"When the blind lead the blind, no wonder they both fall into - matrimony"
About this Quote
A proverb about shared ruin gets a wicked costume change: Farquhar takes the Bible-grade warning "the blind lead the blind" and lets it trip straight into the punchline of matrimony. The move is small and surgical. By swapping the expected destination (a ditch) for marriage, he turns a moral lesson into social diagnosis. The laugh lands because the reader arrives already carrying solemn authority; the twist doesn’t reject that authority, it hijacks it.
The intent is less anti-love than anti-credulity. Matrimony becomes the institutional ditch people tumble into when they mistake tradition for vision and desire for knowledge. The "no wonder" is doing quiet work here: it shrugs at the catastrophe, as if the real surprise would be competence. That shrug is classic Restoration-stage cynicism, where romance is often a marketplace transaction with better costumes, not an uplifting fate.
Subtext: people aren’t just individually clueless; they are mutually reinforcing in their cluelessness. Two blind partners don’t cancel each other out, they double down, turning ignorance into a shared project, socially ratified and publicly celebrated. Farquhar, a dramatist writing in a culture obsessed with wit, reputation, and advantageous matches, aims his barb at the marriage plot itself: the tidy ending that theatre (and society) keeps selling as resolution.
Context matters: in late 17th- and early 18th-century comedy, matrimony is frequently the final compromise between appetite and respectability. Farquhar’s line punctures that compromise, suggesting the "happy ending" is often just a coordinated fall with better paperwork.
The intent is less anti-love than anti-credulity. Matrimony becomes the institutional ditch people tumble into when they mistake tradition for vision and desire for knowledge. The "no wonder" is doing quiet work here: it shrugs at the catastrophe, as if the real surprise would be competence. That shrug is classic Restoration-stage cynicism, where romance is often a marketplace transaction with better costumes, not an uplifting fate.
Subtext: people aren’t just individually clueless; they are mutually reinforcing in their cluelessness. Two blind partners don’t cancel each other out, they double down, turning ignorance into a shared project, socially ratified and publicly celebrated. Farquhar, a dramatist writing in a culture obsessed with wit, reputation, and advantageous matches, aims his barb at the marriage plot itself: the tidy ending that theatre (and society) keeps selling as resolution.
Context matters: in late 17th- and early 18th-century comedy, matrimony is frequently the final compromise between appetite and respectability. Farquhar’s line punctures that compromise, suggesting the "happy ending" is often just a coordinated fall with better paperwork.
Quote Details
| Topic | Marriage |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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