THE DRAMA (MONTCHRESTIEN TO CORNEILLE)
The classical and Italian drama of the sixteenth century was literary,
oratorical, lyrical; it was anything but dramatic. Its last
representative, ANTOINE DE MONTCHRESTIEN (1575-1621), a true poet,
and one whose life was a series of strange adventures, wrote, like
his predecessors, rather for the readers of poetry than for the
theatre. With a gift for style, and a lyrical talent, seen not only
in the chants of the chorus, but in the general character of his dramas,
he had little feeling for life and movement; his personages expound
their feelings in admirable verse; they do not act. He attempted a
tragedy--L'Ecossaise--on the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, a theme
beyond his powers. In essentials he belonged rather to the past, whose
traditions he inherited, than to the future of the stage. But his
feeling for grandeur of character, for noble attitudes, for the
pathetic founded on admiration, and together with these the firm
structure of his verse, seem to warrant one in thinking of him as
in some respects a forerunner of Corneille.
At the Hotel de Bourgogne, until 1599, the Confreres de la Passion
still exhibited the mediaeval drama. It passed away when their theatre
was occupied by the company of Valleran Lecomte, who had in his pay
a dramatist of inexhaustible fertility--ALEXANDRE HARDY (_c_. 1560
to _c_. 1630). During thirty years, from the opening of the
seventeenth century onwards, Hardy, author of some six or seven
hundred pieces, of which forty-one remain, reigned as master of the
stage.[1] A skilful improvisor, devoid of genius, devoid of taste,
he is the founder of the French theatre; he first made a true appeal
to the people; he first showed a true feeling for theatrical effects.
Wherever material suitable for his purposes could be caught
at--ancient or modern, French, Italian, or Spanish--Hardy made it
his own. Whatever form seemed likely to win the popular favour, this
he accepted or divined. The _Astree_ had made pastoral the fashion;
Hardy was ready with his pastoral dramas. The Italian and Spanish
novels were little tragi-comedies waiting to be dramatised;
forthwith Hardy cast them into a theatrical mould. Writing for the
people, he was not trammelled by the unities of time and place; the
mediaeval stage arrangements favoured romantic freedom. In his
desire to please a public which demanded animation, action, variety,
Hardy allowed romantic incident to predominate over character; hence,
though he produced tragedies founded on legendary or historical
subjects, his special talent is seen rather in tragi-comedy. He
complicated the intrigue, he varied the scenes, he shortened the
monologues, he suppressed or reduced the chorus--in a word, the drama
in his hands ceased to be oratorical or lyrical, and became at length
dramatic. The advance was great; and it was achieved by a hack
playwright scrambling for his crusts of bread.
[Footnote 1: Or thirty-four pieces, if _Theagene et Cariclee_ be
reckoned as only one.]
But to dramatic life and movement it was necessary that order,
discipline, regulation should be added. The rules of the unities were
not observed by Hardy--were perhaps unknown to him. But they were
known to others. Jean de Schelandre (the pseudonym formed from the
letters of his name being Daniel d'Ancheres), in his vast drama in
two parts, _Tyr et Sidon_, claimed all the freedom of the mysteries
in varying the scene, in mingling heroic matter with buffoonery. In
the edition of 1628 a preface appears by Francois Ogier, a learned
churchman, maintaining that the modern stage, in accordance with
altered circumstances, should maintain its rights to complete
imaginative liberty against the authority of the Greeks, who
presented their works before different spectators under different
conditions. Ogier's protest was without effect. Almost immediately
after its appearance the _Sophonisbe_ of Jean de Mairet was given,
and the classical tragedy of France was inaugurated on a popular stage.
In the preface to his pastoral tragi-comedy _Sylvanire_, Mairet in
1631 formulated the doctrine of the unities. The adhesion of Richelieu
and the advocacy of Chapelain insured their triumph. The "rules" came
to be regarded as the laws of a literary species.
The influence of the Spanish drama, seen in the writings of Rotrou
and others, might be supposed to make for freedom. It encouraged
romantic inventions and ambitious extravagances of style. Much that
is rude and unformed is united with a curiosity for points and laboured
ingenuity in the dramatic work of Scudery, Du Ryer, Tristan l'Hermite.
A greater dramatist than these showed how Spanish romance could
coalesce with French tragedy in a drama which marks an epoch--the
_Cid_; and the _Cid_, calling forth the judgment of the Academy,
served to establish the supremacy of the so-called rules of Aristotle.
PIERRE CORNEILLE, son of a legal official, was born at Rouen in 1606.
His high promise as a pupil of the Jesuits was not confirmed when
he attempted to practise at the bar; he was retiring, and spoke with
difficulty. At twenty-three his first dramatic piece, _Melite_, a
comedy, suggested, it is told, by an adventure of his youth, was given
with applause in Paris; it glitters with points, and is of a
complicated intrigue, but to contemporaries the plot appeared less
entangled and the style more natural than they seem to modern readers.
The tragi-comedy, _Clitandre_, which followed (1632), was a romantic
drama, crowded with extravagant incidents, after the manner of Hardy.
In _La Veuve_ he returned to the style of _Melite_, but with less
artificial brilliance and more real vivacity; it was published with
laudatory verses prefixed, in one of which Scudery bids the stars
retire for the sun has risen. The scene is laid in Paris, and some
presentation of contemporary manners is made in _La Galerie du Palais_
and _La Place Royale_. It was something to replace the nurse of elder
comedy by the soubrette. The attention of Richelieu was attracted
to the new dramatic author; he was numbered among the five _garcons
poetes_ who worked upon the dramatic plans of the Cardinal; but he
displeased his patron by his imaginative independence. Providing
himself with a convenient excuse, Corneille retired to Rouen.
These early works were ventures among which the poet was groping for
his true way. He can hardly be said to have found it in _Medee_ (1635),
but it was an advance to have attempted tragedy; the grandiose style
of Seneca was a challenge to his genius; and in the famous line--
"_Dans un si grand revers, que vous reste-t-il? Moi!_"
we see the flash of his indomitable pride of will, we hear the sudden
thunder of his verse. An acquaintance, M. de Chalon, who had been
one of the household of Marie de Medicis, directed Corneille to the
Spanish drama. The _Illusion Comique_, the latest of his tentative
plays, is a step towards the _Cid_; its plot is fantastical, but in
some of the fanfaronades of the braggart Matamore, imported from Spain,
are pseudo-heroics which only needed a certain transposition to
become the language of chivalric heroism. The piece closes with a
lofty eulogy of the French stage.
The sun had indeed risen and the stars might disappear when in the
closing days of 1636 the _Cid_ was given in Paris at the Theatre du
Marais; the eulogy of the stage was speedily justified by its author.
His subject was found by Corneille in a Spanish drama, _Las Mocedades
del Cid_, by Guilhem de Castro; the treatment was his own; he reduced
the action from that of a chronicle-history to that of a tragedy;
he centralised it around the leading personages; he transferred it
in its essential causes from the external world of accident to the
inner world of character; the critical events are moral events,
victories of the soul, triumphs not of fortune but of the will. And
thus, though there are epic episodes and lyric outbreaks in the play,
the _Cid_ definitely fixed, for the first time in France, the type
of tragedy. The central tragic strife here is not one of rival houses.
Rodrigue, to avenge his father's wrong, has slain the father of his
beloved Chimene; Chimene demands from the King the head of her beloved
Rodrigue. In the end Rodrigue's valour atones for his offence. The
struggle is one of passion with honour or duty; the fortunes of the
hero and heroine are affected by circumstance, but their fate lies
in their own high hearts.
The triumph of Corneille's play was immense. The Cardinal, however,
did not join in it. Richelieu's intractable poet had glorified Spain
at an inconvenient moment; he had offered an apology for the code
of honour when edicts had been issued to check the rage of the duel;
yet worse, he had not been crushed by the great man's censure. The
quarrel of the _Cid_, in which Mairet and Scudery took an embittered
part, was encouraged by Richelieu. He pressed the Academy, of which
Corneille was not a member until 1647, for a judgment upon the piece,
and at length he was partially satisfied by a pronouncement, drawn
up by Chapelain, which condemned its ethics and its violation of
dramatic proprieties, yet could not deny the author's genius.
Corneille was deeply discouraged, but prepared himself for future
victories.
Until 1640 he remained silent. In that illustrious year _Horace_ and
_Cinna_ were presented in rapid succession. From Spain, the land of
chivalric honour, the dramatist passed to antique Rome, the mother
and the nurse of heroic virtue. In the _Cid_ the dramatic conflict
is between love and filial duty; in _Horace_ it is between love, on
the one side, united with the domestic affections, and, on the other,
devotion to country. In both plays the inviolable will is arbiter
of the contention. The story of the Horatii and Curiatii, as told
by Livy, is complicated by the union of the families through love
and marriage; but patriotism requires the sacrifice of the tenderer
passions. It must be admitted that the interest declines after the
third act, and that our sympathies are alienated from the younger
Horace by the murder of a sister; we are required to feel that a private
crime, the offence of overstrained patriotism, is obliterated in the
glory of the country. In _Cinna_ we pass from regal to imperial Rome;
the commonwealth is represented by Augustus; a great monarchy is
glorified, but in the noblest way, for the highest act of empire is
to wield supreme power under the sway of magnanimity, and to remain
the master of all self-regarding passions. The conspiracy of Cinna
is discovered; it is a prince's part to pardon, and Augustus rises
to a higher empire than that of Rome by the conquest of himself. In
both _Horace_ and _Cinna_ there are at times a certain overstrain,
an excess of emphasis, a resolve to pursue heroism to all extremities;
but the conception of moral grandeur is genuine and lofty; the error
of Corneille was the error of an imagination enamoured of the sublime.
But are there not heroisms of religion as pure as those of patriotism?
And must we go back to pagan days to find the highest virtue? Or can
divine grace effect no miracles above those of the natural will?
Corneille gives his answer to such a challenge in the tragedy of
_Polyeucte_ (1643). It is the story of Christian martyrdom; a homage
rendered to absolute self-devotion to the ideal; a canticle intoned
in celebration of heavenly grace. Polyeucte, the martyr, sacrifices
to his faith not only life, but love; his wife, who, while she knew
him imperfectly, gave him an imperfect love, is won both for God and
for her husband by his heroism; she is caught away from her tenderness
for Severe into the flame of Polyeucte's devout rapture; and through
her Severe himself is elevated to an unexpected magnanimity. The
family, the country, the monarchy, religion--these in turn were
honoured by the genius of Corneille. He had lifted the drama from
a form of loose diversion to be a great art; he had recreated it as
that noblest pastime whose function is to exercise and invigorate
the soul.
The transition from _Polyeucte_ to _Le Menteur_, of the same year,
is among the most surprising in literature.[2] From the most elevated
of tragedies we pass to a comedy, which, while not belonging to the
great comedy of character, is charmingly gay. We expect no grave
moralities here, nor do we find them. The play is a free and original
adaptation from a work of the Spanish dramatist Alarcon, but in
Corneille's hands it becomes characteristically French. Young
Dorante, the liar, invents his fictions through an irresistible
genius for romancing. His indignant father may justly ask, Has he
a heart? Is he a gentleman? But how can a youth with such a pretty
wit resist the fascination of his own lies? He is sufficiently
punished by the fact that they do not assist, but rather trouble,
the course of his love adventure, and we demand no further poetical
justice. In Corneille's art, tragedy had defined itself, and comedy
was free to be purely comic; but it is also literary--light, yet solid
in structure; easy, yet exact in style. The _Suite du Menteur_,
founded on a comedy by Lope de Vega, has a curious attraction of its
own, half-fantastic as it is, and half-realistic; yet it has shared
the fate of all continuations, and could not attain the popularity
of its predecessor. It lacks gaiety; the liar has sunk into a rascal,
and we can hardly lend credence to the amendment in his mendacious
habit when he applies the art of dissimulation to generous purposes.
[Footnote 2: _Polyeucte_ may possibly be as early as 1641.]
These are the masterpieces of Corneille. Already in _Pompee_,
although its date is that of _Polyeucte_, while the great dramatist
is present throughout, he is not always present at his best. It should
not surprise us that Corneille preferred Lucan to Virgil. Something
of the over-emphasis of the _Pharsalia_, his original, has entered
into the play; but the pomp of the verse is no vulgar pomp. A graver
fault is the want of a dramatic centre for the action, which tends
too much towards the epic. Pompey is the presiding power of the
tragedy; his spirit dominates the lesser characters; but he does not
appear in person. The political interest develops somewhat to the
subordination of the personal interest. Corneille's unhappy theory
of later years, that love is unworthy of a place in high tragedy,
save as an episode, is here exemplified in the passion of Caesar for
Cleopatra; but, in truth, love is too sovereign a power to admit of
its being tagged to tragedy as an ornament.
Until 1636 Corneille was seeking his way. From 1636 to 1644 his genius
soared on steady pinions. During the eight years that followed he
triumphed, but he also faltered. _Rodogune_ (1644), which he
preferred to all his other plays, is certainly, by virtue of the
enormity of the characters, the violence of the passions, the vastness
of its crimes, the most romantic of his tragedies; it is constructed
with the most skilful industry; from scene to scene the emotion is
intensified and heightened until the great fifth act is reached; but
if by incomparable audacity the dramatist attains the ideal, it is
an ideal of horror. _Theodore_, a second play of martyrdom, fell far
below _Polyeucte_. _Heraclius_ is obscure through the complication
of its intrigue. _Don Sanche d'Aragon_, a romantic tragi-comedy, is
less admirable as a whole than in the more brilliant scenes. In the
historical drama _Nicomede_ (1651), side by side with tragic
solemnities appears matter of a familiar kind. It was the last great
effort of its author's genius. The failure of _Pertharite_, in 1652,
led to the withdrawal of Corneille from the theatre during seven years.
He completed during his seclusion a rendering into verse of the
_Imitation of Jesus Christ_. When he returned to the stage it was
with enfeebled powers, which were overstrained by the effort of his
will; yet he could still write noble lines, and in the tragedy-ballet
of _Psyche_, in which Quinault and Moliere were his collaborators,
the most charming verses are those of Corneille. His young rival
Racine spoke to the hearts of a generation less heroic and swayed
by tenderer passion, and the old man resented the change. Domestic
sorrows were added to the grief of ill success in his art. Living
simply, his means were narrow for his needs. The last ten years of
his life were years of silence. He died in 1684, at the age of
seventy-eight.
The drama of Corneille deals with what is extraordinary, but in what
is extraordinary it seeks for truth. He finds the marvellous in the
triumphs of the human will. His great inventive powers were applied
to creating situations for the manifestation of heroic energy.
History attracted him, because a basis of fact seemed to justify what
otherwise could not be accepted as probable. Great personages suited
his purpose, because they can deploy their powers on the amplest scale.
His characters, men and women, act not through blind, instinctive
passion, but with deliberate and intelligent force; they reason, and
too often with casuistical subtlety, about their emotions. At length
he came to glorify the will apart from its aims and ends, when tending
even to crime, or acting, as it were, in the void. He thought much
of the principles of his art, and embodied his conclusions in critical
dissertations and studies of his own works. He accepted the rule of
the unities of place and time (of which at first he was ignorant)
as far as his themes permitted, as far as the rules served to
concentrate action and secure verisimilitude. His mastery in verse
of a masculine eloquence is unsurpassed; his dialogue of rapid
statement and swift reply is like a combat with Roman short swords;
in memorable single lines he explodes, as it were, a vast charge of
latent energy, and effects a clearance for the progress of his action.
His faults, like his virtues, are great; and though faults and virtues
may be travestied, both are in reality alike inimitable.
Alone among Corneille's dramatic rivals, if they deserve that
name--Du Ryer, Tristan, Scudery, Boisrobert, and others--JEAN ROTROU
(1610-50) had the magnanimity to render homage to the master of his
art. While still a boy he read Sophocles, and resolved that he would
live for the dramatic art. His facility was great, and he had the
faults of a facile writer, who started on his career at the age of
nineteen. He could not easily submit to the regulation of the
classical drama, and squandered his talents in extravagant
tragi-comedies; but his work grew sounder and stronger towards the
close. _Saint Genest_ (1645), which is derived, but in no servile
fashion, from Lope de Vega, recalls _Polyeucte_; an actor of the time
of Diocletian, in performing the part of a Christian martyr, is
penetrated by the heroic passion which he represents, confesses his
faith, and receives its crown in martyrdom. The tragi-comedy _Don
Bernard de Cabrere_ and the tragedy _Venceslas_ of the following year
exhibit the romantic and passionate sides of Rotrou's genius. The
intemperate yet noble Ladislas has rashly and in error slain his
brother; he is condemned to death by his father Venceslas, King of
Poland, and he accepts his doom. The situation is such as Corneille
might have imagined; but Rotrou's young hero in the end is pardoned
and receives the kingdom. If their careless construction and unequal
style in general forbade the dramas of Rotrou to hold the stage, they
remained as a store from which greater artists than he could draw
their material. His death was noble: the plague having broken out
at Dreux, he hastened from Paris to the stricken town, disregarding
all affectionate warnings, there to perform his duty as a magistrate;
within a few days the inhabitants followed Rotrou's coffin to the
parish church.
THOMAS CORNEILLE, the faithful and tender brother of "le grand
Corneille," and his successor in the Academy, belongs to a younger
generation. He was born in 1625, and did not die until near the close
of the first decade of the eighteenth century. As an industrious
playwright he imitated his brother's manner, and reproduced his
situations with a feebler hand. Many of his dramas are of Spanish
origin, comic imbroglios, tragic extravagances; they rather diverted
dramatic art from its true way than aided its advance. Perhaps for
this reason they were the more popular. His _Timocrate_ (1656), drawn
from the romance of _Cleopatre_, and itself a romance written for
the stage, had a success rarely equalled during the century. The hero
is at once the enemy and the lover of the Queen of Argos; under one
name he besieges her, under another he repels his own attack; he is
hated and adored, the conquered and the conqueror. The languors of
conventional love and the plaintive accents of conventional grief
suited the powers of the younger Corneille. His _Ariane_ (1672)
presents a heroine, Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus, who reminds us
of one of Racine's women, drawn with less certain lines and fainter
colours. In _Le Comte d'Essex_ history is transformed to a romance.
Perhaps the greatest glory of Thomas Corneille is that his reception
as an Academician became the occasion for a just and eloquent tribute
to the genius of his brother uttered by Racine, when the bitterness
of rivalry was forgotten and the offences of Racine's earlier years
were nobly repaired.