내일의 전통, 오늘의 관객을 만나다

월간국립극장

French is referred to as the 'language of Molière'; the Comédie Française, one of the state theaters in France, is known as the 'house of Molière.' As these examples demonstrate, Molière, who was an actor, playwright, and head of a theater company, is an iconic figure in French culture. The year 2022 marked the quadringentenary of Molière's birth. Celebrating the anniversary, the Comédie Française presented a special season dedicated to Molière. Amongst the season programs, , directed by the Belgian director, Ivo van Hove, is especially significant in that it is performed based on the restored version of the premier of the play.

<Tartuffe or the Hypocrite> (hereinafter referred to as <Tartuffe>) is one of the most beloved comedies by Molière in France, along with <The Miser> and <Scapin's Deceits>. <Tartuffe> was premiered at the Palace of Versailles on May 12, 1664, but it was forbidden to the public. In August 1667, a revised version was performed once at Théãtre du Palais Royal, but again the play was banned from being performed. And then eighteen months later, in February 1669, it was performed once again, finally achieving a great success.
<Tartuffe> was forbidden because Molière accused the pious of their hypocrisy and mocked them in the play. At the time, King Louis XIV was not favorable to the Catholic Church, which was obviously not under the king's control, but he was not hostile to it, either. Rather, the king took an ambivalent attitude toward the Church by declaring Jansenism as a heresy and thereby protecting the Jesuits, the mainstream sect in the Catholic Church. King Louis XIV could not reject the request of the archbishop of Paris to suppress the performance of <Tartuffe>, in order to avoid conflicts with the Catholic Church.

In 1669, a re-written version of the play, in which all the problematic parts had been deleted or revised, was published, and this has been regarded as the standard version of <Tartuffe>. The original version of the play was totally forgotten, with no records left. In 2021, however, Georges Forestier, renowned scholar of 17th century literature, published a restored original version of the play. While the 1669 version was in five acts, this restored version consists of only three acts, omitting act 2, in which Orgon's daughter and her lover appear, and act 5, in which the king orders Tartuffe to be punished.
Besides the omission of these two acts, the fundamental difference between the 1669 version from the restored one lies in the point where Tartuffe begins to be portrayed as a hypocrite. In the 1669 version, Tartuffe is portrayed as a fraud and hypocrite by nature. Tartuffe, a fraud, disguises himself as a pious man to get the chance to stay at Orgon's house, and then makes Orgon's possessions his own and seduces his wife. In this storyline, hypocrisy is Tartuffe's own moral defect, not a general problem of the pious. In the 1664 version, however, Tartuffe, although he was a pious man in the beginning, becomes attracted to Elmire, fails in overcoming lust, and ends up seducing her; finally, he betrays the faith, even trying to cover up his crimes. And this character arc conveys the message that Tartuffe's hypocrisy is not a single individual's personal flaw but a universal problem of every pious man. Given this context, Molière's first version of the play was surely meant to be a harsh critique against the innate hypocrisy of the pious, which was why the Catholic Church requested the king to suppress the play. Molière not only wanted to criticize a universal flaw of common men but also intended to capture the moments of self-contradiction from his contemporaries in a specific situation, and this intention of the playwright is better realized in the original version of the play.

Interestingly, however, Tartuffe as a religious hypocrite is not what Hove mainly cares about in his production. Given that secularization is one of the most essential values in the current French Constitution, hypocrisy of the pious is not so important a matter as it was in the 17th century. What kind of 'hypocrisy' then does Hove intend to deal with in his production?
Hove identifies Tartuffe as a 'beggar': Tartuffe freeloads at Orgon's place and even tries to extort his money. And that's why they have Tartuffe, a beggar or a vagrant, take a bath when he firstly came to Orgon's house at the beginning of the play. But providing a certain commentary about the social issue of the homeless is not what Hove tries to do in this play. Rather, the director tries to rethink the validity of 'family' from a contemporary perspective. Orgon's family looks wholesome and morally grounded at first, but since Tartuffe shows up, it is revealed that the familial relationships between them are only built upon hypocrisy. This is the subject of hypocrisy Hove tries to capture. In other words, the director tries to ask if family, a basic unit of the traditional society, is still valid in today's society. Madame Pernelle, the eldest of the family, represents such traditional values. Her son, Orgon, is the patriarch of the family, but he does not get out of his mother's control. It is the character of Elmire that epitomizes the director's intention. In Hove's production, Elmire is not a wise, virtuous woman who tries to protect her family from Tartuffe's evil schemes.
This does not necessarily mean that Hove has altered the text. Without making any changes to the script, the director produces a wholly different version of <Tartuffe> especially by characterizing Elmire as a woman true to her own desire. Here, Tartuffe is a man attractive enough to evoke Elmire's desire, and therefore is depicted as a physically appealing figure, rather than as a pallid religious one. In the opening scene where Tartuffe takes a bath and then changes into a new clothing, his naked body is exposed to the audience, which is a theatrical device to present his body as an object of desire. On the other hand, the famous table scene explicitly reveals what Elmire wants. In the previous productions, Orgon, hiding under a table, witnesses Tartuffe seducing Elmire and therefore realizes his hypocrisy. But in Hove's production, what Orgon, along with the audiences, witnesses is that Elmire succumbs to Tartuffe's temptation as willingly as Tartuffe seduces her. In the ending of the standard version, Tartuffe is thrown out and Orgon's family goes back to normal, but this is not the case in Hove's ending. Even when the whole affair is revealed, Madame Pernelle is refused to accept the truth and tries to keep the family together, but it is meaningless to sustain the family that way. Tartuffe, being banished from the house, proclaims that now he is the real owner of the house, and this scene is not intended to foreshadow his upcoming scheme nor to express his anger. When he proclaims himself as a new owner of the house, Tartuffe is at the center of the stage while the other characters are lining up toward him. These stage directions indicate Hove's intention that the real target of Tartuffe's proclamation is no one but the audience.
Eventually, Orgon's family is destroyed. This is well demonstrated in the ending, which is added by the director to the last scene of Act 3 and proceeds in total silence. Here appear Elmire, who's pregnant, Tartuffe, and Orgon, who looks like a vagrant now. In order to understand this newly added ending, we don't need to try to figure out who the father of Elmire's child is, or whether Orgon has thrown them out of his house. What is important here is that there is no 'home' or 'family' in the traditional definitions of the words. Hove tries to deconstruct the conventional concept of family and suggest a newly constructed, undogmatic one.