Marriage à la mode

de John Dryden

Half comic and half serious, 'Marriage A-la-Mode' is a spirited study of the trials and passions of love and marriage, a blend of satire and true romance. The play is set in the Sicilian court, and consists of a comic plot written in prose, and a tragic plot written in verse. The comic plot wittily explores the fluttering courtly mode of romance. The serious plot, by contrast, offers a timeless understanding of love and marriage as deeply intertwined, and of love as springing from country innocence and honour, and not from the social intriguing of shallow courtiers.