cannot be pleased by the play.Slave Island was one of his favorites because of its moral.

L’École des mères

The one-act play L’École des mères shows Marivaux in a different mode. Its premise is familiar comic material: The tyrannical Mme Argante is rearing her daughter, Angélique, with the utmost strictness and would like her to marry M. Damis. Angélique, however, loves Eraste, M. Damis’s son, and she rebels. Love finally triumphs over the authority of a mother and the pretensions of a father who, unknowingly, is his son’s rival.

This play reminds the viewer of several of Molière’s works on a theme that had become commonplace, and of pieces more typical of the French stage than of the Italian. Again, however, the source is material written by Marivaux for Le Spectateur français, and it was the Italians who produced the play, again with Silvia in the lead. Whereas the tyranny of which the girl in the original piece complained was based on her mother’s excessive piety, a subject considered taboo on the stage, the tyranny of Angélique’s mother is stated in broadly human terms. Moreover, Angélique is much more discerning, much more aware of the complexities of human behavior than Agnès; she is much more “modern” in the social context of Marivaux’s day. Despite the constraints placed on her, she knows that others lead a freer life, and at times she is eager to risk freedom and take responsibility for her own decisions. Although her mother tells her that girls of good family do not need to do anything of the kind because their experienced mothers know better, Angélique wants to become experienced on her own.

Marivaux successfully put forward Angélique’s case in terms acceptable to the enlightened public of his times, a relatively small number as in any age. The tendency now, however, is to see L’École des mères as a play dealing with a problem that has lost its urgency; like any thesis play, it is regarded by some as a museum piece. Nevertheless, Angélique remains an attractive and living character.

Double Infidelity

Double Infidelity is a more substantial work, subtle and brilliantly plotted. A prince, required by law to marry a countrywoman and charmed by the beauty of Silvia, one of his subjects, has her abducted. Silvia, however, intends to remain faithful to her fiancé, the peasant Arlequin, and refuses to see the prince. He therefore decides to pass as an officer of the royal household in Silvia’s presence. Neither external pressures nor material inducements move her. Meanwhile, the clever Flaminia, daughter of one of the prince’s courtiers, manipulates Arlequin, who has been called to the palace and unsuccessfully offered blandishments to give Silvia up, and wins his heart. Revealing himself as extremely considerate and refined, the prince finally manages to stir Silvia, Silvia and Arlequin’s love having died for lack of constant mutual concern, the importance of which Marivaux had pointed out in the number of Le Spectateur français that immediately preceded the creation of the play. Silvia and Arlequin at last discover their “double inconstancy,” and the prince makes known his true rank; he will wed Silvia, and Flaminia will wed Arlequin.

This play leads the short list of Marivaux’s favorite works. As in The Fortunate Peasant, there is such a rich texture formed by the author’s intentions and the complex human action that it is not always easy to grasp the work as a whole. Performed by the Italians, Double Infidelity was a success at the same time that it gave rise to the first of the clichés—he was a practitioner of la métaphysique du coeur—henceforth applied to Marivaux to imply that his psychological action was too complicated for the public to follow. His plays were appreciated merely for the entertainment value of their plots, while their fine psychological analysis and social criticism were largely overlooked. Clearly, Marivaux meant the work to be useful as well as entertaining.

The play is a sequel to Robin, Bachelor of Love and has the same moral lesson to offer. Flaminia’s somewhat frightening artfulness, learned at court, is applied to winning an artless peasant for her husband. Silvia, polished by love, gladly accepts the life of her prince’s court instead of a simple, uncomplicated one with Arlequin. Acted by the great Thomassin, Arlequin was ever the protean figure that could become whatever the author wanted him to be; the play belongs to him.

The Game of Love and Chance

The Game of Love and Chance is regarded by many critics as Marivaux’s masterpiece. In act 1, Silvia obtains permission from her father, M. Orgon, to disguise herself as her maid, Lisette, who in turn will take her place when they meet Silvia’s suitor, Dorante. Meanwhile, unknown to Silvia, Dorante has determined to change roles with his valet, Arlequin. At their first meeting, both Silvia and Dorante, each taking the other for a servant, are astonished to find such distinction and refinement in a person of low birth.

In act 2, Lisette and Arlequin make clear their attraction for each other, while Silvia feels an inclination for Dorante, as he does for her. Troubled, he speaks of leaving, whereupon Silvia suggests her feeling for him, then, ashamed, wishes to abandon her disguise. Her father, however, is opposed. At last, Dorante, determined to put an end to the hoax, reveals himself. Reassured and delighted, Silvia continues the game.

In act 3, M. Orgon’s son, Mario, seeking to provoke Dorante by arousing his jealousy, pretends to love Silvia. Lisette and Arlequin make their positions known to each other. Bitter, Dorante acts as though he is going to depart. Silvia is alarmed, but he returns and finally asks for her hand. Silvia has achieved her objective and may now reveal herself.

Although very successful when produced by the Théâtre Italien, this play was not immediately recognized as the classic that it has become. It is true, however, that The Game of Love and Chance replaced The Agreeable Surprise as a work in which the Italians could test new actors, and that the Nouveau Mercure published a long review that has been republished many times as the play acquired its present reputation.

Of all Marivaux’s comedies, it draws on the largest number of obvious sources and contains the largest number of allusions to well-known works of the preceding century. The culmination of a particular theatrical tradition, it realizes the possibilities of a cluster of ideas and devices that earlier dramatists had been unable to develop fully and forms a perfect vehicle for the author’s personal vision of human relations. The chief traditional device exploited by Marivaux is that of the disguise. Disguises, though they do not fool the spectator, realistically speaking, as the characters’ true social and personal qualities cannot be disguised, work very well dramatically. The chief idea developed by Marivaux and traditional from the time of Pierre Corneille and Molière is that of free choice in marriage, especially for the woman, who must have a clear picture of what men in general and her man in particular are like before she consents. Partly through coquetry, partly to gratify her amour-propre, but principally for that reason must Silvia prolong her disguise almost to the end of the play.

By its formal perfection, the richness and definitive quality of the text, the complexity and truth of the characters, and the variety of the action—alternating emotional tension with youthful exuberance and comic verve, blending the real and the ideal—The Game of Love and Chance has proved itself to be a masterpiece of comedy. A happy fusion of the Italian and the French styles, it serves to illustrate the concept of pure theater, by which is meant the representation of human action transposed into a world at once close enough to and far enough removed from everyday life to permit insights that cannot otherwise be portrayed in such a short length of time.

The False Confessions

The False Confessions was Marivaux’s last full-length play and his last major work for the stage. Dorante, a young man of good family who is, however, financially ruined, is in love with Araminte, a young, wealthy widow. Advised by his former valet, Dubois, he enters her household as her business manager. Dubois, too, is in the service of Araminte, and he confides to his mistress that her manager loves her, as though it were a secret, although Dorante and he have arranged for him to do so. As a clever psychologist, however, he recommends that she not respond to Dorante’s passion. These “false confidences” have the desired effect: They arouse love in Araminte, who will wed Dorante.

No doubt it would surprise Marivaux to know that this play, like The Game of Love and Chance, is now considered one of his most characteristic and one of his greatest works. He thought of it as simply another of his plays and another, too, that was not as successful in its first run as in later ones. Yet The False Confessions has perhaps even a richer dramatic texture than that of The Game of Love and Chance, with a greater number of conflicting desires and interests, all contributing directly to the denouement. It is the play that most harmoniously unites Marivaux’s Italian and French styles as it deals with a familiar problem in human experience in strictly contemporary terms.

All scholarly criticism notwithstanding, the basic problem in the play is a very simple, universal one, and it is resolved perfectly. Men often fall in love with women who are inaccessible because of their superior social status, and the challenge of this inaccessibility contributes greatly to their desirability. Men react in different ways to the challenge, with different results. The few who win their love are those who, for all their passion, retain some wit to enable them to use all their resources and luck to bridge the social gap. Dorante is this type of man, the most interesting for Marivaux’s audience as for most audiences. According to a long cultural tradition, the French tended to believe that a lady should be won, and that initiative and genius on the part of the gentleman deserved to be rewarded, if he was honorable and sincere.

Marivaux had to steer a tricky course between a romantically ideal solution, which would have appeared insipid in 1737, and a crudely realistic solution in order to arrive at an acceptable stage presentation of this rather elementary situation. He also had to contend with the convention of the unity of time. Fortunately, Marivaux could draw on other conventions, those of Italian dramatic practice, to remove the action from the plane of simple realism to which his subject tended. Against the forces of realism, represented chiefly by minor but important characters, a balance is struck by the principals, Dubois, who loves Araminte vicariously and is therefore Dorante’s alter ego, and Araminte. Dubois-Dorante’s stratagem of the false confidences has as its objective both the fortune and the person of the young widow; if she responds as expected, it is not merely because she is duped by the stratagem but also because she knows that Dorante will be a good husband.