Recommendations
Books Like On ne badine pas avec l'amour
Best books to read after On ne badine pas avec l'amour by Musset
Musset's 1834 play — the most unsettling of his comedies — in which Perdican and Camille play emotional games with each other's feelings until their mutual pride accidentally causes the death of Rosette. One of the great achievements of French dramatic writing: a comedy that ends in genuine tragedy.
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Buy on AmazonFantasio
by Alfred de Musset
The companion play — lighter, more whimsical, but exploring the same theme of the young person who hides behind wit from genuine emotional risk.
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Buy on AmazonLes Caprices de Marianne
by Alfred de Musset
The earlier play (1833) that first established the pattern — Cœlio and Octave as the two aspects of Romantic idealism and Romantic cynicism that Musset explores throughout his comedies.
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Buy on AmazonMuch Ado About Nothing
by William Shakespeare
The play that most directly anticipates On ne badine pas — Benedick and Beatrice's witty combat is the same defensive strategy as Perdican and Camille's, though Shakespeare resolves it without tragedy.
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Buy on AmazonLes Liaisons dangereuses
by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Laclos's epistolary novel of strategic seduction — the darkest version of the emotional game-playing that Musset treats more lyrically; in Laclos the cruelty is intentional, in Musset it is inadvertent, but both lead to real death.
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Buy on AmazonLorenzaccio
by Alfred de Musset
The major play that develops the same theme of self-destruction through mask-wearing — where Perdican and Camille destroy each other through emotional strategy, Lorenzo destroys himself through political disguise.
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Buy on AmazonRomeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
The tragedy of young love destroyed by forces outside the lovers' control — the classical background to Musset's more psychologically interior version of the same theme.
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Buy on AmazonLa Confession d'un enfant du siècle
by Alfred de Musset
The novel that provides the sociological context for the emotional games in the play — the analysis of why the Romantic generation cannot express feeling directly.
- 8Buy on Amazon
The Playboy of the Western World
by John Millington Synge
The Irish play that makes the same point as On ne badine pas — the games people play with romantic idealization have real consequences for the real people who become their objects.
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