Theatre
No Trifling with Love
On ne badine pas avec l'amour
Alfred de Musset · 1834
Synopsis
His doctorate in hand, Perdican returns to the château of his father, the baron, just as his cousin Camille leaves the convent. The baron wants to marry them, but Camille, whom the nuns have taught to distrust men, refuses and announces that she will go back to the convent. Wounded in his pride by a letter she writes to a nun, Perdican courts Rosette, a young peasant girl and Camille's foster sister, to make Camille jealous, and Camille in turn enters this cruel game, under the eyes of the tutor Blazius, the priest Bridaine and Dame Pluche.
Context
Commissioned by François Buloz as a sequel to Un spectacle dans un fauteuil, and written after Musset's break with George Sand, the play appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1834; a scene in Act II reuses passages from Sand's letters. Conceived for reading, it was not performed until 1861, and in its full text only in 1923. It belongs to the proverbe, a light society genre, but in the last act it tips over into romantic drama.
Who it is for
For a play in which wit and banter gradually turn to gravity, between comedy and romantic drama.
Prizes and reception
Staged by Jean Vilar at the Théâtre national populaire in 1959, it was brought to the cinema as early as 1908 by Georges Méliès.