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...

Marivaux's light-hearted comedies of love and intrigue are enjoying a vigorous revival

One of the most original of French eighteenth century dramatists, Marivaux wrote over thirty comedies of love and intrigue. This, the only major single-volume selection of Marivaux's plays in English, brings together five full-length and five shorter pieces in lively translations by John Bowen, Michael Sadler, John Walters, Donald Watson and Nicholas Wright.