SOURCE: McCready, Susan. “Performing Stability: The Problem of Proof in Alfred de Musset's Un Caprice and La Quenouille de Barbérine.” Romance Notes 38, no. 1 (fall 1997): 87-95.

In the following essay, McCready regards the theme of fidelity and its proof in two of Musset's comedies of the 1830s.

A husband is unsure of his wife's fidelity and hatches a scheme to prove that she is unfaithful; a wife worries that her husband is about to stray and enlists the help of her maid to spy on him; a young man promised in marriage to a young woman wants to test her to prove that she will be faithful before he says “I do.” Disguises are worn; letters are intercepted; conversations overheard, but in the end, the lovers always recognize each other's true, essential value and are united. This is a standard comic plot: some sort of conflict (a doubt...