bad, as that it is not, in strictness, poetry at all, and the same
is generally true of all those who followed him.
17th-Century Drama.—We have already seen how the medieval
theatre was formed, and how in the second half of the 16th century
it met with a formidable rival in the classical drama of Jodelle
and Garnier. In 1588 mysteries had been prohibited, and with
the prohibition of the mysteries the Confraternity of the Passion
lost the principal part of its reason for existence. The other
bodies and societies of amateur actors had already perished, and
at length the Hôtel de Bourgogne itself, the home of the confraternity,
had been handed over to a regular troop of actors,
while companies of strollers, whose life has been vividly depicted
in the Roman comique of Scarron and the Capitaine Fracasse
of Théophile Gautier, wandered all about the provinces. The old
farce was for a time maintained or revived by Tabarin, a remarkable
figure in dramatic history, of whom but little is known.
The great dramatic author of the first quarter of the 17th century
was Alexandre Hardy (1569–1631), who surpassed even Heywood Hardy.
in fecundity, and very nearly approached the portentous
productiveness of Lope de Vega. Seven
hundred is put down as the modest total of Hardy’s pieces, but
not much more than a twentieth of these exist in print. From
these latter we can judge Hardy. They are hardly up to the
level of the worst specimens of the contemporary Elizabethan
theatre, to which, however, they bear a certain resemblance.
Marston’s Insatiate Countess and the worst parts of Chapman’s
Bussy d’Ambois may give English readers some notion of them.
Yet Hardy was not totally devoid of merit. He imitated and
adapted Spanish literature, which was at this time to France
what Italian was in the century before and English in the century
after, in the most indiscriminate manner. But he had a considerable
command of grandiloquent and melodramatic expression,
a sound theory if not a sound practice of tragic writing, and that
peculiar knowledge of theatrical art and of the taste of the
theatrical public which since his time has been the special possession
of the French playwright. It is instructive to compare the
influence of his irregular and faulty genius with that of the regular
and precise Malherbe. From Hardy to Rotrou is, in point of
literary interest, a great step, and from Rotrou to Corneille a
greater. Yet the theory of Hardy only wanted the genius of
Rotrou and Corneille to produce the latter. Jean de Rotrou
(1610–1650) has been called the French Marlowe, and there is Rotrou.
a curious likeness and yet a curious contrast between
the two poets. The best parts of Rotrou’s two best
plays, Venceslas and St Genest, are quite beyond comparison
in respect of anything that preceded them, and the central
speech of the last-named play will rank with anything in
French dramatic poetry. Contemporary with Rotrou were
other dramatic writers of considerable dramatic importance,
most of them distinguished by the faults of the Spanish
school, its declamatory rodomontade, its conceits, and its
occasionally preposterous action. Jean de Schélandre (d.
1635) has left us a remarkable work in Tyr et Sidon, which
exemplifies in practice, as its almost more remarkable preface by
François Ogier defends in principle, the English-Spanish model.
Théophile de Viau in Pyrame et Thisbé and in Pasiphaé produced
a singular mixture of the classicism of Garnier and the extravagancies
of Hardy. Scudéry in l’Amour tyrannique and other
plays achieved a considerable success. The Marianne of Tristan
(1601–1655) and the Sophonisbe of Jean de Mairet (1604–1686)
are the chief pieces of their authors. Mairet resembles Marston
in something more than his choice of subject. Another dramatic
writer of some eminence is Pierre du Ryer (1606–1648). But
the fertility of France at this moment in dramatic authors
was immense; nearly 100 are enumerated in the first quarter Corneille.
of the century. The early plays of Pierre Corneille
(1606–1684) showed all the faults of his contemporaries
combined with merits to which none of them except Rotrou,
and Rotrou himself only in part, could lay claim. His first play
was Mélite, a comedy, and in Clitandre, a tragedy, he soon produced
what may perhaps be not inconveniently taken as the
typical piece of the school of Hardy. A full account of Corneille
may be found elsewhere. It is sufficient to say here that his
importance in French literature is quite as great in the way of
influence and example as in the way of intellectual excellence.
The Cid and the Menteur are respectively the first examples of
French tragedy and comedy which can be called modern. But
this influence and example did not at first find many imitators.
Corneille was a member of Richelieu’s band of five poets. Of
the other four Rotrou alone deserves the title; the remaining
three, the prolific abbé de Boisrobert, Guillaume Colletet (whose
most valuable work, a MS. Lives of Poets, was never printed, and
burnt by the Communards in 1871), and Claude de Lestoile
(1597–1651), are as dramatists worthy of no notice, nor were they
soon followed by others more worthy. Yet before many years
had passed the examples which Corneille had set in tragedy and
in comedy were followed up by unquestionably the greatest comic
writer, and by one who long held the position of the greatest
tragic writer of France. Beginning with mere farces of the
Italian type, and passing from these to comedies still of an Italian
character, it was in Les Précieuses ridicules, acted in 1659, that Molière.
Racine.
Molière (1622–1673), in the words of a spectator, hit
at last on “la bonne comédie.” The next fifteen years
comprise the whole of his best known work, the finest expression
beyond doubt of a certain class of comedy that any literature
has produced. The tragic masterpieces of Racine
(1639–1699) were not far from coinciding with the
comic masterpieces of Molière, for, with the exception of the
remarkable aftergrowth of Esther and Athalie, they were produced
chiefly between 1667 and 1677. Both Racine and Molière fall
into the class of writers who require separate mention. Here
we can only remark that both to a certain extent committed
and encouraged a fault which distinguished much subsequent
French dramatic literature. This was the too great individualizing
of one point in a character, and the making the man or woman
nothing but a blunderer, a lover, a coxcomb, a tyrant and the
like. The very titles of French plays show this influence—they
are Le Grondeur, Le Joueur, &c. The complexity of human
character is ignored. This fault distinguishes both Molière and
Racine from writers of the very highest order; and in especial
it distinguishes the comedy of Molière and the tragedy of Racine
from the comedy and tragedy of Shakespeare. In all probability
this and other defects of the French drama (which are not wholly
apparent in the work of Molière and Corneille, are shown in
their most favourable light in those of Racine, and appear in all
their deformity in the successors of the latter) arise from the
rigid adoption of the Aristotelian theory of the drama with its
unities and other restrictions, especially as transmitted by Horace
through Boileau. This adoption was very much due to the influence
of the French Academy, which was founded unofficially
by Conrart in 1629, which received official standing six years later, The
Academy.
and which continued the tradition of Malherbe in
attempting constantly to school and correct, as the
phrase went, the somewhat disorderly instincts of
the early French stage. Even the Cid was formally censured
for irregularity by it. But it is fair to say that François Hédélin,
abbé d’Aubignac (1604–1676), whose Pratique du théâtre is the
most wooden of the critical treatises of the time, was not an
academician. It is difficult to say whether the subordination
of all other classes of composition to the drama, which has ever
since been characteristic of French literature, was or was not
due to the predilection of Richelieu, the main protector if not
exactly the founder of the Academy, for the theatre. Among
the immediate successors and later contemporaries of the three
great dramatists we do not find any who deserve high rank as
tragedians, though there are some whose comedies are more than
respectable. It is at least significant that the restrictions imposed
by the academic theory on the comic drama were far less
severe than those which tragedy had to undergo. The latter was
practically confined, in respect of sources of attraction, to the
dexterous manipulation of the unities; the interest of a plot
attenuated as much as possible, and intended to produce, instead
of pity a mild sympathy, and instead of terror a mild alarm
(for the purists decided against Corneille that “admiration was not
