When she acts surprised, he tells her how she's supposed to feel: she respects him, is fond of him, and will marry him. Mariane is speechless, but luckily Dorine, a saucy servant, isn't. She comes in and asks Orgon if Mariane is really going to marry Tartuffe. When her boss confirms this, she makes fun of him, calling the idea ridiculous. Dorine proceeds to annoy Orgon, preventing him from talking further with Mariane. Once Orgon leaves, an irritated Dorine tells Mariane that she can't believe how weak she acts in front of her father.
Although she is hard on Mariane, Dorine eventually relents and agrees to help the girl. He's heard the bad news about their wedding plans. Soon enough he and Mariane are arguing over nothing in particular.
Dorine gets them to kiss and make up. When Damis, Orgon's son, hears about his father's plan to marry Mariane to Tartuffe, he flips out and tells Dorine that he's going to give Tartuffe a knuckle sandwich. Dorine has a better idea: she's arranged for a meeting between Tartuffe and Elmire, Orgon's wife. Damis insists on watching, and spies on the conversation while hiding in a closet. During the meeting, Tartuffe makes a rather awkward attempt to seduce Elmire.
When he fails, Elmire strikes a deal with him. If he refuses to marry Mariane, she says, she won't tell Orgon about what just happened.
While Tartuffe seems fine with this, Damis does not. He leaps from the closet and confronts Tartuffe. When he tells Orgon — who just happens to walk in — what he's just seen, Orgon doesn't believe him. As a result, Orgon disinherits Damis and gives Tartuffe the rights to his whole estate.
After Orgon departs, Dorine, the maid, reprimands Mariane for not having refused to marry Tartuffe. Dorine listens to them argue and then, after they are reconciled, she promises to help them expose Tartuffe's hypocrisy. Damis, incensed about Tartuffe, is also determined to reveal Tartuffe's hypocrisy, and, as he hears Tartuffe's approach, he hides in the closet. Elmire, Orgon's wife, arrives and Tartuffe, thinking that they are alone, makes some professions of love to Elmire and suggests that they become lovers.
Having heard Tartuffe make such a proposition, Damis reveals himself and threatens to expose Tartuffe. When Orgon arrives, Damis tries to inform his father about Tartuffe's proposition, but Orgon is so blind that he thinks his own son is evil in trying to defame Tartuffe's good name and he immediately disinherits his son. Alone with Tartuffe, Orgon reveals that he plans to make Tartuffe his sole heir and also his son-in-law.
They leave to execute this plan. Orgon and Elmire arrive, and when she hears Orgon's plans, she extracts a promise from him to hide in some concealed place and observe Tartuffe's actions. Orgon consents and Elmire sends for Tartuffe. Furthermore, Elmire feels that Tartuffe's religious hypocrisy is fully revealed in the manner that he suggests that he will be responsible for any sin which they might commit.
After coughing loudly a number of times and still not being rescued by her husband, Elmire finally pretends to consent to the seduction, but conceives of another ruse to gain time by asking Tartuffe to see if anyone is watching. She pretends to be afraid that her husband might catch them. At this point, Tartuffe finally seals his fate by saying that Orgon is too stupid to understand — even if he caught them. It seems that only when Tartuffe insults Orgon personally does he finally enrage Orgon sufficiently to make him emerge from his hiding place and denounce his friend.
The irony is that he would allow his wife to be put in a compromising position, but only when he was the subject of a personal affront would he denounce Tartuffe as a scoundrel. Consequently, the comedy stems from a type of delayed emergence as we notice Orgon taking so long to be convinced and, finally, being convinced only when he is revealed as an object of contempt. In Scene 6, after Orgon has been so adamant in his view that only he is correct, we delight in Elmire's sarcasm when she tells him to go back to his hiding place until he is completely convinced.
Dorine will later chide him for being too stubborn for too long. In Scene 7, we take delight in finally having the scoundrel Tartuffe confronted with his own hypocrisy. But when Orgon says that he has long suspected Tartuffe and thought that he would soon catch him in some type of hypocrisy, there is no evidence to support Orgon's claim. In fact, since he was so hard to convince in the preceding scenes, we must assume that he cannot accept all of the indications about his own stupidity.
The scene offers another reversal. After Tartuffe's hypocrisy is exposed, the tables are turned when Tartuffe reveals that he is now master of the house and that it will be Orgon who will have to leave. Instead, once illuminated, Orgon then feels the weight of his own stupidity by being made the victim of Tartuffe's machinations. The final scene of the act offers one more bit of suspense as Orgon states his concern about a certain strongbox which we later discover contains some important papers pertaining to the State.
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