Episode 221: Tartuffe by Moliere, Introduction and Acts 1 & 2
This week on The Literary Life Podcast, Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks delve into a new literary series as we read the comedic play Tartuffe by Jean-Baptiste Moliere. If you want to listen in to the read along of this play, you can view replays on the readings on the House of Humane Letters YouTube channel. Thomas begins the conversation on this play by setting up the cultural and literary context in which Moliere was working, as well as some more biographical background on the author and actor himself. Angelina points out some differences between satire and didacticism. She and Thomas also talk about the influence of Roman comedy in Moliere\u2019s playwriting.
Angelina introduces Act 1 with a question of how Moliere shows the audience what to think of Tartuffe before the character himself ever comes on stage. Thomas talks a little about the characters we first meet, and Angelina highlights the references to enchantments as they read through key portions of these opening scenes. Join us again next week when we will finish up this entertaining play!
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Commonplace Quotes:He had the comic vision of himself as well as of the rest of humanity. He might mock the vices of the world, but he could also mock himself for hating the world, in the spirit of a superior person, on account of its vices.
Robert Lynn, from his essay \u201cMoliere\u201d in Books and Authors
The Burial of MoliereWe think old books are strange; but we are the aliens.
Dr. Jason Baxter
By\xa0Andrew Lang
Dead\u2013he is dead!\xa0 The rouge has left a trace
\xa0 On that thin cheek where shone, perchance, a tear,
\xa0 Even while the people laughed that held him dear
But yesterday.\xa0 He died,\u2013and not in grace,
And many a black-robed caitiff starts apace
\xa0 To slander him whose Tartuffe made them fear,
\xa0 And gold must win a passage for his bier,
And bribe the crowd that guards his resting-place.
Ah, Moliere, for that last time of all,
\xa0 Man\u2019s hatred broke upon thee, and went by,
And did but make more fair thy funeral.
\xa0 Though in the dark they hid thee stealthily,
Thy coffin had the cope of night for pall,
\xa0 For torch, the stars along the windy sky!
Menaechmi, or The Twin-Brothers by Plautus
Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse
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