A Short History of French Literature
forth a large number of pieces which approached much nearer to the
mediaeval drama, and especially to the mediaeval drama in the form which
Gringore had given it, than to the model of Jodelle.
[Sidenote: Beginnings of the Classical Drama.]
It was, however, this model which had the seeds of life in it, and which
was destined to serve as the pattern for the French drama of the future.
In the manifesto of the Pleiade Du Bellay gave especial prominence to
the drama among the literary kinds, in which French had need of
strengthening from classical sources. The classical tragedy in the
classical language, and even in translation, was already no stranger to
French audiences, and the principle of constructing modern vernacular
plays on the same model had become familiar to the upper and learned
classes by the practice of the Italians, with which they had become
acquainted, partly through the numerous visits, friendly and hostile,
paid by Frenchmen to Italy in the early years of the sixteenth century,
partly through the reproduction of these Italian plays at the courts of
Francis I. and Henri II. This reproduction of foreign work was not
confined to the court, for in 1548 the town of Lyons greeted Catherine
de Medicis with an Italian play acted by an Italian company. As for
translations of classical drama, Lazare de Baif translated the _Electra_
as early as 1537, and Buchanan, Muretus, and others composed Latin plays
for their pupils to act. In all these plays, Latin, Italian, and
French-translation, the influence of the tragedian Seneca was paramount,
and this influence made an enduring mark on the future drama of France.
Greek, though it was ardently studied, was, from the purely literary
point of view, little comprehended by the French humanists, and of the
three tragedians Euripides was the only one who made much impression
upon them. Seneca, as the only extant Latin tragedian, had a monopoly of
the classical language which they understood best and revered most
heartily. His model was also peculiarly imitable. The paucity of action,
the strict observation of certain easily observable rules, the regular
and harmonious but easily comprehensible system of his choruses, the
declamatory style and strong ethical temper of his sentiments, all
appealed to the French Renaissance. Within a year or two from the time
when Du Bellay had sounded the note of innovation, Jodelle answered the
summons with a tragedy and a comedy at the same time.
[Sidenote: Jodelle.]
Etienne Jodelle[206], Seigneur de Lymodin, was one of the youngest of
Ronsard's fellows. He was born at Paris in 1532, and was thus barely
twenty years old when, in 1552, he founded at once modern French tragedy
with his _Cleopatre_, and modern French comedy with his _Eugene_. The
representation was a great success, and obtained for the author from the
King, Henri II., besides many compliments, the sum of five hundred
crowns. The success of the plays also brought about an incident famous
in French literary history of the anecdotic kind. The seven determined
to celebrate the occasion by a country excursion, and on the way to
Arcueil they unluckily met a flock of goats. Deeply imbued as they all
were with classical fancies, it was almost inevitable that the idea of a
Dionysiac festival should strike them, and a goat was caught, crowned
with flowers and solemnly paraded, Ronsard himself officiating as the
god. This harmless freak was represented by the zealots of the time as
an impious pagan orgie, in which the goat had been actually sacrificed
to a false god, and the reputation of the brotherhood sank almost
equally with Catholics and Protestants. Six years after, Jodelle
produced his second tragedy, _Didon_, also with great success. But he
was not a fortunate person. The miscarriage of a pageant of which he had
the direction alienated the favour of the court from him, and he was too
proud or too careless to solicit its grace. He was a loose and reckless
liver, and receives from Pierre de l'Estoile a character which very
probably is unduly harsh. However this may be, he died at the age of
forty, indigent and ruined in constitution. His literary activity was
great, but only a small part of his work survives, and his three plays
are the only important portion of this.
The comedy has some impression of classical study, though very much less
than the two tragedies. It is, unlike the indigenous farce, divided
regularly into acts and scenes; it is much longer than the native
comedy, and some of the characters show, though faintly and at a
distance, some traces of a reading of Terence. But it retains the
octosyllabic metre, and its general scheme, despite a somewhat greater
involution of plot and multiplicity of characters, is that of a farce.
Eugene, the hero, a rich and luxurious churchman, is in love with Alix,
whom, to save appearances, he has married to a wittol of the name of
Guillaume. Alix, however, has several other lovers, among whom is
Florimond a soldier, the rejected suitor of Helene, Eugene's sister.
These personages are completed by Maitre Jean, the abbe's chaplain and
general factotum, a creditor of Guillaume's, some servants of the
soldier Florimond, etc. The plot is very simple, consisting of hardly
anything but the return of Florimond from the wars, and his wrath at
discovering Alix's relations not merely with Guillaume but with Eugene.
He is finally made happy with Helene. Alix takes the wise resolution to
be less prodigal of her affections, and the play ends. Some detached
passages, especially the opening scene, in which the lazy, dissolute
life of wealthy churchmen is very pointedly satirised, are amusing
enough, and the characters of the chaplain and the husband are not far
from _la vraie comedie_. The tragedies are indirectly of more
importance, but intrinsically much duller reading. Instead, however, of
cleaving, as _Eugene_ does, closely to the lines of the existing drama,
the innovation in them is of the boldest kind. The octosyllabic verse,
hitherto sacred to drama, is exchanged in _Cleopatre_ for a mixture of
the decasyllabic and the Alexandrine, some scenes being written in the
one, others in the other. Nor is the tentative character of the work
only thus indicated; for the rhymes follow different systems in the
different scenes. In _Didon_, however, Jodelle settled down to the
unbroken Alexandrine with alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes,
which has remained the standard vehicle of French tragedy ever since.
His general scheme follows that of Seneca closely, and his choruses are
written in stanzas of short verses regularly arranged. The matter of
both plays is taken with tolerable exactness, in the one case from
Plutarch, in the other from Virgil; but a somewhat full analytic
description of the first French tragedy must be given. _Didon_ is
something of an advance in versification, as has been pointed out, but
in other respects it is perhaps inferior to _Cleopatre_.
The piece begins with a prologue to the king, and then the first act
opens with a long soliloquy from the ghost of Antony. Long speeches, it
should be said, are the bane of this early French tragedy, and for
nearly a century the evil increased instead of diminishing. Cleopatra,
Charmium, and Eras then appear, for the play follows Plutarch strictly
enough. The queen expresses her despair, and announces her intention to
die. The first act is concluded by a long chorus of Alexandrian women,
who bewail the shortness of life in six-syllable quatrains. The second
act, like the first (unless the monologue of the ghost is counted in
this latter), consists of only a single scene and a chorus. The scene is
between Octavian, Agrippa, and Proculeius, who argue about the probable
fate of Cleopatra. The conqueror is disposed to mercy and to regret for
Antony's death, but his officers are less amiably minded. They agree,
however, that Cleopatra will have to be watched for fear of suicide. The
chorus now is nominally divided into strophes and antistrophes, but
these are really only uniform stanzas of six six-syllable lines each,
with the rhymes arranged a, b, a, b, c, c, and there is no epode. The
third act contains the interview of Octavian with Cleopatra, the
surrender of the treasures, and the treachery of Seleucus. The chorus
takes part in this scene both by a short song and a longer one in
couplets, but arranged in eight-line stanzas, which is preceded by a
dialogue with Seleucus. The act thus consists of two scenes. In the
fourth act Cleopatra repeats and regularly matures her resolve of death.
It contains two choric pieces of some beauty. The first is an undivided
song in sixes and fours; the second has a regular arrangement of
strophe, antistrophe, and epode three times repeated, consisting of
five-syllable lines, of which the strophe and antistrophe contain eleven
each and the epode eight, arranged--strophe and antistrophe a, b, a, b,
c, c, d, d, e, e, d, epode a, b, a, b, c, c, d, d. The fifth act is very
short, containing a recital by Proculeius of the Queen's death, and a
choric lament in quatrains. It will thus be seen that the action in the
piece is very small, except in the brawl with Seleucus; that the chorus
has the full importance which it possessed in the classical tragedy; and
that, owing to the few changes of scene and the other restrictions
imposed upon himself by the poet, the dramatic capabilities of the plan
are not a little limited. The same state of things continued to be the
case during the whole duration of the school whose master Jodelle was.
Style and versification were sometimes better, sometimes worse than his;
but, with comparatively few exceptions, the general conception was the
same, long monologues, few characters, an almost total defect of action,
which is conducted by the aid of messengers, etc.
[Sidenote: Minor Pleiade Dramatists.]
The fervent spirit of imitation which characterised the satellites of
the Pleiade has already been noticed more than once. But in no
department was it more marked than in that of drama. Jean de la Peruse,
who, like many of the Pleiade poets, died very young, produced a _Medea_
imitated from Seneca, and Charles Toustain an _Agamemnon,_ also taken
from the same author. Jacques de la Taille at a very early age wrote a
_Darius_ and an _Alexander_, besides a _Didon_, which is lost. These
pieces have some merit, and it is noteworthy that the metre varies, as
in Jodelle's model. A slight eccentricity of realism, however, has been
Jacques de la Taille's chief passport to a place in the history of
French literature. The death of Darius occurs in the middle of the word
_recommandation_,
Mes enfants et ma femme aie en recommanda ...
Il ne put achever, ear la mort l'en garda.
It is perhaps not insignificant that the verse is completed if the word
is not.
Of this immediate group of Jodelle's followers, however, the most
remarkable before Garnier was Jacques Grevin, who was noteworthy both as
a dramatist and as a poet. Grevin was a Protestant and a practitioner of
medicine, in which capacity he accompanied Marguerite de France, Duchess
of Savoy, to Turin, and died there, at the age of thirty. Before he was
twenty he wrote a tragedy, _La Mort de Cesar,_ which has considerable
merit, and two comedies, _Les Esbahis_ and _La Tresoriere_, which are
perhaps better still. Jean de la Taille, the brother of Jacques, but a
better poet and a better dramatist, wrote _Saul Furieux_ and _Les
Gabaonites_, two of the numerous sacred tragedies which have always
found favour in France, and the tradition of which it has been sought to
revive even in our own day. The theatre, like the pulpit, was used as an
engine by the Leaguers, but nothing of much value resulted from this.
[Sidenote: Garnier.]