If you are going to read Tartuffe, try to get the translation done by Richard Wilbur who, at one time, was the poet laureate of the United States. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his translated Tartuffe in which he somehow managed to keep the rhymed couplets in French to their original meaning in English.
If you think you can’t enjoy something written three hundred and fifty years ago, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how clever and entertaining it is. Tartuffe is my favorite play besides Macbeth although I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing it actually produced on the stage.
I remember reading “Tartuffe” in college in my world lit class; it was Richard Wilbur’s translation and it was hilarious.
Delightful. It is in the old school of Greek tragedy that God is lowered in a basket to resolve the machinations of wicked players. The Prince is no less Deus Machina than this, to bring about justice where it could not be resolved by the players among themselves.
I sense in this a divine wish that the constraints of God be nourished in every soul. Surely there is no greater lesson in this our current evil age.