granted by Charles VI., and, preventing the representation of the Cléopatre by public actors, forced Jodelle to have it performed by his friends." No trade-union of actors, however, could check the growth of classical taste. The Agamemnon of Toutain, taken from Seneca, the dramatist whose rushlight was to be too often preferred by French artists to the full splendour of Attic tragedy, was published in 1557; and in 1580 were published the eight tragedies of Robert Garnier, which closely follow the plots of Seneca or Euripides, contain long speeches, relate events chiefly by messengers, and employ the chorus between every act.
Between the writers of any particular age, says Shelley, in the preface to his Revolt of Islam, "there must be a resemblance which does not depend upon their own will. They cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live; though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded." The symmetry of form and analysis of individual character in the plays of Euripides and Sophocles exactly suited the time-spirit of Paris after the Wars of Religion had centralised culture in the courts of Louis XIII. and the "Grand Monarch." It has been said that the famous line of Corneille's Médée (1635)—
"Que vous reste-t-il contre tant d'ennemis?
—Moi!"
was the cogito, ergo sum of French tragedy, and struck its keynote—that of individual character.[1] If such study of character had been extended to all sorts and conditions of men and women in French society, if it had not been fettered by proprieties of Parisian etiquette and classical
- ↑ Cf. Histoire de France, H. Martin, liv. xiii. p. 552.
