IDEA O.F LAW IX I'OETHY Ml 



Good morrow, fair ones : pray you, if you know, 

 Where in the purlieus of this forest stands 

 A sheep-cote fenced about with olive trees? 



To which Cclia replies: 



West of tliis place, down in the neighbour bottom : 

 The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream 

 Left on your right hand brings you to the place. 



The fact is, that both the Greek and English dramatists were the 

 natural successors of the minstrels the former of Homer and the 

 cyclic poets, the latter of the mediaeval trouvercs and their imagin- 

 ations were accustomed to live in the ideal action of the story-tellers. 

 Xow for a story in itself Corneillc cared nothing. What he meant 

 by unity of action was the unity of abstract idea in a drama. He 

 understood very well the nature of the stage effects required to produce 

 emotion in an audience; and he constructed his plays logically and 

 scientifically with a view to securing these effects. I imagine that 

 the way in which he composed a tragedy was something like this: 

 First, he searched for a situation in which he might exhibit a conflict 

 between the will and the passions; then, when he had found the 

 subject, he filled in the situation with the characters, and determined 

 their relations to each other in successive scenes; after that, he 

 thought out the emotions and sentiments proper to each scene; lastly, 

 he colored the whole of the dialogue with impassioned rhetoric and 

 epigrammatic points. 



Composing on this principle, Corneille was able to exclude from the 

 structure of his drama every external incident that was not necessary 

 to the evolution of his abstract idea, but he was far from attaining 

 unitv of action. Re strove to imitate, a* far as possible, the outward 

 form of Greek tragedy, and took note of Ari-Motle's saying, that it is 

 not necessary to represent on the stage the whole of a recorded action. 

 r>ut lie did not observe that the reason of thi- was that, in the Athe- 

 nian theatre, the audience were all familiar with the whole story- 

 represented, and so were able to supply from their imagination the 

 necessary gaps in the action. But Ibis is nor the case in Tlic Cid. 

 Corneille. in this play, merely select- from the story of the Spanish 

 hero such ci-odos as he deemed necessar for the treatment of his 



t> and i >on ( ^oii'c 



iiuarrel causing the 



situation re-ernbles 



According to r>ne of 



igue for C'himene is 



avemre th.e in-ult of- 



