Submission, Seduction, and State Propaganda in Favart's 'Soliman II, ou Les trois sultanes'

The following essay aims at reading the propaganda value of Favart's Soliman II, ou Les trois sultanes. 1 Based on an eponymous short story by Marmontel, the play narrates the reformation of the Ottoman court through the good offices of a French woman, Roxelane. 2 Favart's Soliman is represented as a monarch leading a fairly profligate existence, jumping from one member of his harem (what he calls his "machines caressantes" (259)) to another. He is shown pining after a Spanish woman, Elmire, only to lose interest in her once she agrees to his offer and openly declares her love for him. Roxelane, on the other hand, attracts the sultan's interest with her native understanding of sovereignty, her brash critiques of life at the court, and, more significantly, her apparent indifference to the Sultan. Amidst the many chains of unrequited love that bind the sultan to the harem, her show of indifference stands her in very good stead. It also affords her a moral soapbox of sorts, from which she preaches opposition to the Sultan's harem politics in favor of a by now familiar message of liberty, equality and fraternity.