ABSTRACT
The plan is simple. He will hide under the table, while she “entertains” the man she claims is trying to seduce her. This way, her husband will hear, with his very own ears, that the man he once believed in is a charlatan of the first order. The husband is Orgon, his wife is Elmire, and the soon-to-be-exposed-charlatan is none other than the titular Tartuffe whose very name has made its way into numerous modern dictionaries as a worthy synonym for a religious hypocrite, dissembler, dissimulator, Pharisee, and just plain phony. But we are less interested in this swindler and his victims and more concerned with the instrument of this villain’s undoing: a simple, relatively nondescript table—an object usually employed for dining, or writing, or gaming. But during the next 16 or so minutes it will go through a series of less than ordinary usages. It will become a hide-away, an obstruction, a bed in service of seduction and, ultimately, the unnameable itself. Molière’s usage of the table conforms to one of Jasper Johns’ basic definitions of art-making: take something, change it, change it again. Our table will go through one transformation after another, like an actor assuming multiple roles; in this respect, our simple little table proves to be as versatile an actor as its master Molière. Let us look at the table’s first and perhaps most well-known characterization.
