PREFACE

If we assume with the large majority of French critics that the seventeenth century was the time in which French art most truly reflected the ideal qualities of the French nation as a whole, we shall be anxious to discover in the literature of that century what it is that marks it off from the pseudo-classical literature of the age of Anne in England, and why the Siècle d'or is a truer epithet as applied to France than the 'Augustan age' as applied to England.

It was, in the first place, the age of the greatest French dramatists and it is not generally disputed that though the genius of the French can be expressed in beautiful and lucid prose, whether in the seventeenth-century 'period' or the freer, more pictured phrase of modern times, yet the drama offers to the French spirit its greatest opportunities. Perhaps one reason for this is to be seen in a consideration of the national temperament. In contrast to the genius of the Teuton, which tends to express the thought and emotion of the individual, the French mind tends to express in art and literature the thought and feeling of man as part of a society. We are reminded by every writer on French literature that literature is a reflection of society, real or ideal, but it is equally true that the characters in French literature of the higher and more serious order all have a social part to play,1 and the critic, in judging a French

1. See Brunetière, Manuel de l'histoire de la littérature française, pp. 100– 105: 'On ne croit plus que l'objet de chacun soit le libre développement des puissances que la nature peut avoir mises en lui . . . il ne suffit pas non plus d'abandonner le corps social à lui-même pour qu'il trouve son point d'équilibre, et il faut que chacun de nous travaille de sa personne à le rétablir constamment. C'est ce que veut dire le bon Du Vair . . .

work of art, considers whether the characters fulfil their social obligations. Thus he has a generalized idea of what is becoming to wife, sister, child, or mother, and the French heroine does not put forward the first claim of the individual life. The hero is judged in his civic duty and profession as well as in his family relations. So, in the seventeenth century, the critics who condemned Corneille's Polyeucte did so partly on the ground that idol-breaking was an unpatriotic act.

This view appears to be inherent in the classical drama from Corneille to Voltaire, and is equally evident in minor writers such as Diderot, who prepared the way for the modern play. It is not conspicuous in the romantic drama of the nineteenth century in France, and that dramatic experiment has had no succession. It reappears in the drama of the present day, notably in Émile Augier and Dumas fils, and in the modern problem play, and the conception has now become general in Europe.

It was also characteristic of the seventeenth century in France that a restrained and conscious choice was exercised by the artist. The dramatist narrowed his stage, and simplified-for the time-his scenery, reduced the number of characters in a play and subjected it to the three unities, the theory of which, accepted from a general, if incorrect, interpretation of Aristotle, was in accordance with his own sense of fitness (at any rate in tragedy). Such an art tended to be clear rather than vague, and to be inspired by a sense Organisons la vie sociale... Nous tenons là l'idée dernière du classicisme, et l'histoire de la littérature française pendant cent cinquante ou deux cents ans ne va plus être que l'histoire des transformations ou des progrès de cette idée maîtresse. Ainsi . . . nous voyons une littérature originale et nationale tendre à se dégager de l'imitation des littératures étrangères ... cette littérature sera surtout sociale... Étant sociale elle sera générale dans ses moyens d'expression, cette littérature sera encore morale, dans la mesure précise où il ne saurait exister de société sans morale.'

of order as well as by a sense of beauty, but, as we hope to show, it was none the less a true reflection of life for being a conscious one, and an artistic one for being restrained.

It is perhaps difficult for a generation still under the influence of the Romantic movement not to judge somewhat hardly the literature of the French classical period, and the tendency, in England at any rate, still is to lay stress on its artificial character.1 The classical ideal is described as cold, and the speeches of the characters rhetorical, while the form is condemned as wanting in elasticity and naturalness. Yet it is this type of drama which has its roots so deep in the problems of human conduct that it still controls the stage, while no writer attempts to fill the larger canvas of a Shakespeare, and to show, in successive episodes, an impression of life in many aspects-in other words, to recover the element of epic in. the drama. Possibly we may find on examination that the French classical drama of the seventeenth century has been influential because it is not cold, but thrilling with passion, because the words are not mere rhetoric, but carry the right meaning, because the setting is not a sign of artificiality, but of art. The real antithesis may be not, as has been supposed, between the naturalism of the present day and the conventionalism of the seventeenth century, but between the subjectivity of the Teutonic idea, with its accompanying love of mystery and expansiveness, and the French social ideal, whether expressed by Corneille and Racine in different forms of romanticism, or by Molière in those of realism.

1 This has been the complaint of England against France in the matter of the drama whenever England has had dramatic critics, from Dryden onwards. See, for example, J. C. Bailey, The Claims of French Poetry, especially the chapter on 'English Taste and the French Drama'. A recent most careful consideration of the issues thus raised is to be found in E. Legouis, Défense de la Poésie française, 1912.

In the study of the national art of France we see that the French dramatists of the seventeenth century accepted, and indeed imposed on themselves, great limitations of subject and treatment, but in so doing they were able to express their own personality and to reflect the life of their age. So far as they could do this, their 'classic' art has its justification. For a theory of aesthetic should not describe art as merely reflecting life, or social life, at any one stage: art in general is better defined as reflecting life in progress and development. Now in the evolution of society the consciousness of the individual and of the group is the chief determining factor. We have therefore a reason for admitting the forms of art which, as in the French literature of the seventeenth century, reflect the conscious life instead of the immature conditions of society.1 The conscious element which is a condition of all art that reflects life in progress, is especially characteristic of the genius of the French; this is one of many facts to be observed which may help us to a modification of a theory of aesthetic as applied to dramatic literature.

This introductory essay does not attempt to do more than suggest lines of investigation and reading, and therefore the

1 If we accept the formula that art reflects life in progress, we shall be able to see why the representation of certain facts in society have proved unpopular and even impossible on the stage; for an audience will not submit to a representation in art of conditions out of which society has grown. Thus the subject of the betrayal of friendship or the primitive laws of hospitality ceased early to be an acceptable subject for drama, while villainy of other kinds, not yet entirely repudiated by the moral sense of society, is still represented on the stage. See on this subject, Corneille, Discours du Poème dramatique, pp. 20, 21: 'Notre théâtre souffre difficilement de pareils sujets, le Thyeste de Sénéque n'y a pas été fort heureux: sa Médée y a trouvé plus de faveur, mais aussi, à le bien prendre, la perfidie de Jason et la violence du roi de Corinthe la font paraître si injustement opprimée que l'auditeur entre aisément dans ses intêrêts et regarde sa vengeance comme une justice qu'elle se fait ellemême de ceux qui l'oppriment.' See also Discours de la Tragédie, p. 65.