One of my many required reading titles for
between now and X-mas. I won’t be typing up reviews for all of them, but I
really liked this one, so I thought it deserved a review all of its own! I wasn’t
expecting much of it because, frankly, the front cover put me off even reading
the book.
A bit of historical context: at this time,
France was still bouncing back after the end of Louis XIV’s reign. Though his
reign started well, it didn’t end all that well and it took a few years for
Paris – and France – to recover. At the time when Le Jeu was written, there
were two major theatre trends in Paris: French theatre, which took itself very
seriously; and Italian theatre, which has more of a comic side to it. Le Jeu
fits in the Italian trend, although Marivaux did also write pieces for French
theatre.
Presentation: A short but fun play. My copy is a
large paperback with 96 pages broken down into three acts and I don’t know how
many scenes.
Story: Silvia isn’t particularly keen on
the idea of marriage but when she finds out that she is to meet her newly betrothed,
Dorante, that very same day she comes up with the perfect scheme: she and her
maid will switch places, allowing her to form an opinion of Dorante without him
knowing who she really is. When she asks her father’s permission to enact this
scheme, he readily agrees, much to her surprise. Unbeknownst to Silvia (but
known to her father), Dorante has had the exact same idea. Fun and games ensue.
Thoughts
and impressions: As
of the very first page, you know that Silvia is going to be one of those
characters that just leave you groaning out loud. She was, right through to the
end, though from the perspective of an early 18th century lady of
class, I can understand where she’s coming from with her second set of
theatrics.
This is not
one but two plays within a play, more or less following the three rules of
theatre that dominated the writing of French plays at that time. (The one rule
that isn’t fully respected is ‘action’ as the piece could have ended had Silvia
not played out her second, not entirely necessary, play.) However, I liked this
added extra to the play and considering how it did add to both Silvia’s and
Dorante’s characters in the end.
I found it
funny how neither class, the regal Silvia and Dorante and the ‘help’ Lisette
and Arlequin, was able to shake off their true status. Both Silvia and Dorante
kept the clipped tones you would expect of members of the aristocracy while
Lisette was always quite meek and softly spoken and Arlequin was downright
rude! But it all adds up for a bit of short, easy to read fun.
Style: I admit that some of the subtler
points of the style may have just completely gone over my head but I
appreciated the humour in the piece. The author increases the ‘speed’ of the
dialogue by repeating parts what was previously said. I think they even named
this style after him!
Final
verdict: One of the
best pieces of French theatre that I’ve read so far. I was going to alternate
scenes of this play with chapters of my English read but ended up ignoring my
English book in favour of this and that says everything. 4 stars.
Extra notes: It was written in the early 1800's... of course there's no bad language or sex!
