expressed. In the case of Corneille and Racine, though both used the means of Greek story and great historical events for their frame, there was a distinction in their manner of insulating character for the purposes of art, and thus producing the sense of detachment. Corneille chose one method of romanticism; Racine another.1 The belle âme of the Cornelian stage, magnanime and généreuse, and the appeal to gloire, are the signs of this in Corneille. The connexion with the men and women we know is made in the secondary or transitional characters, and in the comedies. In this way we may perhaps trace the development of the new type of Christian drama associated with the name of Corneille. Such a drama could not be mainly realistic, for by the terms of the statement attention is called to the perfecting of the will and to the ideal possibilities of character. The characters are not inhuman but superhuman, we can trace in them both the natural and the spiritual man, the former under the domination of the latter. It will be seen how easily the heroic romantic drama could develop into the Christian tragic drama. The sole change is that of the prevailing motif. From the Cid to Polyeucte is only a step. 1 Racine, in a drama that is far more Greek than Corneille's, is conscious of a God who moves the world and is behind all manifestations of beauty in nature and of goodness in man, but Corneille feels God to be in man, inspiring the personality with the Divine grace. This is at once in touch with mysticism, with the robust individualism of Descartes, and with the Church's faith in a personal God. In Racine, to the breaking down of individual strength and freedom there corresponds the loss of belief in a prevailing power of goodness, until the Hebrew plays recall the stronger and more hopeful position which had been abandoned by him at an earlier stage. CHAPTER III CORNEILLE AND THE SPANISH DRAMA IN considering the relation of the drama of the seventeenth century in France to foreign sources, it is possible to distinguish the periods of Spanish and Italian influence, and also to notice what types of play in France were most affected by Spain or by Italy. It is generally said that Spain had little influence either on Racine, or on the earlier comedies of Corneille, but a study of the Spanish drama in its two great developments in the seventeenth century, viz. the auto and the comedia, shows that at any rate the French classical drama shares some of the outstanding qualities of the Spanish comedia. Thus Corneille was influenced by the idea of honour in the Spanish play, and also, in his tragedies, by a sense of the worthlessness of human life when considered in relation to the great issues of conduct which is also found in the autos. The early comedies have been considered to be exempt from this influence, because contemporary evidence exists of Corneille's attention having been expressly drawn to the subject of Spanish drama after these comedies were written: 1 but as the relations between Spain and France were close, and at Rouen, where Corneille lived during the early part of his life, there was a large Spanish colony, there is nothing to prove that Corneille had not some knowledge of Spanish literature before he wrote the Cid, and the emphasis laid on intrigue in the earlier plays is much on the lines of the comedia. In fact the strength of Spanish influence was 1 See Beauchamps, Recherches sur les Théâtres de France, ii. 157. greater during the earlier period of Corneille than later, when Le Menteur inaugurated direct study of life for the stage.1 Up to that time the French dramatist had been accustomed to take as material a comedy or a romance, or a pastoral, or a mythical or historical relation, and to weave his play from this. Corneille's light early comedies were of this pattern, though they had promise in them of a characterization that was not artificial nor seen through the medium of romance. So Italy and Spain, as well as the ancient world, and the world of seventeenth-century writers of romance, were drawn upon by the stage both for poetry and ideas. As Lanson has pointed out, the writers of tragi-comedy drew considerably from Spain, where Lope de Vega's prolific work promised a treasure of romantic material.2 Racine's plays, in so far as their chief element is a love-interest, have also a likeness in this one point to the Spanish comedia. The Spanish dramatists had gathered the names and descriptions of their characters from the whole of the civilized and uncivilized world: the careless freedom of their geography and chronology showed that, like Shakespeare, they bent probability to serve their artistic intuition, while their heroes, rushing through adventures, possible and impossible, remained Spaniards and kept all their national characteristics. For Spain had preserved a popular 1 Corneille used the plot of Ruiz de Alarcón's comedy, Verdad Sospechosa, but the setting and characterization of Le Menteur are French. 2 See Gustave Lanson, Corneille: ... C'était en effet le roman, non la vie, qui servait de modèle: les poètes de théâtre allaient de Cervantes à d'Urfé, de l'Amadis à l'Argenis, de Leucippe à Cléagenor. On démarquait les comédies des Italiens; on s'appropriaient leurs pastorales. Mais la tragi-comédie vivait surtout aux dépens des Espagnols; outre la veine si riche des Nouvelles, déjà exploitée par le bonhomme Hardy, depuis quelques années arrivaient chez nous, en livrets ou en recueils, les comédies du grand Lope de Vega et de ses successeurs: nos jeunes ", Rotrou en tête, se jetèrent sur cette proie; ce fut une belle curée. On renonça à inventer: les féconds Espagnols nous épargnaient cette peine.' 66 national drama, little affected by the Renaissance or by the classical models or influence of Seneca. Argensola, it is true, had written plays modelled on Seneca, but Lope de Vega went back to the national form, and threw his immense vigour into it.1 The actual staging of the plays was not unlike that of the Elizabethans. The courtyard or patio of a house was used, and a rough stage put up at one end. Ladies looked on from the windows of the house, and there were some seats sheltered by an awning, but the mass of the spectators stood in the courtyard. A rough farce was generally added to the more serious play to give pleasure to the 'groundlings', and even when the national theatre was fully developed the first act was followed by a farce, and the second and third by ballets. Molière imitated the Spanish practice by the introduction of ballets in La Princesse d'Élide, L'Amour Médecin, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le Malade Imaginaire, Le Sicilien, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Les Amants Magnifiques. In the construction of the Spanish play we may find a characteristic common both to Spain and France in the seventeenth century. The plays run clearly and logically to a conclusion which is foreseen from the first. Whatever explanation may be found for this fact in France, it is 1 It is also true that after Lope de Vega the free form of his drama was attacked by some Spanish writers in the name of the Ancients', but their attempts failed to diminish the great popularity of the drama of national Spanish origin (see G. Huszār, P. Corneille et le Théâtre Espagnol, pp. 99– 103). They were practically answered by Tirso de Molina, who justified the imitation of life in the comedies of Lope de Vega, and urged that a drama which fulfils the conditions of reflecting reality is doing more for the development of the art than any imitations of classical models could do, and by Francesco de la Barrida (ibid., pp. 105-7). No strong effect of classical art was apparent in Spain till the national decadence of the eighteenth century came about. Then imitations of French plays encouraged the classical idea in Spanish drama. Mosqueteros. 2 : clear that no classical influence had helped to build up a theory of dramatic construction in Spain. Perhaps, however, it may be suggested that popular national drama seems as a rule to answer an expectation in the audience for a fixed result in the play an elementary type of mind wishes to be prepared from the outset for the dénouement, leaving a margin for wonder and curiosity as to how that will be reached. In all countries popular melodrama even of the modern type has this kind of construction. It is a foregone conclusion that the plot shall work out to a certain end. Thrills of feeling and active interest may be aroused, but there is no real doubt as to the result. We find even in the drama of Lope de Vega, and in a greater degree in that of Calderón, that character-drawing is sometimes subordinated as a result of this unconscious concession to popular expectation in dramatic story. The Spanish play generally opened with a lengthy monologue, explaining a good deal of the action which in the Shakespearean drama would have been put upon the stage, and thus have created for the audience a continuous stimulus of interest. One peculiarity of these monologues in Calderón's plays is their lyrical character. They are poetical in treatment and break into refrain.1 Corneille uses this method in Médée (Soliloquy of Ægée),2 in Le Cid (Soliloquy of Don Rodrigue),3 in Polyeucte, and in Héraclius.5 4 The influence of the Spanish upon the French drama is not, however, limited to that of details of construction. In other ways the dramatic art of Spain has been significant to the history of the French plays of the seventeenth century. Of the great ideas which dominated the Spanish literature from which the French dramatists of the sixteenth and 1 See, in addition, Mira de Mesqua, Examinarse de rey, act i, sc. 10; Lope de Vega, La Clave de la honra (Soliloquy of Lisardo). 3 Act i, sc. 6. 4 Act iv, sc. 3. 5 Act v, sc. 1. 2 Act iv, sc. 4. |