Religious Hypocrisy In Tartuffe

Did you know that the play Tartuffe was written to mock the hypocrisy of the church during the mid-1600? Tartuffe was scandalous back in the day, and there's a reason why. It exposes the idea of religious hypocrisy. This issue was hard to tackle back then. For this, the play was censored by King Louis XIV, 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. Tartuffe, written by the French play writer Jean-Baptiste Moliere, is a dramatic comedy that with irony, exaggerations and powerful comic effects, many derived from La Commedia dell’ Arte, depicted a cleaver deceitful man that with malicious intent and for personal gain, pretended to be very religious and pious and then
Furthermore it didn't help that Orgon, a member of the upper class, was portrayed as a total fool and sometime as a complete stupid hypocrite. All of this "offensive" material caused the play to be banned. Many writers before and Moliere himself, decided not to be explicit in criticizing the religious establishment because they knew they would have been harshly punished, and even killed, if they did. As result of their fear of punishment, they preferred to create stories that secretly hided their problems with the church, which is what exactly Moliere tried to do in his Tartuffe. He masterfully tried to hide in irony and comedy his harsh criticism against the corrupt and hypocritical religious devotion of many members of the Church, and of others members of the royal society. Throughout the entirety of the play, Tartuffe, the symbol of these deplorable kinds of men, acts maliciously, trying to deceive everybody. He always uses his corrupted mind and his perfectly designed mannerism to manipulate people or to conquer with preys whoever was trying to oppose him. Surely he represents the perfect