[In the following essay, Connon contends that Marivaux adapted the commedia dell'arte's use of disguise as a device for social comment in his plays.]

As is pointed out by Norbert Jonard in his study of the commedia dell'arte, disguise is one of the principal devices employed in the scenarios of the form.¹ Mel Gordon, in his study of lazzi, draws attention to a more specific use of disguise, one which involves not only pretence about the character's identity, but also about his social class: ‘Often, the humour grows out of a class reversal, the servant acts like a master and the master becomes confused.’² Given the importance of the théâtre italien in Marivaux's career, the frequency of his use of the topos of disguise in his plays is hardly surprising, but in only one does he relate it specifically to the notion of social role- or class-reversal, doing so in a context where the device is clearly underlined by the stylized symmetry of the plot: that is to say Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard (1730), where the duplication of the reversal in both male and female characters produces a quarter of individuals all parodying with more or less success their social opposites. Although there is no true use of disguise in the earlier play L'Ile des esclaves (1725), since the identity of the various characters is never in doubt either for the audience or for each other, a similarly symmetrical use of role-reversal backed up by costume changes relates it strongly to Le Jeu, and in this briefer play the social burden of the device is much more clearly underlined.

Although these are the only plays to use such a symmetrical structure, in a number of others one or other side of the equation is found in isolation. She (or he) stoops to conquer in works like La Double Inconstance (1723), Le Prince travesti (1724) and Le Triomphe de l'amour (1732), and in La Fausse Suivante (1724) the result of the trial is the more surprising rejection of the original beloved. But in only one other is there an important use of the situation described by Gordon, in which it is the servant who pretends to be of the class of his master: that is L'Epreuve (1740). It is this depiction of the servant as master in these three plays, L'Ile des esclaves, Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard and L'Epreuve that it is my intention to examine here. Whilst there seems little doubt that the Italian theatre was a fundamental influence in Marivaux's frequent use of disguise in his plays, it is a device which is by no means unique to that tradition. By focusing on this one particular aspect, on the other hand, we will be led to a consideration of a much more specifically Italianate aspect of Marivaux's theatre, the development of one facet of his treatment of his most persistently archetypal character, Arlequin.

That costume is an important icon of social status in these plays is in no doubt, otherwise there would be no point in the swapping of clothing specified in L'Ile des esclaves when the nobles are cast down to servitude and the servants (or, even more pointedly for the philosophical message, slaves, as they are here) are elevated to higher rank, for here there is no deception involved. Even on this island, where the slaves have realized the injustice and artificiality of social inequality, the symbol of the outward trappings of costume will be one of the most important indicators of the masters' fall from grace and the slaves' elevation.

One anomaly should, however, be noted: the swapping of costumes is specified by Trivelin for both couples: ‘(Aux esclaves) Quant à vous, mes enfants, qui devenez libres et citoyens, Iphicrate habitera cette case avec le nouvel Arlequin, et cette belle fille demeurera dans l'autre; vous aurez soin de changer d'habit ensemble, c'est l'ordre’ (‘[To the slaves] As for you, my children, who are now free citizens, Iphicrate will live in this cabin with the new Arlequin, and this beautiful young lady will live in the other; you will make sure to exchange clothing, that is the rule’), (430-1).³ Arlequin and Iphicrate exit immediately after this, and at their subsequent re-entry the scene heading specifies ‘Arlequin, Iphicrate, qui ont changé d'habits’ (‘Arlequin, Iphicrate, who have exchanged clothing’), (438). The absence of any similar indication with regard to the female characters, the fact that the continuity of the action prevents them from leaving the stage until after Cléanthis's denunciation of Euphrosine, by which time the exchange has become almost redundant, and the absence of any opportunity for them to resume their original costumes before the final reinstatement of the status quo all point to the fact that Marivaux did not actually envisage any exchange taking place between them in performance. The scene in which the men resume their original clothing (scene ix) is one of the emotional highpoints of the play, and, although the fact that this latter exchange takes place in full view of the audience suggests that it was only some sort of over-costume which was exchanged, with Arlequin retaining his traditional motley, it seems fair to assume that much comic effect would be derived from his inappropriate dress. A remark by Silvia in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard concerning her disguise as a servant—‘Il ne me faut presque qu'un tablier’ (‘Virtually all I need is an apron’), (680)—suggests that, on the other hand, as a result of the habitual over-dressing of actors of the time, the costumes of Euphrosine and Cléanthis would have been so similar that the exchange would have made little visual impact;⁴ accordingly Marivaux sacrifices it to the fluency of his action. This suggests that, even in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, where the women clearly do adopt disguises, the sartorial impression given by Lisette will be both less striking and less inappropriate than that of Arlequin.

The characters' behaviour, though, does not always live up to the costume, and so, in its superficiality, the disguise is shown to have no profound effect on their essence, and it is in the case of Arlequin, where the visual disguise is at its least effective, undermined as it would have been by his traditional trappings of mask and slap-stick as well as clear evidence of his suit of shreds and patches under his assumed garb, that the character also proves least able effectively to fulfil his new role. For if we compare him not only with his female counterparts, but also with Frontin his successor in L'Epreuve, who, unencumbered by Arlequin's traditional acessories, would have cut a much more dashing figure in his disguise as master, we will find that it is Arlequin who is least able to provide a convincing impersonation of the ruling classes, and who is in consequence the source of the most broadly parodic humour.

Cléanthis, for example, although not totally devoid of vulgarity—even Trivelin becomes exasperated by her inability to know when to stop at the end of scene iii of L'Ile des esclaves—displays a rather subtle sense of satire and observation; indeed, as Haydn Mason has shown,⁵ her satirical tour de force of scene iii is very closely related to a passage which appears later in Le Cabinet du philosophe (1734). And it is she who becomes most obviously exasperated by Arlequin's inability to adjust his behaviour to either his new role or costume:

CLéANTHIS
Il fait le plus beau temps du monde; on appelle cela un jour tendre.
ARLEQUIN
Un jour tendre? Je ressemble donc au jour, Madame.
CLéANTHIS
Comment! vous lui ressemblez?
ARLEQUIN
Eh palsambleu! le moyen de n'être pas tendre, quand on se trouve tête à tête avec vos grâces? (A ce mot il saute de joie.) Oh! oh! oh! oh!
CLéANTHIS
Qu'avez-vous donc? vous défigurez notre conversation!
ARLEQUIN
Oh! ce n'est rien; c'est que je m'applaudis.
CLéANTHIS
Rayez ces applaudissements, ils nous dérangent.

(442)

CLéANTHIS
The weather is as beautiful as can be; people call this a tender [i.e. gentle] day.
ARLEQUIN
A tender day? In that case I am like the day, Madam.
CLéANTHIS
What do you mean, you are like the day?
ARLEQUIN
Sblood! how could I not be tender [i.e. loving], when I am in the company of your charms? (At this witticism he jumps for joy.) Ho! ho! ho! ho!
CLéANTHIS
What is the matter? you are spoiling our conversation!
ARLEQUIN
Oh! it is nothing; I am just applauding myself.
CLéANTHIS
Cut the applause, it disturbs us.

It is true that the parody of the poetic lover's conceit at the beginning of this extract is almost subtle, but it is clearly only present to permit the inappropriate oath and the naively childlike ebullience, which are much more typical both of the humour produced by Arlequin elsewhere in this particular play and of his usual archetypal self.

Such internal commentaries by the characters on their own and each other's actions as that found in the above extract are of course impossible in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, where the disguises must be sustained, but the comedy of Arlequin's role still resides in the inappropriateness of his behaviour:

ARLEQUIN
Un domestique là-bas m'a dit d'entrer ici, et qu'on allait avertir mon beau-père qui était avec ma femme.
SILVIA
Vous voulez dire Monsieur Orgon et sa fille, sans doute, Monsieur!
ARLEQUIN
Eh! oui, mon beau-père et ma femme, autant vaut; je viens pour épouser, et ils m'attendent pour être mariés; cela est convenu; il ne manque plus que la cérémonie, qui est une bagatelle.
SILVIA
C'est une bagatelle qui vaut bien la peine qu'on y pense.
ARLEQUIN
Oui; mais quand on y a pensé, on n'y pense plus.

(688)

ARLEQUIN
A servant down there told me to come in here, and that my father-in-law would be informed that I was with my wife.
SILVIA
No doubt you mean Monsieur Orgon and his daughter, Monsieur!
ARLEQUIN
Yes, my father-in-law and my wife, same difference; marriage is what I am here for, and what they are waiting for; it is all agreed; all we need now is the ceremony, which is a mere trifle.
SILVIA
It is a trifle which it is worth making the effort to remember.
ARLEQUIN
Yes; but once you have remembered it, you do not give it another thought.

Lisette, on the other hand, is used so much by Marivaux as a sort of ‘straight-man’ for Arlequin's excesses that she provides little humour of her own. As with Cléanthis, her sense of savoir faire is sufficiently superior to that of Arlequin for her to react with surprise at his excessive behaviour, as the following extract shows, but it is not developed enough for her ultimately to see through his disguise.

MONSIEUR Orgon
Adieu, mes enfants: je vous laisse ensemble; il est bon que vous vous aimiez un peu avant que de vous marier.
ARLEQUIN
Je ferais bien ces deux besognes-là à la fois, moi.
MONSIEUR Orgon
Point d'impatience; adieu. [Il sort].
ARLEQUIN
Madame, il dit que je ne m'impatiente pas; il en parle bien à son aise, le bonhomme!
LISETTE
J'ai de la peine à croire qu'il vous en coûte tant d'attendre, Monsieur; c'est par galanterie que vous faites l'impatient: à peine êtes-vous arrivé! Votre amour ne saurait être bien fort; ce n'est tout au plus qu'un amour naissant.

(693)

MONSIEUR Orgon
Goodbye my children: I will leave you together; it is right that you should have the chance to fall in love a little before you get married.
ARLEQUIN
I would just as soon do the two things at the same time.
MONSIEUR Orgon
Be patient; goodbye. [He leaves].
ARLEQUIN
Madam, he tells me to be patient; it is all very well for him to say that, the old dodderer!
LISETTE
It is hard to believe that you find it quite so difficult to wait, Monsieur; it is through pure gallantry that you pretend to be impatient: you have only just arrived! Your love cannot really be very strong; it is no more than beginning.

And again, in the Frontin of L'Epreuve, we find that we have almost left the ineptitude of Arlequin behind. True, there is enough Arlequinesque conceit and whimsicality to give away his origins in a comment like ‘On s'accoutume aisément à me voir, j'en ai l'expérience’ (‘I know from experience that people very easily get used to seeing me’), (1326), and his silencing of Madame Argante is much too peremptory to be that of the true master: ‘Point de ton d'autorité, sinon je reprends mes bottes et monte à cheval’ (‘Do not take that authoritarian tone or I will put my boots back on and get back on my horse’), (1331). In general though, Marivaux allows his servant character in this play to achieve an impersonation which is almost credible.

So the costume changes nothing: Silvia and Dorante, Lisette and Arlequin are instinctively drawn to their social equals despite the multiple disguises. Convincing as Frontin's acting may be, he still lacks the nobility which will cause Angélique to love him instead of Lucidor (although in this late play Marivaux again weakens the case against Frontin by the strength of Angélique's fidelity: even a real master, he suggests, would still have failed to win her from Lucidor). Perhaps most interesting is the situation presented in L'Ile des esclaves, in which the two slaves, rather than being attracted to each other, are unable to resist the attraction of the nobles, despite the fact that on the island of slaves the latter have become technically their social inferiors. The slaves' sense of their masters' superiority will not easily be modified by mere changes in clothing or arbitrary reversals of the power structure.

The social comment in L'Ile des esclaves is quite explicit, although critics who have compared Arlequin's remarks to those of Figaro are perhaps underestimating the significant extent to which the subversive character of comments like the following is mitigated by the tone of reconciliation in which they are spoken: ‘Tu veux que je partage ton affliction, et jamais tu n'as partagé la mienne. Eh bien! va, je dois avoir le cœur meilleur que toi; car il y a plus longtemps que je souffre, et que je sais ce que c'est que la peine. Tu m'as battu par amitié: puisque tu le dis, je te le pardonne; je t'ai raillé par bonne humeur, prends-le en bonne part, et fais-en ton profit’ (‘You want me to share your affliction, and you have never shared mine. Go on then! I must be softer-hearted than you, for I have suffered for longer, and I know what pain is. You beat me out of friendship: because you say so, I forgive you; I mocked you out of good humour, take it in the way it was intended, and learn from it’), (448). Ultimately the play calls for humanity rather than social upheaval.

Similarly, although we may be led by the plight of Silvia and Dorante in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, in the most emotional moments of the struggle between love and the reason which tells them they cannot cross the social divide, to question the humanity of a society in which Silvia the mistress would not be allowed to wed Dorante if he really were Bourguignon, and although we may have an amused sympathy for the fact that the plans of Lisette and Arlequin to better themselves socially by marriage are doomed to failure, the play leaves us in no doubt that the mutual attraction of the characters comes not from costume, but from a deeper inherent sense of class and the different outlook on life and love which goes with it, neither of which can be so easily donned or doffed. I have discussed elsewhere, in relation to La Colonie, the fact that this situation may be more complex than Marivaux's merely negating his social comment by stressing stereotype and reasserting the status quo, and that the traditional elements provide for the audience a familiar framework through which the philosophical point can be made the more effectively.⁶ The main point for the present argument is, however, the way in which all of these plots contain elements of social climbing: the character who assumes the clothing of his social superior begins to think seriously of aspiring to the rank which would usually go with it.

For the two slaves in L'Ile des esclaves social elevation is a reality, but only within the mythic confines of the island, a fact which they seem to understand as well as we do, given their disastrous attempts to woo their social superiors from the real world. And, although Cléanthis is admittedly less convinced than Arlequin, their reversion to their original lowly status is self-willed; they realize that their natures are determined by their original roles and that they cannot cope with their new-found responsibility. When Cléanthis asks Arlequin why he has resumed his original costume, the symbol of his servitude, he replies in terms which can be understood on either the literal or the symbolic plane: ‘C'est qu'il est trop petit pour mon cher ami, et que le sien est trop grand pour moi’ (‘It is because it is too small for my dear friend, and his is too big for me’), (449).

The symmetries of Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard make it clear that this is no more an attempt at realistic theatre than L'Ile des esclaves. We are a very long way here from the illusionism of Diderot's dramatic theory, or even the specific references to Paris found in Les Fausses Confidences. Neither, however, does Marivaux introduce anything like the distancing effect of the Greek setting of L'Ile des esclaves: the period is contemporary, and the location sufficiently anonymous to allow Marivaux's audience to identify it with their own milieu. The fact that the costume changes of this play have become true disguise, rather than mere symbolism, means that, despite the title of the play, for Lisette and Arlequin the attempt at social elevation through matrimony is much less of a game than it was for their predecessors in the earlier philosophical piece. Their failure too, although the audience shares with Monsieur Orgon and Mario the knowledge that it is inevitable, is a result of the given circumstances rather than of choice. So in this play we have moved a step closer to social climbing as a true possibility. But only a step: whilst Lisette and Arlequin here lack the self-knowledge of the Arlequin of L'Ile des esclaves, which allows him to understand and express the fact that he is happier in his old position, Marivaux shows, through the ease of their acceptance of their disillusionment, that he wishes us to understand that subconsciously they have come to a similar realization, and our sympathy for them is as short-lived as their disappointment:

LISETTE
Venons au fait. M'aimes-tu?
ARLEQUIN
Pardi! oui: en changeant de nom tu n'as pas changé de visage, et tu sais bien que nous nous sommes promis fidélité en dépit de toutes les fautes d'orthographe.
LISETTE
Va, le mal n'est pas grand, consolons-nous.

(719)

LISETTE
Get to the point. Do you love me?
ARLEQUIN
Good God, yes: by changing your name you have not changed your face, and you know very well that we promised to be faithful to each other despite all spelling mistakes.
LISETTE
Come on, it is no great pity, we will get over it together.

By the time Marivaux came to write L'Epreuve, he had already completed Les Fausses Confidences, a play in which the crossing of the social divide by marriage becomes a reality, for in marrying Dorante, Araminte weds her own servant, as intendant a very high-class servant, it is true, but a servant nonetheless. Dorante may have become intendant to Araminte as part of Dubois's stratagem to bring about their marriage, but there is no sense in which he has disguised himself as a social inferior, as does the Dorante of Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard: he really has taken the job as Araminte's servant, and such a post is seen to be compatible with the reduced status brought about by the loss of his fortune. His uncle, Monsieur Remy, certainly sees no shame in this position, and even believes the servant Marton to be a fitting bride for his nephew. Araminte, on the other hand, learns from Dubois of Dorante's condition as impoverished son of a good family as early as the first act of the play, but this high social status certainly does not override his position as servant in her house; it is this which makes the psychological struggle so acute as she gradually falls in love with him and is forced to admit her affection both to herself and to her household. And for Madame Argante, her delightfully odious mother, the status of servant negates all other considerations, preventing her ever accepting Dorante as son-in-law; indeed, she is still affirming this at the final curtain: ‘Ah! la belle chute! Ah! ce maudit intendant! Qu'il soit votre mari tant qu'il vous plaira; mais il ne sera jamais mon gendre’ (‘What an unhappy ending! Ah, that confounded steward! He can be your husband as much as you like; but he will never be my son-in-law’), (1235). Despite the mitigating factors of Dorante's high status in both social and domestic terms, Araminte has still taken the very significant step of breaking through the barrier separating her from her servants.

From here we move on to L'Epreuve, which is full of the crossing of social barriers, although across a social distance less extreme than that dividing master from servant seen in the earlier plays. Angélique is of a lower class than Lucidor, but they wed. Maître Blaise aspires, however half-heartedly, to his social superior Angélique, and his wealth will eventually represent a step up the social ladder to Lisette, who finally accepts his proposal of marriage.

But what of the disguised character Frontin? Given that the whole point of the plot of this play is that Angélique passes the test which is set for her, perhaps the best measure of Marivaux's intentions concerning the competence of Frontin's impersonation is not his rejection by her, but rather the treatment he receives from Lisette. Whilst her namesake in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, although convinced of the social superiority of the disguised Arlequin, is still emboldened to woo him, Frontin, despite being both recognized and loved by his Lisette, nonetheless manages not only to convince her that she is mistaken about his true identity, but also to put any notion that he would be accessible to her out of her mind. So Frontin's disguise succeeds, and we are more inclined to believe his warnings that he may win Angélique away from Lucidor than we are that Arlequin could ever win a true member of the ruling class. But if the servant Dorante is able to win his mistress in Les Fausses Confidences, the daring of this conclusion is, as we have seen, at least mitigated not only by his being intendant rather than valet, but also by the fact that he is a man who has had both rank and fortune and has been ruined. In L'Epreuve, even in a world where both Lucidor and Maître Blaise marry beneath them, the true servant cannot be permitted to find a wife who is of either the nobility or the haute bourgeoisie. And the symmetry of the fantasy of the earlier plots has also disappeared, with the result that in this more realistic world there are victims as well as winners: the role he is playing for Lucidor deprives Frontin of Lisette, just as the Marton of Les Fausses Confidences is deprived of the servant who, according to traditional plot-structure, is rightfully hers.

There is a clear development here: as Marivaux moves away from the stock characters and symmetries of traditional commedia models, social mobility becomes more of a possibility. And this development is even more pronounced if compared with a well-known seventeenth-century model: the nobles in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme are prepared to trick Monsieur Jourdain out of his money by promises of marriage and of favours, but that these should ever actually be granted is never their intention. In Marivaux's L'Héritier de village, on the other hand, the nobles are quite prepared to marry Blaise's children in order to get at his money, the follies and dishonesty of such an alliance being avoided only by the revelations of the dénouement.

Clearly this modification has its roots in social reality. It seems likely that contemporary audiences would assume that the Dorante of Les Fausses Confidences was ruined in exactly the same way as Marivaux himself, that is in the financial crash caused by John Law. John Lough comments as follows:

The immediate economic consequences of the Système were mixed. On the one hand thousands of people were ruined (it is perhaps to the Système that we owe the plays and novels of Marivaux who was driven by his losses in it to seek a living with his pen), and the violent inflation which caused a steep rise in the cost of living brought suffering to the lower classes, especially in the towns … Enormous fortunes were made almost overnight; the lackeys of yesterday became the masters of today.⁷

But such social mobility does not imply that members of the ruling class suddenly began forming marital alliances with servants: far from it. Elinor Barber points out that nobles were only likely to marry beneath their status for considerable financial gain, and that even this compromise was far from being universal:

The poverty-stricken provincial nobility continued to disdain any alliance with the rich bourgeoisie, even though they might be reduced to the status of hobereaux. The acceptance by the Court nobility of these marriages may, therefore, be one more indication of its defection from a genuine noble ideology and of its espousal of a way of life no longer congruent with its older functions as a political and military aristocracy.⁸

So the aspirations of Cléanthis and Arlequin in L'Ile des esclaves and of Lisette and Arlequin in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard are unrealistic, and, whilst rightly belonging to the fantasy worlds of these two plays, are, even in that context, inevitably doomed to failure. The slight social mismatch of the marriage of Lucidor to Angélique, on the other hand, may lack some of the fairy-tale extravagance of the earlier plays, but it is perfectly justified in the more realistic atmosphere of L'Epreuve, since in terms of contemporary social reality it was actually possible. It is for the same reason that Lisette, although attracted to Frontin, makes no attempt to aspire to the conquest of the master she thinks him to be. Unlike her namesake in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, she knows the attempt to be pointless, for she, like the play in which she figures, is more in touch with social reality.

Lionel Gossman comments, however: ‘The plain truth seems to be that works of literature do not “reflect” social reality, at least not immediately, so that the relation between the social background and the work of literature is never a simple causal one.’⁹ This is certainly true of Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard: there is a degree of reflection of the increased social mobility of the period in the servants' attempts to marry above themselves, but whilst they are not unaware of the difficulty of the attempt, in the real world of the time it would surely have been impossible. Similarly in relation to the masters: although much of the emotional tension of their roles comes from their reluctance even to consider a mésalliance, Silvia's eventual manipulation of Dorante to the point that he proposes marriage to a girl whom he believes to be a servant is again the stuff on which dreams and romantic comedies are made, but is not representative of contemporary reality. It is not just, therefore, the symmetricality of this play or the tidiness of its dénouement which have an almost fairy-tale quality; the exaggerated aspirations of the servant characters and the extent to which Dorante's love triumphs over the demands of commonsense and social reality come into a similar category. The characters themselves may not feel that they are involved in a game, but through his title Marivaux signals to his audience that the content of this play should be taken none too seriously.

By the time we reach Les Fausses Confidences we are in much more plausible territory, for, despite the daring conclusion in which mistress marries not only a servant, but actually her own servant, we can see that the situation is much more closely analagous to that described by Lough and Barber: Araminte is the rich bourgeoise, and Dorante, although ruined, has a social rank which makes him an acceptable partner; Marton too, is quite justified in seeing Dorante as her legitimate partner, since both belong to the servant class. And then, in Marivaux's final play for the Italians, we move ever further from commedia dell'arte fantasy, for, as we have seen, L'Epreuve depicts a situation which, on the social level at least, is more or less uncontroversial.¹⁰

But the collapse of Law's system dates from 1720, L'Ile des esclaves from 1725, Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard from 1730, Les Fausses Confidences from 1737 and L'Epreuve from 1740. The plays certainly inhabit post-Law society, but, given this time-scale, they can scarcely be seen as a specific response to the collapse of the Système. Should we seek other reasons for the development in Marivaux's approach seen in these plays?

The naming of the characters is not without significance. In L'Ile des esclaves names chosen for their relevance to the Greek setting (Iphicrate, Euphrosine, Cléanthis) rub shoulders with the Italianate (Trivelin and Arlequin). It is, of course, the Arlequin archetype who is the most persistently Italian element of Marivaux's theatre, and we note that when he swaps roles and costumes with Iphicrate, even though, as I have suggested, it seems unlikely that the actor playing the part of the noble took over the traditional elements of the costume (the stylized patchwork suit, the mask and the slap-stick), his master does take over his name. This is part of his humiliation: ‘Arlequin’, as we are told in this play, is little better as an appellation than ‘Hé’ (428), and we will learn in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard that one of its principal features is that it rhymes with ‘coquin’ (‘rascal’) and ‘faquin’ (‘wretch’) (718). In Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, on the other hand, whilst Silvia in her disguise becomes Lisette and Lisette Silvia, Arlequin even becoming Dorante, Dorante is spared not only Arlequin's traditional costume, but also his name: he becomes Bourguignon. In Marivaux's first important play for the Italians, Arlequin poli par l'amour,¹¹ Silvia had been a fitting partner for Arlequin, but by the time we reach Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard her suitor cannot be expected even to assume his name. Whilst the name Lisette is a traditional enough name for a soubrette, it does not have enough archetypal significance to compromise either the dignity or the nature of Silvia's performance as a servant.

Arlequin is another matter: in L'Ile des esclaves Iphicrate makes no pretence of actually being Arlequin; all he needs to do is appear offended whenever he is called by this name, and, indeed, the role is so sketchy in the central part of the work that this is virtually all he does do. Dorante, on the other hand, is in disguise, and, in terms of her social status, Silvia has come a long way since her first appearance in a play by Marivaux; there is a sense in which the mere fact of calling himself Arlequin would completely compromise Dorante's wooing of her, for the archetypal force of the name is such that it would be completely inappropriate to the refined servant played by Dorante: ‘le galant Bourguignon’ (704). The archetypal force of the name also causes it to demand of the actor playing the part, even in disguise, the lazzi which are typical of it, and these were not only counter to Marivaux's purpose, they were also, as it were, the property of Thomassin, who was playing the ‘real’ Arlequin, and not of Luigi (often known as Louis) Riccoboni, who was in the role of Dorante. So the swapping of names demanded by the role-reversal in L'Ile des esclaves has disappeared: here roles are still reversed, master pretends to be servant and servant master, but whilst Arlequin still pretends to be Dorante, Dorante emphatically does not pretend to be Arlequin. Arlequin has, in consequence, been marginalized: in Arlequin poli par l'amour he is central to the plot. In L'Ile des esclaves the servant characters dominate the action and his presence is also, as it were, duplicated by the fact that Iphicrate is given his name. In Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard it is the action involving the masters which is paramount, and when they are on stage we are not even reminded of Arlequin by the disguised Dorante's using his name. And when we reach L'Epreuve, Marivaux's last play for the Italians, he has disappeared completely.

When Marivaux calls his female lead in Les Fausses Confidences Araminte and in L'Epreuve Angélique, it is true that these changes denote a certain change in the type of character, for the former is a rather more emotionally mature woman than the Silvias of the earlier plays, and the latter a little more modest and passive; but these modifications are subtle, the type remains broadly similar and the parts were still played by the actress Silvia. Much the same is true of Riccoboni's Lélios, Dorantes and Lucidor; and if the Marton of Les Fausses Confidences is a slightly more serious character than our two Lisettes, the emphasis is surely on ‘slightly’. In the case of Arlequin, however, the situation is completely different, for with the name goes the archetype. Indeed, so strong is the archetypal force of the name, that in the scene in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard in which Arlequin reveals his true identity to Lisette (III. vii) an interesting situation arises: Arlequin confesses to being the servant of Dorante, but does not give his name. Logically, given the symmetry of the plot, Lisette should assume that he is called Bourguignon. But no: a few lines further on, without needing to be told, she calls him Arlequin. That this should occur without causing any sense of incongruity, without giving rise to the feeling that here we have an authorial error, is entirely attributable to the impossibility of dissociating the name from the character-type. The one implies the other, so it would be superfluous for the character to identify himself by name. And so the different name given to Frontin implies a significant difference in character: not for him the traditional trappings of Arlequin's costume. Yves Moraud comments, for instance: ‘Arlequin est à peu près le seul personnage qui continue, à la fin du xvii siècle, à porter régulièrement le masque’ (‘Arlequin is virtually the only character who, at the end of the seventeenth century, still regularly wears a mask’).¹² In order to permit the much more convincing portrayal of the master by the disguised Frontin, Marivaux had to make use of such an alternative servant figure: an actor playing Arlequin would have provided the conventional lazzi, which the audience would have expected. Not only would the use of the archetypal character without his tomfoolery have disappointed the audience, but the expectations of his name and the conventional trappings of his costume would in any case have ensured that any attempt on Marivaux's part to make the servant's impersonation of the master convincing with him in the role was doomed to failure from the outset.

Kenneth McKee remarks of L'Epreuve:

With its felicitous role for Silvia, L'Epreuve was a fitting climax to Marivaux's career as purveyor to the Italian actors. Yet, strangely, the play shows no trace of the old Italian influences. In the twenty years since Marivaux submitted Arlequin poli par l'amour to Riccoboni, he drew less and less on the commedia dell'arte, and his writing evolved to such a point that none of his last eight plays, except Les Fausses Confidences, contain even a minor part for Arlequin.¹³

And that role in Les Fausses Confidences has been even more marginalized than the relegation from central character to servant figure that we noted between Arlequin poli par l'amour and Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, for in this play he has even become a secondary servant, the dolt who amuses us with his lazzi in a few cameo-like scenes, and has but minor importance for the plot; the main function is reserved for the Machiavellian first servant and meneur du jeu, Dubois.

Arlequin was for Marivaux, to a large extent, not merely an archetype, but an actor: Tommaso Visenti, known as Thomassin. There seems no doubt that, at the height of his powers, he played the part very well, but, in the few years before his death in 1739, ‘après une longue maladie’ (‘after a long illness’) as the Mercure stated,¹⁴ his failing health must have made him a less acrobatic and lively zanni and possibly even a less reliable colleague. After his death, the Italians replaced him with Carlo Bertaggi, but Marivaux had already written his final Arlequin; his loss of interest in the role coincides with Thomassin's decline. But is the playwright being controlled by the archetype, or the archetype by the playwright? Does Marivaux stop writing roles for Arlequin because he loses Thomassin, or is it through loyalty for the actor that he goes on writing them for as long as he does? Is the development in Marivaux's theatre a result of the disappearance of Arlequin, or is he dropped because he is incompatible with the new direction that Marivaux is pursuing?

There is no clear or certain answer to these questions, and it would be misguided to claim that one alternative were true to the exclusion of the other, but certain trends related to the concerns we have already examined suggest that the second of each pair of alternatives may represent the dominant force in Marivaux's development. We have seen that Arlequin dominates the plot in Arlequin poli par l'amour. La Double Inconstance (1723) has a similarly artificial symmetricality to our first two comedies of role-reversal, but the work is constructed in such a way that in each part of the plot one of the commedia characters (Arlequin and Silvia, who at this point is still seen as his legitimate partner) is paired with one of the courtly characters, thus spreading the commedia influence evenly through the texture of the play. By the time of L'Ile des esclaves and Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard the servants are paired together as are the masters, but if in the former the servants dominate the plot, in the latter it is the masters who hold centre stage. In Les Fausses Confidences and L'Epreuve the symmetry has disappeared and it is the masters who are at the centre of the plot-line, the commedia archetypes having been first marginalized and then banished. This development marks a gradual abandonment of the commedia dell'arte models which Marivaux adopted at the beginning of his career, in favour of a more emotional and sentimental form of drama represented by the dominance of the higher-born characters, a form which is more typical of later currents in eighteenth-century French theatre.¹⁵ And along with this move towards the dominance of a more serious form of comedy we find a tendency for both settings and social attitudes to become more realistic; the latter trend we have already examined, the former can be seen in the move from the fantasy worlds of Arlequin poli par l'amour and L'Ile des esclaves to the anonymously contemporary setting of Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard and further to the specific references to Paris found in Les Fausses Confidences and L'Epreuve; the Madame Dorman for whom Frontin has worked, for instance, lives, ‘du côté de la place Maubert, chez un marchand de café, au second’ (‘by the Place Maubert, at a coffee merchant's, on the second floor’), (1327). There are certainly exceptions to this trend, La Dispute (1744), for example, which, although written after L'Epreuve, inhabits a world every bit as fantastic as the three island comedies,¹⁶ but the general trend seems clear enough. Indeed, Les Fausses Confidences and L'Epreuve inhabit very similar milieux to Marivaux's two great novels, La Vie de Marianne and Le Paysan parvenu, both of which were undertaken during the period between Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard and Les Fausses Confidences, and both of which are much concerned with the theme of social climbing which we have also observed in our comedies of disguise and role-reversal.

So the issue of disguise and role-reversal and Arlequin's relationship to this theme turn out to be related to the central development of Marivaux's theatre away from its commedia dell'arte origins. Arlequin's inability to change his nature is central to the philosophy of L'Ile des esclaves, and adds to the comedy in a play like Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard, where the basic artificiality of the plot structure makes it clear that we should not take lapses in credibility too seriously. A play like L'Epreuve, in which our response to Angélique's emotional crisis depends on our ability to believe that she is taken in by Frontin's disguise, would be impossible with Arlequin in the role of disguised servant. For Arlequin cannot ever truly be disguised; Marivaux may polish him, he may become Sauvage, Deucalion or Roi de Serendib,¹⁷ but fundamentally he is always immutably himself.

Notes

1. La Commedia dell'arte (Lyon, L'Hermès, 1982), 71.

2. ‘Lazzi’: The comic routines of the ‘Commedia dell'Arte’ (New York, Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983), 37.

3. All references to Marivaux's plays are from Théâtre complet, ed. Marcel Arland (Paris, Gallimard, 1949).

4. Jean Emelina comments too: ‘Les frontispices de l'edition de 1701 [du Théâtre italien de Gherardi] en six volumes ne permettent pratiquement pas de distinguer d'après l'habit, Colombine de sa maîtresse’ (‘The frontispieces of the six-volume 1701 edition [of Gherardi's Italian Theatre] hardly allow us, in terms of costume, to distinguish at all between Colombine and her mistress’), Les Valets et les servantes dans le théâtre comique en France de 1610 à 1700 (Grenoble, PUG, 1975), 398.

5. ‘Women in Marivaux: Journalist to Dramatist’, in Women and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: Essays in Honour of J. S. Spink, ed. E. Jacobs, et al. (London, Athlone Press, 1979), 42-54, (49-50).

6. ‘Old dogs and new tricks: Tradition and revolt in Marivaux's La Colonie’, in The British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, XI (1988), 173-84.

7. An Introduction to Eighteenth-Century France (London, Longmans, Green, 1960), 146.

8. The Bourgeoisie in 18th-Century France (Princeton University Press, 1955), 102.

9. French Society and Culture: Background for 18th-Century Literature (New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1972), 113.

10. There is, of course, Frontin's suggestion in the first scene that he may win Angélique from Lucidor, but, in the event, this comes to nothing. The controversial aspects of this play reside rather in the morality of Lucidor's treatment of Angélique, and perhaps also the fact that Lucidor's manipulations lose for Frontin his rightful bride.

11. The brief allegorical L'Amour et la Vérité had been given by the Italians on 3 March 1720. Arlequin poli par l'amour followed on 17 October of the same year.

12. Masques et jeux dans le théâtre comique en France entre 1685 et 1730 (Lille, Atelier Reproduction des Thèses, Université de Lille III, 1977), 393, n. 22.

13. The Theater of Marivaux (New York University Press, 1958), 231.

14. See Théâtre complet, ed. F. Deloffre, 2 vols. (Paris, Garnier Frères, 1968), II, 341.

15. Although, mercifully, even in his most sentimental plays, La Mère Confidente (1735) and La Femme fidèle (1755), Marivaux never approaches the humourlessness of Nivelle de La Chaussée at his most larmoyant, of Madame de Graffigny or of Diderot's drame. Arlequin may have disappeared from L'Epreuve and Frontin's role may be quite restricted, but Maître Blaise is the source of much low comedy. However, whilst the figure of the dialect-speaking peasant may have his roots in similar commedia dell'arte characters, Maître Blaise is so French in both his attitudes and accent that he has left any hint of the Italian far behind.

16. L'Ile des esclaves, L'Ile de la raison and La Colonie.

17. See the plays by Delisle de La Drevetière, Piron and Lesage.