Summary
Act 3. Rhodophil meets up with Doralice and Artemis. After Rhodophil and Doralice embrace, Doralice withdraws. "If you had staid a minute longer," she says, "I was just considering, whether I should stab, hang, or drown my self."
Artemis admires their relationship and Rhodophil tells her that they are always happy and loving. When Artemis leaves, Rhodophil and Doralice immediately walk in opposite directions, with Rhodophil whistling and Doralice singing a melancholy tune. They fight and discuss the fact that they feel burdened by one another.
Melantha enters with Artemis, complaining that she had to follow Princess Amalthea into court. Artemis reminds her that she has no business at court, and so brings these indignities upon herself. When Artemis suggests that perhaps Melantha would be happier in the country, Melantha suggests that people who live in the country are always falling behind those who live in the town or the city. They discuss the fact that country folk are bored and wait for letters with anticipation, and that they learn of popular songs 12 months after city people learn it.
Artemis and Doralice leave, at which point Philotis enters with a paper in her hand and begins to read her mistress a list of French words that she has extracted from various texts. As Philotis reads the words, Melantha misuses them. She then rehearses her laugh while looking in a mirror, asking Philotis if her manner of laughing is becoming. All the while, Philotis makes fun of her mistress, before handing her a romantic message from Rhodophil. After reading it, Melantha dismisses Philotis so she can practice how she will interact with Rhodophil. As Polydamas and Leonidas enter, Melantha flees the scene.
Polydamas has discovered Leonidas' love for Palmyra using his spies, and Leonidas confirms that this is true. The guards bring Palmyra in and Polydamas questions her about her affair with Leonidas. She replies, "Alas, what shall I answer? to confess it/Will raise a blush upon a Virgin's face;/Yet I was ever taught 'twas base to lie."
When Polydamas insists that they are an unfit match because of their difference in status, Leonidas assures him that "Love either finds equality, or makes it:/Like death, he knows no difference in degrees,/But plains, and levels all." Palmyra discusses the ways that the two of them fell in love, and the fact that Leonidas favored her above all other maidens and gave her many gifts of nature, often showing her birds and courting her with single-minded affection.
Still, Polydamas will not abide their love and orders that Palmyra should be put alone on a boat with only enough bread and water for three days. When Leonidas resists this execution, Polydamas tells him that he will let her live if Leonidas agrees to never see her again. Leonidas refuses, saying, "I will not save ev'n my Palmyra's life/At that ignoble price; but I'll die with her."
Polydamas refuses to let Leonidas die with Palmyra, so Leonidas hands him his sword and tells him to pierce him with it. Just then, Argaleon enters with Hermogenes, and tells Polydamas that Hermogenes has important news for him. Hermogenes tells the king that Palmyra is his daughter, and presents him with a letter and a jewel that belonged to his mother and which he presented to his wife, Eudocia. The letter is written by his late wife, and confirms that Palmyra is their daughter. Polydamas begins to cry and embraces his daughter.
Sure that he is Hermogenes' son, Leonidas humbles himself and resigns himself to a life of poverty. Polydamas wants to give him a large pension and make him a noble, but Leonidas refuses, and everyone but him leaves the stage. Left alone, Leonidas delivers a monologue about the fact that he does not want to be a nobleman and will do his best to do good as a poor man.
Scene 2. Palamede meets with Doralice, who has a book in her hand. They banter for a time, before retiring into a dark grotto. After they do, Rhodophil and Melantha enter, with Melantha commenting on the fact that the grotto is a scandalous place. Not able to find Doralice in the dark grotto, Palamede emerges and sees Rhodophil and Melantha, his mistress. Rhodophil insists that he brought Melantha with him to find Palamede. When Doralice enters, Rhodophil is surprised to see her. Doralice lies that she has been waiting there so that she can catch Rhodophil with Melantha, and that she was calling to Palamede in order to make Rhodophil jealous. Everyone denies their respective affairs.
Analysis
Act 3 starts with a rather comical interaction between Rhodophil and Doralice. In front of Artemis, the couple attests that they are deeply in love, with Rhodophil even telling her, "...there is not such a pair of Turtles in all Sicily; there is such an eternal Cooing and kissing betwixt us, that indeed it is scandalous before civil company." Then, as soon as Artemis leaves, the two lovers walk in opposite directions and reveal that they actually despise one another. In this way, we see that love and marriage, within the logic of the play, is based on a performance and a set of social expectations, rather than on desire and intimacy shared between a couple.
The script of Marriage à la Mode is sprinkled with various philosophies of life and meditations on how the world works. The most insistent philosophical question concerns the ways that people can never be satisfied with what they have, and are always plagued with desires elsewhere, especially in the context of marriage. Additionally, characters meditate about other elements of society, from the pretension and social climbing of Melantha, to the differences between country and town folk. When Artemis suggests that perhaps Melantha would be better suited for country life, Melantha attests that people in the country are so bored that they wait to receive letters with "such devotion, that they cannot sleep the night before" and that "A Song that's stale here, will be new there a twelve moneth hence."
Melantha is a character who is particularly defined by her own pretensions, and her desire to feel superior to others. In spite of her lower rank, she appears in court regularly and gets miffed when people don't treat her with more respect. Additionally, she sends Philotis, her servant, on absurd errands searching for new French words for her to use, and then promptly misuses them when she learns them. In the broader scheme of the play, she is the most pretentious of the characters, but her own absurdities reveal the deeper truth that many of the characters in Marriage à la Mode are attached to their own absurd delusions of grandeur.
The love shared between Leonidas and Palmyra is of a far more tender kind than the ridiculous and shallow affairs carried on by the courtiers, yet it is far more endangered. In this act, Palmyra is brought before Polydamas, who condemns her affair with Leonidas as misguided. Leonidas attests that their difference in class is irrelevant to their love, saying, "Love either finds equality, or makes it:/Like death, he knows no difference in degrees,/But plains, and levels all." For these two lovers, love is an undeniable force, not simply a business contract. The purity of this love contrasts starkly with the fickle and changeable affections of Rhodophil, Doralice, Melantha, and Palamede.
Indeed, the relationships between Rhodophil and Doralice and between Melantha and Palamede are more practical than passionate. In the scene at the grotto, each of them is pursuing their respective affairs, but each denies doing so in order to preserve the appearance of marital bliss. Doralice assures Rhodophil that she was only in the grotto to spy on him and to make him jealous, while Rhodophil insists that he brought Melantha to the grotto to reunite her with Palamede. The result is a strangely convenient group deception, in which everyone keeps up their lies in spite of wanting something completely different from what they say they want.
