Discuss Tartuffe by Moliere as a modern comic drama

Tartuffe is regarded as a masterpiece of comic drama by France's greatest comic playwright. During the 1660s, when the performance of Tartuffe remained a public controversy for five years, many critics of the day considered religion to be an inappropriate topic for the comic stage. In fact, many religious authorities considered comic plays in general to be immoral. In his preface to the first published edition of Tartuffe, however, Molière defended comic drama as an important means of correcting immoral behavior. He pointed out that "It is a great blow to vice to expose it to everybody's laughter," because "We do not mind being wicked, but no one wants to be ridiculed." Donald M. Frame, in Tartuffe, and Other Plays (1967), has observed of this corrective effect of Molière's comedies:

Again and again he leads us from the enjoyable but
shallow reaction of laughing at a fool to recognizing
in that fool others whom we know, and ultimately
ourselves, which is surely the truest and deepest
comic catharsis.

In the course of his career, Molière transformed the comic stage in France, adding a depth of humanity and philosophical complexity to the existing standards of comic theater. Molière's complex use of comedy as a means of exploring serious psychological and moral issues in Tartuffe marks the play as a new development in the history of comic drama.