THE PLÉIADE--RONSARD--THE LESSER STARS--‘THE DÉFENSE ET
ILLUSTRATION DE LA LANGUE FRANÇAISE’--THE WORK OF RONSARD--HIS
PLACE IN POETRY--JOACHIM DU BELLAY--REMI BELLEAU--BAÏF--DU
BARTAS--D’AUBIGNÉ--THE DRAMATIC WORK OF THE PLÉIADE--JODELLE--GREVIN
AND LA TAILLE--MONTCHRESTIEN--THE COMEDY--‘LA RECONNUE’--CAUSES OF
FAILURE OF EARLY DRAMATIC LITERATURE.
The French literature of the later Renaissance is divided, almost as
it were by visible mechanical barriers, from what had gone before, and
from what was to come after. The distinction is less marked in prose,
but even here it is real, while the poetry of the time is the work of
a school, with a creed and a set of formulas all its own. It has ever
been much the custom of the French, whether in politics, in art, or
in literature, to move altogether, and to make a clean sweep. Every
new school rejects its predecessor with more or less indiscriminate
contempt, becomes a tyranny in its turn, and is, in the fulness of
time, rebelled against, and destroyed. The process has never been shown
more fully and with fewer disturbing elements than in the history
of the Pléiade. Exactly in the middle of the century a small body of
young writers took possession of French poetry, dismissed the forms of
their elders as “grocery” (_épiceries_), just as the romantic writers
of this century labelled the classic style as “wig” (_perruque_), and
ruled without opposition, till one fine day they were scored out by
the equally irreverent, though more pedantic, and less generous pen of
Malherbe.
[SN: _The Pléiade._]
The poets of the Pléiade are entitled to the respect of the historian
of literature for several reasons, and to his gratitude for this,
that they formed a compact body which he need be at no trouble to
disentangle, because they stood deliberately apart, or to define,
because they did the work for him, by publishing an exhaustive
manifesto of their principles. There is nowhere a better example of
that _situation nette_ which the French love. The Pléiade knew its
own mind, and what it wanted to do. Moreover, if it did not always
achieve its purpose, at least it knew how the work was to be done.
Some slight doubt exists as to the names of the seven forming the
original constellation. The most orthodox list gives Daurat, Ronsard,
Du Bellay, Belleau, Baïf, Jodelle, and Pontus de Thyard, but another
of less authority replaces the sixth and seventh by Scévole de Sainte
Marthe and Muret. It does not matter which of the two is taken, since
both include the important names. Jodelle has a notable place in French
dramatic literature, but the drama is subordinate in the history of the
Pléiade. Pontus de Thyard (1521-1603), though the first-born and the
last survivor of the fellowship, is not an essential member, and may
pass behind his leaders, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Belleau, and Baïf.
[SN: _Ronsard._]
All these poets were by birth gentlemen, and several of them were
highly connected. Pierre de Ronsard, the master of them all, and the
“Prince of Poets” of his century, not only in the opinion of his
countrymen, but by the consent of many foreigners, was the son of the
_maître d’hôtel_ (steward of the household) of Francis I. He was born
at Vendôme in 1524, and entered the service of the Duke of Orleans as
page. When James V. brought back his second wife, Mary of Lorraine,
to Scotland, Ronsard followed them, and spent thirty months in their
service, returning to France by way of England. When _hors de page_, he
was attached to the suite of more than one ambassador. Among them was
Lazare de Baïf, whose natural son, Jean Antoine de Baïf, was receiving
his education under the care of the humanist, Jean Dorat, Daurat,
or D’Aurat (1508-1588). Ronsard showed a taste for reading from his
early years, and if he rejected the forms of Clement Marot, it was not
without knowing them. An illness, which may have been the result of
his sufferings during a shipwreck on the coast of Scotland, left him
deaf in 1546. He now, and as it would seem not unwillingly, left the
service of the Court, and betook himself to study at the college of
Coqueret under the direction of Daurat, and in company of Jean Antoine
de Baïf. Remi Belleau was a pupil at the same college. An accidental
meeting between Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay added this latter to
the fellowship. [SN: _The lesser stars._] The four, Daurat advising
and approving, undertook to revolutionise French poetry, and they did
it. The later dates in their biographies may be briefly noted. Ronsard
enjoyed great favour at Court, earned not only by admiration of his
poetry, but by his singularly amiable personal character. On the death
of Charles IX., himself a fair verse-writer, Ronsard retired to the
Abbey of Croix Val, of which he was lay abbot, and died in 1584. Remi
Belleau (1528-1577) passed a peaceful life in the service of the house
of Lorraine, and was carried to his grave by brother poets. Joachim
du Bellay (1525?-1560), member of a very distinguished family of
soldiers and statesmen, some of whom made their mark in French memoir
literature, accompanied his kinsman the Cardinal du Bellay to Rome,
but fell out of favour and returned to France. He was of weak health,
and appears to have suffered from family troubles. He died suddenly of
apoplexy at the age of thirty-six. Jean Antoine de Baïf (1532-1589)
had a busy life in public affairs, and suffered changes of fortune.
Characteristically enough he founded an early French Academy, for
which he received a patent from Charles IX. in 1570.[89] It lasted for
several years.
[SN: _The_ Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française.]
The _Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française_, which is the
manifesto of the school, was written by Joachim du Bellay. It was
published in February 1550, according to the modern calendar, but
1549 in the old, which made the year begin on Lady Day. If Boileau,
before dismissing Ronsard and his friends so contemptuously, had
taken the trouble to read this treatise, he would have learnt that
it was not their intention to speak Latin and Greek in French, or
to make a new art after their own fashion. Their purpose was very
different. It was their aim to write good French, but to use all the
resources of the language in order to reproduce the forms of the great
classic literatures--the Epic, the Drama, the Satire, the Ode, and
the Italian models--the Canzone and the Sonnet. They held, and not
unjustly, that the French verse of Marot’s school was poor in rhythm,
and “frivolous.” It had come to be satisfied with turning out nine
insignificant verses, if it can put “le petit mot pour rire” into the
tenth. A sham Middle Age was lingering on--the mere remnants and echo
of the _Roman de la Rose_ allegory. Du Bellay speaks of the _Roman_ and
of its authors--Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung--with respect.
He was sufficiently an admirer of French mediæval literature to quote
the stories of Lancelot as fit to be used for epic. But he insists
that the prosaic language used by the school of Marot was not adequate
for poetry, and that a new poetic tongue must be formed, which could
only be done by the ardent study of Greek and Latin. What the student
learnt he was to assimilate and make French. There was nothing in this
which was not at once inevitable when the immense influence of the
classic literatures in that generation is allowed for, and was not also
in itself sound. It was a misfortune that the Pléiade cut itself off
so completely from the mediæval tradition; and there is unanswerable
force in Sainte-Beuve’s criticism that if Ronsard and his school were
looking for _épiceries_, they had as good cause to condemn the sonnet
as the “rondeau” or the “ballade.” Yet it was not the great mediæval
literature which they had before them. That was already forgotten. They
did a work by which the seventeenth century, while treating them with
contempt, profited. If they did not achieve all they aimed at, it was
because no one among them--not even Ronsard--was a man of the first
rank of poetic genius, not because their principles and method were at
fault. And there is this to be said--that if some of their followers
fell into extravagances of language (the poets of the Pléiade proper
and their contemporaries were not, at least in their earlier years,
open to the reproach), they did not impoverish the French tongue. They
did not reduce it, when used for literary purposes, to colourless
general terms; nor did they tie the Alexandrine into sets of two lines
by making a meaningless rule that the sense was never to be carried
over into a third. Their revolution was more fruitful, and less merely
destructive, than Malherbe’s.
[SN: _The work of Ronsard._]
Although Du Bellay appeared as the spokesman of the school, he was
instantly eclipsed by Ronsard. The Odes of the “Prince of Poets” were
published in 1550, at about the same time as the Sonnets to Olive
(an anagram of Mlle. de Viole) of Du Bellay. He was at once accepted
as _the_ poet of his time, and his supremacy endured till his death
without question, except for one moment in his later years when it
appeared to be shaken by the popularity of Du Bartas. The _Amours de
Cassandre_[90] followed in 1552, with a second edition in the following
years, which contains the famous “Mignonne allons voir si la rose.” In
1555 appeared the Hymns, and in 1560 he collected all he had as yet
written in a complete edition at the request of Queen Mary, who was
his ardent admirer, as was also Queen Elizabeth. Between 1561 and 1574
he was attached to the service of Charles IX., who treated him with
kindness, and whose “virtues” he celebrated, even after his death, in
terms which sound strange to us. As Court poet he wrote “by command,”
which is not a favourable source of inspiration. It was to please the
king that he wrote his fragmentary epic, _Franciade_, which his most
sincere admirers have to confess is “dull.” It had the misfortune to be
published on the eve of the Saint Bartholomew. Yet his _Discours des
Misères du Temps_ (1562) and his _Remonstrance au Peuple de France_
(1563) belong to these years, and they were drawn from him by the
shocking miseries of the time. Henri III., though generous to some,
was less a favourer of poets than his brother, and Ronsard was free
to express himself in the lyrics and melancholy sonnets of his last
years. At the very end, when his health was broken down and his mind
affected, he made an unfortunate and negligible revision of his work,
published in 1584.
[SN: _His place in poetry._]
It is perhaps some excuse for the sweeping condemnation of Ronsard
by Malherbe that even the Romantic reaction of this century has not
succeeded in regaining favour for the part of the poetry of the chief
of the Pléiade for which he was most admired by his contemporaries, and
of which he was most proud. In the vigorous sonnet beginning “Ils ont
menty, d’Aurat,” written against Du Bartas--or at least against his
admirers--Ronsard appealed to his own Francus, and
“Les neuf belles sœurs
Qui trempèrent mes vers dans leurs graves douceurs,”
as witnesses that he was not less than the author of the _Semaine_.
Now it is precisely this part of his poetry, that in which he would be
an epic poet, or wear the Pindaric robe, which is dead, and can by no
effort be brought to life again. When Malherbe condemned it he passed a
sentence which no later admirer of the poetry of the sixteenth century
has been able to reverse. The gross error of the later school was
that it did not make allowance for the passing and temporary fashion
of imitation of the classic models, and did shut its eyes to the fact
that, besides Ronsard le Pindarique, there was Ronsard the author of
“Mignonne allons voir si la Rose,” and the beautiful sonnet to Hélène,
“Quand tu seras bien vieille.” This Ronsard was a very genuine, and
elegant, if not very great, poet. That he would not himself have been
pleased to know that he was to be admired for these themes, and not
for his _Franciade_ and his Pindaric ode to Michel de L’Hospital,
is possible. Yet his erroneous estimate of the relative values of
different parts of his work does not affect his real glory, which is
that he raised French verse from the condition of prose tagged with
rhyme, into which it had fallen, gave it a new melody, and breathed
into it a new poetic spirit. He did for France what Surrey and Wyatt
began, and Spenser and Sidney completed for us, what the Spanish poets
of the school of Boscan and Garcilaso attempted for Castilian. He
set up a model of sweeter and statelier measures, and he brought the
ancient classic inspiration out of pure scholarship into literature.
If he had far less power than his English contemporaries, he was
infinitely more original than the Spaniards. There is no mere slavish
repetition of foreign models in him, but the constant and successful
effort to give a genuine French equivalent, which is quite another
thing.
[SN: _Joachim du Bellay._]
The followers of “a prince” are inevitably eclipsed by their leader,
and that is the more likely to be the case when a body of poets are
memorable for their accomplishment, their general poetic spirit, their
scholarship--for anything, in short, rather than for power. Power,
indeed, is not what can be attributed to the poets of the Pléiade. When
it appears among the younger men it is in the verse of the Huguenots
Du Bartas and D’Aubigné, in whom there is again less scholarly
accomplishment. Among the other poets of Ronsard’s school, from his
brother in literature Joachim du Bellay down to his last follower
Jean Bertaut (1532-1611), the best is commonly what is melancholy or
what is gay and graceful. Joachim du Bellay[91] published his first
volume, which contained the Sonnets to Olive, the _Musagnæomachie_,
or “Battle between the Muses and Ignorance,” and some Odes in 1550, a
little before Ronsard. The sonnet had already been written in French
by Mellin de Saint-Gelais, but Du Bellay claimed, and was allowed,
the honour of having first “acclimatised” it. The model adopted and
constantly followed in France was the Petrarchan. His most memorable
work was born of his new experiences in Italy. It was there that he
wrote the _Antiquités de Rome_--the sonnets translated by Spenser under
the name of _The Ruins_--his _Regrets_, in which he gives expression to
his disgust at the papal capital and his home-sickness, and his _Jeux
Rustiques_, inspired by the Latin poetry of Navagiero, the Venetian who
advised Boscan to write in the Italian manner. Du Bellay himself wrote
Latin verse. The _Jeux Rustiques_, published at the same time as the
_Regrets_, 1558, contain his best known pieces, the perfectly gay and
graceful _Vanneur_ (“the Winnower”), and the lines to Venus, in which
he has done all there was to be done with that very artificial product
the pastoral poetry of learned poets. Withal Du Bellay carried beak and
claws. He was praised for having put the epigram into the sonnet, and
there are certainly few better examples how that can be achieved than
in the numbers of the _Regrets_ which contrast the outward courtesy and
dignity with the inward treason and meanness of the Roman court. Du
Bellay is more uniformly excellent than Ronsard, but the bulk of his
work is far smaller and he tried less.
[SN: _Remi Belleau._]
The _gentil_ Belleau was a less strong man than Du Bellay, and it is
to the honour of his critical faculty that he recognised the truth. He
left the ode, Pindaric or Horatian, alone, and devoted himself either
to translation (he translated Anacreon) or to poetry of the style of
the _Jeux Rustiques_. His _Bergerie_, 1565, and his _Deuxième Journée
de la Bergerie_, 1572, are of this order, while his _Amours et Nouveau
Eschanges des pierres précieuses vertus et propriétés d’icelles_ is an
imitation, or adaptation, of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ and the poets of
the Greek decadence, based on a book about the properties of precious
stones, written by a Bishop of Rennes in the eleventh century. Our
own Euphuists must have gone to the same source. The first _Bergerie_
contains the really delightful
“Avril l’honneur et des Bois
Et des Mois,”
which ranks with Du Bellay’s _Vanneur_ as the masterpiece of the style.
It is a curious comment on the theory which accounts for literature by
the “circumstances” that all this light verse about graceful things
belongs to the years of the conspiracy of Amboise, when the streets
of that town were, in the vehement words of Regnier de la Planche,
tapestried with the corpses of executed Huguenots, and while the wars
of Religion, the Saint Bartholomew, and the League were deluging France
in blood.
[SN: _Baïf._]
Like Belleau, J. B. de Baïf was a translator. His versions of the
_Antigone_, and of the _Eunuchus_ of Terence, were published in 1565,
and other translations of Greek and Latin drama were left unpublished
by him at his death, and have been lost. Baïf was also the author
of a comedy imitated from Plautus, _Le Brave_, acted in 1567. His
poetry includes the _Ravissement d’Europe_ and _Les Amours de Méline_,
1552, _Les Amours de Francine_, 1555--these are sonnet cycles--the
_Météores_ of 1567, his _Étrennes de Poesie Française_, 1574, and the
_Mimes_, 1576. Baïf, who was more scholar than poet, took the lead in
an attempt to reform French spelling, which indeed at that time stood
in no small need of being reduced to order, and he also was one of a
small body of writers who repeated in France the hopeless attempt to
force the poetry of modern languages to conform to classic metres. His
Academy has already been mentioned. Jean Daurat and Pontus de Thyard
are chiefly worth mention because their names are associated with those
of more original men. Daurat was a humanist, whose share in producing
the poetry of the Pléiade was to direct the reading of his pupils at
the college of Coqueret, and to write Greek and Latin verse in praise
of them. His French verse is insignificant. Pontus de Thyard could
claim to be a forerunner of the Pléiade, for his _Erreurs Amoureuses_
appeared shortly before the first published verse of Ronsard and Du
Bellay. But he soon renounced verse for theology and mathematics.[92]
Of most of the poets who followed “the conquering banner” of their
Prince, Ronsard, as of the lesser learned poets of Spain, no detailed
mention can be made here. The abundance of literary talent which has
seldom been wanting in France accounts sufficiently for the “crop of
poets” which sprang up “at the summons of Du Bellay, and under the
hand of Ronsard.” That time of war, oppression, and conspiracy might
have seemed to be “wholly consecrated to the Muses.” Olivier de Magny
(d. 1560), Jacques Tahureau (1527-1555), Nicolas Denisot (1515-1559),
called “le Comte d’Alsinois” by anagram, Louis le Caron (1536-1617),
who called himself Charondas, Estienne de la Boetie (1530-1563), the
friend of Montaigne, who indeed saved him from oblivion, and others
whom it were tedious to mention, were men of talent, respectable
members of the army of minor poets, which in nations of considerable
literary faculty, and in times of literary vigour, has never been
wanting. One really original poet usually makes many who are
accomplished, but who without the example might never have written,
and would certainly not have written so well. It was perhaps the
necessity for finding a rhyme to _haut_ which induced Boileau to quote,
from among all the followers of Ronsard, the names of “Desportes and
Bertaut.” His dogmatic assertion that they were made “more restrained”
by the fall of Ronsard is perfectly unfounded. Desportes (1546-1606),
who in character was a courtier of the baser kind, owed his great
popularity at Court to the fact that he was an echo of one part of
Ronsard.[93] Bertaut (1552-1611), another courtier, was also another
Desportes. Their greater measure was mainly due to the fact that they
represented the decadence of their school.
There are, however, three poets of the later sixteenth century in
France who stand apart, though all are fairly describable as followers
of Ronsard, and to one of them it was given, in the French phrase, to
“tell its fact” to the meticulous criticism of Malherbe. They are Du
Bartas, Aubigné, and Regnier.
[SN: _Du Bartas._]
Guillaume Salluste, Seigneur du Bartas, was born in or about 1544, at
Montfort, near Auch, in Gascony. He served Henry IV. both in diplomacy
and in war, and died in 1590 of wounds received at the battle of Ivry.
Du Bartas was one of the many of his time who in a once favourite
phrase were “tam Marte quam Mercurio,” equally devoted to arms and to
letters. On the suggestion of Jeanne d’Albret, the Queen of Navarre, he
began by writing a poem on the story of Judith; but his fame was gained
by the _Semaine_, or “Week of Creation,” published in 1579. It was
followed by the _Uranie_, the _Triomphe de la Foi_, and the _Seconde
Semaine_, of which part was published in 1584, and which remained
unfinished at his death. Du Bartas is an interesting figure, and his
literary fortune has been curious. With men of his class in France
a profession of Protestantism was commonly only a form of political
opposition. They were “of the Religion” because they were the enemies
of the House of Guise, and the great majority of them fell away from
it in the following generations. But with Du Bartas the religious
enthusiasm was manifestly real. He was of the Puritan type, and in that
lies part, at least, of the explanation of his strange literary fortune
in his own country. He was at first extraordinarily popular. Even
Ronsard praised him, and sent him a present of a pen. But his party
began to claim that he was the superior of the courtier poet. This not
unnaturally drew from Ronsard the emphatic denial of the sonnet to
Daurat, and the opinion of Frenchmen has been favourable to the older
poet. Du Bartas has been treated with neglect, and even contempt, by
his own countrymen.[94] Abroad he has had better fortune. He was widely
translated. The English version of Joshua Sylvester was long popular
with us, and in comparatively recent times he has been praised by
Goethe for showing qualities wanting in other Frenchmen. But Frenchmen,
to whom the Puritan type has always been uncongenial, have disliked him
on those very grounds. They have always insisted on looking exclusively
at his faults, his want of taste, his provincialism, and his pedantry.
All are undeniable, but the critics who have endeavoured to secure
justice for the Pléiade ought to have remembered that this last was
only an exaggeration of the teaching of Ronsard and Du Bellay. They had
recommended adaptation of the language of classic poetry, Greek and
Latin. They had used inversions, and had argued that French writers
were entitled to form compound words on the Greek model. Du Bellay,
for example, justifies the construction of such a word as “fervêtu.”
Du Bartas certainly took a very wide licence in this respect. He wrote
such lines as--
“Le feu donne-clarté, porte-chaud jette-flamme;”
and careful examiners have found more than three hundred examples of
such words in his verse. As the French have not chosen to make use of
a freedom legitimate enough in a language which contains such words as
_marche-pied_ and _aigredoux_, Du Bartas has suffered for his boldness.
It is easy enough to find pedantry and bad taste in him; and it would
be easy, by confining attention to the “Pindaric” side of Ronsard, to
show that he was a stilted and pompous writer. But it is no less the
case that there is a vehement grandeur in Du Bartas which is painfully
rare in the correct poetry of France. It may be fairly said that if
the quality of the French mind, which Frenchmen call “le bon sens
français,” achieved one of its triumphs when it wholly rejected Du
Bartas, it also condemned its literature to possess no Milton. When it
is your exclusive ambition to be without fault, to be merely correct,
your safest course is to abstain. If you will keep from the “wine cup”
and “the red gold,” from love, adventure, and ambition, then you may
“easy live and quiet die”; but you will hardly do anything passionate.
Nothing is so “correct” as cold water.
[SN: _Agrippa D’Aubigné._]
Theodore Agrippa D’Aubigné, the contemporary, friend, and kindred
spirit of Du Bartas, was a gentleman of an ancient family in Saintonge.
His long life was full of agitation and many-sided activity. Jean
D’Aubigné, his father, was Chancellor of Navarre. The son was born in
1550, and received a careful education, by which he unquestionably
profited, though we may doubt the exact accuracy of his own assertion
that he could read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew at the age of six. Jean
D’Aubigné was a vehement Calvinist. It is one of the best-known stories
of the time that he made his son, then a mere boy, swear, in the
presence of the decapitated heads of La Renaudie and the other chiefs
of the conspiracy of Amboise, to revenge their deaths. D’Aubigné kept
this “oath of Hannibal” to the end of his life. When only nine years
old he risked the stake, “his horror of the Mass having overcome his
fear of the fire.” He took part in the defence of Orleans in the first
war of Religion, and from thence escaped to Geneva, where he studied
under Theodore Beza. At a later time he served under Condé, and then
attached himself to Henry of Navarre. It was his good fortune to be in
hiding for a duel when the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew took place.
He remained with Henry at the French Court. During this period he
seems to have so far departed from the rigidity of his principles as
to bow down with his master “in the temple of Rimmon.” At this time he
certainly met Ronsard, and fell under his influence. He wrote court
poetry, composed a tragedy, and belonged to the Academy of Baïf. When
Henry of Navarre made his escape, D’Aubigné accompanied him. The
Bearnais had no more daring or faithful servant, and none who spoke to
him with a ruder frankness. The abjuration of Henry IV. was a bitter
blow to D’Aubigné, and he risked his master’s favour by his blunt
condemnation of that politic act. Yet Henry knew the essential fidelity
of D’Aubigné, and left him the possession of his offices of Governor
of Saintonge and Vice-Admiral of Poitou. After the murder of the king
he took part in the unfortunate opposition to Marie de Medici. The
publication of his _Histoire Universelle_ aroused enemies against him,
and in 1620 he fled to Geneva, where he died in 1630, energetic to the
last--“lassé de vains travaux, rassasié, et non ennuyé de vivre,” as
he describes himself in his will. The prose work of D’Aubigné is very
large, and will be dealt with elsewhere.[95] His poetry is divided
into the lighter verse which he wrote under the influence of Ronsard,
and _Les Tragiques_, which unquestionably show the influence of Du
Bartas. If his own words are to be taken in the literal sense, they
were written in the very stress of the war with the League; but there
is internal evidence that this can only be true of the three first.
The others were at least largely written after the peace of Vervins
in 1598. There are seven poems in _Les Tragiques_, called Misères,
Princes, La Chambre Dorée, Les Feux, Les Fers, Vengeances, Jugement.
They are historical poems, written in verse which is sometimes heavy,
but often magnificent, and always animated by a grim force. D’Aubigné
denounces wickedness in the form of a Latin satirist; but the spirit
comes from the Hebrew prophet, and that is perhaps belittled if we call
it satire.
It would be difficult to find a sharper contrast than is shown between
the long restless life of D’Aubigné and the career of Mathurin Regnier.
He was born at Chartres in 1573, in a family of the middle class, and
was nephew to the prosperous court poet Desportes. His family destined
him to the Church, and he was tonsured at the age of eleven. By the
influence, in all probability, of his uncle, he was appointed to a
place in the suite of the Cardinal Joyeuse, French Ambassador in Italy.
Later on he was provided for by a canonry in his native town, and died
there in 1613. The character of Regnier may unfortunately be described
nearly in the terms which the Duke of Wellington used of an English
military adventurer who had served under him in the Peninsula. He was,
said the Duke, “a brave fellow, but a sad drunken dog.” A considerable
poet, but a sad drunken dog, is, it is to be feared, the description
of Regnier. His habits rather than the quality of his verse justify
the epithet of “cynical” which has been applied to him.[96] Although
he wrote other verse, including some fine lyrics, Regnier is chiefly
memorable as a satirist. This he was in the proper sense of the word.
He attacked vices, and did not only say savage things about people whom
he disliked. In the form of his verse Regnier was so far correct that
he escaped the condemnation which the school of Malherbe passed on all
the other poets of his century. Yet he kept much of the freedom of the
earlier time, and in his ninth satire he pointed out with admirable
precision exactly what were the weaknesses of the reform of Malherbe.
There is an individuality and an air of sincerity in Regnier which
saves his work from the too common fault of modern satire--which is to
be a mere echo of Juvenal, verse written not because the author feels
any indignation, but only because he thought it a distinguished action
to imitate the classics and scold his contemporaries.
The ambition of the Pléiade included the reform of dramatic as well
as of other literature. Its poets wished to replace the Mysteries,
Moralities, “Sotties,” and “Farces” by tragedy and comedy. Their
chances of success in this field might have seemed, if anything, more
promising than elsewhere. The taste for the theatre was very strong in
France. In Paris there existed a guild, established by charter from the
king in 1402, for the performance of mysteries and moralities, which
possessed a theatre at the Hospital de la Trinité, near the gate of St
Denis. Two other societies, the Clercs de la Bazoche, or Clerks of the
Parliament of Paris, and the Enfants sans Souci, a body of volunteers
who performed farces, existed by the side of, and to some extent under
the control of, the chief guild, which was called the Confrérie de la
Passion. In the provinces there were numerous societies named _puys_
which existed to produce plays. And while the stage enjoyed so much
popularity, a number of causes were at work to render it no longer
possible to continue the religious plays of the Middle Ages. The
influence of the Renaissance helped to discredit their form, while the
spread of the Reformation began to make their old downright realistic
piety look ridiculous. As early as 1540 the Parliament of Paris had
protested against the performances of the Confrérie de la Passion
as leading to scandal. In 1548 it was strictly forbidden to present
religious mysteries.
[SN: _The dramatic work of the Pléiade._]
As the poets of the Pléiade were just about organising themselves in
those years, and were to present their first attempt to repeat the
classic models in French in 1552, it would seem on the face of it that
they had a singularly favourable opportunity. They had only to step
into the place left vacant. But that was in reality far from being
the case. Although the Confrérie de la Passion was forbidden to play
sacred mysteries, it was left in possession of its exclusive privilege
to open a theatre in Paris, and was thus able to silence all rivals.
The tradesmen and artisans who formed the guild were little likely
to favour their contemptuous literary rivals, while the poets were
as little disposed to go cap in hand to such masters. Thus the men
of letters were practically shut out from the real stage, and were
driven to seek a chance of getting their pieces acted at Court or
in colleges. They had no access to any body of actors. We need not
attach too great importance to this exclusion from the real theatre.
If Jodelle and Garnier had possessed dramatic genius of a high order,
their works would bear witness for them. In time, too--the date is
1588--the Confrérie de la Passion did consent to the establishment of
an independent theatre. After the restoration of peace in 1593 there
was always one in Paris. Thenceforward it was within the power of any
Frenchman who possessed the necessary faculties to be the Lope de Vega
or the Shakespeare of his country. If none appeared, it was doubtless
because no such Frenchman was born; and perhaps in the long-run the
non-appearance of the right man is the one adequate explanation of
the want of any form of literature in any country. Yet it may be
allowed that the monopoly of the Confrérie did have a certain effect
on the dramatic work of the Pléiade by confining them to coteries and
colleges, and so intensifying whatever tendency there was in them
to produce mere school exercises on a classic model. It must also
be kept in mind that the sacred mysteries continued to be acted in
the provinces. A few traces of them are to be found to this day in
the form of the religious marionette plays performed in Brittany. In
Paris itself the Confrérie de la Passion continued to give profane
mysteries, which appear to have been long straggling successions of
scenes taken from history, or from the tales of chivalry through
Ariosto. Its stage has this much vitality, that it was used for
political purposes by the League. But all this belongs to the history
of the stage proper or to curiosity, not to literature.
Whatever causes may be held to be responsible, the fact remains that
the dramatic is the weakest part of the work of the poets of the
Pléiade. Here they made little effort to assimilate and reproduce in
genuine French form. They repeated the shape slavishly. In tragedy they
did not try at all to go beyond the model given them by Buchanan in the
Latin plays written for his pupils at Bordeaux, which again were taken
from Seneca. In comedy there was less slavery, and less break with the
mediæval literature. But the poets did comparatively little in comedy;
and the liveliest comic writer of the later sixteenth century in
France, Larivey, who was of Italian descent, did not achieve more than
to give bold adaptations of Italian originals.
[SN: _Jodelle._]
The title of father of modern French dramatic literature, tragic and
comic, belongs to Estienne Jodelle, Seigneur de Lymodin. He was born
at Paris in 1532. Jodelle was a copious miscellaneous writer; but
only two tragedies, one comedy, and some poetry written in his youth,
survive.[97] His _Cléopâtre Captive_, and the comedy _Eugène_, were
performed before King Henry II. in 1552 by Jodelle himself and his
friends. The king was so pleased that he gave the dramatist five
hundred crowns, a handsome sum of money at the time. In the pardonable
joy of their hearts, Jodelle and his friends celebrated their success
by a supper at Arcueil, which became the excuse for a scandal. Being
full of a classic zeal, not always according to knowledge, the poets
impounded a goat, crowned it, and chanted some nonsense verses, largely
composed of Greek words, the work of Baïf. The New Learning had always
been open to the reproach of paganism, and the Reformers accused the
party of having performed a heathen sacrifice. The Confrérie de la
Passion, glad of an excuse to bring rivals into trouble, joined in
the cry. Jodelle’s second tragedy, _Didon se sacrifiant_, was written
later, and apparently never played. In 1558 he fell into disgrace
through the failure of a mask on the Argonauts, provided for the
reception of Henry II. at the Hôtel de Ville. It is said that the stage
carpenter mistook the word _rochers_ for _clochers_, and provided
bell-towers instead of rocks in the properties. Jodelle never recovered
favour; but this accident is not accountable for the misfortunes of his
later years. There is evidence that “much bad living kill’d Teste Noire
at last,” for Jodelle, unlike his brother poets, who seem to have been
orderly people, was of the character of our own Bohemian forerunners of
Shakespeare. He died worn out, and in great distress, in 1573.
[SN: _The Senecan plays._]
Jodelle is of importance rather because of his date, and on the ground
that he indicated the road which French literary drama was to follow,
than for his intrinsic merits. His tragedies are little more than
school exercises. His model was the Latin tragedy of Seneca, which in
itself is a thin dry copy of the mere machinery of the Greeks. The
popularity of these very tiresome pieces during the Renaissance can be
partly accounted for by the fact that Greek was far less familiar than
Latin. But it is easy to make too much of this. Sophocles and Euripides
were not unknown. Buchanan caused Greek plays to be performed by his
pupils at Bordeaux; while, if Jodelle could not read Greek himself,
he might have had the help of Daurat, and he had the translations of
Sophocles by Lazare de Baïf and others to guide him to a better model
than Seneca. They would have been quite enough for a writer who had any
dramatic instinct. But Seneca was easy to imitate. A well-known story,
told mostly in long speeches, by a messenger or other “utility,” no
play of character, and a chorus which chants commonplaces, having only
a very general relation to the story these are the notes of the Senecan
tragedy. It is obvious that they are easy to reproduce. The opening
they afforded for serious moral reflection must have had an attraction
for the poets of the Pléiade, who had a very definite purpose to expel
“frivolity” from poetry.
A tragedy which began in such conditions as those described here could
hardly hope to become a national drama. It is certainly the fact that
very little which was written before the seventeenth century has much
interest except as a curiosity. Jodelle and his immediate successors
can hardly be said even to have written for the stage in the proper
sense of the word. When they were acted at all, it was at the Court
or in colleges. They had so far an influence that they succeeded
in establishing the chorus as a necessity. It was introduced even
into the wild anti-Royalist pieces of the League; but these writers
understood the classic model so little that they treated the chorus
as a mere means of filling in the intervals between the acts, and not
as an integral part of the play. They in fact exaggerated one of the
defects of Seneca, as is the way with the mere imitator. We have to
wait for the generation of Rotrou and Corneille before seeing how an
intelligent attempt could be made to give a new form to the principles
of the classic drama. As for the earlier poets, as they chose to allow
themselves to be bound by the pedantic rules laid down by Joseph
Scaliger in his _De Tragediis et Comediis_ (1560), which said that this
and the other must be done by every right-minded man because Seneca had
done them, their plays were doomed to want life.
Of Jodelle’s two tragedies, the _Cléopâtre_ possesses, though by no
merit of his, the better plot. The story of the death of the Queen of
Egypt is in itself so picturesque and so complete that it would be
difficult to spoil it altogether. His second tragedy is rather better
written. There is more force in the dialogue, more poetry in the moral
reflections of the chorus of _Didon_; but then the plot is inevitably
inferior. It is difficult indeed to see what could be done with the
story of Dido and Æneas on the stage, unless the intention is to make
the hero odious or ridiculous. It is true that Jodelle does not fail to
attain to a comic effect, which is, however, too obviously undesigned.
The last words he puts into the mouth of Æneas are--
“Pauvre Didon, hélas! mettras-tu l’assurance
Sur les vaisseaux marins, que n’ont point de constance.”
These are too like the sailor’s traditional excuse to be worthy of the
son of Anchises, who at least had the grace to sail “multa gemens,
magnoque animum labefactus amore.” It is but just to add that not
dissimilar plunges into the ridiculous where what was called for was
the sublime, might be found in the great, the truly great, Corneille.
It must also be remembered that Jodelle established the Alexandrine as
the metre of French tragedy, though he did not submit to the strict
rules enforced in the next century.
[SN: _Grévin and La Taille._]
The names of Jacques Grévin and Jean de la Taille are entitled to
little more than bare mention among the followers of Jodelle. Grevin
(1540?-1570) was for a time a favourite with Ronsard; but he was a
strong Calvinist, and broke with the Prince of Poets in resentment
against the _Discours sur les Misères du Temps_. Ronsard retaliated
by cancelling his praise of Grévin. One tragedy, _César_, and two
comedies, _La Trésorière_ and _Les Esbahis_, all three written in
his youth, still survive.[98] Jacques de la Taille (1540?-1608), a
soldier, and in poetry a follower of Ronsard, lives in all literary
histories by a piece of unjust ill-luck. He wrote the two famous lines
at which everybody has laughed--
“Ma mère et mes enfans aye en recommanda ...
Il ne put achever car la mort l’engarda (l’empêcha).”
M. Suard, who habitually took a contemptuous tone to the early
dramatists of his country, made the remark--a very fair example of
the silly would-be clever--that La Taille found it easier to shorten
his words than to lengthen his line. Yet such a stroke of mistaken
realism as this is less essentially foolish than the flat absurdity
which Jodelle puts into the mouth of Æneas. The attempt to be true
to life was at least meritorious in intention, and there is force in
La Taille’s tragedy of _Les Gabaonites_, on the story of the sons of
Rizpah.[99]
[SN: _Garnier._]
Robert Garnier (1545-1601) was a far stronger man than any of these
three. He was born at La Ferté-Bernard, was a magistrate all his life,
and was finally made Counsellor of State by Henry IV. Garnier was much
less open to the reproach of being “a barren rascal” than Jodelle,
Grevin, or La Taille. His list of plays is of respectable length.
_Porcie_ was written in 1568, _Cornélie_ (translated into English by
Kyd) in 1574, and _Marc Antoine_ in 1578. _L’Hippolyte_, the _Troade_,
and the _Antigone_ are translations or adaptations of Sophocles and
Euripides. There are two other plays more original than either of
these--_Les Juives_ (1583), a “Sacred Tragedy” founded on the story of
Zedekiah; and _Bradamante_ (1582), a romantic drama founded on passages
in Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_.[100] These two plays are of special
interest. _Les Juives_ is an example of all that could be done with
Garnier’s model. The story supplies just such a catastrophe as was fit
to be treated in the measured, and, when good, stately Senecan fashion.
The prophet, to whom Garnier gives no name, Zedekiah and his mother
Amutal (Sédécie and Amital in the French), the King of Babylon and his
general Nabuzardan, are exactly the characters required; while the
chorus is abundantly provided with matter for lamentations, reflections
on the instability of all human things, the justice of God, and the
cruelty of the wicked. In this case also the chorus of Jewesses, to
which the play owes its name, though less truly a personage in the
drama than it is in the _Œdipus the King_ or the _Agamemnon_, is not a
mere voice used to fill up the intervals between the acts. Garnier was
very free from the want of taste which allowed Jodelle to drop into
vulgarity. He had an instinct for the “grand manner,” and does not fall
below his subject. The _Bradamante_ is a still more interesting play
than _Les Juives_. There is something almost pathetic about it, for in
the _Bradamante_ Garnier may be said to have brought French literary
drama to within touch of emancipation from the tyranny of Seneca’s
form. If he had gone a step further, or had found a worthy follower,
the work of Corneille might have been antedated by half a century,
and in happier circumstances. The subject is neither classical nor
Biblical, and this perhaps gave Garnier the courage to drop the chorus.
As the _Bradamante_ is not, in the full sense of the word, a tragedy,
since it has a happy ending, the chorus was not strictly necessary; but
as it was not meant to be a comic piece, the natural course at the time
would have been to supply one. As has been noted above, the chorus was
habitually introduced into pieces which were meant to be serious even
when the subject was not classical. At the same time Garnier showed, by
introducing a “confidant,” that he had a real sense of the theatre. He
knew that over and above the main personages there must always be some
who explain, or to whom explanations are made, and to whom it falls
to render the action intelligible. The name does not alter the nature
of the thing. Horatio is a confidant, and Mercutio is not much else,
though we do not call them by the title. That they are also interesting
human beings is an argument for incorporating the chorus in the play,
not a proof that some such wheel in the machinery is superfluous.[101]
Then, as he was not under the obligation to maintain the perpetual
gravity proper to classical and Biblical subjects, Garnier felt free to
relieve the heroic passages by comedy. Aymon, the father of Bradamante,
is a human, peppery, and peremptory old gentleman, very much the
_barba_ of the Spanish _comedia_, and a true figure of comedy. This, it
need hardly be said, is quite a different thing from the introduction
of scenes of clowns who have nothing to do with the action. It is a
detail worth noting that Garnier, who does not seem to have cared much
whether his play was acted or not, adds a note to his preliminary
argument to tell any manager who chooses to bring it out that he is
free to replace the absent chorus by interludes between the acts, “in
order that they may not be confounded, and not to join together what
requires a certain interval of time.” This, besides proving how fully
the French dramatists of the day accepted Scaliger’s most disputable
theory, that the chorus served only to separate the acts, is an
example of what has already been said of the Spanish and the English
stages--namely, that an audience expected something more than the play,
which the Spaniards gave in _saynetes_ and dances between the acts, and
the English inserted in the body of the piece.
[SN: _Montchrestien._]
Antoine de Montchrestien, the last survivor of the French dramatists of
the sixteenth century, may by a slight stretch of charity be described
as the Racine of the epoch in which Garnier was the Corneille. The
date of his birth is unknown, but he was killed in a skirmish during a
Huguenot rising in 1621, after a very agitated life. At one time he
was an exile in England on a charge of homicide, and owed his pardon
to the intercession of James I., whose favour he had earned by a play
on the death of Mary Queen of Scots, called _L’Écossaise_. It is sad
to relate that he was afterwards accused of coining false money. In
1615 he published a _Traité de l’Économie Politique_, and was indeed
the first to use the term. Montchrestien wrote a poem _Suzanne_, and a
Bergerie, or Pastoral, in addition to his six tragedies--_Sophonisbe_,
or _La Cartagénoise_ (translated from Trissino), _Les Lacènes_,
_David_, _Aman_, _Hector_, and _L’Écossaise_. Montchrestien was an
accomplished writer of the school to which he belonged, but his plays
show no great originality. They were published in 1601, and were
probably all written in his youth. It does not appear that they were
ever acted.
[SN: _The comedy._]
The comedy of this school was less a pure imitation of classic models,
but it was also on the whole less interesting, and cannot be described
as original, since it took freely from the Italians. Every one of the
nine surviving plays of Pierre Larivey (1540?-1611?) has an Italian
original. He was descended from the family of the Giunti, printers
at Florence and Venice.[102] His father had settled at Troyes, and
had translated his name into L’Arrivé, which was again corrupted into
Larivey. Pierre was a copious translator from his father’s native
language. The nine comedies he left are adaptations as well as
translations. He subjected his originals to the revision which the
English playwright has so often applied to French plays, but it was
not for the purpose of forcing them to become decent. Through Larivey
much of the common matter of comedy was handed on to Molière, who may
also have owed his predecessor something on the side of the technical
skill. It is, however, mainly on this ground that they belong to French
literature. The comedy of the later sixteenth century is on the whole
unimportant. It cannot be said to have had any particular character of
its own. One piece has indeed some promise and considerable merit of
execution. This is the _Reconnue_ of Belleau.[103]
[SN: La Reconnue.]
The story has the merit of being drawn from the real life of the
time. A young lady named Henriette has been placed while a child in a
religious house at Poitiers. She has no vocation, and escapes from the
convent to become a Huguenot. In the storm of the city by the king’s
army she is made prize by a certain Captain Rodomont, whom (a pleasing
touch of the manners of the age) she fully recognises as her lawful
master. The captain is a very honest man, who is well disposed to marry
his captive. But he is summoned away to take part in the recovery of
Havre from the English, and leaves her, having always “treated her
as a sister,” in charge of an old lawyer in Paris. At this point the
play begins. The old lawyer falls in love with Henriette, and thereby
arouses the jealousy of his wife. To quiet her he arranges to marry
Henriette to his clerk, Jehan, who is likely to prove a complacent
husband. He tells Henriette that the captain has been killed at Havre.
In the meantime we learn that a certain young advocate has fallen
in love with Henriette. She, who would willingly marry either the
captain or the advocate--for she is a downright though honest young
person--nevertheless resigns herself to marry Jehan, seeing that the
captain is dead, and she dare not go home. At this crisis the captain
turns up enriched by booty, and immediately afterwards Henriette’s
father. The “recognition” gives its name to the play. Henriette is
married to the advocate. The captain is consoled with the promise of
another wife, and all ends happily. Here are the elements of a very
lively play, and one can imagine what Lope de Vega or Dekker would have
made of them. Belleau falls much short of what was possible, largely
because his respect for classic models made him feel it incumbent on
him to tell his story, not by dialogue and action, but by narratives.
The return of the captain, for instance, which might have made an
excellent scene, is only described by the old lawyer’s servant. The
merits of the comedy are none the less considerable. They lie in the
brisk flowing verse of the dialogue, which, as was to be expected of
“le gentil Belleau,” is wholly free from mere grossness, and in the
human truth of the characters. Even the author’s excessive deference
to the classics is partly atoned for. His descriptions of what it
would have been better to tell by action are mostly given by Jeanne,
the lawyer’s servant, who is an excellent study of that very French
personage, the _Bonne à tout faire_, the general servant, who is partly
the drudge, but also partly the friend, and a little the tyrant, of the
family. Jeanne is truly the ancestress of the _servante_ of Molière.
With _La Reconnue_, as with Garnier’s _Bradamante_, we feel that only a
little was wanted to make a complete success. But that little was not
supplied, and the difference between the complete and the incomplete
is in itself infinite. [SN: _Causes of failure of the early dramatic
literature._] Of the dramatic work of the French poets of the later
sixteenth century it has to be said that on the whole it was lost
labour. The tragedy is too artificial, too slavishly imitated from a
poor model. The comedy, as all can see who will look at the _Eugène_
of Jodelle, or the _Esbahis_ of Grévin, was incoherent, being partly a
rehandling of the “sotties” and the “farces” of the Middle Ages, partly
an imitation of Plautus and Terence, nowhere an original growth. Its
authors were men of letters, doing exercises in kinds of literature to
which they were attracted by their prestige. They did not really work
for the stage. Now the theatre, in the material sense, is as necessary
to the dramatist as the model is to the painter. The most “learned” of
artists will soon find that his work loses life and reality unless he
keeps the living figure constantly before his eyes. A play is meant
to be talked and acted to an audience. When it is written only to
be read, it soon loses life. From “the cart of Thespis” down to the
“four boards” of Lope de Rueda in the Spanish market-place, there has
always been the stage first, and then the dramatic literature. That is
equally true in France. The history of the French stage is continuous
from the Confrérie de la Passion, through the Enfants sans Souci, and
the professional actors who succeeded them at the Hôtel de Bourgogne,
down to the “maison de Molière.” But in the sixteenth century it
skirted literature, and the alliance was not made between them till
the time of Rotrou and Corneille. So the earlier dramatic literature
remains a curiosity, or at the most an indication of what was to come.
Its best tragedy is an “essai pâle et noble,” and its comedy a rough
experiment, too often the very reverse of noble. In order to show how
the writers of the great time, and of the eighteenth century classic
school, while working on the same fund of principles, and with similar
aims, differed from their predecessors, it would be necessary to go
beyond the scope of this book.
FOOTNOTES:
[89] Sainte-Beuve, _Tableau historique et critique de la Poesie
Française et du Théâtre Français au XVI^{me.} Siècle. Le Seizième
Siècle en France._ Par MM. Darmsteter et Hatzfeld.
[90] _Œuvres complètes de P. de Ronsard_, edited by M. Prosper
Blanchemain. Bibliothèque Elzévirienne, 1858.
[91] Ed. Marty-Laveaux. 2 vols.
[92] A Selection of Baïf’s verse has been made by M. Becq de
Fonquières, 1874, and his _Mimes_ have been reprinted by M. Blanchemain.
[93] Ed. M. Alfred Michiels. 1858.
[94] There is still no modern edition of Du Bartas. The standard
edition is that of 1610-1611, in 2 vols. folio.
[95] An edition of the works of D’Aubigné, complete with the exception
of _L’Histoire Universelle_, was published in Paris, 1873-1892, by MM.
Réaume et de Caussade. Partial reprints are numerous.
[96] Ed. M. Prosper Poitévin.
[97] Ed. Marty Laveaux, 1868-1870; and _Ancien Théâtre François_ in the
“Bibliothèque Elzévirienne,” vol. iv.
[98] Ed. 1562, but _Les Esbahis_ is in the _Ancien Théâtre Français_.
[99] Ed. M. René de Maulde. 4 vols., 1878-1882.
[100] Ed. of 1585 reprinted in _Sammlung Französischer Neudrucke_.
Heilbronn, by Herr Wendelin Förster.
[101] It is advisable not to burden one’s page with illustrations, but
it may be pointed out that the modern “well-made play” supplies copious
examples of what is said above. The Jalin of Alexandre Dumas fils, in
the _Demi Monde_, or the Duc de Montmeyran in _Le Gendre de M. Poirier_
of Emile Angier, are chorus; and it may be added that they are also
legion.
[102] _Ancien Théâtre Français._ Bibliothèque Elzévirienne. Vols. v.
and vi.
[103] _Ancien Théâtre Français_, vol. iv.