Staged briefly at the Comédie-Française, this comedy depicts a fashionable poet so entranced by his own image that he ruins every friendship. The piece fizzles with the public but helps Rousseau sharpen his satire of vanity. He lampoons salon chatter, powdered wigs, and the urge to appear brilliant at any cost. Voltaire writes social comedy too, yet usually spares the elite if they embrace wit. Rousseau traces vanity back to the structure of polite life itself, a view closer to Pascal’s stern moralism than to Hobbes or the Encyclopedists. The play’s cool reception convinces him that theatre seldom reforms anyone who attends in order to shine. Valère is vain and conceited. His sister Lucinde, with the help of Angelique, plays a trick on him by dressing up one of his portraits as a girl. Valère then falls in love with his own image and breaks up with Angélique. Meanwhile, Lucinde is secretly in love with Cléonte, but her father wants her to marry his godson Léandre, whom she has never met. In reality, Léandre is hiding under the name Cléonte. After a few twists and turns, the two couples come together at the end of the play. This professional translation delivers scholarly depth with amplifying materials. This Reader's Edition includes an illuminating afterword tracing Rousseau's intellectual relationship with Diderot, Voltaire and his reception by Nietzsche, revealing the fascinating dialogue between the period's most influential minds. A comprehensive timeline connects the major events of Rousseau's life with world events, an glossary of Enlightenment terminology frames Rousseau's debates in the intellectual milieu of his day, and a detailed index provides an authoritative guide to his complete writings.