SOURCE: An introduction to Seven Comedies by Marivaux, edited by Oscar Mandel, translated by Oscar Mandel and Adrienne S. Mandel, University Press of America, 1984, pp. 1-15.

In the essay below, which was first published in 1968, Mandel presents a general survey of Marivaux's career, touching on such aspects of his comedies as characterization, situation and plot, mood and tone, and relation to French and Italian theatrical conventions.

"Marivaux comes after Molière and Racine as Menander follows Aristophanes and Euripides." Thus Lucien Dubech in his classic Histoire générale illustrée du théâtre. At the Comédie-Française, where the thousandth performance of Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard was celebrated in 1948, Marivaux is now the most frequently performed comic playwright after Molière. Since the Second World War, directors like Barrault, Vilar, and Planchon have mounted highly acclaimed productions at the Odéon, the Vieux...