“A fine upstanding husband and my avenger!”

Bartholo has no love lost for Figaro, nor the Count. In the previous play, The Barber of Seville, Figaro helped the Count lure away Bartholo’s ward. That young woman is now the Countess, and Bartholo holds a grudge. At this point in the play, his role is mostly spiteful. He seeks to undermine his old rivals in any way possible, even if it is just offering sarcastic comments from the sidelines of the plot.

“Is it not meet and right that a generous Lord should share the happiness he procures for his servants?”

Much like Bartholo, Marceline takes a vindictive interest in the marriage between Figaro and Suzanne. She seeks to undermine it, not necessarily because she believes that Figaro may love her more, but because she feels something for Figaro that she cannot identify. Like her old lover, Bartholo, Marceline is restricted—at this stage of the play—to being a looming threat to the marriage and a deliverer of spiteful barbs.

“The one the girls all hated! But Suzette, it is a charming old custom!”

The count talks about the right of droit du seigneur in a dismissive tone. While many of the other characters praise him for the seemingly benevolent act of forsaking his supposedly ancient right, the count is less sure. He wants to retain this appearance of benevolence, but he also wants to have sex with Suzanne. As such, he needs to find a way to arrive at the same result as the right would have entailed but without actually enacting the legal right he has given up. He thus tries to pressure Suzanne into sex, reflecting Patriarchal Double Standards in Love and Marriage.

“That it is high time the goodness of such a considerate master received some form of public acknowledgement.”

Figaro is aware of the Count’s interest in his bride-to-be and also aware of the Count’s considerable ego. He hopes he can prevent the count from reneging on his decision with regard to the droit du seigneur by turning the decision into a public spectacle. Figaro loudly and publicly praises the Count for not acting on his traditional right to have sex with a bride on the night of her marriage to prevent the Count from changing his mind.

“I’ve bored him with my affection, wearied him with my love.”

The events of The Barber of Seville sold the Countess on a false romance. Though the Count once dedicated himself to winning her love, he has fallen out of love with her. His constant infidelities, she believes, are a result of his having grown bored with the affection she offers, since he prefers to chase a woman he cannot have rather than love a woman who returns his love unconditionally. The Countess’s disempowerment speaks to patriarchal double standards in love and marriage.

“Two plots, three, four at a time, as involved and tangled as you like. I should have been a politician.”

Figaro prides himself on his ability to manipulate others. He weaves concurrent plots that, for anyone else, would become confusing to the point of absurdity. For Figaro, the confusion and the chaos are a plus, as he views this as a vindication of his superior intelligence. His satirical comment—that such trickery is befitting of a politician—is an extra flourish of sarcastic satire to illustrate how much fun he is having with his plots.

“How could I have let this happen?”

Finding herself in an absurd situation, the Countess blames herself for allowing events to spiral out of her control. The farcical nature of the scene is reflected in the structure of the play: In this single scene, the Countess is alone, and she has one line, delivered for the sake of the audience as much as herself. She is caught between rooms as she is caught between worlds, just as she is caught between scenes. The staccato structure of the scenes turns the plot into a flurry of asides, schemes, and confusion, reflecting The Problem of Deceit and the Power of Truth.

“Everything is exactly as I left it.”

When the Count returns to his wife’s bedroom, he confidently asserts that everything is just as he left it. He is incorrect: Suzanne has swapped places with Cherubin, a move that will make the Count seem ridiculous in short order. The confidence with which the Count asserts an incorrect fact speaks to his blustering foolishness. He is easy to trick because—unlike Figaro—he lacks the imagination to understand how anyone could ever deceive him.

“I have ceased to be the Rosine you once pursued so passionately! I am poor Countess Almaviva, the sad, deserted wife you do not love any more.”

The Countess speaks to the way in which marriage has changed her identity. She was once simply Rosine, and she was desired by the Count. She bought into this romance, accepting his proposal, only to discover that married life is not as she anticipated. She is no longer Rosine, the optimistic young woman who believed in love. Now, she is the Countess, and she has been chastened and made cynical by her husband’s infidelity, reflecting patriarchal double standards in love and marriage.

“That’s because they haven’t got servants to help them.”

Figaro’s witty riposte to the Count is an example of the way in which the play subtly incorporates social criticism and speaks to The Instability of Class Hierarchies, with Figaro drawing subtle attention to just how much servants ease the lives of the nobles while receiving no such help themselves. The dialogue hints at the naivety and the thoughtlessness of nobles such as the Count, to whom Figaro’s obvious statement is beyond their realm of comprehension. The play portrays such nobles as out of touch, but does so through humor to assuage the censors.

“Which goes easy on the strong and hard on the weak.”

In The Barber of Seville, Figaro and the Count were allies. Over the course of The Marriage of Figaro, they have increasingly come to see one another as enemies, speaking to the instability of class hierarchies. Figaro has always said what he thought and made jokes with the Count, yet his comments are now explicitly satirical. He is critical of the law and order that the Count embodies and wishes to wield against Figaro. The comment is so pointed, both men know, because Figaro understands the Count’s true intentions.

“Vapors is for ladies and you can only catch it in boudoirs.”

In her effort to trick the count, Suzanne plays on his lack of understanding of women and social classes. Adopting a less educated, less formal tone than she uses throughout the play, Suzanne flatters the Count’s idea of lower-class women as less refined and less-informed than women of the Count’s class. By flattering his misguided opinions, she distracts him from her true intentions, a trick that could easily be played by her husband to be, Figaro, showing that they are a well-paired couple.

“It’s scandalous that public offices are sold.”

The conversation between Don Gusman Brid’oison and Marceline shows that social satire is not limited to Figaro and Suzanne. Other characters are aware of the corruption or unfairness of their society, even those who are empowered, such as Don Gusman. He criticizes the way in which public offices are sold, all while holding public office. As such, satire is not limited to those whom society excludes, as there is also social critique among those who benefit from the corrupt system.

“Even in the highest ranks of society, all that women get from men is condescension and contempt.”

Early in the play, Marceline is little more than a plot device. She stands in the way of Figaro marrying Suzanne, bringing a legal case against him. As the play develops, however, she shows a strong range of social criticism toward patriarchal double standards in love and marriage. Marceline, like many of the characters, possesses a thorough, innate understanding of how society marginalizes her, and she is not willing to tolerate this marginalization.

“Yesterday, I was what you would call an orphan. Now I have both parents, not as grand as I had convinced myself they would be, I grant you, but good enough for us, for we’re not as choosy as rich people are.”

In another frank and honest conversation with Suzanne, Figaro drops his pretense and speaks sincerely about how much he has changed since the beginning of the play. After growing up as an orphan, he now knows his parents. The identity of his parents is rife with irony and farce, yet the knowledge itself is valuable to Figaro. He better understands himself and his place in the world; recent events have clarified many of the great unanswered questions about his life. These revelations reflect the problem of deceit and the power of truth.

“Have we strayed into some kind of farce?”

In a moment of outrage, the Count criticizes the notion that events have turned into a farce. For the audience, this is an example of dramatic irony. The audience is well aware of the farcical nature of the play; it is part of the theatrical intention. That even the mere suggestion should annoy the emotional Count so much demonstrates why he is such an easy target for plots and schemes.

“Did you, or did you not, promise me that if, within four years, you weren’t spoken for, you would give me first refusal?”

Bazile’s claim on marriage to Marceline suggests that she is very much Figaro’s mother. Just as Figaro had a series of schemes and promises regarding marriage that he intended to ignore, Marceline had made a number of promises to various men about who she might marry. Though she went to court to enforce Figaro’s promise to marry her, the existence of an alternative proposal suggests that this was not her only option. Like Figaro, she was capable of making promises that she did not intend to keep.

“I defy the most designing woman to pull the wool over my eyes.”

At the end of Act IV, Figaro speaks authoritatively about jealousy. He has spent so long manipulating so many people that he feels above such petty, human emotions. He assures his mother that he will never become jealous, as to be jealous would place him on the same level as the victims of his schemes. As such, a standard is set up against which Figaro will soon be measured. He may say that he will never be jealous, yet this is exactly what he will soon become.

“You call that thinking? You’d throw it all away for a mere suspicion?”

By the closing scenes of Act IV, Marceline has embraced her role as Figaro’s mother and moral conscience. As he seems to have lost the grip on his emotions (of which he was so proud), Marceline embraces her motherly role by counselling her long-lost son not to be overly reactive. She reminds him that his jealousy is “mere suspicion” at a time when Figaro himself has actively set out to cultivate suspicion in others. Marceline was previously an impediment to Figaro’s plans; now, she is a voice of reason.

“With me standing there like an idiot.”

In his long speech, Figaro cites his jealousy and suspicion as reasons why he is turning against Suzanne, yet a key issue appears to be his own pride. He fears being made to look “like an idiot,” exactly as he has made others seem so foolish. Figaro’s reaction is driven not only by his jealousy and his emotional fatigue, but also by a desire not to become just like his own victims.

“Only trivial minds are afraid of trifling books.”

Figaro provides a potted history of his career, which is rife with examples of how government censorship has oppressed him. His various enterprises have fallen victim to the overzealous authorities. While Figaro is criticizing specific (invented) examples from his life, the soliloquy is also a subtle repudiation of the government censors who sought to repress The Marriage of Figaro. Those people who sought to halt the production of the play are, the line suggests, mere “trivial minds” who lack confidence in their power and beliefs.

“The Countess’s hand isn’t half as smooth to the touch!”

After Figaro has declared his fear of being made to look like a fool, the culmination of the play is the meeting between the Count and the woman he believes to be Suzanne. In fact, the woman is his wife, yet he praises her explicitly by comparing her to his wife. This dramatic irony—in which the audience is aware of the woman’s true identity but the Count is not—turns the Count into a figure of fun. His easy belief that the Countess, in disguise, is actually Suzanne speaks to the instability of class hierarchies in the play.

“Come, man of pride, eat your humble pie.”

After spending most of the play trying to outwit and out-scheme one another, Figaro and the Count find themselves in a very similar position. They are both victims of their wives’ schemes; they are both made to look foolish. Suzanne invites Figaro toward redemption, suggesting that humility will resolve his problems and allow him to resume his old ways. He must eat his “humble pie,” served to him by Suzanne, as he served so many people with his own schemes.