692 POETRY 



fered to his father; the love of Chimene for Rodrigue is checked by 

 the duty imposed on her to avenge the death of her father; the dra- 

 matic interest depends on the solution of the psychological puzzle. 



It is extremely interesting and instructive to observe how carefully 

 Corneille applies the Law of the Three Unities to a tragedy thought 

 out on this completely abstract principle. He wished to make the play 

 appear logical to the audience on the stage; he did not care about 

 making it appear real to the universal imagination. Accordingly, he 

 pleads apologetically, in his Discourse on the Three Unities, that he 

 has not departed from the rule of Unity of Place further than he 

 was absolutely obliged by the nature of his subject. And as to the 

 Unity of Time, since the action of the play is restricted by the sup- 

 posed law to twenty-four hours, the dramatist is obliged by the course 

 of events to make Don Rodrigue first kill Don Gomes, then conquer 

 the Moors, then come back to fight a second duel with Don Sanche; 

 and that he may do all this within the prescribed time limits, his 

 father, Don Diegue, opposes the desire of the king to give The Cid 

 an interval for rest and refreshment, observing that it is nothing for a 

 man of his son's heroic valor to come from a battle to a duel without 

 making a pause ! 



And yet. though Corneille is so anxious to satisfy the demands of a 

 dramatic law which has no existence in truth or nature, he sees no 

 improbability in representing Chimene making long speeches to her 

 lady-in-waiting in order to show the audience the state of her mind in 

 the struggle between her inclination and her duty; no improbability 

 in bringing Don Rodrigue to his mistress, after he has killed her 

 father, to entreat her to plunge the same sword into his own heart; no 

 improbability in causing the king to decide that Chimene's plea 

 for vengeance against the man who has killed her father shall be 

 satisfied by a duel between Rodrigue and Chimene's selected champion, 

 the prize of victorv being the hand of Chimene herself; no improb- 

 ability in leading us to suppose, at the close of the play, that Chimene 

 marrie< her father's slaver and lives happily for ever after! Such im- 

 probabilities could never have been conceived by any poet who undei- 

 slood the meaning of Aristotle's principle of Unity of Action in the 

 imitation of Xature: but they proved no obstacle to the appreciation 

 of the tragedy by an audience whi-ch accepted the artificial hypothesis 

 with which the poet started, and mainly desired to have their own love 

 of antithesis and rhetoric satisfied in a dramatic form of representa- 



it from me. as an Fndi-hman. to -peak with disrespect of 

 dramatists of France. Viewed in their relation to the 



reneh society, plays ]jk e ][nrac'\ Cinna. I'licdrc, and Athalie 

 seem to he marvels of dramatic skill and invention. Mv argument is 

 that n sor-iftv like that of France was incapable of conceiving tragic 



