l'avocat dupé

I assumed that a play titled "The Duped Lawyer" would include more justice related puns, but alas this play could have just as easily been called "The Duped Doctor" or "The Duped Professional". Lawyer here is just an indicator of social status and acceptability of romantic interest. It made me long for the farces of the previous century where the wordplay was sharper and the reliance on situational comedy was not as strong. This play reads much like a knockoff version of a Shakespearean comedy in the vein of Much Ado about Nothing, in that several couples are engaging in cross dressing and trickery and ending with happy couples all getting married. Another interesting component of this play is that the female characters seem to be on roughly equal ground as the men, with the exception of Isidore and her brother who seems more upset that she has been cross-dressing than anything else. The plot is shaky and loosely connected, but altogether fairly standard in terms of a romantic comedy.