14 November 2002: Marivaux, Love in Disguise (Le prince travesti)
14 November 2002: Marivaux, Love in Disguise (Le prince travesti)
Translated by Dan Smith. University of Massachusetts Theatre Department production. directed by Ed Golden.
Smith, the translator and dramaturg, says in a program note that his is the only translation of Le prince travesti available in English. If so, it is a most welcome addition to English-language Marivaux, and a fine piece of work. I heard two or three words or phrases that struck my ear as a touch too contemporary (to us, I mean) — “job” for “task,” “deal” for “agreement” — but overall this is a very well-crafted translation that plays clearly and mellifluously.
This is the story of the unrequited love of the Princess of Barcelona for a young man, Lélio, who seems to be not of noble or royal blood and has no money (though he dresses exceedingly well) and enlists her close friend and confidante Hortensia to intercede. But Hortensia herself is in love with Lélio, who bravely saved her from highwaymen and fell in love with her in the process. In the conclusion the Princess settles for an advantageous marriage with the Prince of Castile, who under the guise of ambassador has come to Barcelona to press his suit. Meanwhile Lélio and his servant Harlequin are subjected to the machinations of the Princess’s devious Minister Frederic, who sets Harlequin to spy on Lélio and as a reward offers him gold and a buxom, winsome girl, Lisette. And so the travesti, or disguise, theme of the plot is worked out in multiple ways: literally, by virtue of Lélio’s real identity as Prince of Lyons and the Castilian ambassador as Prince, but also in a more figurative way by virtue of the extended examples, developed through the intrigue of this charming comedy, of true feelings and true motives disguised or held back.
Marivaux’s method is the method, long tested on the French stage since the days of Racine and before — Greek in origin, in fact, reflecting a theatre with only three actors at most on stage at a given time — of working a goodly range of changes on pairings, scene by scene, of all or almost all the characters, deftly arranging for the action to advance by means of revelations or obfuscations or, even more centrally, by reversals of intention or feeling. In pursuing this method Marivaux also brings in a large amount of style and material from the Italian commedia dell’arte, a fixture in Paris by the time he began writing plays for the Comédie Itallienne troupe in 1720. The most obvious commedia element is the valet, called simply Harlequin, wonderfully well played by Matt Dunphy, a six-feet-plus, gangly yet well-coordinated actor with legs half a mile long who can bound across the small stage (open on three sides) of the Curtain Theatre in a second and in the next second crumple up on the floor in mock terror. But the whole commedia manner of relatively impromptu speeches and scenes hung on the secure scaffolding of an efficient scenario seems to be carried out in Marivaux’s workmanlike appr