Marriage

Marriage in the play is both a private promise and a public institution through which love, property, paternal authority, and moral duty collide. At first it appears as an arrangement made by Arlequin for his daughter Nisida and, unexpectedly, for Nérine and Cléante; by the ending, however, it becomes legitimate only after concealed identities are exposed and Arlequin chooses honesty over possession of inherited wealth.

Arranged Plans and Paternal Authority

Arlequin first announces that he has settled Nisida’s marriage to the marquis d’Yrville. He presents the decision as an expression of his strong desire to see his daughter married to a socially suitable man, while also acknowledging that her own reasons should be heard if the arrangement displeases her. The scene therefore combines paternal authority with a stated willingness to listen: Arlequin chooses the prospective husband, but claims that Nisida’s judgment remains decisive.

His plan expands when he also arranges Nérine’s marriage to Cléante. Having observed the friendship between them, Arlequin promises Nérine a respectable dowry and fixes her wedding for the same day as Nisida’s. The proposal is comically shocking to both Nérine and Cléante, because Arlequin mistakes the emotional structure of the household: Nérine is Cléante’s confidante and accomplice, not his beloved, while Cléante is secretly in love with Nisida. The proposed double marriage thus turns misunderstandings into a formal social design.

Love Against the Marriage Market

Nisida does not reject marriage because she lacks affection or gratitude. She tells Arlequin that she is completely happy living with him and that she has no wish he has not already fulfilled. Even a husband equal to her father, she says, would force her to divide a heart she wants to give only to him. Marriage is consequently defined against the emotional security of the father-daughter bond, not merely against an unsuitable suitor.

When Nisida recognizes that her love for Cléante may conflict with Arlequin’s wishes and circumstances, she asks for the marriage to be postponed and requests permission to enter a convent. Her proposed retreat is an act of self-denial: she would rather remove herself from Cléante than make her father suffer. Later, she offers an even more painful sacrifice, promising to overcome her passion, be separated from Cléante, and marry the marquis d’Yrville if that will protect Arlequin’s old age. The arranged marriage therefore becomes the measure of her filial devotion, while her resistance shows the emotional cost of treating a daughter’s future as a paternal responsibility.

Secrecy, Consent, and Misrecognition

Cléante’s relationship to marriage is shaped by concealment. He has loved Nisida for more than a year but, unable to gain entry to Arlequin’s household, disguised himself as a secretary. Nérine helped him enter the house and protected his access to Nisida, allowing him to live near her for six months while she remained unaware that he loved her. His disguise makes the household itself a space of suspended courtship: the lovers are physically close, yet the social conditions required for an open proposal are absent.

Nérine attempts to convert hidden feeling into an honest marriage. She advises Cléante that if he can forget Nisida, he should return to his regiment and recover his position through service; if he cannot live without Nisida, he must remain, confess his identity, and tell her that he loves her. She then urges him to request a month’s delay from his colonel while she undertakes to bring him and Nisida to an explanation. Her intervention treats marriage as dependent on acknowledged feeling rather than on a decision made by others.

The emotional evidence eventually begins to surface before the formal revelation. Nérine hears Nisida singing Cléante’s song privately behind the door of her room, in a tender voice. She interprets this as proof that Nisida is not indifferent to its author: someone who felt nothing, she reasons, would not withdraw alone to sing his song softly. The discovery transforms the proposed marriage with the marquis d’Yrville from a plausible arrangement into an obstacle to an already mutual attachment.

Wealth, Inheritance, and the Final Union

The marriage plot is inseparable from property. After Cléante’s identity is revealed, Arlequin announces that Cléante is the son of the man who had left Arlequin and Nisida their fortune and that everything they possess belongs to him. The consequence is immediate and severe: they had been rich that morning, but must now become poor. Arlequin accepts this loss because retaining property that morally belongs to Cléante would make them dishonest.

The revelation also changes the marriages that Arlequin can authorize. He can no longer give Nérine Cléante as originally planned, so he doubles the dowry intended for her and asks her to remain with the household as the family’s good friend. Nisida and Cléante, meanwhile, are to be united. Their marriage is no longer blocked by the apparent difference between a wealthy daughter and a poor secretary, because Cléante’s true identity and inheritance have been disclosed; more importantly, the union has been tested by sacrifice and confession rather than secured by concealment.

The ending makes moral conduct the final condition of marital happiness. Arlequin tells Nérine that he cannot give her Cléante, but compensates her materially and preserves her place within the family. He then tells Nisida and Cléante that they will be united and will probably be happy, while insisting that no pleasure equals fulfilling the duty of an honest man and a good father. Marriage consequently resolves the romantic plot only after the characters accept that love cannot be separated from consent, truth, family obligation, and justice in the disposition of wealth.