Recommendations
Books Like Fantasio
Best books to read after Fantasio by Alfred de Musset
Musset's 1834 fantasy comedy in which the Parisian dandy Fantasio disguises himself as the dead court jester and saves Princess Elsbeth from a forced marriage — a meditation on ennui, the freedom of the mask, and the Romantic relationship between wit and genuine feeling.
- 1Buy
On ne badine pas avec l'amour
by Alfred de Musset
The companion play published the same year — darker and more tragic, but exploring the same theme of the young person who hides behind wit from genuine emotional exposure.
- 2Buy
Les Caprices de Marianne
by Alfred de Musset
The earlier play (1833) that first established Musset's mixture of comedy and sudden tragedy — Octave's role as go-between for Cœlio parallels Fantasio's role as jester for Elsbeth.
- 3Buy
Much Ado About Nothing
by William Shakespeare
The Shakespearean comedy that is the deepest background to Musset's Romantic comedies — Benedick's defensive wit against Beatrice's sparring, both too proud to acknowledge love directly.
- 4Buy
A Midsummer Night's Dream
by William Shakespeare
The Shakespearean fantasy comedy that gives Fantasio its basic structure — the romantic mix-up resolved by intervention in an enchanted space separate from the ordinary social world.
- 5Buy
Il ne faut jurer de rien
by Alfred de Musset
The Proverbe dramatique (1836) that best complements Fantasio — lighter, more purely comic, but using the same device of the young man who is disarmed by the woman he was sent to defeat.
- 6Buy
Le Misanthrope
by Molière
Musset admired Molière above all French dramatists; the Misanthrope's Alceste is the direct ancestor of Fantasio's type — the man who refuses the social performance that everyone around him accepts.
- 7Buy
The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde
Wilde's comedy shares Musset's preoccupation with the mask that is more real than the face behind it — Algernon's 'Bunburying' is a Victorian version of what Fantasio does by taking on the jester's costume.
- 8Buy
La Confession d'un enfant du siècle
by Alfred de Musset
The novel that gives the Romantic-comedy plays their serious background — Octave's ennui in the Confession is what Fantasio is running from when he puts on the jester's costume.
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