Arlequin

Arlequin, father of Nisida, is the play’s central moral hinge: a wealthy bourgeois whose love for his daughter is at once generous and controlling, and whose understanding of justice is finally tested when the fortune that made his household prosperous is revealed to belong to Cléante. He arranges a socially advantageous marriage for Nisida, tries to remove Cléante from her life, and then reverses himself when conscience, gratitude, and paternal responsibility become stronger than legal possession or social pride.

Identity and Background

Arlequin presents himself as a rich father, but his history begins in poverty and migration. He lived with Nisida’s mother in Bergame, a small Italian town, when the comte de Valcourt settled there and rented the house in which the couple occupied an apartment. The comte de Valcourt became his friend, and after six months had grown so dependent on Arlequin’s companionship that the two men lived in particularly close intimacy. Arlequin’s account establishes that his fortune was not acquired through a long-established family position: it came from an extraordinary succession of friendship, death, and inheritance.

The comte de Valcourt had secretly married a woman in France, a woman Arlequin describes as morally disreputable, and had left her half his fortune for herself and for their six-month-old son. The comte then died in Italy after naming Arlequin heir to everything he had brought there. Arlequin says that he had lived with him for twelve years and that the comte had been dead for eleven. Thus the wealth that later permits Arlequin to live lavishly in Paris is inseparable from a concealed family history and from a son whom the dead man had refused to acknowledge openly.

Arlequin’s prosperity also carries a history of bereavement. He says that poverty had once coincided with happiness, whereas wealth brought grief: he lost Nisida’s mother and his two sons. He consequently became alienated from his homeland, liquidated his property, and moved to Paris with Nisida, who was then only six years old. His investments had nearly doubled over ten years, giving Nisida, in effect, an income of sixty thousand livres a year free of debt. The numerical precision of this inheritance underscores both the scale of his security and the scale of what will later be placed at risk.

Fatherhood, Wealth, and Control

Arlequin’s affection is expressed through material care. For Nisida’s celebration, he plans a salon filled with flowers and lights, music, and garlands bearing her name. Merchants are to enter afterward, and anything that appears likely to please her is to be carried to her room. He insists that he will pay for everything because he is rich and considers money spent on his daughter money well spent. His extravagance is not presented as indifference or vanity alone; it is his most visible language of love.

The same paternal concern becomes a form of surveillance when he considers Nisida’s future. He fears that, after his death, she would be alone in Paris, a foreigner without family or support, and vulnerable at an age when a small mistake might damage the rest of her life. For that reason he wants her married to the marquis d’Yrville, whom he regards as estimable and socially respected. The proposed marriage is meant to replace the protection of a father who feels himself growing old, but it also treats Nisida’s marriage as a safeguard to be arranged by him rather than a choice to be made by her.

Nisida responds by asking for two things: that the marriage be delayed and that she be placed in a convent. She promises to do her duty and says that the more he commands, the more determined she is to obey, yet her very language reveals the pressure beneath that obedience. When Arlequin urges her to disclose the source of her distress, he invokes their shared honor and promises that she can safely open her heart to him. He therefore appears as both guardian and confidant, but the emotional safety he offers remains contained within paternal authority.

When Nisida admits that she loves Cléante, Arlequin acknowledges that he is not superior to Cléante in every respect and that, had he remained in Italy, he would not have hesitated to give his daughter to him. In Paris, however, he has allowed himself the folly of vanity, making the match more difficult. Nisida then offers to suppress her passion for the sake of his old age and asks him to separate her from Cléante; she even agrees to marry the marquis d’Yrville after being given time. Arlequin refuses that immediate sacrifice, saying that he will try to cure her and that he will act as her physician. His tenderness is therefore real, but it operates through his power to prescribe the conditions of her emotional life.

Cléante and the Crisis of Honor

Arlequin’s relationship with Cléante is unusually intimate before the young man’s identity is exposed. Cléante has been living in Arlequin’s household as his secretary, having entered under a disguise because he could not otherwise approach the family. Arlequin tells him that he is gentle, helpful, always ready to oblige, and so widely esteemed that everyone takes an interest in him. Precisely because Cléante is so well liked, Arlequin insists that he must leave.

The expulsion is one of Arlequin’s most painful acts. Cléante hears it as cruel irony and protests that the order to leave is already enough punishment without the added insult of being made unhappy. Arlequin rejects the charge. He says that he esteems Cléante as himself, would give half his fortune to spend his life with him, and has felt such friendship and attachment from the first day that he weeps while ordering him away. He embraces Cléante while sobbing, calls him his good friend, promises to regret him all his life, and nevertheless repeats that Cléante must depart and that Arlequin must not see him again. The scene exposes the contradiction at the heart of his conduct: he is not expelling a hated intruder but sacrificing a beloved companion to what he believes paternal duty requires.

Cléante finally explains that a violent and profound passion for Nisida has possessed him for more than a year. Despairing of gaining admission to Arlequin’s house, he presented himself as a secretary and asks to be punished for this deception. Arlequin initially interprets the confession as an abuse of his trust undertaken to seduce his daughter. Cléante, however, describes a different hope: he wished to please Arlequin by living with him, earn his esteem and kindness, and wait until affection made a declaration possible. He had hoped that Arlequin might hear his poverty and misfortunes not merely as Nisida’s father but as the friend of an unhappy man.

This appeal redefines the apparent deception. Cléante’s disguise is still a breach of trust, but it was also an attempt to cross a social barrier that poverty and uncertain parentage made impassable. Arlequin’s own attachment to him has already supplied the emotional recognition that Cléante sought. The father’s hostility is therefore directed less at Cléante’s character than at the threat his presence seems to pose to Nisida’s reputation, marriage prospects, and security.

The Inheritance Revelation

The decisive reversal begins when Cléante reveals that his father died in Italy just as an old friend was preparing to help him obtain permission to visit him. Cléante had never been able to embrace his father in his lifetime. After the death, he learned that the paternal fortune had been left to a stranger. Arlequin’s alarm at this detail prepares the recognition: when he asks the father’s name, Cléante identifies him as the comte de Valcourt and says that he possesses proof.

Arlequin immediately understands that Cléante is the son of his benefactor. He embraces him and declares that he owes him respect. He recalls having loved the comte de Valcourt for fifteen years and recognizes that he himself has received the whole fortune. The inheritance is therefore not merely a legal instrument in the plot; it is the material form of an old friendship that has silently excluded the friend’s child.

Arlequin’s response is immediate and uncompromising. He says that he possesses all of Cléante’s property and will return it because the comte could not truly have given it to him. His reasoning does not depend on whether the law would compel restitution. Indeed, Cléante argues that his parents’ marriage was never declared and that the law gives him nothing to claim. Arlequin answers that the law cannot govern his conscience when his heart tells him the property is not his. He refuses to accept a situation in which he would be rich while the son of his benefactor remained poor.

This is the clearest expression of Arlequin’s governing principle. He distinguishes formal possession from moral ownership: the fortune may have been transferred to him, but gratitude makes its retention intolerable. His decision also carries a practical cost. He tells Nisida that they were rich that morning and will now become poor, yet insists that restitution is necessary because otherwise they would no longer be honest people. The language converts private generosity into a definition of character. Arlequin does not merely perform a benevolent act; he chooses the identity by which he wishes to live.

Change, Reconciliation, and Ending

Arlequin’s return of the fortune does not mean that paternal concern disappears. He asks Cléante to ensure that Nisida will have the means to live, saying that he would die of grief if he left her in poverty. The demand is neither a rejection of restitution nor an attempt to keep the property: it is the last condition of his fatherhood. Cléante accepts the fortune only in order to place it at Nisida’s feet, turning the restored inheritance into the basis of their union rather than a compensation that separates them.

The revelation also transforms Arlequin’s judgment of Cléante. The impoverished secretary whom he expelled becomes the rightful son of the man to whom Arlequin owes everything. Bloodline and property suddenly make visible what affection had already recognized. Arlequin’s earlier attachment was not invalidated by the truth; instead, the truth gives that attachment a moral and historical foundation, allowing him to regard Cléante not only as a beloved friend but as the heir whose deprivation he must repair.

At the close, Arlequin tells Nisida that Cléante is the son of the man who left them their fortune and the person to whom everything they possess belongs. He then tells Nérine that his original plan for giving her Cléante is no longer possible, but promises to double the dowry he had intended for her and asks her to remain with the family as its good friend. The family’s reconciliation thus includes Nérine rather than treating her as disposable once the central marriage has been settled.

Arlequin’s final lesson joins his two governing roles. He tells Nisida and Cléante that they will be united and will probably be happy, but urges them to remember that no pleasure in the world equals the pleasure of doing one’s duty as an honest man and a good father. His ending does not deny happiness; it places happiness after duty. The fortune is restored, the lovers are joined, Nisida remains protected, and Arlequin’s authority is redeemed only when he is willing to relinquish the wealth and arrangements through which he had tried to secure everyone’s future.