Marriage a-la-mode
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Marriage a-la-mode
（The new mermaids）
A & C Black , W.W. Norton, 1991
- : uk
- : us
- : new cover
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Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
: uk ISBN 9780713634129
Description
"Marriage a-la-Mode" was an early and influential comedy of manners, later to be developed by Etherege and Wycherly. During the play Dryden deploys verbal and theatrical wit which is in experimental contrast to a loftier vein of poetic tragi-comedy. With its unusual combination of two plots, this play affords a complex exploration of the language of social exchange and personal feeling between typically well-born men and women of the late 17th-century English world.
- Volume
-
: new cover ISBN 9780713666663
Description
Dryden's audiences in 1671, both aristocratic and middle-class, would have been quick to respond to the themes of disputed royal succession, Francophilia and loyalty among subjects in his most successful tragicomedy. In the tragic plot, written in verse, young Leonidas has to struggle to assert his place as the rightful heir to the throne of Sicily and to the hand of the usurper's daughter. In the comic plot, written in prose, two fashionable couples (much more at home in London drawing-rooms than at the Sicilian court) play at switching partners in the 'modern' style. The introduction of this edition argues that Dryden's own ambivalence about King Charles and his entourage, on whom he came to rely more on more for patronage, manifests itself in both plots; most of all perhaps in the excessively Francophile Melantha, whose affectation cannot quite hide her endearing joie-de-vivre.
by "Nielsen BookData"