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The sun of a legal official, he watt trained 

 for the har, ami for Home time tried with but 

 slight success to ol)tiiiii a practice in his birthplace. 

 In ltl'2'.i In- removed to Paris, where lib comedy 

 Mf'/ttf, \\hich hud already been performed at 

 Uoiien, proved so successful as to lie run at the 

 game time in two theatres, the Murais and the 

 HAtel de Bourgogne. It was followed by CM- 

 andre, La Veuve, La Galerie du Palais, La 

 Suivante, and La Place Itoyale. In these early 

 pieces intricate and extravagant plots are handled 

 with considerable ingenuity, hut the writer's poetic 

 genius only (lashes out in occasional verses. For 

 some time ( 'orneille was numbered among Riche- 

 lieu's 'five poets,' the others being Rotrou, Colletet, 

 Hois- Robert, and l/Ktoile. These writers were 

 engaged to compose plays on lines laid down by 

 the cardinal. Each of the five wrote an act, 

 which was then criticised, altered, and paid for by 

 their employer ; among the pieces thus produced 

 being Les Tuileries, L'Aveugle de Smyrne, and La 

 Grande Pastorale. Corneille, however, was too 

 independent to retain Richelieu's favour, and his 

 dismissal followed at once on his proposing to alter 

 a plot of the cardinal's devising. Medee, a tragedy 

 which appeared in 1635, showed a marked advance 

 on his earlier works, both in dramatic power and in 

 style ; and in 1636 the Old, his most famous if not 

 his best plav, took Paris by storm. Richelieu 

 ordered his literary retainers to write down the 

 piece, and Scudery called on the Academy to vindi- 

 cate French letters in the eyes of Europe by passing 

 formal censure on Corneille. The Academy, which 

 had lately been founded by Richelieu, thereupon 

 issued a hostile examen of the play ; but adverse 

 criticism was powerless against the general en- 

 thusiasm, and the phrase beau comme le Cid passed 

 into the language. The result of the struggle 

 between the minister and the dramatist is happily 

 summed up in Boileau's famous couplet : 



Eu vain centre le Cid un ministre se ligue, 



Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue. 



The story of the play was taken from Las Moce- 

 dudes del Cid, a Spanish work by Guillem de 

 Castro (q.v. ), but Corneille's treatment of the sub- 

 ject was thoroughly original. With the appear- 

 ance of the Cid the poetic drama took possession 

 of a stage hitherto occupied by broad and shape- 

 less farces, wooden imitations of Seneca, and the 

 extravagant and off-hand pieces of Hardy. The 

 graceful and heroic figures of the lovers, Rodrigue 

 and Chimene, the nobility of the sentiments, the 

 power and harmony of the verse, justify the enthu- 

 siasm which the play excited. It may not be its 

 author's greatest effort, but there is a charm in the 

 spirit of youthful ardour and tenderness which 

 animates it such as is hardly to be felt again in 

 Corneille's work, until we come to the exquisite 

 lyric love-scene which he contributed in hb old 

 age to the opera of Psyche. 



The Cid was followed in 1639 by Horace, a play 

 which was founded on the story of the Horatii and 

 Curiatii as told by Livy, and which contains, in the 

 tirade spoken before her death by Camille, the 

 most magnificent burst of invective in the French 

 classical drama. Oinna appeared in 1639 ; Poly- 

 eucte, one of Corneille's noldest tragedies, in 1640 ; 

 and La Mort de Pompee in 1641. Le Menteur, 

 which was produced in 1642, entitles Corneille to be 

 called the father of French comedy as well as of 

 French tragedy. The play is a masterpiece. The 

 character of Dorante, the liar, is drawn with 

 admirable humour and insight, and the style, at 

 once easy, graceful, und pointed, reaches a level 

 of excellence which Moliere did not surpass in his 

 earHer works. Theodore was brought out in 1645, 

 and liodogune, perhaps the most impressive and 



thrilling of < 'orneillc'* trugedie*. in 1646. Between 

 1647 when he was made an academician and 

 1653 Corneille produced Ileradius, Dun tinnche 

 il'Arinjon (an imitation of Lope de Vega's Palaeio 

 Confuso), Aiidroinede, Nicomede, and Pertharite. 

 Tin -se pieces, of which the last named wan damned, 

 show a decline in dramatic and poetic power. 

 After the failure of Pert/utrite in 1653, Corneille 

 ceased for a time to write plays, and occupied 

 liim-i-lt" with making a verse translation of the 

 Imitutio Christi. He returned to the stage in 1659 

 with (Edipe, which had considerable success, and 

 which was followed by La Toison d'Or, Sertoriua, 

 Soj>honisbe, Othon, Agtsilas, Attila, and Tite et 

 Berenice (1670). In 1671 he joined Moliere and 

 Quinault in writing the opera of Psyche, and the 

 loveliest verses which he ever penned are to be 

 found in the scene between Psyche and Cupid ( act 

 iii. scene 3). His last works were Pulcherie ( 1672) 

 and Surena ( 1674). 



His work did not bring him wealth, for he never 

 received more than 200 louis for a piece. Hb 

 private fortune was not large, and the pension 

 which was granted him was not regularly paid. 

 After his marriage in 1640 he lived habitually in 

 Rouen until 1662, when he settled in Paris. Hb 

 domestic life seems to have been a happy one. He 

 and his brother Thomas married two sbters, and 

 dwelt for a long time in contiguous houses. 

 During his later years he had to compete with 

 Racine, an inferior poet but a more dexterous 

 playwright, and one who could cater more shrewdly 

 for the public taste. The veteran dramatist spoke 

 contemptuously of his rival's ' sighs and flames,' 

 but his popularity waned before that of the 

 younger writer, whose cause was espoused by 

 Boileau and the king. Corneille died in Paris in 

 the Rue d'Argenteuil on October 1, 1684. 



Corneille and Racine are the chief dramatists of 

 the classical school which held command of the 

 French tragic stage from the middle of the 16th 

 century down to the Romantic movement of 1830. 

 The works of this school were modelled on the 

 plays of Seneca that b to say, on plays cast in 

 the mould of Greek tragedy, but having even less 

 action and more diffuse moralising. The writer 

 who adopts this form of drama b bound down by 

 a set of rigid rules which allow him to present only 

 a few idealised personages in certain stereotyped 

 situations. He cannot exhibit the development of 

 character and the interaction of human passions. 

 He is almost denied the use of incident, and the 

 slow progress of his play to its climax b mainly 

 brought about through the agency of messengers 

 and confidants. Before Corneille the classic school 

 had failed to produce a single good acting play ; its 

 adherents, nevertheless, succeeded in diverting him 

 from the path on which he had entered when he pro- 

 duced the Cid, and in thereby cramping his rich 

 and vigorous genius. 'Corneille,' savs Mr Walter 

 Pollock, ' was one of the first to malve a move in 

 the direction of the romantic drama, and wanted 

 nothing but courage and self-sacrifice to curry out 

 his intention.' (See his admirable articles on Victor 

 Hugo and Romanticism in French Poets, 1879). 

 Unfortunately, instead of disregarding the academic 

 criticism of his day, Corneille turned from Spain to a 

 'Castilian Rome,' remote from the world of romance, 

 and set himself to compose plays of so severe and 

 uneventful a type that he failejWsave in one or 

 two cases, to invest them wiU^^Brong sustained 

 interest. In reading these jHP^pe yield alter- 

 nately to admiration and fatigue. The characters 

 have a simplicity and grandeur which recall the 

 work of the sculptor, but they have also something 

 of its immobility. We can grasp them at once ; 

 they are not developed in the course of the drama. 

 Corneille's heroes bear their fate with an indexible 



