The Glass of Water

     Unfortunately for me, my dramaturgical spidey sense failed me both while reading and after reading Eugène Scribe's The Glass of Water. 
     Fortunately for me, I was paying attention in class when we briefly discussed Water and the two odd pieces changed by the translator were made clear to me. 

     The first moment in the play that did not fit in with the rest was when the Duchess and Bolingbroke kiss and then slap each other smartly on the cheek. For the first two acts of Scribe's play, the Duchess and Bolingbroke are at each other's throats. They engage in a 24-hour armistice, where they complete small favors for each other, and then resort back to their sneaking, battle-like relationship. They are a threat to the other and are always competing in a battle of wits. And yet, after all of this back-and-forth-ness, they realize... they've been in love all this time? "You are the first man who has ever defeated me . . . and, if I were not already married, you would know no peace until I had wed with you," the Duchess remarks. They then claim the first and second privileges of husband and wife (a kiss and a slap, respectively) and then bow to each other and leave. Ok... A very strange moment in the play that was never even hinted at in the previous two acts. 

     The second moment in the play that did not seem to fit in with the rest was when the Queen looks out of her window and takes notice of the new, handsome guardsman. Again, what..? Looking strictly from a level of class perspective, a queen would never be involved or even take up an interest in a mere guardsmen. That aside, it just doesn't fit in with the rest of the plot. Why would the queen fall in love at the end of the play? Her story line should have ended when Masham and Abigail got together, and yet, the Queen has this odd wave of a love interest just as the curtain falls. While the bulk of Water fits together, this last moment definitely seems out of place in this otherwise well-made play.