This play was tricky in a number of ways. It is clearly a pastoral, all of the characters are shepherds and shepherdesses running around and in love with each other. Sylvanire, the title character, holds the heart of several men, at one point the text jokes “Who isn’t in love with Sylvanire?” She is not your typical heroine however, batting off men’s advances with wit and cunning. The debates between characters are reminiscent of Renaissance love dialogues, with long arguments over the nature of love, who has the right or duty to serve the other sex, etc. It is clear to me that Sylvanire wins all of these battles of wits, so one would expect that her spurned male lover would simply take her by force and carry her off, but instead he poisons (or maybe cursed? It was not clear) her with the goal of getting her alone to have his way with her. It is a common trope that poison is a woman’s weapon, so this further flips the gender roles where Sylvanire always seems to come out on top, whether it be with jilted lovers, admirers, or her father. This poisoning episode reminds me of a happier version of Romeo and Juliet where the plot is discovered at the last moment and the two are saved. But this dip towards the tragic casts a dark shadow over the rest of the play, leaving the audience confused as to whether this was a tragedy or a comedy. Plays like this help to explain the neoclassical desire for the clarity of genres, as a way to remedy unclear plots and emotional rollercoasters. Indeed, Sylvanire has much more in common with the Elizabethan drama than the neoclassical french.
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Jennifer KellettM.A. French Literature Florida State University Archives
June 2021
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