Le Mariage Forcé

Sganarelle, a well-to-do middle-aged man, has agreed to marry the young Dorimène. There's just one problem: as the wedding day approaches, he loses his nerve. What follows is a farcical odyssey of indecision as he consults philosophers, cornering them with absurd questions about whether he should proceed, and plies astrologers for cosmic reassurance. Meanwhile, he eavesdrop on Dorimène herself, only to discover she's agreed to the match for entirely practical reasons: she wants to escape her father's iron rule. When her brother Alcidas finally arrives with an ultimatum to either marry the girl or fight him, Sganarelle finds that a man's word once given is not so easily taken back. Molière's early comedy is a wickedly funny expose of the theater surrounding marriage: the desperate search for reasons to do what one has already decided, the terror of bachelorhood, and the pleasant fiction that we choose our fates when society has already chosen them for us.