Marriage ? La Mode

By John Dryden and John; Auburn Mark S. Dryden

Book Overview

Whether for love or ambition, for parental approval or reasons of state, marriage has complicated the lives of all who enter into it. First performed in 1671, Dryden's Marriage la Mode portrays the motives high and low that make marriage the pivotal institution of a nation.

Like Dryden's best tragicomedies, Marriage la Mode has a double plot. The hopes that marriage excites and the regrets it suffers, the possibilities it opens and the opportunities it denies, its potential nobility and its vulnerability to decay provided Dryden with plentiful dramatic material. Comedy and pathos intersect in plots that entangle and surprise like marriage itself.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803203861
• ISBN13: 9780803203860
• Release Date: August 1981
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 144 Pages

Customer Reviews

Developing the Comedic Genre in Restoration England

Dryden's "Marriage A-La-Mode" can be thought of as a Comedy of Manners play of the Restoration era but was actually written before the genre took true form and had a part in developing its eventual popularity. "Marriage A-La-Mode" satirizes the English Aristocracy and has the distinction of creating what became comedic typologies, especially in the character of Melantha. The separate storylines are only superficially interwoven though both are explicitly critical of aristocratic lifestyles and attitudes. If you like the genre of Restoration Comedy, Dryden's "Marriage" is a good bet and without the over-complicated plots of Sheridan.

WOW

THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING, PACKED WITH DRAMA, AND SUSPENSE, AND COMEDY. EVERYTHING THE 1999 ACADEMY AWARDS DIDN'T HAVE