What happens in Act V of Tartuffe?
Act V opens with a crisis: Orgon, who took in the conman Tartuffe, now faces the disastrous fallout of his misplaced trust. Tartuffe has turned against Orgon, informing the King and presenting a strongbox filled with incriminating letters from the rebel Argas. He has initiated the process to legally seize Orgon's home and estate. Orgon and his family prepare for devastation, with Madame Pernelle finally—though late—acknowledging Tartuffe's true nature. A bailiff, Monsieur Loyal, arrives with an eviction notice, demanding that the family leave by morning. Despair washes over them. But then, in a surprising turn of events, an Officer of the King appears and arrests Tartuffe instead of Orgon. The King, depicted as a wise and just ruler, has been aware of Tartuffe's criminal history and current betrayal; he nullifies the gift deed, forgives Orgon for his past political mistakes, and returns the family’s property. Valère and Mariane can finally marry without obstacles. The play ends with Orgon pledging to be wary of all seemingly pious men from now on, while Cléante gently encourages him to temper that reaction.
Analysis
Molière crafts Act V as a purposeful reversal of the slow-burn entrapment seen in the earlier acts. While Acts II–IV steadily tightened Tartuffe's hold, Act V releases that pressure with two sudden shifts: Monsieur Loyal's entrance—his name ironically suggesting loyalty to a fraud—intensifies the despair before the royal intervention resolves it completely. The King's involvement is the play's most debated choice: critics interpret it as either genuine absolutist flattery, a protective legal shield for a banned play, or a satirical excess that highlights the randomness of earthly justice. Molière intentionally maintains an unstable tone here, where relief and discomfort coexist.
The theme of sight and blindness, woven throughout the acts, culminates in Madame Pernelle's conversion, played for dark humor as her newfound clarity arrives at a moment when it holds no value. Orgon's final promise to distrust all piety reverses his earlier flaw of excessive gullibility without truly rectifying it, while Cléante's measured response argues that a rational approach—not mere cynicism—is the real lesson. This represents Molière's sharpest tonal shift: the "happy ending" is undercut by the implication that Orgon has grasped the wrong lesson.
In Act V, the language quickens; the alexandrines tighten into fast-paced exchanges during the arrest scene, reflecting the sudden collapse of Tartuffe's carefully built facade. The play concludes not with celebration but with calculated irony—the household is restored, yet the patriarch's judgment remains questionable.
Key quotes from Act V
“We live under a prince who is an enemy of fraud, a prince whose eyes see into our hearts, and who cannot be deceived by the most artful impostor.”
The Officer announces the King's judgment, framing the monarch as the omniscient corrective to every human failure of perception dramatised across the play.
“I fear that this good man may give you some uneasiness; everything inspires distrust, and I see you, after this adventure, capable of quarrelling with the most innocent devotion.”
Cléante delivers this closing caution to Orgon, warning that his new blanket cynicism toward piety is as dangerous as his former blind credulity.
“Treason never profits those who commit it; and the just have nothing to fear from the wicked.”
Spoken as Tartuffe is led away, the line functions as the play's moral thesis statement—though its tidy confidence sits in ironic tension with how close ruin actually came.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Act V
- writ
- A formal legal document issued by a court or authority ordering a person to do or refrain from doing a specific act.
- sequester
- To legally seize or take possession of property, typically by order of a court or authority, pending resolution of a dispute.
- redress
- A remedy or compensation for a wrong or grievance that has been suffered; the correction of an injustice.
- clemency
- Merciful leniency shown by someone in power toward an offender or enemy who might otherwise be punished harshly.