SOURCE: “Tartuffe: Comedy or Drama?” in Modern Languages Journal, Vol. 70, No. 2, June, 1989, pp. 118-22.

In the following essay, Nurse surveys aspects of Molière's Tartuffe, examining the long disputed question as to which genre it belongs: pure comedy, satirical comedy, drame bourgeois, or tragedy.

If ambiguity is one of the necessary characteristics of a masterpiece, then Tartuffe clearly qualifies for such a distinction, for, together with Dom Juan and Le Misanthrope, it is one of the plays which has consistently stirred controversy since its first performance. The critical arguments centre on two interrelated problems, one of them specific and one more general, namely: how should the character of Tartuffe himself be interpreted, and to what kind of dramatic genre should the play be assigned, with the choice ranging between pure comedy (with a large dose of farce), satirical comedy, drame bourgeois (anticipating the 18th-century category of that name...