SOURCE: "Introduction" and "Conclusion," in Marivaux and Molière: A Comparison, Texas Tech Press, 1977, pp. 3-12, 130-32.

In the following excerpts, Cismaru evaluates Marivaux's debt to Molière, and concludes that "Marivaux went beyond moliéresque limits, and broadened the playwright's scope into areas heretofore largely ignored by writers of comedies and only touched on by composers of tragedies. "

In the enormous bibliography devoted to Marivaux, there are far fewer studies of his theater than of other aspects of the writer and his work. Many commentators have written about Marivaux the man, the novelist, the moralist, the philosopher, but relatively fewer have discussed thoroughly his theater. The first English popularization of the plays of the eighteenth-century dramatist was that of Kenneth N. McKee, The Theater of Marivaux [1958], which treated each play as a unit and studied the playwright's entire theater in chronological order. A later, more complete work...