SOURCE: “Place and Setting in Tartuffe,” in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. 89, No. 1, January, 1974, pp. 42-9.

In the following essay, Hope maintains that the setting of Molière's Tartuffe had a distinctive, expressive function.

The theme of place and setting in the classical theater has attracted far more attention in Racine than in Molière.¹ The action of most Racine tragedies is inseparable from certain deeply expressive settings: altar, temple, sea and seaport, labyrinth, seraglio, and a palace which seems to imprison its occupants. There is also in Racine the evocative use of place names recalling a dark past or foretelling a brilliant future. Burning Troy is the backdrop of Andromaque and imperial Rome the illusory goal of Mithridate. Some of Racine's most memorable lines evoke places (“Dans l'Orient désert quel devint mon ennui”) or suggest them (“Vous mourûtes aux bords o...