Molière Monologues for Auditions: Nine Tartuffe Speeches in a Free Translation

The notice wants a classical piece, you’ve done your Shakespeare, and you’d like something that shows you can be funny in heightened language. Molière is the obvious answer. Then you look for the words and hit a wall: many speeches posted online come from a modern rhymed translation, often without saying which version it is.

That matters more than it seems. With Molière you never perform Molière’s words; you perform a translator’s. Pick a version, learn it, and that is the text you’re committed to.

The short version: use a translation you’re allowed to read, check that the school counts Molière as classical, and pick a character who wants something from someone in the room right now. Below are nine speeches from Tartuffe, five for women and four for men, each with the setup, the want, a short excerpt, and an estimated run time. Every excerpt is copied from Curtis Hidden Page’s public-domain translation and checked against Project Gutenberg.

Check that Molière counts on the notice

Many programs accept Molière as classical, but they phrase it differently. Ithaca College’s Acting BFA requirements ask for two contrasting monologues of 60 to 90 seconds and say classical monologues should have heightened language. Molière is named in its list of writers whose work counts, right after Shakespeare and before Marlowe.

Some notices limit the classical piece to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and Molière, whose Tartuffe was first played nearly fifty years after Shakespeare died, doesn’t fit that limit. If the notice says “classical verse,” check your translation: some English versions of Molière are in verse and some are in prose. When in doubt, send the school a one-line email. Our guide to classical monologues that aren’t Shakespeare sorts out the common phrasings.

Use a translation you’re allowed to read for free

Molière’s play is centuries out of copyright, but each English translation is its own work. The U.S. Copyright Office’s Circular 14 lists translations among the common kinds of derivative works, which carry their own copyright for what the translator added. So an old translation can be free while a recent one is not.

The free one to use is Curtis Hidden Page’s. Wikisource records it as published in The Harvard Classics in 1909, and Project Gutenberg’s copy credits Page and marks it public domain in the USA. It’s also the text in our free copy of Tartuffe, where you can read every scene and see how the parts divide: Dorine and Orgon carry about the same share of the words, and Tartuffe doesn’t speak until Act 3.

One thing to know before you learn it. Molière wrote the play, as Standard Ebooks notes, in twelve-syllable lines of rhyming couplets, but Page put it into blank verse without rhymed endings. Mostly, anyway: read closely and you’ll find he rhymes in places. Dorine’s warning to Orgon in Act 2 suddenly turns to couplets (“fates” and “hates,” “woman” and “human”), and so does part of Madame Pernelle’s opening rant. Treat those rhymes as the character landing a point, not as a change of style.

The modern rhymed translations

The best-known modern version in the U.S. is Richard Wilbur’s. Critic Steve Vineberg, in his appreciation at Critics at Large, writes that Wilbur translated ten of Molière’s plays, dates his Tartuffe to 1963, and notes that he turned Molière’s six-beat lines into iambic pentameter. It’s under copyright. The acting edition is a Dramatists Play Service title, listed as translated into English verse by Wilbur.

Wikipedia’s production history names other English versions staged in Britain, including Christopher Hampton’s for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1983, Ranjit Bolt’s in 1991, and Roger McGough’s in 2008. All of them are modern and under copyright, so buy or borrow the published script. Don’t copy a speech from a monologue site that won’t tell you whose translation it is.

Speeches for women

A note on times: we counted the words in each full speech in Page’s text and divided by 150 words a minute, a conversational pace. Your own pace may be quicker or slower, so treat every time as an estimate and check it with your own run.

Dorine, “Her case is nothing, though, beside her son’s!” (Act 1, Scene 2)

Madame Pernelle has just stormed out, and Cléante, her son Orgon’s brother-in-law, remarks how taken she is with Tartuffe. Dorine, the family’s maid, tells him that’s nothing next to Orgon himself. He calls him brother, loves him / A hundred times as much as mother, son, and so on through the family, down to how, if Tartuffe belches at table, Master exclaims: “God bless you!”

What she wants: an ally. Cléante is the one person in the house Orgon might listen to, and she needs him to see how bad it has got. It runs about 272 words, or roughly a minute and fifty seconds. This is a favorite Dorine audition speech, and it works because every detail is a small, vivid story told to someone who can do something about it.

Dorine, “Yes, so he says himself. Such vanity” (Act 2, Scene 2)

Orgon has just announced that his daughter Mariane will marry Tartuffe, and he’s explaining that Tartuffe is really a gentleman with an estate at home. Dorine, who is not supposed to have an opinion, has one. She starts by mocking the boast and ends with a warning: Virtue is at the mercy of the fates, / When a girl’s married to a man she hates;

What she wants: to stop the marriage, while keeping Orgon from throwing her out. That tension, a servant arguing with her master, is the fun of it. About 177 words, roughly a minute and ten seconds, which makes it a strong pick for a one-minute call if you trim the first few lines.

Elmire, “If that refusal has offended you,” (Act 4, Scene 5)

Orgon refuses to believe Tartuffe has made a pass at his wife, so Elmire hides him under the table and invites Tartuffe in. Tartuffe is suspicious of her sudden warmth. She explains, sweetly, that a woman’s no can mean yes, that modesty makes women To make as though we would not, when we would.

What she wants: to get Tartuffe to show himself, fast, so her husband finally sees it. She’s acting a seduction she doesn’t feel, with an audience under the table that isn’t stepping in. About 224 words, roughly a minute and a half. Play the two layers at once, and let her glance toward the table now and then.

Mariane, “Father, I beg you, in the name of Heaven” (Act 4, Scene 3)

Orgon arrives with the marriage contract in hand. Mariane, who has been passive for most of the play, drops to her knees and begs him: if she can’t marry Valère, the man she loves, at least save me from the torment / Of being possessed by one whom I abhor!

What she wants: to change his mind in the next half minute, before he signs. About 120 words, under a minute. It’s the most serious speech on this list, a plea in the middle of a comedy, and a good pick if you want a classical piece that isn’t played for laughs.

Madame Pernelle, “There! That’s the kind of rigmarole to please you,” (Act 1, Scene 1)

Orgon’s mother has been arguing with the whole household about Tartuffe, and Dorine has just had the last word. Pernelle finally grabs the floor and won’t give it back. She lectures her daughter-in-law Elmire, mocks the gossip at parties (Where all, beyond all limit, babble on.), snaps at Cléante for laughing, and storms out cuffing her maid: March, trollop, march!

What she wants: the last word, and an exit with dignity. Page marks her shifts of target in stage directions (“To Cleante,” “To Elmire”), so you have a ready-made map of where to look. About 257 words, roughly a minute and three quarters. It’s a rare big comic speech for an older woman.

Speeches for men

Orgon, “Ah! If you’d seen him, as I saw him first,” (Act 1, Scene 6)

Cléante is trying to talk sense into his brother-in-law. Orgon answers with the story of how he met Tartuffe: He came to church each day, with contrite mien, sighed, prayed, kissed the earth, and tried to give back part of every gift, until Orgon took him home. It ends on Orgon’s proudest proof of Tartuffe’s holiness: he once blamed himself for having, while praying, In too much anger caught and killed a flea.

What he wants: for Cléante to love Tartuffe as much as he does. The comedy comes from total sincerity; Orgon never hears how foolish he sounds. About 255 words, roughly a minute and forty seconds. Build to the flea and don’t comment on it.

Tartuffe’s reply to Elmire (Act 3, Scene 3)

Alone with Elmire, Tartuffe makes his move. When she points out that this is surprising from a pious man, he answers that he is a man after all: I know such words seem strange, coming from me; / But, madam, I’m no angel, after all; He moves from devotion to a sales pitch, promising that he, unlike boastful courtiers, can offer Love without scandal, pleasure without fear.

What he wants: Elmire, and her silence. About 277 words, roughly a minute and fifty seconds. The trap is playing him as an obvious villain; he works only if the religious language is the way he really talks, and the lust seeps through it. The full scene is one of the free two-person scenes in our acting scripts.

Tartuffe, “Ah! Let him speak; you chide him wrongfully;” (Act 3, Scene 6)

Orgon’s son Damis has told his father everything he overheard. Orgon turns on Damis, and Tartuffe, instead of denying it, agrees that he’s a sinner: No, no; you let appearances deceive you; / I’m anything but what I’m thought to be, He invites Damis to call him traitor, thief, and murderer.

What he wants: to make Orgon trust him more by confessing, and it works. He tells the truth, knowing it will be disbelieved. About 126 words, under a minute, and a sharp short comic piece for a man.

Cléante, “So! There you go again, quite off the handle!” (Act 5, Scene 1)

Orgon has finally seen Tartuffe for what he is and swears off pious people forever. Cléante, the play’s voice of reason, tells him he’s swung from one extreme to the other: Distinguish virtue from its counterfeit, and keep to the golden mean.

What he wants: to stop Orgon making a new mistake out of the old one. About 168 words, roughly a minute and five seconds. Cléante can come across as preachy, so play the exasperation of a brother-in-law who has said all this before. Cléante’s longer speech in Act 1, Scene 6 runs over twice the length, a useful choice if a notice asks for a longer classical piece.

Play the comedy by playing the want

Molière’s characters are funny because they’re certain. Orgon is sure Tartuffe is a saint, Madame Pernelle is sure the house is going to hell, and Dorine is sure she’s right and the master is a fool. None of them knows they’re in a comedy. If you play for the laugh, you lose it; play the want at full strength and let the panel laugh.

A few habits help. Place the listener clearly, because almost every speech here is aimed at one person: Cléante, Orgon, Elmire, Tartuffe. Find the line where the character changes tactic, such as Dorine’s “But I offend you,” where she backs off the insult and comes at Orgon another way. And keep the verse moving: think in sentences, not lines, so Page’s line endings don’t make you stop every ten syllables. Our guide on how to perform a comedic monologue has more on timing, and our list of comedic monologues has classical pieces to pair with one of these.

Cut by thought, and pair with something modern

Most of these run between one and two minutes in full. To trim one, start on a full sentence, end on one, and keep the turn and the last line. Our guide on how to cut a monologue walks through the method, and the free monologue timer checks the length at different paces. Since a Molière speech is quick and argumentative, it pairs well with a quiet, serious contemporary piece. Our monologue library is a place to look for one.

Learn the speech inside the scene

Every one of these speeches answers someone. Dorine answers Cléante’s “possessed with her Tartuffe,” Orgon answers Cléante’s sarcasm, and Mariane answers her father holding out the contract. Learn the cue line as carefully as the speech, and read the whole scene aloud a few times before you go word-perfect.

Offbook is built for exactly that. Upload the scene in Page’s translation, pick your role, and realistic voices read every other character, then wait while you say your lines. When the speech starts to stick, hide your own lines while the others stay on screen, as the video below shows, or swap your words for first-letter cues.

Our free first-letter memorizer does the cue step with any speech you paste in. Our guide on how to learn lines in verse covers the rest, including the rhymed versions.

Questions actors ask

Is there a Dorine monologue in Tartuffe?

Yes, several. The best known is her Act 1, Scene 2 speech to Cléante about Orgon’s obsession, and her Act 2, Scene 2 warning to Orgon about the marriage is shorter. Dorine and Orgon have about the same share of the words in the play, so there’s plenty to choose from.

Can I use Richard Wilbur’s translation for an audition?

Check the notice first. A published translation is a published play like any other, so get your copy from the Dramatists Play Service acting edition rather than an unauthorized website, and name the translator if the panel asks.

Are Molière monologues good for comedic classical auditions?

Often, yes. Where a school accepts Molière, it’s a way to show comic timing in heightened language without doing a Shakespeare clown. Pair it with a serious contemporary piece so the panel sees range.

Can I rehearse a Molière speech on my phone?

Rehearse on your laptop with the full script on a big screen, and listen to your scenes on your phone anywhere. With Offbook, listening to the scene on the way to the audition keeps your cue lines in your ear.