2 Prosser Hall Frye 



the framework is of the utmost severity, such as is ideally pre- 

 scribed by the unities of time and place, as Corneille insists that 

 he is practising them. But what he congratulates himself upon is 

 anything but the harmonious accommodation of material to plan. 

 Rather, he justifies his fondness for the play by " the surprising 

 incidents," which, he assures us, are purely of his own " inven- 

 tion " and " have never before been seen on the stage." To be 

 sure, he acknowledges that his " tenderness " for this particular 

 drama may be in the nature of parental partiality — it contains so 

 much of himself ; but the very fact that he feels it at all, is pretty 

 good evidence that he never quite realized the obligations which 

 his own profession of the unities imposed upon him, particularly 

 with reference to the selection of congruous subject-matter. And 

 to this charge he pleads guilty in so many words in the Discours 

 de la Tragedies 



" It is so unlikely that there should occur, either in imagina- 

 tion or history, a quantity of transactions illustrious and worthy 

 of tragedy, whose deliberations and efifects can possibly be made 

 to happen in one place and in one day without doing some little 

 violence to the common order of things, that I can not believe 

 this sort of violence altogether reprehensible, provided it does 

 not become quite impossible. There are admirable subjects 

 where it is impossible to avoid some such violence ; and a 

 scrupulous author would deprive himself of an excellent chance 

 of glory and the public of a good deal of satisfaction, if lie were 

 too timid to stage subjects of this sort for fear of being forced 

 to make them pass more quickly than probability permits. In 

 such a case I should advise him to prefix no time to his piece or 

 any determinate place for the action. The imagination of the 

 audience will be freer to follow the current of the action, if it is 

 not fixed by these marks, and it will never perceive the precipi- 

 tancy of events unless it is reminded and made to take notice of 

 them expressly." 



Here, then, is his confession. Do the best you can to crowd 



2 In quoting Corneille and Racine I use the spelling and accentuation of 

 Fournel's edition (Librairie des Bibliophiles} based on the last editions 

 published during the authors' lives. 



174 



