A Short History of French Literature

rest, though vigorous verse and good scenes are to be found in almost all. These plays, it should be observed, were not written until after the publication of Corneille's early masterpieces, though Rotrou had exhibited a play the year before the appearance of _Melite_. The two poets were friends, and though Corneille in a manner supplanted him, Rotrou was unwavering throughout his life in expressions of admiration for his great rival. Of the two plays just mentioned, _Venceslas_ is the more regular, the better adapted to the canons of the French stage, and the more even in its excellence. _Saint Genest_ is perhaps the more interesting. The central idea is remarkable. Genest, an actor, performs before Diocletian a part in which he represents a Christian martyr. He is miraculously converted during the study of the piece, and at its performance, after astonishing the audience by the fervour and vividness with which he plays his part, boldly speaks in his own person, and, avowing his conversion, is led off to prison and martyrdom. Many of the speeches in this play are admirable poetry, and the plot is far from ill-managed. The play within a play, of which _Hamlet_ and the _Taming of the Shrew_ are English examples, was, at this transition period, a favourite stage incident in France. Corneille's _Illusion_ is the most complicated example of it, but _Saint Genest_ is by far the most interesting and the best managed. [Sidenote: Corneille.] There is every reason to believe that though, as has been said, Rotrou's best pieces were influenced by Corneille, the greater poet owed something at the beginning of his career to the example of his friend. Pierre Corneille[237] was born at Rouen in 1606. His father, of the same name, was an official of rank in the legal hierarchy; his mother was named Marthe le Pesant. He was educated in the Jesuits' school, went to the bar, and obtained certain small legal preferments which he afterwards sold. He practised, but 'sans gout et sans succes,' says Fontenelle, his nephew and biographer. His first comedy, _Melite_, is said to have been suggested by a personal experience. It succeeded at Rouen, and the author took it to Paris. His next attempt was a tragedy or a tragi-comedy, _Clitandre_, of a really marvellous extravagance. It was followed by several other pieces, in all of which there is remarkable talent, though the author had not yet found his way. He found it at last in _Medee_, where the famous reply of the heroine 'Que vous reste-t-il?' 'Moi,' struck at once the note which no one but Corneille himself and Victor Hugo has ever struck since, and which no one had ever struck before. Corneille, as has been said above, was one of Richelieu's five poets, but he was indocile to the Cardinal's caprices; and either this indocility or jealousy set Richelieu against _Le Cid_. This great and famous play was suggested by, rather than copied from, the Spanish of Guillem de Castro. It excited an extraordinary turmoil among men of letters, but the public never went wrong about it from the first. Boileau's phrase-- Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue, is as sound in fact as it is smart in expression. The _Cid_ appeared in 1636, and for some years Corneille produced a succession of masterpieces. _Horace_, _Cinna_, _Polyeucte_, _Le Menteur_ (a remarkable comic effort, to which Moliere acknowledged his indebtedness), and _Rodogune_, in some respects the finest of all, succeeded each other at but short intervals. Half-a-dozen plays, somewhat inferior in actual merit, and which had the drawback of coming before a public used to the author and his method, followed, and the last and least good of them, _Pertharite_, was damned. Corneille, always the proudest of writers, was deeply wounded by this ill-success, and publicly renounced the stage. He devoted himself for some years to a strange task, the turning of the _Imitation_ of A'Kempis into verse. At last Fouquet, the Maecenas of the day, prevailed on him to begin again. He did so with _Oedipe_, which was successful. It was followed by many other plays, which had varying fates. Racine, with a method refined upon Corneille's own, and a greater sympathy with the actual generation, became the rival of the elder poet, and Corneille did not obey the wise maxim, _solve senescentem_. Yet his later plays have far more merit than is usually allowed to them. The private life of Corneille was not unhappy, though his haughty and sensitive temperament brought him many vexations. His gains were small, never exceeding two hundred louis for a play, and though this was supplemented by occasional gifts from rich dedicatees and by a scanty private fortune, the total was insufficient. 'Je suis saoul de gloire et affame d'argent' is one of the numerous sayings of scornful discontent recorded of him. He had a pension, but it was in his later days very ill paid. Nor was he one of the easy-going men of letters who console themselves by Bohemian indulgence. In general society he was awkward, constrained, and silent: but his home, which was long shared with his brother Thomas--they married two sisters--seems to have been a happy one. He retained till his death in 1684, if not the favour of the King and the general public, that of the persons whose favour was best worth having, such as Saint-Evremond and Madame de Sevigne, and his own confidence in his genius never deserted him. Corneille's dramatic career may be divided into four parts; the first reaching from _Melite_ to _L'Illusion Comique_; the second (that of his masterpieces), from the _Cid_ to _Rodogune_; the third, from _Theodore_ to _Pertharite_; the fourth, that of the decadence, from _Oedipe_ to _Surena_. The following is a list of the names and dates (these latter being sometimes doubtful and contentious) of his plays. _Melite_, 1629, a comedy improbable and confused in incident and overdone with verbal _pointes_, but much beyond anything previous to it. _Clitandre_, 1630, a tragedy in the taste of the time, one of the maddest of plays. _La Veuve_, 1634, a comedy, well written and lively. _La Galerie du Palais_ (same year), a capital comedy of its immature kind, bringing in the humours of contemporary Paris. _La Suivante_, a comedy (same year), in which the great character of the soubrette makes her first appearance. _La Place Royale_, a comedy, 1635, duller than the _Galerie du Palais_, which it in some respects resembles. _Medee_, a tragedy (same year), incomparably the best French tragedy up to its date. _L'Illusion Comique_, 1636, a tragi-comedy of the extremest Spanish type, complicated and improbable to a degree in its action, which turns on the motive of a play within a play, and produces, as the author himself remarks, a division into prologue (Act i), an imperfect comedy (Acts ii-iv), and a tragedy (Act v). _Le Cid_, 1636, the best-known if not the best of Corneille's plays, and, from the mere playwright's point of view, the most attractive. _Horace_, 1639, often, but improperly, called _Les Horaces_, in which the Cornelian method is seen complete. The final speech of Camille before her brother kills her was as a whole never exceeded by the author, and the 'qu'il mourut' of the elder Horace is equally characteristic. _Cinna_, 1639, the general favourite in France, but somewhat stilted and devoid of action to foreign taste. _Polyeucte_, 1640, the greatest of all Christian tragedies. _La Mort de Pompee_, 1641, full of stately verse, but heavy and somewhat grandiose. _Le Menteur_, 1642, a charming comedy, followed by a _Suite du Menteur_, 1643, not inferior, though the fickleness of public taste disapproved it. _Theodore_, 1645, a noble tragedy, which only failed because the prudery of theatrical precisians found fault with its theme--the subjection of a Christian virgin to the last and worst trial of her honour and faith. _Rodogune_, 1646, the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the style, displaying from beginning to end an astonishing power of moving admiration and terror. This play marks the climax of Corneille's faculty. In _Heraclius_, 1647, no real falling-off is visible; indeed, the character of Phocas stands almost alone on the French stage as a parallel in some sort to Iago. _Andromede_, 1650, introduced a considerable amount of spectacle and decoration, not unhappily. _Don Sanche d'Aragon_, 1651, _Nicomede_, 1652, and _Pertharite_, 1653 (each of which may possibly be a year older than these respective dates), show what political economists might call the stationary state of the poet's genius. The first two plays produced after the interval, _Oedipe_, 1659, and _La Toison d'Or_, 1660, both show the benefit of the rest the poet had had, together with certain signs of advancing years. _La Toison d'Or_, like _Andromede_, includes a great deal of spectacle, and is rather an elaborate masque interspersed with regular dramatic scenes than a tragedy. It is one of the best specimens of the kind. In _Sertorius_, 1662, there are occasional passages of much grandeur and beauty, but _Sophonisbe_, 1663, is hardly a success, nor is _Othon_, 1664. _Agesilas_, 1666, and _Attila_, 1667, have been (the latter unfairly) damned by a quatrain of Boileau's. But _Tite et Berenice_, 1670, must be acknowledged to be inferior to the play of Racine in rivalry with which it was produced. _Pulcherie_, 1672, and _Surena_, 1674, are last-fruits off an old tree, which, especially the second, are not unworthy of it. Nor was Corneille's contribution to the remarkable opera of _Psyche_, 1671, inconsiderable. This completes his dramatic work, which amounts to thirty pieces and part of another. It should be added that, to all the plays up to _La Toison d'Or_, he subjoined in a collected edition very remarkable criticisms of them, which he calls _Examens_. The characteristics of this great dramatist are perhaps more uniform than those of any writer of equal rank, and there can be little doubt that this uniformity, which, considering the great bulk of his work, amounts almost to monotony, was the cause of his gradual loss of popularity. We shall not here notice the points which he has in common with Racine, as a writer of the French classical drama. These will come in more suitably when Racine himself has been dealt with. In Corneille the academic criticism of the time found the fault that he rather excited admiration than pity and terror, and it held that admiration was 'not a tragic passion.' The criticism was clumsy, and to a great extent futile, but it has a certain basis of truth. It is comparatively rare for Corneille to attempt, after his earliest period, to interest his hearers or readers in the fortunes of his characters. It is rather in the way that they bear their fortunes, and particularly in a kind of haughty disdain for fortune itself, that these characters impress us. Sometimes, as in the Cleopatre of _Rodogune_, this masterful temper is engaged on the side of evil, more frequently it is combined with amiable or at least respectable characteristics. But there is always something 'remote and afar' about it, and the application by La Bruyere of the famous comparison between the Greek tragedians is in the main strictly accurate. It follows that Corneille's demand upon his hearers or readers is a somewhat severe one, and one with which many men are neither disposed nor able to comply. It was a greater misfortune for him than for almost any one else that the French and not the English drama was the Sparta which it fell to his lot to decorate. His powers were not in reality limited. The _Menteur_ shows an excellent comic faculty, and the strokes of irony in his serious plays have more of true humour in them than appears in almost any other French dramatist. Had the licence of