Alfred de Musset: Seven Plays

The seven plays in this collection share a light-hearted tone, though with occasional and unexpected moments of seriousness. In Marianne , a confirmed cynic intercedes with a married woman on behalf of his best friend. In the eponymous hero of the modern 'fairy tale' Fantasio , by turns imaginative, abrupt and perceptive, Musset provides us with a compelling self portrait. Don't Trifle with Love shows the dangerous strategems of two childhood sweethearts, supposedly destined for marriage. In The Candlestick , an infatuated clerk is set up as a decoy by his employer's young wife and her lover. The one act plays A Diversion , A Door Must be Open or Shut and You Can't Think of Everything deal, in witty, epigrammatic style, with various aspects of romance: a wife and her friend test her husband's fidelity, or lack of it; a man wants to propose to his bantering, blas? hostess; and a couple in love, one absent-minded, the other forgetful, tries to concentrate long enough to get married.