The Cercle Francais will give next week its sixteenth annual dramatic performance, presenting Corneille's "Le Menteur," a comedy in five acts. The graduates' night performance will be given in Brattle Hall, Cambridge, on Thursday, December 11, and the Cambridge public performance on Friday, December 12. There will be a Boston performance for the Boston schools on Saturday afternoon, December 13, in the Bijou Theatre, at which the price of admission will be reduced to 75 cents for the orchestra, and 50 cents for the gallery. The regular Boston performance will take place on Monday night, December 15.
The scene of "Le Menteur" is the Tuileries in Paris; the time, the seventeenth century. The action of the play centers about the character of Dorante, a young man who has recently returned to Paris from school in Poitiers. Geronte, father of Dorante, is anxious to have his son marry Clarice. The young lady is not unwilling, but would like to see her suitor before deciding. She is loved by Alcippe, but their marriage being constantly delayed by his father, who finds no time to come to the ceremony, she is willing to accept another suitor. Isabelle proposes a way for Clarice to see Dorante, without exciting Alcippe's jealousy. She is to see him under the assumed name of her friend Lucrece who will arrange the meeting. Geronte notifies Dorante that he wants him to marry and has chosen for him a handsome and wealthy lady. Dorante tells his father that he has been secretly married in Poitiers, giving details concerning the affair.
Dorante meets Clarice, but thinks at the time that he is speaking to Lucrece, and he declares his love to her. When urged to explain the story of his supposed marriage, he says that it was only a skilful way of avoiding a marriage proposed by his father, for he loves Lucrece and will marry no one else. Clarice is satisfied that all the love-talk of Dorante is addressed to Lucrece, but tells her friend to beware of the deceiver.
Geronte finds that he has been deceived by Dorante in regard to that supposed marriage of his. The indignant father asks his son to explain and hears from him that he had made up this story to avoid being married to Clarice, as he is in love with Lucrece. Dorante goes to Clarice whom he still believes to be Lucrece and assures her that he has nothing but contempt for Clarice. Just then he is warned, by a word in the conversation, of the mistake he has constantly been making of taking Clarice for Lucrece and skilfully explains his actions as a revenge upon the one who he says wished to deceive him and assumed Lucrece's name to talk to him on the previous evening. His love has always been given to the real Lucrece, and his father is persuaded to make a formal demand for her hand.
Alcippe is married to Clarice and Dorante to Lucrece.
The cast for the play is as follows:
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