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is more original than the first, but inferior to it in plot and development. These two pieces, divided each into five acts, with intervening choral odes, may be regarded as the first regular tragedies that were written in Castilian verse. About the same time also, at Valencia, where the first theatre, built in 1526, was the property of an hospital, were played various dramas, still more remarkable, composed by Cristoval de Virues, whom we have already had occasion to mention, and by Andres Rey de Artieda. Virues, a military officer, was one of the leaders in that day of the great Spanish school which had gloried from the first in spurning the Aristotelian restrictions. His first production was 'La Gran Semiramis,' a subject handled at the same time in Italy by Muzio Manfredi. Virues however, instead of the five acts of the Greeks, divided his play into three jornadas, which, together, contain the whole life of Semiramis, the first act being laid at Bactria, the second at Nineveh, and the third at Babylon. He afterwards produced successively, and with the same disregard to the unities, the tragedies of Cruel Cassandra,' Atila Furioso,' Infeliz Marcela,' &c. That entitled' Elisa Dido,' which he himself announced as written conforme al arte antiguo,' is in fact the only one wherein the rules' are at all respected. So little however does its plot resemble the famous episode of the Æneid, which Ludovico Dolce had lately brought upon the tragic stage of Italy, that he makes his heroine remain faithful to her first husband Sichæus, and kill herself that she may not marry Iarbas. The associate of Virues in this old war against the classic rules, Juan de la Cueva, after imitating the 'Ajax' of Sophocles, brought out at Seville two original tragedies; one, Las Siete Infantes de Lara,' founded on a popular tradition; the other taken from Roman history, and combining two tragic subjects, the death of Virginia and that of Appius Claudius. Cueva was the first who dramatised this subject, which, since then, has been so repeatedly brought upon the stage. Meanwhile, at the Madrid theatre, the tragedies of the friar Bermudez were succeeded by those of Lupercio de Argensola, to which Cervantes, ever more prompt to applaud his contemporaries than to criticise them, gives much higher praise than they can now be admitted to deserve. Of the noble pathos of his ownNumancia' we have already spoken.

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It is plain how much the romantic spirit predominates over the classical, even in these productions professedly tragic of the old Spanish stage. When, however, the accession of Philip V. had brought the Spanish theatre within the influence of Parisian taste, not only were the French tragic poets translated into the language of Spain, but some attempts were also made by the Spanish poets to imitate them. Of this number were the 'Virginia' and the 'Ataulfo' of Montiano.

manner of the 'Mérope' of Voltaire, and an Edipus, played recently at Madrid, wherein, says one of the most intelligent critics of Spanish literature (M. Louis Viardot), he has contrived to be original on a subject already treated by Sophocles, Seneca, Corneille, Voltaire, La Motte, and Dryden.

As regards the present theatrical vogue of the elder Spanish dramatists in their own country, we may remark that while Lope de Vega is almost wholly banished to the libraries, and while Calderon and Moreto seldom occupy the stage, Tirso de Molina, whom we have already characterized, is to be seen there more frequently than any other of the old dramatic writers. The late king, Ferdinand VII., so renowned for his delicate testimonies of devotion to the Virgin, used to enjoy most royally the rich jokes of this free-witted friar; and this declared predilection imposed silence on the susceptibility of certain agents of authority, which the friar's bold attacks upon the great were calcu lated to arouse. His comedy, entitled Don Gil of the Green Breeches' (Don Gil el de las Calzas Verdes) was Ferdinand's especial favourite; and accordingly the municipality of Madrid never failed to have this dainty served up to him on state occasions.

Although the performance of the autos sacramentales on the ordinary stage was suppressed in 1765, in the reign of Charles III., yet the seasons of Advent and Lent, and more especially the Holy Week, are still solemnized by the like representations in the great churches: a sort of stage, called the monument, is erected in the choir, upon which are played the acts of the Passion, wherein the numerous characters that successively figure in the piece still wear the costume of the middle ages as it must have been at the origin of these exhibitions,-san-benitos, black masks, high pointed caps, long skirts, belts, or rather breastplates, made of cords, all the wardrobe, in short, of an auto-da-fe procession.

FRENCH DRAMA.

In France the mysteries appear to have had their im
mediate source in the pilgrimages so common in those
days. Menestrier tells us (Représentations en Musique
Anciennes et Modernes) that the pilgrims to the Holy
Land, St. James of Galicia, Mont St. Michel in Nor-
mandy, and the various other places of pious resort in
France and abroad, used to compose rude songs on their
travels, wherein they introduced a recital of the life and
death of Christ, or of the last judgment: in others they
celebrated the miracles of saints, their martyrdom, and
divers wonderful visions and apparitions. These pilgrims,
going in companies, and taking their stand in the streets
and public places, where they sang with their staves in
their hands, and their hats and mantles covered with shells,
and painted images of various colours, formed a kind of
spectacle which pleased the public of that day, and at
Paris excited the piety of some of the citizens to raise a
fund for purchasing a proper place in which to erect a stage
whereon these performances might be regularly exhibited
on holidays, as well for the instruction of the people as for
their entertainment. This appears to have been the origin
of the society at Paris called the Brethren of the Passion.
In 1402 Charles VI. authorised these exhibitions by letters
patent: the Premonstratensian monks gave the use of a
great hall of their convent, and a stage was constructed in
it upon which the fraternity enacted scriptural pieces.
The ecclesiastics crowded to these exhibitions; stages soon
arose in every province; and the mystères were so much
relished, that on holidays the hour of vespers was hastened,
that the people might have more ample time to be present
at the play. The brethren, to vary the attractions of the
performance, added a sort of farcical interludes or after-
pieces of a merely worldly character, the enacting of which
however, careful of their own histrionic dignity, they de-
legated to a junior society called that of the Enfans sans
Soucis. These latter pieces, in allusion to their burlesque
and buffoon character, were denominated sottises or soties.

Subsequently, under the enlightened ministry of the marquis of Aranda, this endeavour was resumed by Fernandez de Moratin, Cadalso, and Garcia de la Huerta; the first of whom produced Hormesinda,' the second Don Sancho Garcia,' and the third 'Raquel;' but these works, though valuable, especially the last, were not striking enough to naturalize a species of drama so novel in Spain. At the commencement of the present century, the like effort was made with better success by Don Nicasio Alvarez de Cienfuegos, ably supported by the talent of the celebrated actor Isidoro Mayquez, in some sort a pupil of Talma, not unworthy of his master, besides that he approached nearer to the wonderful versatility of Garrick, for he succeeded not only in the tragic department, but in every other, even down to simple buffoonery. After Cienfuegos, who left an 'Idomeneo,' a 'Pitaco,' and a 'Zoraida,' appeared two other tragic poets who are yet living. One of these, Quintana, is the author of a tragedy entitled 'Pelayo,' and founded on the history of that old champion of the forlorn cause of Spanish independence against the triumphant Arabians, a truly noble and pathetic piece, of which the Spaniards of the present day, forced like their ancestors to repel a foreign domination, used to repeat the most energetic passages in marching to battle. The other is Martinez de la Rosa, lately prime minister, whose first production of this class was likewise a patriotic piece, The Widow of Padilla,' founded on the memorable struggle of the municipal cities of Spain against the tyrannical aggressions of Charles V. This tragedy, composed during the siege of Cadiz by the French, was performed there on a stage erected for that express purpose. Its author has subsequently produced a 'Morayma,' somewhat after the

The stage upon which the mysteries were played consisted of several scaffoldings one above another: the most elevated of all represented heaven; that immediately beneath it, earth; a third, still lower, the palace of Herod, the house of Pilate, &c.; and hell, which was at the bottom and in front, was figured by the gaping mouth of a dragon, which opened and shut as the devils went in and out. On each side were seats rising in steps one above another, on

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which the actors rested when they were not upon the stage, a contrivance not very favourable to scenic illusion; and at the back was a recess, with curtains drawn across it, for the exhibition of such matters as were supposed to take place in the interior of a house. Among the French, as elsewhere, the Passion was the primary, the most constant, and most solemn subject of these representations, the parts of Christ on the cross, Judas hanging himself, &c., being all played by real persons, sometimes at the actual peril of their lives. It seems to have been owing chiefly to the efforts of the early reformers to diffuse a knowledge of the Scriptures among the people that the Romish ecclesiastics throughout Europe, as one means of securing the fidelity of their flocks, proceeded studiously to extend the field of the religious representations so as to embrace the whole series of Old and New Testament history, or as much of that history as they deemed it prudent to disclose to the multitude. This zealous exertion on the part of the Catholic clergy was supported by all the authority of the Catholic princes. Thus we find that in 1541, under Francis I., the performance of a grand mystery of the Acts of the Apostles was proclaimed with great solemnity under the royal authority, and acted at Paris in the course of many successive days, before the nobility, clergy, and a great concourse of the people, in the Hôtel de Flandres. These plays, written in French rhyme by the brothers Greban, were printed in 2 vols., folio, black letter, under patent of the king to one Guillaume Alabat, of Bourges. The dramatis persona are, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; the Virgin and Joseph; archangels, angels, apostles, and disciples; Jewish priests, emperors, philosophers, magicians, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Belial, Cerberus, and a multitude of other celestial, terrestrial, and infernal personages, amounting altogether to nearly five hundred. The subjects of these plays are chiefly scriptural; but many of them are from apocryphal New Testament subjects, and the whole forms a strange medley of sacred and profane history. This grand performance was executed, not by any standing company, but by actors selected from the people at large after trial of the merits of the respective candidates. In the present instance, the proclamation notified that all should be, on the feast of St. Stephen, the first holiday in Christmas following, in the hall of the Passion, the accustomed place for rehearsals and repetitions of the mysteries played in the said city of Paris, which place, being well furnished with rich tapestry, chairs, and forms, is for the reception of all persons of honest and virtuous report, and of all qualities therein assisting, as also a great number of citizens, merchants, and others, as well clergy as laity, in the presence of the commissioners and judicial officers appointed and deputed to hear the speeches of each personage; and these are to make report, according to the merit of each, as in such case required, as to which have a gracious reception; and from day to day, every day so to continue to do until the perfection of the said mystery.'

Among the numerous legendary pieces, one of the most curious extant is 'The Mystery of the Knight who gives his Wife to the Devil,' (Le Mystère du Chevalier qui donne sa Femme au Diable; but the most universally popular of them all seems to have been that of the miraculous host, or consecrated wafer, tortured by a Jew at Paris, commonly called Le Mystère de la Sainte Hostie,' two several versions of which exist in black letter.

After the mystères and the soties, and during their continuance, came the moralités and the farces, of which the clerks of the Basoche were the inventors. These clerks were the young assistants of the procureurs, or solicitors, to whom Philippe le Bel granted the privilege of choosing from among themselves a chief, to be called their king, to have supreme jurisdiction over their body, and even to coin money for currency among the clerks. Francis I., in requital of the service rendered him by the king of the Basoche and 6000 of his clerks in marching against the revolters of Guienne, presented them, in 1547, with an extensive promenade ground, bordering on the Seine, which thence took the name of Pré aux Clercs. As early as the commencement of the fifteenth century, the king of the Basoche used every year, in July, to make a review of his clerks, divided into twelve bands under as many commanders: after the review, they went and offered their salutations to those gentlemen at the head of the legal profession who composed the parliament of Paris; and then P. C., No. 583.

they went and performed a morality or a farce. The brethren of the Passion having the exclusive privilege of acting mysteries, the clerks were driven to the invention of the moralities, which were purely allegorical pieces personifying the vices and virtues. The farces and the soties, on the other hand, took a satirical turn, the success of which soon carried the authors to licentious extremes. The public calamities and violent political dissensions of the reigns of Charles VI. and Charles VII. favoured this tendency: the two leading parties, the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, had each its poet, and insulted each other by turns upon the stage. When public order was restored, the royal authority availed itself of the fair pretext which these satirical excesses afforded to suppress this exclusively popular stage altogether: the clerks were forbidden to play either farce, sotie, or morality, on pain of flagellation and banishment. This suspension continued until the reign of a prince who was less afraid to hear the truth. The good king Louis XII.,' says the historian Bouchet, afflicted that in his time he could find nobody to tell him the truth, wherefore he could not know how his kingdom was governed, to the intent that the truth should find its way to him he gave liberty to the stage, and willed that upon it should be freely acted the abuses that were committed in his court and kingdom; thinking thereby to be acquainted with many things which it would otherwise be impossible for him to hear of.' He did indeed hear some things of a kind rather novel to royal ears, for the players represented him as mean and miserly. This good-natured king, it is true, only laughed at them; but his peculiar relish for homely truths was not likely to predominate among his successors; and accordingly we find that this renovated satirical liberty of the clerks brought on them numerous persecutions, which, however, they seem to have braved at first with something like the daring of an Aristophanes. The society of the Enfans sans Soucis, too, already mentioned, had been established under Charles VI., had been authorized by patent, and had suffered political oppression. Louis XII.. took them likewise under his protection; and their most celebrated sotie, entitled The Abuse of the World' (L'Abus du Monde) is attributed to the historian Bouchet above quoted. Their farces have been more celebrated, especially that of Pathelin,' whose name has ever since been proverbial in France. The best writers of the beginning of the sixteenth century speak of it as a work enjoying the highest reputation; and in recent times it has been revived in the shape of a modern adaptation, by Brueïs and Palaprat. The characters are-Pathelin, a lawyer with little practice; Guillemet, his wife; Guillaume, a draper; Thibaut Aignelet, a shepherd; and the judge; and the humour of the plot consists chiefly in the droll expedient by which the lawyer, after using it to outwit his neighbour the draper, is outwitted by his client the shep herd. But the dialogue itself, written in octosyllabic rhyme, is full of humour; and from one passage it may be mentioned that Lafontaine has taken his charming fable, 'Le Renard et le Corbeau.' This piece, with all its levity, is very interesting, as one of the most truly original and national productions of the early French stage, and therefore as one of those which gave promise of something like that spontaneous and vigorous dramatic growth which was springing in one or two neighbouring countries. But the three several kinds of theatre which we have particularized were fated soon to sink under the repeated blows aimed at them by the government. This strong tendency, however, of the infant stage of France to freedom of political animadversion, and the early jealousy and arbitrary repression of theatrical liberty on the part of the French crown, should be clearly and constantly borne in mind, in order to understand and appreciate that very peculiar course which dramatic composition took in that country, and which the predominance of French taste made for so long a period ascendant in Europe. To this determined stifling by the government of the first germs of a truly national drama we ought to attribute the immediate and general success of the earliest French imitations of the antient theatre that were actually brought upon the stage. The national taste, the romantic tendencies of which had decidedly manifested themselves, was not suffered to develop itself freely. Theatrical enjoyment, since they first tasted it, has ever appeared a more imperious want of the French, and of the Parisians in particular, than of any other people, excepting perhaps the antient Athenians; and when, at the period in VOL. IX.-3 H

question, their rulers had violently crushed every other | erected at Paris, one of which was occupied by a company species of dramatic production, they eagerly welcomed which took the title of Troupe de la Comédie Française; those only forms of it which those rulers would vouchsafe the other company established itself in the quarter of Paris to let them have. called the Marais, with the consent of the brethren of the Passion, and thus the old stage of the middle ages was finally extinguished in the French metropolis. Still, however, as before, the theatre took its tone from the exclusive taste of the court; and from the commencement of the sixteenth century till the appearance of Corneille, scarcely anything was brought forward but either tragedy or that very harmless description of farce which, it was thought, might without much danger be conceded to the popular taste: this is the grand æra of the popularity of the wellknown burlesque personages Gros Guillaume, Tabarin, and Turlupin, whose merry reign was protracted even into the age of Louis XIV.

Some French translations from Sophocles and Euripides already existed, but nobody had yet thought of adapting them to the stage; indeed they were little to the purpose either of the brethren of the Passion or the performers of the Basoche. A young gentleman, Etienne Jodelle, seigneur of Limodin, who had studied the antient dramatists both in their original works and in the Italian imitations of them, was the first to avail himself of the opportunity thus afforded, by bringing forward his 'Cléopatre Captive', a tragedy in five acts, with choruses after the manner of the Greeks. His friends got a stage erected in the Hôtel de Reims at Paris; two poets of note in that day, Remi Belleau and Jean de la Péruse, undertook the principal male parts; and Jodelle himself, trusting to his youth, his Personal beauty, and histrionic talent, personated Cleopatra. Henry II. and his court, seeing plainly that while this dramatic innovation would gratify in some degree the craving appetite of the Parisian public for theatrical exhibitions, there was little danger of its contributing to develop those truly national feelings which it was now the confirmed policy of French administrations to discourage, warmly patronized this performance; and all Paris, delighted to have once more a theatre of some sort, followed the court's example. This piece is remarkable only as being the first of its class, and so commencing a new æra of French dramatic history. Jodelle was more successful in his comedy entitled 'L'Abbé Eugène,' wherein, still emulating the Italian imitations of the antients, though in the manners of his own age and country, he exhibits a libertine ecclesiastic intriguing with the wife of a simple man, and his chaplain acting the honourable part of go-between in the affair. There is much comic power and sprightliness in this play, to which succeeded his second tragedy of 'Didon,' the fate of which is not known.

Most of the tragedies of this period flowed from the exhaustless pen of Alexandre Hardy, a poet employed by the company which had succeeded to the privilege of the brethren of the Passion, and who wrote more than eight hundred dramatic pieces, of which forty remain. Possessed of very extensive reading, Hardy made some efforts to deviate from the beaten track of his predecessors: he ventured in some instances to compose what he called tragi-comedies, one of which is founded on a tale of Cervantes; but his genius was not equal to his boldness and facility. The dramatists who immediately preceded Corneille and Molière were Mairet and Tristan, the former of whom, like so many before and after him, tried and failed in the eternal subject of Sophonisba; while the latter failed yet more signally in the Jewish subject of Mariamne.

We come now to the age of Louis XIV., of which Cardinal Richelieu was the real creator in literature, as well as in politics. This great artificer of despotism, whose genius raised the French crown to a height and a solidity of irresponsible power, for the abuse of which it has dearly paid in later times, had the sagacity, which many powerful ministers have wanted, to perceive that, in order to consolidate his favourite political fabric the more, it was worth while to permanently organize the literary talent of the country in the service of the court. Leave us at least the republic of letters,' said Napoleon once to a poet who was showing him too much of the courtier: but Richelieu understood the matter differently; and arranged it so that his literary senate should ever remain as subservient as Napoleon's own political senate was under his imperial reign. The court, it is true, did not directly dictate to the cardinal's chosen forty in what quarters they should bestow their praise or censure; but things were so ordered that the men to whom the protectorship of letters was officially entrusted should always share more or less the tastes and opinions of the government: by the court it was that they were paid; under the eyes of the court they held their sittings; it was by court intrigue that a vacant chair was to be obtained; and every writer was ambitious of that honour.

From Jodelle down to Corneille, French dramatic art made little progress; but dramatic productions, in the same line of classic imitation, abounded, especially in tragedy, the heroes of which were constantly taken from Greek or Roman history, or at most from that of the Turks, who were first introduced upon the stage by Gabriel Bonnin. At this early period, indeed, of the French theatre, that singular dramatic prejudice seems to have firmly established itself, that the pomp of tragic style could not be well supported on the stage, except both costume and character were either Greek, Roman, or Mussulman. The Alexandrine verse, too, was almost invariably used; though once, and but once, was acted a prose tragedy of Sophonisba,' by St. Gelais. The versified comedies of the same period have nothing remarkable; but in 1562, the two brothers De la Taille began to accustom the French public to comedies in prose. Nicolas Filleul attempted unsuccessfully to naturalize pastoral poetry on the stage. All these writers had still to contend against the privileged Such was the predominant influence under which Cor possessors of the stage. There was not in all France a neille began his dramatic career. To enter the academy, single company regularly trained for the new class of per- he must please the court; and to please the court, he must formances. Under Henry IV., the brethren of the Passion defer to the literary dictation of the academy. Now, in had obtained almost a revocation of the edict of 1548, which dramatic composition, the academy not merely recomprohibited them from enacting religious subjects; but the mended adherence to the so-called rules of Aristotle, but public had now little relish for these rude exhibitions, so prescribed their observance with the greatest rigidity. These that the fraternity found themselves obliged to let their same Aristotelian maxims were, indeed, in the present intheatre to a more modern class of performers. The other stance, little more than a pretext; but the far-sighted cardramatic societies endeavoured to adopt their antiquated dinal was well aware how admirably they were adapted to pieces in some degree to the modern taste; and thus out facilitate that strictness of surveillance, and that repression of their old moralities they contrived to make pastoral of everything like popular enthusiasm, to which his views pieces wherein the Church was a bride, and Christ the required that this grand focus of public sympathies, the bridegroom. Robert Garnier rose in tragedy some little drama, should be subjected. There was, however, one seabove his predecessors in elegance and dignity, and was so rious obstacle to the complete establishment of his dramatic much celebrated in his own day as to have the pre-emi- system, viz. the general estimation of the Spanish literature nence of his tragic powers commemorated in one of the and the Spanish drama in particular, then as ascendant in best sonnets of Ronsard. Though he usually drew abun- Europe as those of France have been since. Familiarly dantly from Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca, he showed cultivated and highly relished as the language and literature in some of his pieces more original vigour, as for instance of Spain then were at Paris, any young dramatic writer of viin 'Les Juives,' taken from Jewish history. The prose co-gorous talents must have found himself, with all his anxiety medy of intrigue (for the comedy of character had not yet to please the court, rather disagreeably circumstanced, appeared) continued to be cultivated with vigour and suc- between the academy and its classic code on the one hand, cess by Pierre de l'Arivey, contemporary with Garnier. and the successful example of the most popular European The Jesuit father Fronton attempted a tragedy on the dramatists on the other. Corneille produced six comedies grand national subject of 'Jeanne d'Arc,' but without suc- and one tragedy after the antique models, before he venAt length, in 1600, two permanent theatres were ture on any bolder attempt. Their great superiority in

cess.

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elegance and dignity of style over those of all his French predecessors, who in this respect had remained so far behind the Italians and the Spaniards, would alone have been sufficient to ensure their success. He next produced a comedy in the Spanish taste; and shortly after ventured to give a yet more striking evidence of his romantic tendencies in his tragedy of Le Cid.

This vigorous experiment brought the academic code and the public taste fairly into collision; the latter decided loudly for the author, and under any other political system might have effectually supported and encouraged him in his independent views of art. But the league of the academy with the court was too strong even for his masculine resolution; and in two of his best pieces, which next followed, The Horatii,' and 'Cinna,' he returned to the Roman tragedy. In comedy, however, Corneille still borrowed avowedly from the Spanish stage. In his tragedy of 'The Cid,' he had imitated two Spanish dramatists, Guillen de Castro and Diamante, who had both successively treated the same subject; and now, in his comedy of The Liar' (Le Menteur), he frankly and warmly acknowledged his obligations to a Spanish original, The Doubtful Truth' (La Verdad Sospechosa), of Don Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, which was long attributed by some to Lope de Vega, by others to Francisco de Rojas, and of which Corneille himself did not know the real author. When he afterwards produced the Sequel to the Liar' (La Suite du Menteur), he owned that he drew it also from a Spanish source; we find his original in Lope de Vega's Loving without knowing whom (Amar sin saber á quien). Fontenelle himself, so careful of his uncle's fame, tells us, in speaking of another of his pieces, that it is taken almost entirely from the Spanish; for,' says he, at that time nearly all the plots were taken from the Spaniards, on account of their great superiority in those matters.' But Corneille's deep study of and sympathy with the Spanish dramatists appear also in the compositions more peculiarly his own; those chivalric manners, those lofty sentiments and swelling images, with which he was so familiarized, are discoverable throughout; his very Romans belong rather to the middle ages than to the old republic; and, indeed, are perhaps hardly so much Roman as they are Spanish. However, he kept himself in a feverish and constrained submission to the academy, for which he was at last appropriately rewarded with a seat among its members.

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The rise of the French comedy of character, of which Molière is the great representative, is yet more clearly deducible from the Spanish source than that of their classic tragedy. The marked separation between tragedy and comedy was a fundamental article of the academic code. To that most numerous order of writers who are fitted to deal only with one of the two great classes of dramatic elements, the comic and the serious, such an injunction operates indeed rather as an encouragement than as a shackle or a clog; but when this prohibition of the mixed or truly romantic species falls upon a genius so bold and comprehensive as that of Corneille, it cripples the noblest of his powers, and shuts out from him the richest of his re- | sources. A writer, however, having this depth and compass of genius, with that constant tendency to seriousness of purpose which ever attends them, finds it a less painful effort to abstain from the comic intermixture in tragedy than to exclude the passionate and the pathetic from comedy; and will thus, like Corneille, devote himself less to the latter than to the former. But Molière was born for the comic only, and could therefore indulge his dramatic tastes and propensities with comparatively little restraint. In his first pieces, written for a strolling company, he imitated the lively trickery and buffoonery of the Italian farces, a species of composition for which, throughout his career, he showed a strong inclination. Next, in 'L'Etourdi' and 'Le Dépit Amoureux' he imitated the Spanish comedy of intrigue. And how he was led, by Corneille's adaptation from the Spanish, to the comedy of character, wherein he was destined to establish his fame so solidly and so durably, he himself tells us in a letter to Boileau, recently quoted by Martinez de la Rosa. I am much indebted,' he says, to "Le Menteur." When it was first performed, I had already a wish to write, but was in doubt as to what it should be. My ideas were still confused, but this piece determined them. In short, but for the appearance of "Le Menteur," though I should no doubt have written comedies of intrigue, as "L'Etourdi" or "Le Dépit Amoureux," I

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should perhaps never have written "Le Misanthrope.' Nor was it alone through the medium of Corneille that Molière, in his maturer compositions, received the influence of the Spanish stage: in various instances he borrowed directly from it, especially in his secondary pieces.

It is remarked by Schlegel, that when Molière in his farcical pieces did not lean on foreign invention, he still appropriated to himself the comic manner of other countries, especially that of the Italian buffoonery. He wished to introduce a sort of masked characters without masks, who should recur with the same name. They have never however been able to become properly domiciliated in France; because the flexible national character of the French, which imitates every mode that is prevalent for the time, is incompatible with that odd originality of exterior to which humorsome and singular individuals give themselves carelessly up in other nations, where all are not modelled by the social tone after the same manner. As the Sganarelles, Mascarilles, Scapins, and Crispins have been allowed to retain their uniform that everything like consistency may not be lost, they are now completely obsolete on the stage. The French taste is, generally speaking, very little inclined to the self-conscious, drolly exaggerating, and arbitrary comic; because these descriptions of the comic speak more to the fancy than to the understanding. We do not mean to censure this, nor to quarrel about the respective merits of the different species. The low estimation in which the former are held may perhaps contribute the more to the success of the comic of observation; and in fact the French comic writers have here displayed a great deal of refinement and ingenuity: herein consists the great merit of Molière, and it is certainly very distinguished.' The highest refinement and delicacy of the comic of observation, however, consists in this, that the characters disclose themselves unconsciously by traits which involuntarily escape from them; whereas long argumentative disquisitions be tween the several personages are frequent in all the most admired pieces of Molière, and nowhere more so than in Le Misanthrope,' which has always been cited by the French critics of the old school as the great model of French comedy; close by which they rank the 'Tartuffe,' 'Les Femmes Savantes,' and 'L'Ecole des Femmes' of the same author. Molière's greater comedies, in short, are too didactic, too expressly instructive; whereas the auditor should only be instructed covertly and incidentally. It should be observed that 'The Miser' of Molière (L'Avare'), some scenes of which are taken from Plautus, is the earliest instance of a five-act French comedy written in prose.

The restrictions which cramped the genius of Corneille comfortably fitted that of Racine, and contributed to render him in every sense the favourite tragic poet of the court of Louis XIV. He seemed born to carry to the highest possible perfection what we must call, for want of a neater term that should be equally appropriate, the Frenchification of Greek tragedy. He managed with consummate art and most felicitous ease to flatter at once the dramatic taste and the moral temperament of the court. The very anomaly which his works presented, in giving to antique heroes the tone and the language of the French gallantry of his time, thus became one of their highest recommendations. Above all, his excellence in investing the expression of love, real or pretended, with conventional dignity and delicacy, was a merit invaluable in the eyes of Louis and his courtiers of both sexes. For tenderness and elegance of expression, Racine is indeed unrivalled among the French dramatists of the classic school. His high powers of this kind made him also one of the ablest appropriators and improvers of the eloquence of preceding writers in numberless scattered passages of his own productions. Among his pieces on Grecian subjects, Andromaque' is that in which he displays the most originality: in this tragedy, says Schlegel, he expressed the inward struggles and inconsistencies of passion with a truth and energy which had never before been heard on the French stage." And respecting 'Phèdre,' the same critic, looking with no partial eye upon the masters of the French classic school, observes - How much soever in this tragedy Racine may have borrowed from Euripides and Seneca, and how much soever he may have spoiled the former and not improved the latter, still it was a great step from the affected mannerism of his age to a more genuine tragic style. When we compare it with the 'Phèdre' of Pradon, which was so well received by his contemporaries, for no other reason than because no trace what

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motives of honour and love without any ignoble intermixture, as entirely consecrated to the exhibition of chivalrous sentiments, as that of Le Cid' itself. In 'Alzire,' Voltaire went still farther, treating a subject in modern history never before touched by his countrymen; and as in the pieces already mentioned he had contrasted the chivalric ideas and motives with the Saracenic, so here, with great historical truth and noble pathos, he has ventured to exhibit the old Spaniards in opposition to the Peruvians. It is singular enough,' remarks Schlegel, that Voltaire, in his restless search after tragical materials, has actually completed the circumnavigation of the globe; for, as in 'Alzire' he exhibits the American tribes of the other hemisphere, in his Dschingis Kan,' he brings Chinese upon the stage from the farthest extremity of ours, who, from the faithful observance of their costume, have the appearance of comic or grotesque figures.' 'As the French,' observes our German critic in another place, are in general better acquainted with the Romans than with the Greeks, we might expect the Roman pieces of Voltaire to be more consist ent, in a political point of view, with historical truth, than his Greek pieces are with the symbolical nature of mythology. This, however, is the case only in Brutus,' the earliest of them, and the only one which can be said to be sensibly planned. Voltaire sketched this tragedy in England; he had learned from "Julius Cæsar" the effect which the publicity of republican transactions is capable of producing on the stage, and so endeavoured to hold in some degree a middle course between Corneille and Shakspeare;' of the latter of whom, we may add, he acquired, or at least evinced, very little in the way of due appreciation. On the whole, however, though Corneille is deemed to have expressed heroic sentiments with greater sublimity, and Racine the natural emotions with greater sweetness, it is admitted that Voltaire introduced moral motives into the drama with greater effect, and displays a more intimate acquaintance with the original relations of the mind.

ever of the antients was discernible in it, but every thing reduced to the scale of a fashionable miniature-portrait for a toilette, we must entertain the higher admiration for the writer who had so strong a feeling for the antient poets, had the courage to connect himself with them, and dared to display so much purity and unaffected simplicity in an age of which the prevailing taste was every way vitiated and unnatural.' Racine's Britannicus' is one of those among French classic tragedies which have the highest claims to historical accuracy and delicate discrimination of character, in the persons of Nero, Agrippina, Narcissus, and Burrhus. In "Athalie," says his German critic, he exhibited himself for the last time, before taking leave of poetry and the world, in his whole strength. It is not only his most finished work, but I have no hesitation in declaring it, of all the French tragedies, to be the one which, free from all mannerism, approaches nearest to the grand style of the Greeks. The chorus is fully in the sense of the antients, though introduced in a different manner for the sake of suiting our music and the different arrangement of our theatre. The scene has all the majesty of a public action: expectation, wonder, and keen agitation, succeed each other, and constantly rise with the progress of the drama: with a severe abstinence from everything extraneous, there is a display of the richest variety, sometimes of sweetness, but more frequently of majesty and grandeur. The inspiration of the prophet elevates the fancy to flights of more than usual boldness. The signification is that which a religious drama ought to have; on earth, the struggle between good and evil; in heaven, the wakeful eye of Providence darting down rays of decision from unapproachable glory. All .s animated by one breath, by the pious inspiration of the poet; of the genuineness of which neither his life nor this work will allow us to entertain a doubt. This is the very thing in which so many pretended works of art of the French are deficient: the authors have not been inspired by a fervent love for their subject, but by the desire of external effect; hence the vanity of the artist everywhere breaks forth, and casts a damp over our feelings.'

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In the history of French tragedy, it is little gratifying to pass from Racine to Richelieu's favourite, the Abbé D'Aubignac, who revenged himself for the failure of his tragedy of Zénobie' by censuring bitterly the works of Corneille. Racine himself found a similar adversary in Nicolas Pradon, who wrote a rival tragedy of Phèdre,' which Madame Deshoulières was not ashamed to extol above Racine's, and a Régulus,' which the praises of St. Evremond and Madame de Sévigné have not saved from oblivion. Lafosse profited somewhat better by Corneille's example in the dignity and intelligence which he threw into his otherwise feeble Manlius,' which Talma's acting recently made so popular. As for the tragedies of Duché, Campistron, the abbé Pellegrin, the abbé Longepierre, and others, suffice it to say, that they brought little fame to their authors, and no advancement to the art. Thomas Corneille ventured to write tragedy after his brother, and wrote it very 'correctly.' Crébillon was by far the most successful tragic writer that arose in the interval between Racine and Voltaire; but his reputation, rapidly acquired, resting on an unsound basis, declined almost as rapidly; ever striving rather to horrify than to affect, the unnatural exaggeration both of situation and character into which he was constantly betrayed was a defect too serious to be redeemed even by the great force and mastery of style which he displays.

Only the first and the last of these three great masters of the French tragic stage may be said to have been fruitful in this class of productions. Racine, however, has this advantage, that, excepting his first youthful attempts, the whole of his pieces have kept possession of the stage and of the public favour, while many of Corneille's and Voltaire's which pleased at first are not now even so much as read, so that it has become common to publish selections from their dramatic works under the title of Chefs-d'œuvre.

Voltaire seems to have come too late, even with his moderate attempts at reformation of the dramatic system. The prejudice which gave such disproportionate importance to the observance of external rules and proprieties was already immovably established; nor was it until after the great political change which took place towards the close of the last century that any considerable effort was again made to break through the academic limitations. We shall therefore pass briefly over the half century of French dramatic history which immediately followed the age of Louis XIV., notwithstanding that, during that period, upwards of fifty authors, of more or less celebrity, wrote for the higher departments of the stage, of whose pieces the greater part were actually performed, many of them with high temporary and some few with permanent success. In tragedy we shall mention nothing more than the names, for the most part now obscure, of Lagrange, Chancel, Lamotte, Piron, Lanoue, Guimond de Latouche, Châteaubrun, Saurin, and Debelloy.

This species of composition occupied no small proportion of the wonderful versatility of Voltaire; and although he La Harpe, whose critical labours had so extensively in was irresistibly led to press the tragic muse into the service jurious an influence throughout Europe in enforcing the of the unceasing warfare which he waged against supersti- classic system in all its rigidity, contributed nothing to re tion, fanaticism, and hypocrisy, and might even owe some commend it by his own tragic compositions, which, while portion of his theatrical success to that circumstance, yet they are among the most correct in style, are among the he has earned, in universal estimation, a place beside Cor- most frigid in sentiment and effect, although, indeed, he has neille and Racine as a dramatic artist. The same indepen- the merit of having presented, in his Philoctète,' the most dence of genius and spirit which made him rebel against exact imitation of a Greek tragedy that France has pro other conventionalisms of graver import, prompted him to duced. On the other hand, Marie Joseph Chénier, who, break through some of the more irksome part of the restric- flourishing in the early days of the Revolution, wrote, like tions imposed by the established dramatic system. He the tragic poets of Greece, in the midst of free men, and insisted on treating subjects with more historical truth, and with like ardour stimulated them to the love of liberty, raised once more to the dignity of the tragic stage the made nearer approaches than any of his predecessors to the chivalrous and Christian characters of modern Europe, tragic strength and fervid diction of Voltaire. His 'Charles which, ever since 'The Cid' of Corneille, had been altogether the Ninth, or the School for Kings' (Ecole des Rois), from excluded from it. Thus his Lusignan and Nerestan, in which the people, too, might draw an important lesson, was Zaire,' are among his most true, affecting, and noble crea- that among his pieces which produced the greatest excite tions; and the plot of his 'Tancrêde' is founded on as purement in the public mind. So far, however, from stu

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