Marriage A-La-Mode

Dryden's audiences in 1671, both aristocratic and middle-class, would

have been quick to respond to the themes of disputed royal succession,

Francophilia and loyalty among subjects in his most successful

tragicomedy. In the tragic plot, written in verse, young Leonidas has

to struggle to assert his place as the rightful heir to the throne of

Sicily and to the hand of the usurper's daughter. In the comic plot,

written in prose, two fashionable couples (much more at home in London

drawing-rooms than at the Sicilian court) play at switching partners in

the 'modern' style. The introduction of this edition argues that

Dryden's own ambivalence about King Charles and his entourage, on whom

he came to rely more on more for patronage, manifests itself in both

plots; most of all perhaps in the excessively Francophile Melantha,

whose affectation cannot quite hide her endearing joie-de-vivre.