10 Prosser Hall Frye 



centres upon the adolescent Nero. The truth is that as a tragedy 

 of passion the nature of Racine's drama — Hke the depravity of 

 Nero himself with its long suppression and gestation, its violent 

 spasm and its quick collapse— is essentially feminine. 



Obviously, such a drama is not without its incidental technical 

 advantages over and above its simplifications of the unities. Its 

 preparation, for instance, is immaterial and subjective: it is all 

 internal and mental, dependent upon the state of mind of the 

 characters; and hence it requires little exposition save what is 

 involved in the psychology of the situation itself and developed 

 pari passu with the progress of the play. On the contrary, it is 

 noteworthy that one of the best evidences to the artificiality of 

 Corneille's dramatic construction is furnished by the inherent dif- 

 ficulty of his exposition — he complains of it himself — which 

 makes pretty nearly every one of his entrances into the matter a 

 tour de force. At the same time the Racinean outbreak or de- 

 nouement has the corresponding merit of being as sudden and 

 violent, like an explosion or convulsion of nature. All that is 

 necessary is to apply a match to the train — to invent the one little 

 contingency capable of precipitating the catastrophe. Consider 

 how simple is the machinery of Andromaque in comparison with 

 that of Lear or Hamlet ; it is a mere release or trigger. There is 

 no difificulty in imagining such a tragedy as occurring in a single 

 day and in a single chamber wherever the combustible happens 

 to be stored. And it was to his conception of a tragedy of this 

 sort — as an eruption of the most vehement of human passions — 

 that Racine, I repeat, owed his invention of a modern action per- 

 fectly in keeping with the unities of time and place. 



In this connection it would be unpardonable to omit a reference 

 to what is after all the great superiority of the classic drama. 

 The supreme merit of the simplified or synthetic plot which is the 

 determining feature of that drama, whether in the hands of the 

 Greeks or of Racine, consists in the fact that it allows the dram- 

 atist time and opportunity for the conception and development of 

 a definite and deliberate theme. " Le premier merite d'une oeuvre 

 dramatique," declares Vinet, " c'est qu'une idee s'en degage nette- 

 ment et vivement, c'est qu'on puisse, comme un discours oratoire, 



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