Racine 7 



great mass of incident has ever been the recourse of those poets 

 who have felt their genius too frail and scanty to hold their audi- 

 ence for five acts by a simple action [italics mine, again] sup- 

 ported by the violence of the passions, the beauty of the senti- 

 ments, and the elegance of the expression." As compared with 

 Corneille's confessed weakness for " surprising incidents," the 

 like of which had never before been seen on the stage, these ex- 

 pressions would seem to be sufficiently explicit. It is not the mul- 

 titude or variety of^ incident which is to furnish forth the perfect 

 tragedy ; it is passion, sentiment, expression, which, so far from 

 disagreeing with simplicity of action, in reality concur with it ; 

 for here as everywhere it is upon this significant simplicity of 

 action that the whole weight and force of Racine's authority is 

 brought to bear. 



As for the unity of place — it is in itself a minor matter any- 

 way. That is to say, the unity of place offers no such difficulty in 

 the problem of verisimilitude as does the unity of time. There 

 is no prohibitive improbability that an action of any extent, pro- 

 vided it be confined to the linear dimension, should not occur in a 

 single place. One may be born, wed, and die in the same room, 

 as far as that goes — though it is impossible to imagine all these 

 events as taking place on the same day. It is for this reason, 

 perhaps, that Racine nominally conforms to Corneille's receipt in 

 setting all his dramas for a single room or apartment — with the 

 exception of Phedre, which is set, in accordance with an earlier 

 recommendation of the same authority, for a single " site." Never- 

 theless his own practice implies a kind of criticism of Corneille's. 

 With the latter the single room or cabinet which served as the 

 local habitation of his drama was a stage fiction no less truly than 

 his dramatic day. Conventionally — though as a matter of fact it 

 often shifts from one spot to another — it was feigned to adjoin 

 the apartments of the principal characters and to represent a kind 

 of indififerent or neutral ground where all parties to the action 

 were equally at home, and where etiquette and precedence were 

 suspended in the article of entrances and exits. Actually, it was 

 a mere theatrical spot, non-committally furnished and decorated, 

 where the actors met regardless of verisimilitude, whenever the 



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