Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard

Marivaux is among the most perfomed of all French playwrights, and "Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard" is his best known play. The play combines the linguistic refinement of the eighteenth-century salons, the intellectual challenge of the dawning Enlightenment, and the imaginative fancy of the Italian actors who first brought it to life. In Marivaux's own day he was accused of writing in a style seen as affected. Today his linguistic subtlety is perceived as being among his great qualities, though it makes his work particularly difficult for the non-native speaker of French. This edition offers an introduction which elucidates the themes of the play by situating them within the wider context of Marivaux's writing, and notes which clarify the originality of Marivaux's style.