Study Questions on Camille

1.     How do you feel towards Varville in Scenes 1-3 before Marguerite enters?

2.     How do you feel towards him and her when you see how she treats him?

3.     Scene 6: What generalization can you make about Marguerite’s social circle?

4.     Scene 7:  How do Armand Duval’s first speeches characterize him?

5.     Scene 8 is a roller coaster ride climaxing in Marguerite’s breakdown.  How do Armand and Prudence differ in their responses?

6.     Scene 10:  Does Marguerite treat Armand the same as Varville?

7.     What is Marguerite’s opinion of herself?

8.     Act II, Scene 1:  Who exactly is this duke who sends Marguerite money?  Return to Act I or search the electronic script to find out.

9.     Scene 4: Is Marguerite playing Armand for a fool?  To what extent, if at all, is she deceiving him?  Do Scenes 5 and 6 alter your view?

10. Scene 10:  Were you surprised that Armand had not left Paris after all?  Don’t be surprised, then, when he behaves this way again.

11. Scene 12:  How would you have Marguerite deliver her line on p. 40: “Because . . . You don’t know what you’re saying”?  What happens during the ellipsis dots?

12. Scene 13:  As the curtain descends on Act II, what does the audience see?

13. Act III begins with a showdown where the truth comes out, but a new deception immediately takes its place.  Where is this pattern repeated later on?

14. Scene 3:  Everything is coming together for Armand and Marguerite.  They are trying to outdo each other in devising clever plans for future maintenance.  Experienced theater-goers recognize this as a sign that the weather is about to change.  You have enough information to guess at least part of the storm that is going to break in Scene 4.  Make a prediction.

15. How does the author make us recognize M. Duval as a formidable enemy wile at the same time making us confident that Marguerite will defeat him?  And at exactly what moment does that confidence begin to waver? 

16.  When it becomes clear that Marguerite has met her match in Armand’s father, how do you feel toward the man who in all likelihood is going to succeed in destroying her happiness?

17. Does Marguerite do the right thing in yielding to M. Duval’s demand?  What various motives influence her?  Are some of them more admirable than others?  What do you think Armand might have to say on this subject?

18. Before learning her plan for breaking up with Armand, can you guess what it may be?  Why does she say that if M. Duval knew, he would be honor-bound to try to stop her?

19. Find a summary of the plot of the novel Manon Lescaut, by the Abbé Prévost (source of operas by Puccini, Massenet, and others). It is mentioned more than once in this play.  What resemblance does it bear to this story?

20. Act IV:  Of what earlier scene does the general appearance of the scene opening Act IV remind you?

21. There is some wordplay  in Scene 1 that was hard to translate.  Can you find it?

22. Locate all the humiliations suffered by St. Gaudens in Scene 1, at the hands of  Anaïs and others.  Can you imagine Armand’s letting himself be so treated?

23. Prudence says many things that reveal how well (or ill) she knows Marguerite.  Find them.  How would you characterize their relationship?

24. Scene 3: Who is Gustave?  Have you been aware of his being something of a stranger to Marguerite’s circle?  What do we know about him?

25. On p. 69, Marguerite asks, “Do I have a choice?  And, besides, don’t I have to stupefy myself?”  Are these two different questions?  What does each mean?

26. In the middle of p. 70, Gaston, says, “Say, buddy, that’s a game from hell you’re playing.”  This is a bit of deliberate ambiguity, meant to be a comment on Armand’s poor luck at gambling but also on what else?  The translation is literal: un jeu d’enfer `a game from hell.’  Help me translate it better.

27. Scene 7: Armand swings from one extreme to another.  Are his conflicting passions equally convincing?  What exactly is his act of cowardice?

28. Some important characters make a final appearance in Act V.  What about their words and behavior is specially appropriate in characterizing them?

29. Would it have been better to end the play as the silent film version starring Rudolph Valentino ends, with Marguerite alone in bed, dying, with her creditors inventorying her possessions to pay her debts?