The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [92]
For a third time the chief characters are plunged into a series of multiple misunderstandings, this time at night amid the shadowy surroundings of the garden, as the two leading ladies, the Countess and Susanna, disguised as each other, now take the final initiative in leading the Count a merry dance (so clearly is the focus now on the unshakeable feminine alliance between Susanna and the Countess that they even briefly fool Figaro as well). The Count is led into the final hypocrisy of a jealous attack on Figaro for supposedly making love to the Countess, when in fact Figaro is making love to his own wife and it is the Count who thinks he is making love to Figaro's. On this climax, bringing the Count's hypocrisy to its reductio ad absurdum, the doubly-wronged Countess can step from the shadows to bring home to him the full horror of the situation he has got into. We at last see the appalled Count going through the profound transformation we have been waiting for throughout the story. He has at last been forced to confront the truth about himself and his own behaviour. He recognises what a heartless monster of hypocrisy he has become, and pleads with his faithful loving wife for forgiveness. At last everyone in the story can properly pair off, and the four joyful couples sing out the moral of the tale:
and how, after this tempestuous day (the story's subtitle is `The Day of Madness'), they are going `to the sound of music to revel all night'.
The essence of what we see in The Marriage of Figaro is a situation familiar from countless other comedies. We see a group of people, a little community, reduced to complete confusion and misery primarily because one dominant figure in that community is totally egocentric and possessed by a state of `darkness'. Because he is not `centred' and right in himself, the repercussions of his inner disorder are felt in a domino-effect throughout the community. The chief source of power in the community is abusing his power. There is no longer a sense of harmonious order. No one quite knows who they are any longer. Everyone is set against everyone else. Nothing is clear.
What has happened by the end of Figaro is a weaving together of all the ingredients which we have seen making up almost any fully developed comedy. The figure who is the dominant source of `darkness' in the story has finally been brought to recognise his blind and heartless egocentricity: he has moved to a different `centre' of his personality or `come to himself'. Power and authority in the community is at last being exercised properly and no longer abused. The terrible curse of egotism which has afflicted the community has been lifted. And as part of this same process of healing, of reconciliation and of everything being brought into the light, a number of other things have also happened at much the same time. All disguises have been thrown off. The need for concealment is at an end. Everyone has emerged in or discovered their true identity. All the characters have finally recognised who they must properly pair off with. Everything has at last been brought into a harmonious state of order. Love and friendship are triumphant in all directions. And the story ends on a miraculous image of human wholeness; of everyone brought together, both outwardly and inwardly, in a way which gives us an exhilarating sense of life renewed.
In all these respects we may be struck by the parallels between The Marriage of Figaro and The Winter's Tale. As two of the most profound of all comedies, it is no accident that each is in the end describing a strikingly similar situation. The ruler of a kingdom or household has fallen under a great sickness of soul which casts all beneath him into shadow, particularly his wife, who becomes the `obscured heroine'. Restoration begins in the shadows, `below the line', with the bringing together of a pair of young lovers, representing youth, hope and new life. Eventually the spirit of renewal reaches up above the line, to thaw out the frozen heart of the sick ruler. And in each case the