt itself by interfering with the play's production. With the benefit of three hundred years of hindsight, it seems most damning that the established Church found Tartuffe to be an indictment of itself.It would be a travesty for any well dramaturged production of Tartuffe not to closely consider the impact of the Catholic Church on the development of the play. The surviving edition of Tartuffe was the third revision of the play, dulled to soften its impact on the Church. To ignore the manifestations of Church guilt on the handicapping of its original production is to ignore the entire period of the production itself.Perhaps the original version of Tartuffe was inflammatory enough to warrant the strong response of the Church, perhaps not. One must work only with the knowledge one possesses. Regardless, the vigorous response of the Church has created a sensibility for the production that makes it as much a history as a tragedy as a comedy.LIST OF WORKS CONSULTEDBryson, Scott S. The Chastised Stage. Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1991Hochman, Stanley (Editor). McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama.New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1984Hodgson, Terry. The Batsford Dictionary of Drama. London: B.T. Batsford 1988Mander, Gertrud. Molire. New York: Frederick Unger Publishing, 1973Sennett, Herbert. Religion and Dramatics. Lanham: University Press of...
