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 VANROOSBROECK 
 
 GENESIS OF CORNEILLE' S 
 MELITE
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 

 
 THE GENESIS OF 
 CORNEILLE'S MEUTE 
 
 GUST. L. VAN ROOSBROECK 
 
 Krube Pubusring Co. Vintom, Iowa 
 
 w,
 
 THE GENESIS OF 
 CORNEILLE'S MELITE 
 
 GUST. L. VAN ROOSBROECK 
 
 Kruse PiDirsHiNG Co. Vinton, Iowa
 
 Pierre Corneille began his career as a writer of comedy and 
 to his comedies was due his early reputation as a dramatic poet. 
 Ilare ecrivain de notre France, 
 Qui le premier des beaux esprits 
 As fait revivre en tes ecrits 
 L' esprit de Plaute et de Terence; 
 exclaimed Mairet in 1634, in the complimentary poems of 
 La Yeuve and Du Petit- Val repeats upon the same occasion: 
 Ce style familier non encore eiitrepris, 
 Ni connu de personne, a de si bonne grace, 
 I)u theatre frangois change la vieille face, 
 Que la scene tragique en a perdu le prix. 
 His early plays acquired the esteem of the court. In the 
 Examen of the Melite he expressly states that his first work 
 ''me fit connaitre a la cour", and he repeats in the Excuse 
 a Ariste: "Mon vers charma la cour," There exists evidence 
 that some of Corneille 's early comedies were represented before 
 the court, in 1633, at Forges (Normandy), when the king, the 
 queen and Richelieu resided there for some time. (1) 
 
 But the spectacular success of the Cid and of the tragedies 
 which followed soon, engrossed the attention of his contempor- 
 aries just as they have largely absorbed the attention of his 
 posterity. His first comedies were almost forgotten, and it be- 
 came the fashion to date his work from his first tragedies, es- 
 pecially from the Medee of 1635, and to dismiss his early pro- 
 ductions with a few disdainful words. 
 
 La Bruyere asserted: '*Ses premieres comedies sont seches,. 
 languissantes et ne laissaient pas esperer qu' il dut ensuite aller 
 si loin." (2) Boileau agreed with him: Tout son merite pour- 
 tant a 1' heure qu' 11 est, ayant ete mis par le temps comme dans 
 un creuset, se reduit a huit ou neuf pieces de theatre, qu' on ad- 
 mire et qui sont, s' il faut ainsi parler, comme le midi de sa 
 poe.sie dont 1' orient et 1' Occident n' ont rien valu." (3) Their 
 assertions were echoed by Voltaire: "Ses premieres comedies 
 ....sont a la verite, indignes de notre siecle, mais elles furent 
 longtemps ce qu' il y avait de moins mauvais en ce genre, tant 
 nous etions loin de la plus legere eonnaissance des beaux arts."
 
 re 
 
 (4) La Harpe showed even less condescension: On me dispen- 
 sera, sans doute, de parler des premieres comedies de Corneille 
 . . . On se souvient seulement qu' il les a faites et que sans rien 
 valoir, elles valent mieux que toutes celles de son temps." (5) 
 According to Nisard they are only to be read "through cur- 
 iosity." (6). 
 
 In this way the general perspective of Corneille 's work was 
 altered. He was considered almost exclusively as a writer of 
 tragedies of the heroic cast. And, since he was so superior to 
 his many rivals, he soon came to stand alone. The notion of 
 Corneille 's absolute independence of his surroundings and of 
 the literary efforts of his predecessors has been generally ac- 
 cepted. The Abbe d' Olivet exclaims: "Voila Corneille qui, 
 sans modele, sans guide, trouvant I'art en lui-meme, tire la 
 tragedie du chaos oil elle etait parmi nous." (7). For Nisard 
 "an abyss separates Corneille from all that can be called a play 
 before him." (8). 
 
 With the publication of Taschereau's Histoire de la Vie de 
 Pierre Corneille (1829), a reaction set in. His first plays were 
 here, if not thoroughly studied, at least given some place in his 
 work. But the former attitude of mind toward Coi-neille re- 
 mained uppermost in the estimation of most critics. Some of 
 them studied his first productions with the intention of discov- 
 ering in these early works the unmistakable signs of future 
 greatness. As a natural consequence they were sometimes 
 praised beyond their real merit. This has been especially true 
 of his very first play, of the Mclite. Some critics already per- 
 ceived in this coup d' essai the methods, inventions and inno- 
 vations of an independent writer with almost revolutionary ten- 
 dencies. The tradition that Corneille was inspired by an actual 
 event in his own life to write the Melite was interpreted as 
 meaning that he wrote the play without taking inspiration from 
 any of his predecessors and contemporaries, without going 
 through the apprenticeship in language and stage-craft which 
 is necessary even to the most original genius of the theater. So, 
 for example, Roger Le Brun: "Mais voiei que tout a coup, 
 brusquement, sur un ton nouveau, a la fois moins choquante 
 dans r esprit et dans la langue, presque epuree, la veritable 
 comedie fait son apparition. Sans bassesse dans les caracteres, 
 conime sans outrance dans 1' intrigue, elle reflete, et d' alerte 
 fagon, les moeurs de 1' epoque. C est l' aurore de la comedie
 
 moderne; voici, en effet, Pierre Corneille qui debute au theatre, 
 apportant 1' art ou il n' y a encore que d' inforines ebauches de 
 comedie; voici Melite, premiere oeuvre qu' ait produite le grand 
 homme, (9) F. Brunetiere is not far from sharing in this opin- 
 ion: "Je crois que dans notre litterature classique elles (les 
 comedies) sont longtemps demeurees sans imitateurs, comme 
 elles etaient a pen pres sans niodeles. Je erois qu' avec d' autres 
 qualites elles ne sont pas moins originales en leur genre que la 
 comedie de Moliere et que les Plaideurs de Racine. " (10) Accord- 
 ing to these writers, who are spokesmen for more, the form, matter 
 and treatment in Corneille 's early comedies are almost exclus- 
 ively the result of the poet's unaided inspiration. There seems to 
 be no link betAveen him and the literature of the time. In comedy 
 as well as in tragedy he is, according to the expression of Sainte- 
 Beuve, "a genius by instinct, blind and independent." 
 
 Since this conception of Corneille 's early works is founded 
 largely upon the anecdote about the origin of the Melite, I pro- 
 pose here to examine in detail the facts known about the genesis 
 of this play and to study, incidentally, the relation of this 
 "coup d' essai", as Corneille terms it, to the contemporary lit- 
 erature. 
 
 To enable the reader to follow the argument further ex- 
 pounded, a resume of the play, based on the text of the first 
 edition, (1633), is here printed: 
 
 Act I. Sc. 1. Eraste confides to Tircis how he suffers from 
 the disdain of Melite Avhom he loves and has "served." Tircis 
 talks with cynical irony of love, Avomen and the "burdens" of 
 marriage. Eraste defies hini to maintain this attitude after hav- 
 ing beheld the beauty of Melite. Sc. 2. The tAvo friends visit 
 Melite Avho treats ironically the love declarations of Eraste. 
 Sc. 3. Tircis confesses to Eraste that he is not insensible to the 
 charms of Melite but disclaims any intention of paying court to 
 her. Alone, he soliloquizes that in loA^e affairs friendship does 
 not count. Sc. 4. Love scene betAveen Philandre and Cloris, 
 sister of Tircis. Sc. 5. Tircis interrupts and rails at their love 
 making. 
 
 Act II. Sc. 1. Eraste complains of the favor Avhich Tircis 
 seems to be receiving from Melite. Sc. 2. firaste meets Melite 
 and reproaches her for her intimacy with Tircis. Sc. 3. firaste, 
 in despair, resoh^es to get Tircis out of his Avay by preparing
 
 forged love-letters from Melite to Philandre. Sc. 4. Eraste 
 secures by a gift the aid of Cliton, neighbor of Melite. Se. 5. 
 Tircis has composed a sonnet for Melite which he intends to 
 give to Eraste ; he shows it to his sister Cloris who recognizes 
 his love for the heroine of the play. Sc. 6. Eraste gives Cliton 
 the forged letter of Melite to Philandre, suitor of Cloris. Sc. 7. 
 Cliton delivers the letter to Philandre ; while he is reading this 
 letter Eraste appears ; discloses the love of Tircis for Melite and 
 encourages Philandre. Sc. 8. Tircis brings his sonnet on 
 Melite to Eraste, who refuses to accept it while Melite Avatches 
 the maneuver from a window. Sc. 9. Melite confesses to Tircis 
 her love for him. 
 
 Act III. Sc. 1. Philandre soliloquizes on his love for 
 Melite. Sc. 2. Tircis confides his love for Melite to Philandre 
 who shows him the forged letters of the heroine as a proof of 
 her infidelity. Tircis challenges Philandre who refuses to fight. 
 Sc. 3. Tircis soliloquizes on the infidelity of Melite and re- 
 solves to commit suicide. Sc. 4. Cloris meets him and he shows 
 her the forged letters he has taken from Philandre. Sc. 5. 
 Cloris resolves to show Melite the letters Avhich she has re- 
 ceived from her brother, Tircis. Sc. 6. Philandre resolves to 
 get the letters back from Tircis. Sc. 7. Philandre meets Cloris 
 who shows him the letters which she is about to give to Melite. 
 Sc. 8. Philandre goes to demand the letters from Tircis. 
 
 Act. IV. Sc. 1. The Nurse counsels Melite on her conduct 
 in love matters. Sc. 2. Cloris visits Melite and shows her the 
 letters. Melite denies having written them. Sc. 3. Lisis, a 
 friend of Tircis announces that the latter has died of grief. 
 Melite swoons. Sc. 4. Cliton, Eraste 's letter-carrier, arrives; 
 he concludes that Melite is dead. Sc. 5. Eraste soliloquizes on 
 the success of his forged letters. Sc. 6. Cliton informs him 
 that both Melite and Tircis are dead. Eraste goes mad; he be- 
 lieves himself in the infernal regions and takes Cliton for 
 Charon. Sc. 7. Philandre seeks Tircis. Sc. 8. The mad 
 :Braste thinks he is fighting ghosts and demons. He takes Phil- 
 andre for Minos and explains his deception of the forged let- 
 ters. Sc. 9. Ravings of Eraste. Sc. 10. Lisis informs Cloris 
 that her brother Tircis is not dead. 
 
 Act. V. Sc. 1. Cliton tells the Nurse of the madness of 
 Eraste. Sc. 2. Delirium of Eraste. He takes the nurse for 
 Melite but finally recognizes her and comes to his senses. Sc. 3.
 
 Philandre tries, but unsuccessfully to become reconciled with 
 Cloris. Sc. 4. Tircis who has come back and Melite rejoice 
 over their happiness and resolve upon their marriage. Sc. 5. 
 Cloris announces that she has broken with Philandre. Sc. 6. 
 jferaste appears and confesses his fault. He obtains his pardon 
 and the hand of Cloris. The nurse soliloquizes humorously upon 
 her faded charms. 
 
 THE ArTOBIOGKAFHICAL ELEMENT IN THE MELITE 
 
 The autobiographical element in Corneille's Melite is one 
 of the most discussed questions in Corneille-research. The more 
 general opinion is that his first work is almost entirely inspired 
 by personal experience; that his later comedies are based 
 upon direct observation of his surroundings, whereas his trag- 
 edies are a creation of the intellect with little, if any, direct 
 influence from his personal life. 
 
 As to the Melite, Thomas Coriieille, younger brother of our 
 poet, testified that the germ of the play was furnished by a 
 love-adventure of Pierre Corneille : "Une avanture galante luy 
 fit prendre le dessein de faire une comedie pour y employer un 
 sonnet qu' il avoit fait pour une Demoiselle qu' il aimoit. Cette 
 piece dans laquelle est traitee toute 1' avanture et qu' il inti- 
 tula Melite eut un suces extraordinaire (11). 
 
 This passage seems to receive a certain confirmation in 
 verses which Pierre Corneille wrote in 1637, in the Excuse a 
 Ariste: 
 
 Ce que j' ai de nom je le dois a 1' amour. 
 J'adorai done Philis; et la secrete estime 
 Que ce divin esprit faisait de notre rime 
 Me fit devenir poete aussitot qu' amoureux. (12). 
 On the basis, apparently, of these declarations, Fontenelle, 
 nephew of the poet, produced a statement which is more cir- 
 cumstantial and precise, although different in one respect: Ac- 
 cording to Fontenelle, Pierre Corneille added "something" to 
 the truth, whereas Thomas Corneille states that the "whole ad- 
 venture" was reproduced in the play. Fontenelle says: II 
 (Corneille) ne songeoit a rien moins qu' a la poesie et il ig- 
 noroit lui-meme le talent extraordinaire qu' il avoit, lorsqu' il 
 lui arriva une petite aventure de galanterie dont il s' avisa de 
 faire une piece de theatre, en ajoutant quelque chose a la 
 verite. On donnoit a Rouen le nom de Melite a la dame qui
 
 avoit fait naitre 1' avanture qui faisoit le sujet de cette piece." 
 (13). 
 
 The last sentence of this passage has acted as a powerful 
 stimulant upon the curiosity of later historians. In 1738, the 
 abbe Granet, editor of Corneille's works, in a commentary upon 
 the Excuse a Ariste, identifies the lady loved by P. Corneille 
 as a certain Mme Du Pont, married to a "maitre des comptes" 
 of Rouen. He did not, however, give any proof of his identifi- 
 cation. (14), 
 
 A field so fertile could not fail to bear some different kind 
 of fruit. At the end of the eighteenth century, Jos. Andre 
 Guiot brought forward another and a contradictory identifica- 
 tion of Corneille's Melite. In Le Moreri des Normands he in- 
 troduces Mile Millet as the prototype of the heroine who inspired 
 Corneille in his early years and revealed his talent to the world : 
 "Sans la demoiselle Millet, tres jolie Rouenaise, Corneille 
 peut-etre, n' eut pas si tot connu 1' amour; sans cette heroine 
 aussi, pent etre, la France n' eut jamais connu le talent de Cor- 
 neille . . . . Le plaisir de cette aventure determina Corneille 
 a faire la comedie de Melite, ana gramme du nom de sa maitresse. 
 (15) Fifty years later (1834) Emmanuel Gaillard improved 
 upon this assertion Avhich, in its turn, had been presented with- 
 out any citation of proofs: J' ajouterai qu' elle (Mile Millet) 
 demeurait a Rouen, rue aux Juifs, No. 15. Le fait m' a ete at- 
 teste par M. Dommey, ancien greifier, et par deux demoiselles 
 (16). Marty-Laveaux sought to reconcile these two identifica- 
 tions ; first by supposing that Mile Millet became Mme Du Pont 
 through marriage; (17) then, renouncing this theory, he con- 
 cluded that Corneille had been inspired by two sweethearts, 
 Mile Millet, for whom he had felt an ephemeral passion about 
 the time of the composition of the Melite, and another, Mme Du 
 Pont, to whom he had consecrated the more enduring affection 
 reflected in the Excuse a Ariste. 
 
 In his valuable work Points obscurs et nouveaux de la vie 
 de Pierre Corneille, Mr. Bouquet has expounded a theory of 
 the Melite as an autobiographical document, which is based sole- 
 ly upon the information supplied by the abbe Granet, in 1738. 
 Mr, Bouquet rightly rejects the invention of a shadowy Mile 
 Millet as the prototype of Corneille's Melite by Jos. Andre 
 Guiot, about 1785, because this identification is manifestly a
 
 very late development of a Corueille-legend, with no basis in 
 fact. Its origin is probably the text of Fontenelle where he 
 speaks abont a lady of Rouen who was given the name of 
 Melite because she was the heroine of C'orneille's first play. 
 
 Althougli the commentary of the abbe Granet was written 
 more than a century after the first representation of the Melite 
 and although lu) indication uas furnished as to the source of 
 his important biographical details, his text has been accepted 
 without question by Mr. Bouquet and others, and served as 
 basis for research about Corneille's early love and his first play. 
 Mr. Gosselin found in the archives of Rouen the maiden name 
 of Madame Du Pont, who was, according to the abbe Granet, 
 the lady Corneille had in mind when he wrote in the Excuse a 
 Ariste: 
 
 "Je me sens tout emu quand je 1' entends nommer." 
 
 She was the daughter of Charles Hue, "receveur des aides" at 
 Rouen, and of Catherine de Bauquemare. Baptized on the 23d 
 of April, 1611, she received the name of her mother: Catherine. 
 (18) From these facts Mr. Bouquet deduced a series of identi- 
 fications : Melite is Catherine Hue ; Tircis is Corneille himself ; 
 the mother of Melite, mentioned in the play, although she does 
 not appear on the scene, is Catherine de Bauquemare, widow of 
 Charles Hne ; Cloris, in the play the sister of Tircis, is Corneille 's 
 younger sister, Marie Corneille, born in 1609. Eraste and Phi- 
 landre remained unidentified. Mr. Bouquet expresses his opin- 
 ion that thy represent real jjersons, as the other characters of 
 the play. 
 
 Now, the basis of the identifications of • Mr. Bouquet, the 
 commentary of the abbe Granet, does not seem altogether trust- 
 worthy. Granet laid special stress on the fact that Corneille's 
 love for Mme Du Pont (Catherine Hue) was a very constant 
 one, lasted for many years, and Avas only broken off about 1637, 
 the time of the Excuse a Ariste. Thomas Corneille and Fon- 
 tenelle, to the contrary, only speak of "une petite avanture de 
 galanterie" of an ephemeral character. Here follows Granet 's 
 commentary in full : 
 
 "II (Conieille) avoit aime passionement une dame de 
 Rouen, nommee Mme Du Pont, femme d' nn niaitre des comptes 
 de la meme ville, parfaitement belle. II 1' avoit connue toute 
 petite fille pendant qu' il etudiait au College des Jesuites, et fit 
 pour elle plusieurs petites pieces de galanterie, qu' il n^a jamais
 
 voulu rendre puhliques, q\ielf|iies instances que lui aient faites ses 
 amis; 11 les brula lui meme e}iviron deux aiis avant sa mort. II 
 lui communiquoit la piupart dc ses piccefi avant de les mettre au 
 jour, et comme elle avoit beaucoup d' esprit, elle critiquoit fort 
 judicieusement, de sorte que M. Coi-neille a dit plusieurs fois qu' 
 il lui etoit redevable de plusieurs endroits de ses premieres 
 pieces." (CEuvres de Corneille, 1738). 
 
 Since Corneille left the College of the Jesuits about 1623, 
 his love for Catherine Hue (later Mme Du Pont), according to 
 Granet's commentary, must have begun before this date; and 
 since he is said to have shown her "most of his early plays", he 
 must have been on good terms with her until at least 1634-35. 
 Corneille 's love is thus represented as a very constant one, last- 
 ing from ten to twelve years. It is to this constant love Cor- 
 neille is supposed to allude in the Excuse a Ariste (1637), when 
 he tells us that love taught him to rhyme: 
 
 "Puisque ce fut par la que j' appris a rimer." 
 Now% it must be noticed that Corneille had already referred 
 five years earlier to that love "which taught him to rhyme", in 
 one of the poems printed in an appendix to his play Clitandre 
 (1632) : 
 
 J' ai fait autrefois de la bete; 
 J' avois des Philis a la tete : 
 
 Soleils, flambeaux, attraits, appas, 
 Pleurs, desespoirs, tourments, trepas, 
 Tout ce petit nieuble de bouche 
 Dont un amoureux s' escarmouche 
 Je savais bien m'en escrimer; 
 Par Id je m'appris a rimer; 
 Par la je fis sans autre chose, 
 Un sot en vers d' un sot en prose. . . . 
 
 (Marty-Laveaux, X, 25). 
 
 In both poems the name of the lady is given as Philis.. 
 Now, if these two poems refer to the same love-adventure, as 
 is quite clear from their text, this love-adventure had ceased 
 in 1632, and Corneille was not taught to rhyme by a long and 
 constant love, but by an ephemeral love-adventure, the "petite 
 aventure de galanterie" to which Fontenelle refers. The poem
 
 of 1632 (a Monsieur D. L. T.) indicates clearly that at that 
 date Corneille was cured from love-fever. It is very apparent, 
 on the other hand, in the Exc^ise a Ariste (1637) that the love 
 referred to had ceased a lonj; time previously for Corneille 
 says there : 
 
 "Aussi n' aimais je plus et nul objet vainqueur, 
 "N' a possede depuis ma veine ni mon coeur." 
 
 Both poems refer then to a love adventure, which taught 
 Corneille to rhyme, and which must have been finished before 
 1632, so that the explanations of the abbe Granet about the 
 corrections which Mme Du Pont suggested in the early plays 
 of Corneille cannot be accepted as based in fact. Granet seems 
 to have felt that there existed a contradiction between his com- 
 mentary, which mentioned a long and constant love, and the 
 text of the Excuse a Ariste, which referred to a love finished 
 since a long time. He misread Corneille 's text, or changed it 
 to make it fit in with his own explanation. Corneille had writ- 
 ten: 
 
 Elle eut mes premiers vers, elle eut mes derniers feux; 
 
 In Granet 's text this verse reads: 
 
 Elle eut mes premiers, elle eut mes premiers feux; (Marty 
 •Lav X, 77, Note 2) which agreed with is own commentary: "II 
 1' avoit connue toute petite fille pendant qu' il etudiait a Rouen 
 au College des Jesuites." 
 
 Another point in which the commentary of the abbe Granet 
 is not in accordance with fact is that he says that Corneille 
 wrote for his beloved "plusieurs petites pieces de galanterie 
 qu' il n' a jamais voulu rendre publiques, quelques instances 
 que lui aient faites ses amis." This statement cannot refer to the 
 poems Corneille wrote for his sweetheart, Melite, for, far from 
 refusing to print them, he publishes twice the well-known sonnet : 
 "Apres les yeux de Melite il n' y a rien d' adorable", once in 
 the Poesies following the Clitandre and once in the play Melite. 
 Besides, the very fact that he produced a whole play about his 
 love adventure shows clearly enough that he was^taifi^e to pub- 
 licity about it. (vMxt ) 
 
 It must be concluded that the commentary of the abbe 
 Granet does not present a sufficiently reliable clue to the iden- 
 tity of the real lady, who, possibly, is hidden behind the name 
 Melite in Corneille 's first work.
 
 When the identifications made by Gosselin and Bou- 
 quet are considered from the point of view of internal evidence 
 some contradictions are at once perceived. Tircis, said to be 
 Corneille himself, is indeed a credulous personage. When the 
 false letters, manufactured by Eraste, fall in his hands, he at 
 once runs away, speaking of suicide instead of ascertaining 
 from his beloved their reality or falseness. And, Cloris,— sup- 
 posed to be Marie Corneille,— is represented in the play as very 
 free in manners. She has on the scene very intimate love-con- 
 versations with her lover, Philandre, and she accepts the falsi- 
 fier Eraste for husband without showing any notion of moral 
 reserve. Would Corneille have painted his younger sister with 
 such traits? (19). 
 
 Corneille 's first play concludes with marriages of Tircis 
 with Melite and of Cloris with Eraste. They took place the same 
 evening, after the action, as is proved by various passages in the 
 first edition which have mostly been erased in the later ones. 
 Verses 1707 and following, for instance, sounded in the early 
 editions : 
 
 Tircis : 
 
 Tons nos pensers sont dus a ces chastes delices 
 Dont le ciel se prepare a borner nos supplices: 
 Le terme en est si proche, il n 'attend que la nuit. 
 and the play concluded : 
 La Nourrice : 
 
 Allez, je vais vous faire a ce soir telle niche, 
 Qu'au lieu de labourer, vous lairrez tout en friche. 
 The expressions are not elegant but quite clear; they prove that 
 the marriages were set for the same evening that the action was 
 finished. 
 
 Now, Corneille 's love-adventure, which he is supposed to 
 have brought on the scene with the Melite, was not ended with 
 a marriage. 
 
 Apres beaucoup de voeux et de submissions, 
 Un malheur rompt le cours de nos affections, 
 he said in the Excuse a Ariste, eight years after the time of 
 the Melite. Mr. Bouquet (op. Cit. 58) opiniates that, by the end 
 of the play, the real Melite had obtained a promise of marriage 
 from her mother and he devotes a page to an hypothesis about 
 the fact why this promise was not kept. Such marriages at the
 
 end of plays were entirely conventional so that no autobiographi- 
 cal value can be attached to them. 
 
 All that results from the conflicting testimonials of Fon- 
 tenelle, Thomas Corneille and the abbe Granet, is that the 
 nucleus of the Melite was furnished by a personal love-adven- 
 ture of Corneille, and that to that nucleus, he added various 
 episodes. (See note 20). It is possible that Madame Du Pont 
 (Catherine Hue) was the heroine of the Melite, but there is no 
 contemporary evidence to that effect. The statements of the 
 Abbe Granet must be accepted only with reserve. It seems un- 
 warranted to build on the slight foundation of his conflicting 
 commentary a series of identifications as undertaken in the 
 work of Mr. Bouquet. Until more evidence is presented, it 
 seems reasonable to state about the Melite nothing more than 
 exactly what Thomas Corneille and Fontenelle said: That the 
 impulse to write the Melite and the nucleus of the play were 
 both due to a personal adventure of Pierre Corneille. 
 
 And even then it is necessary to make a preliminary dis- 
 tinction: Corneille 's love for Melite may have been the occasion 
 of the first blossoming of his talent, it cannot be its origin. 
 Corneille Avas quite well acquainted with the literature of the 
 times (21), and it is possible to find counterparts of the char- 
 acters and of the situations of the Melite in the novels and the 
 plays of his period. In some parts the incidents and the char- 
 acters of Corneille 's early plays resemble so closely more or 
 less traditional stage-characters and situations that the ques- 
 tion "Where ends the biographical inspiration and where be- 
 gins the purely literary?" seems well-nigh insoluble. A few 
 resemblances and counterparts of the heroes and the plot of 
 Corneille 's first play will be pointed out in the following pages, 
 
 THE NAME MELITE 
 
 The name Melite is found in the Greek Anthology, in one 
 of the thirty-eight epigrams of the Byzantine poet Rufinus. It 
 occurs too in the late Greek novel Clitophon's and Leucippus' 
 Loves by Achilles Tatius, where it designates a wealthy widow. 
 This novel was much in vogue in European countries during the 
 sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The last four books 
 were translated from Greek into Latin by Annibal della Croce, 
 (22) and then from Latin into French under the title ^'Les 
 Devis Amoureux" (23) by L' Amoureux de la Vertu (Claude
 
 Collet), in 1545. Another translation which ran through three 
 editions was produced some ten years later by Jacques de 
 Roquemare (24) : Les quatre dernier s livres de propos amour eux 
 contenans le discours des amours et marriage du seigneur Clito- 
 phont et damoiselle Leusippe. Then follows the complete work 
 in French: Les Amours de Clitophon et de Leusippe, escrits 
 en grec par Achilles Statins, Alexandrin, et nouvellement tra- 
 duits en francois par B. (Belleforest) Comingeois. There are 
 three editions of this translation. The evident popularity of 
 the novel is further attested by the plays derived from it. A 
 lost play of Alexandre Hardy (25), Leueosie, was developed 
 from it as a source and one of its characters probably was 
 named Melite. Pierre du Ryer also found in it the plot of his 
 Clitophon which was played about 1628, and in which Melite 
 is a wealthy widow pursuing the hero Clitophon with her atten- 
 tions. (25a). The name occurs also in other works composed inde- 
 pendently of the Greek novel. So, for example, an anonymous 
 novel of 1609 is entitled Les Amours de Melite et de Statiphile 
 (26). In the pastoral play of Hardy, Corinne ou le silence, 
 Corine et Melite appear as "jeunes bergeres, egales en beaute, 
 qui deviennent eperdument amoureuses de Caliste." The name 
 further appears in three other plays which were produced be- 
 fore Corneille 's first comedy. Melite is the friend of Amaranthe 
 in the pastoral play of that name by Gombauld (1625). Pro- 
 fessor H. Carrington Lancaster has recently drawn attention to 
 another play in which a Melite is found, to Rampalle's Belinde, 
 published in 1630 (26a). And, finally, in the Bague d' Ouhli of 
 Eotrou, Melite appears in the "dramatis personae" as a "demoi- 
 selle confidente de Liliane." (27). 
 
 There is no reason to seek in the name Melite a clue for the 
 identity of the heroine in the "petite avauture de galanterie" 
 by which the poet is said to have been inspired nor to believe it 
 an anagram. It is merely a name taken from the literature of 
 the time, although considerably less banal than that of Philis 
 which Corneille uses in the verses quoted with reference to the 
 same or another love affair. 
 
 THE RIVAL FRIENDS 
 
 Now as to the "adventure" itself. Only the initial episode 
 of the play can be interpreted as autobiographical : Braste pre- 
 sents his friend, the women-despising Tircis, to his sweetheart
 
 Melite. Tircis falls in love with her at sight and soon supplants 
 Eraste in the young lady's affections. The rest of the story: 
 the false letters, the madness of Eraste and the marriages at 
 the end, are obviously commonplaces from the literature of the 
 times. They constitute the incidents which Corneille, accord- 
 ing to the testimonial of Fontenelle, "added to truth." The 
 alleged auto-biographical part of the play, the initial episode, 
 will be considered here first. 
 
 While it may well be that Corneille met in real life with a 
 "galant" experience closely akin to the main theme of the 
 Melite, it was yet a kind of adventure which had become long 
 since a common-place in literature. Unless we believe that, in 
 Corneille 's case, there arose in real life a spontaneous duplica- 
 tion of a traditional situation in the letters of the time, we must 
 assume that his inspiration was literary. But, even granted 
 that the nucleus of the Melite was a personal adventure and not a 
 duplication of a favorite literary situation, Corneille 's treat- 
 ment of the story, his arrangement of the scenes, his conception 
 of his heroes and characters were influenced by the contempor- 
 ary examples which were numerous enough to constitute stock 
 themes of the authors of the period. 
 
 To illustrate this contention, it is sufficient to turn to a 
 parallel of the story of the rival friends in, for example Lyly's 
 -BtH-el Euphues. Witty Euphues is at first, like Hiia i fito , a satyri- 
 cal woman-hater, (p. 36-37. Ed. M. Croll and H. Clemond). But, 
 being presented by his friend Philautus to Lucilla, for three 
 years the latter 's sweetheart, he too supplants him in the lady's 
 affections. The story develops like Corneille 's and purports 
 to show "the falsehood in fellowship, the fraud in friendship, 
 the fair w^ords that make fools fain." Euphues decides, in a 
 soliloquy that over his friendship his love must prevail. In a 
 similar way Tircis determines: 
 
 "En matiere d 'amour rien n 'oblige a tenir, 
 Et les meilleurs amis, lorsque son feu les presse, 
 Font bientot vanite d'oublier leur promesse. " 
 
 While the beginning of both stories is parallel, the end dif- 
 fers: Euphues is supplanted by a third lover; Tircis marries 
 Melite as is natural in a comedy with a happy ending. 
 
 The story of the rival friends in Euphues has been asserted 
 to be autobiographical, even as in Corneille 's Melite. (28). On
 
 the other hand it has been pointed out convincingly that this 
 struggle between friendship and love is a connnonplace of lit- 
 erature which probably originated from a lost Greek romance ; 
 and that Lylj' was directly indebted to Boccaccio's Tito and 
 Gisippo {Decani, x, 8) for his narrative (29). 
 
 But what about Corueille's Melitef There too are found 
 the same details of plot, the common features of the traditional 
 story of the two rival friends. They can be shortly described 
 as follows : A has been for years in love with a girl, to whom 
 he presents his friend B, generally depicted as a woman-hater 
 or as a wit. During the visit to the betrothed B falls in love 
 with her at first sight. An internal struggle follows between 
 his friendship for A and his love. In most stories A gives up 
 his sweetheart to B and helps him to marry her; but in some 
 cases — as, for instance, in Euphues, — a struggle between the 
 two friends follows. 
 
 It does not fall within the scope of this study to trace the 
 origin of the numerous narratives and plays based on the con- 
 flict between rival friends, nor even to study the various forms 
 it has taken in literature. For the present purpose it is suffi- 
 cient to point out that the story was treated so frequently about 
 the time of Corneille's debut, that it can reasonably be supposed 
 that he was acquainted with it: (30). 
 
 The story had become familiar through translations and 
 adaptations of Boccaccios's Tito e Gisippo, the eighth Novella of 
 the Tenth day of the Decamerone. The forty-sixth novel in 
 Le Grand parangon des nouvelles Nouvelles, by Nicolas de 
 Troyes, (31) relates the adventure *'D'un compaignon, qui pour 
 I'amour qu'il avoit a ung sien compaignon lui donna et livra sa 
 propre femme pour espouser. ' ' Another imitation is contained in 
 Le Petit Oeuvre d' amour ou gaige d'amitie contenant plusieurs 
 diets amour eux (32). Fillipo Beroaldo translated the story 
 into Latin Verse and this in its turn was translated into 
 French (33). 
 
 In the literature of the time the Astree contains at least 
 two versions of this story ; first the adventures of Thamyre and 
 Calydon both in love with the fair Celidee, and secondly of 
 Palemon who favors his friend Adraste in his love for his Avife, 
 Doris (34). In the play Isabel of P. Ferry (1610) Calvonte, in 
 love with Clorifee, assists his rival. The same situation occurs 
 in La Diane Frangoise of Du Verdier (1624) in which Climandre
 
 is ready to resign Amarante to his friend Pilamon, and finally, 
 in La Clorise of Baro, Eraste f^ives up his beloved C'loris to 
 Alidor, her other lover (35), Alexandre Hai'dj-, to whom Cor- 
 neille refers as his first model, adapted Boccaccio's novel to the 
 stage with his Gesippe on les deux a))iis. "Tite, jeune gei\til- 
 honmie Romain, etudiant a Athenes contracte une etroite amitie 
 avee Gesippe, Athenien de meme age et de meme qualite, qui 
 sur le point d'epouser une des belles d 'Athenes en voulut don- 
 ner la veue a ce sien fidelle amy; I'aspect d'une contagieuse 
 beaute captive Tite d'une telle sorte que reduit au desespoir il 
 projette d'abandonner la ville d 'Athenes et sa vie'' (36). Hardy's 
 treatment of the story differs, of course, from Corneille's in that 
 Gesippe yields his sw^eetheart to his friend and even assists in 
 forming their attachment, whereas in Corneille's comedy Eraste 
 strives to retain Melite. But the denouement is identical. Just 
 as Eraste finally marries Cloris, sister of his friend Tircis, so in 
 Hardy's play, Gesippe marries Fulvie, sister of his friend and 
 successful rival, Tite. These similarities are the more significant 
 because Corneille must have been acquainted with Hardy's 
 work, for it was published at Rouen by a friend of his, David 
 du Petit-Val, and in the year 1626, that is, only a short time be- 
 fore he must have begun to think of producing his first comedy. 
 
 Another play by Hardy, the tragi-comedy, Dorise, is of even 
 greater interest in this connection. The first scene of this play 
 also presents two friends in love with the same girl and with 
 the same result ; the first lover is supplanted by the second who 
 marries the heroine. Furthermore there is a striking resem- 
 blance in important details of the plot. A display of letters 
 plays an important part in the Dorise as well as in the Melite 
 and the supplanted lover, Salmacis, runs away to a hermitage 
 and becomes mad under the influence of a mysterious charm . 
 much after the manner of Eraste, in Corneille's comedy. In 
 both plays the supplanted lovers finally recover their senses and 
 both plays end in a double marriage (37). 
 
 Without lengthening unduly the list of the imitations of 
 the Rival-Friend story, it is clear that love and friendship 
 brought into rivalry was not uncommon in the literature prev- 
 ious to Corneille's debut. The initial episode of the Melite: — 
 a lover presents a friend to his sweetheart, and, after a struggle, 
 is supplanted by him — is found, situation for situation, in sev- 
 eral counterparts. Corneille's first play seems a variation upon
 
 a stock theme of contemporary romance rather than pure auto- 
 biography. And, therefore, identification of the characters of 
 the Melite with living persons is more than hazardous. All that 
 can be gathered from the testimonials of Thomas Corneille and 
 of Fontenelle is that, in the Melite, fact was mingled to some 
 degree with fiction and truth with make-believe. Yet modern 
 criticism has tended to make the Melite entirely true, and a 
 realistic autobiography. If Corneille really utilized a personal 
 experience, he followed traditional models in the treatment of 
 his material, in the development and succession of his scenes, 
 in the characterization of his heroes. 
 
 IS TIRCIS, CORNEILLE? 
 
 Tircis, who, in the Melite, supplants his frieiul Eraste in 
 his sweetheart's affections, has been identified generally with 
 Corneille himself (40). He is depicted as a sceptic in love- 
 matters who becomes a convert to love through the bewitching 
 beauty of Melite. 
 
 Such an identification becomes, however, very doubtful 
 when it is remembered that in the early editions, Tircis was 
 guilty of several indecent expressions and allusions. (41). Why 
 would Corneille have depicted himself in such unfavorable 
 light? Would he really have represented himself as a light- 
 hearted sceptic, frequently indecent in his expressions, who be- 
 trayed his friend in love? Would he have made the reputation 
 of his beloved Melite who rejected her first suitor, an object 
 of public commentary? Yet, whether Corneille intended to em- 
 body his own "self" in Tircis or not, the first audiences of the 
 Melite must have recognized in Tircis a personage with whom 
 they were already very familiar. There had grown up in the 
 sixteenth century even, in reaction against the hero embodying 
 the Platonic love conception which had spread from Italy, a 
 type which served sometimes as a contrast and sometimes as a 
 foil to these conceptions. It was a type which railed at the 
 flowery language and the absurd actions of the exponents of 
 "r amour eternel;" it was a literary impersonation of "I'esprit 
 gaulois" which voiced a revolt against the unreal ideals of the 
 pastoral novels and plays, insisted upon the realities of life and 
 love; who claimed the right of lovers to "change" and eren 
 erected inconstancy into a rule of conduct. As such it appears 
 in the person of the cynic Saifredent, opponent to the Platonist
 
 Dagroncin in the Ileptameron of Marguerite of Navarre. It is 
 easy to trace the character through the literature which fol- 
 lowed. Estieiiiie Pas(iuier introduced him in his Monophile 
 (1554), the possessor "d'un eoeur gay et Francois, estant adonne 
 a toutes, sans faire estat d' une seule" who believed "que 
 meilleur est faindre I'amour que d 'aimer. " In La Pyrenee of 
 Belief orest (1572) his name is Drion, who brings love back to 
 its natural and materialistic origin and has no patience with, 
 the Platonic dreamers: "Quant a moi, j'ainie mieux rire a mon. 
 aise sentant et savourant un peu de plaisir, qu'extatic et reveur 
 songer un bonheur qui ne se gagne que par imagination." In 
 the Bergeries de Juliette by OUenix de Mont-Sacre (Nicolas de 
 Monti-eux) he appears as the cool headed Glaphire and as the 
 woman-hater Belair in Les Infideles Fiddles, fahle hoscagerre 
 (1603) of the "shepherd Calianthe" (probably G. de Bazire). 
 Many other novels and plays contain this type of the witty 
 sceptic, merry and light-hearted womanhater, lavish with his 
 shrewd materialistic counsels. He appears as Floridan in 
 L'Heureux Desespere, tragi-comedie -pastorale (1613) by C. A. 
 Seigneur de C. (Comte Adrien de Cramail?), whose motto is: 
 "A tons vents," and who rails at the constancy of Angeralde. 
 Philiris in the Isahelle (1610) of Paul Ferry represents the type 
 when he exclaims: "Moy qui n'aime sinon ce qui m'est profit- 
 able." 
 
 The most interesting and most highly developed represen- 
 tative of the type is probably Hylas in the Astree (42) the 
 smiling dilettante of love, the theorician of inconstancy as a 
 rule of conduct. Throughout the novel his capricious and witty 
 attacks upon the apotheosis of Avoman and the hollow unreality 
 of shepherd love serve as an antidote to the abstract and sub- 
 limated theories of Celadon. And in his conduct he puts his 
 theories into practice. For example, in the third book (second 
 volume) where Clorion is in love with Cyrene, he makes Hylas 
 his confident. Hylas encourages him and promises to serve as 
 his ambassador and advocate with the lady but, like Tircis in 
 the Meliie, he betrays the faith of his friend. He falls in love 
 Avith Cyrcene and adds her to the already formidable number 
 of his amorous conquests. The mental debate on friendship 
 versus love in which Hylas indulges (L. 217) is quite in line 
 with the debate portrayed in the monologue of Tircis at the end 
 of the third scene of the first act of the Melite and the conclu-
 
 sion is the same, namely, that in love matters, sentiment of the 
 friend must give way before the passions of the lover. This 
 idea is found more precisely stated in the comedy which Mare- 
 chal composed on the basis of the Hylas episodes in the Astree: 
 L'Inconstance d' Hylas (43). 
 
 L 'amour de Periandre augmente mon ennuie, 
 
 Ma flamme de ses feux, tient la foi'ce et la vie, 
 
 Montrons-luy qu'en amour tout effort est permis. 
 
 Qu' Hylas pour estre amant, ne connoit point d'amy. 
 And Tircis in the Melite (I. 3) gives utterance to precisely the 
 same sentiments: 
 
 En matiere d 'amour rien n 'oblige a tenir, 
 
 Et les meilleurs amis, lorsque son feu les presse 
 
 Font bientot vanite d'oublier leurs promesses (44). 
 
 In 1627 Hon. d'Urfe brought Hylas on the stage in his 
 Sylvanire. As in the Melite, — the play opens with a discus- 
 sion between two friends about love. Aglante, deeply in love 
 with Sylvanire, is here confronted with the smiling and cynical 
 Hylas in the same way as Eraste and Tircis in the first scene of 
 Corneille's play. The whole dispute, Avhich can be traced to 
 Italian models runs along the same general lines (45). 
 
 And here is found the connecting link between the t\T)e of 
 the love-sceptic (Monophile, Dagoncin, Euphues, Hylas, Tircis, 
 etc.) and the story of the two Rival Friends. Before Corneille 
 already, as exemplified above, the light-hearted sceptic in love 
 had been identified with the faithless friend. Corneille's Tircis 
 is a counterpart of these M^ell-known fiction characters rather 
 than his own portrait. In 1660, Corneille himself perceived that 
 his Tircis was not altogether **vrayseniblable." He said in his 
 Examen de Melite: Tircis, qui est 1' honnete homme de la 
 piece, n' a pas l' esprit moins leger que les deux autres." (Philis 
 and Eraste). 
 
 There is every reason to conclude that Corneille, composing 
 his first play, should have shown toward the conventional types 
 and scenes of the literature of his time much of that docility 
 which he was to display in after years, in matters of far greater 
 moment, when his mastery of the art had won recognition. Even 
 granted that he attempted self-portrayal with his Tii'cis, he 
 only succeeded in reproducing a Avell-kno\m character of con- 
 temporary fiction, placed in a traditional situation, struggling 
 with the much exploited "love versus friendship" problem.
 
 THE LETTER-DEVICE AND THE MADNESS OF ERASTE 
 The plot of the Melite contains two other fundamental ele- 
 ments: the use of forged letters and the madness of firaste. 
 Reference to the outline of the play, given above, shows that 
 Eraste in order to balk his rival, forges letters from Melite to 
 Philandre. These letters, falling into the hands of Tircis are 
 the pivot upon which the plot turns. No attempt has ever been 
 made to connect both these episodes Avith Corneille's life; con- 
 sideration of them may therefore be limited to a search in con- 
 temporary literature for the models upon which they were con- 
 structed. 
 
 The letter-device was very popular w^ith the authors of the 
 period. It is sufficient to open any novel to find love letters 
 used for all purposes. The Astree, notably, is full of them and 
 many go to the Avrong address. The novel begins wdth a letter 
 stratagem very similar to the one used by Corneille. Alcippe, 
 father of Celadon, has a young shepherd, Squilindre, prepare 
 "une lettre contrefaite" in order to produce an estrangement 
 between Astree and his son. In the fifth volume (book 11) 
 Squilindre prepares another forged letter, from Sigismond to 
 Dorinde, at the behest of king Gondebaut. In like manner 
 firaste, in the Francion of Sorel forges a letter with the same 
 fraudulent intentions and the father of Florigene in Les Be- 
 ligieuses Amours de Florigene et de Meleagre, makes use of 
 the same trick in order to create a misunderstanding between 
 his daughter and Meleagre, her lover (46). In many cases the 
 letters are genuine and come into the possession of the heroine 
 or of her lovers causing jealousy or despair. So, for example, 
 in the fourth book of the first volume of the Astree, Semire 
 learns of the love of Celadon and Astree through a lost letter. 
 From the novels the use of letters in the interests of the 
 plot passed into the plays. In the Dorise of Hardy, which, as 
 has been shown above, contains many important elements of the 
 Melite plot, Licanor makes use of a letter to arouse the jeal- 
 ousy of Dorise and thus gain an advantage over his more for- 
 tunate rival Salmacis. In the Amaranthe of Gombauld, (play- 
 ed 1623, published 1628) Orante prepares a false letter pur- 
 porting to come from the goddess Diane, by which he hopes to 
 have his rival condemned to death. That the use of letters to 
 create jealousy was a popular device with playwrights is proved 
 by the fact that it occurs in many plays composed before or
 
 after the Melite: Les Vendanges de Suresne (du Ryer), 
 Celie and L'Heureuse Constance (Rotrou), La Mort des En- 
 fants d'H erode (La Calprenede) etc. 
 
 The forged letters upon which the plot of Corneille's first 
 comedy hinges is then one from that extensive repertory of de- 
 vices, letters, rendez-vous, oracles, magic mirrors, boasted fav- 
 ors, etc., out of which contemporary writers spun the tangled 
 webs of their novels and plays. They are devoted to the same 
 purpose, triumph over a rival, and they are all used in about 
 the same Avay and generally with the same outcome: Seeing 
 the result of these tricks, the perpetrator, overcome by remorse, 
 becomes temporarily insane, while the victim, as a matter of 
 course gives way to his despair and contemplates suicide. 
 
 The adventures of the lovers in the Melite follow this 
 course. Having read the letters forged by Braste, which prove 
 the love of Melite for Philandre, Tircis runs away, his mind 
 intend upon suicide. At least such was the action in the earlier 
 versions in which one reads these lines, removed in later editions : 
 Et mes pieds me porteront sous eux en quelque lieu desert. 
 En quelque lieu sauvage a peine decouvert 
 Ou ma main d'un poignard achevera le reste, 
 Et pour suivre I'arret de mon destin funeste, 
 Je repandrai mon sang. 
 Melite hearing a false report of Tircis' death falls in a 
 swoon and, for the moment, is believed to be dying. The car- 
 rier of the forged letters hastens to Eraste and reproaches him 
 with the death of the lovers. Eraste, filled with remorse for his 
 crime, becomes insane. Both the episode and the treatment of 
 it in the Melite are quite in harmony with the literary conven- 
 tions of the time. 
 
 In his Examen de Melite of 1660, Corneille confessed that 
 the madness scenes of his first play were not original: ''La 
 folic d 'Eraste n'est pas de meilleure trempe. Je la condamiiois 
 des lors en mon ame ; mais comme c ' etoit un ornement de 
 theatre qui ne manquoit jamais de plaire et se faisoit souvent 
 admirer, j'affectai volontiers ces grands egarements." (47). 
 
 During the quarrel of the Cid, one of Corneille's bitterest 
 opponents, Claveret, wrote : * * Ceux qui consideront bien vostre 
 fin de Melite, c'est a dire la frenesie d 'Eraste, que tout le monde 
 avoue franchement estre de vostre invention, et qui verront le 
 peu de rapport que ces badineries ont avec ce que vous avez
 
 derobe, jugeront sans doiite que le commencement de la Melite 
 
 n' est pas une piece de vostre invention (48). Claveret 
 
 means, of course, that the "frenesie d' :6raste" was only one 
 more proof of Corneille's lack of orifrinality in the Mflite. And, 
 in fact, the madness device was one of the commonplaces of the 
 literature of the times, (49) which was especially prevalent in 
 plays at the time that Corneille wrote his "coup d' essai." 
 firaste, overcome by remorse, believes that the earth has burst- 
 ed and that he stands before the Styx. He takes his helper 
 Cliton, for Charon, who, he believes, refuses him passage over 
 the river of the dead. Now, Charon's refusal to take aboard 
 the souls of those lovers who were killed by love, was a stock 
 theme of the sixteenth and of the early seventeenth century. 
 The popularity of the situation goes back to the well-known 
 sonnet of Olivier de Magny, which, according to the testimonial 
 of G. Colletet, in his Traite du Sonnet, was copied and learned 
 by heart by every lover of poetry : 
 
 Magny. 
 Hola, Charon, Charon, nautonnier infernal! 
 
 Charon. 
 Qui est cet importun qui si presse m' appelle? 
 
 Magny. 
 C est r esprit eplore d' un amoureux fidele, 
 Lequel pour bien aimer n' eust janimais que du mal. 
 
 Charon. 
 Que cherches tu de moy? 
 
 Magny. 
 
 Le passage fatal. 
 Charon. 
 Quel est ton homicide? 
 
 Magny. 
 
 demande cruelle! 
 Amour m' a fait mourir. 
 
 Charon. 
 Jamais dans ma nasselle 
 Nul subjet a 1' amour je ne conduis a val. 
 
 Magny. 
 Et de grace, Charon, recoy-moy dans ta barque. 
 
 Charon. 
 Cherche un autre nocher, car ny moy, ny la Parque 
 N' entreprenons jamais sur ce maistre des Dieux.
 
 Magny. 
 J' iray done maiigre toy; car j' ay dedans nion ame 
 Tant de traicts amoureux, tant de larmes aux yeux, 
 Que je seray le fleiive, et la barque et la rame. 
 In the Mclite the supposedly dead lover to whom a passage 
 over the tStyx is refused, pretends to fight ghosts and gods, and 
 to inspire terror and confusion in the infernal regions. This 
 situation is found worked out more at length than in the Melite 
 in Ph. Desportes' La mort de Rodomont, et sa descente aux en- 
 fers, partie imitee de V Arioste, partie de V invention de V 
 auteur, (50) and in various plays of the time as, for instance, 
 in Hardy's Alcmeon ou la vengeance feminine and in A, Mar- 
 eschal's La genereuse Allemande (1630). The recovery of 
 Corneille's hero from his spell of madness also follows closely 
 the convention of the stage of the period as exemplified by de 
 Viand's Pirame et Thisbe, Mairet's Sylvie, Rotrou's Hypo- 
 condriaque and other plays (51). 
 
 THE OTHER CHARACTERS OF THE MELITE 
 
 The nurse w'ho plays an important part in the recovery of 
 Braste also belongs in the list of conventions w^hich had long 
 been presented upon the French stage. It was a traditional 
 character played generally by a masked man. In the comedy 
 of the sixteenth century, to be sure, the nurse-character is rath- 
 er rare for the reason that the old woman of the play was gen- 
 erally a "femnie d 'intrigue" of the Celestina type. She plays 
 however, a small role in the Fidele of Larrivey and a ridicu- 
 lous one as Marian in L'Escolier. But in the tragedy composed 
 in imitation of the ancients, she took a more important part in 
 the action, as in the Medee of La Peruse, the Lucrece of Nico- 
 las Filleul (1566), La Carthaginoise of Montchrestien, etc. 
 She even pays for her interference in the action with her life 
 as in the Tyr et Sidon of de Schelandre (1608 and 1628). 
 
 She appears in the tragi-comedy as a distributor of good 
 counsels, favoring or combatting the love of the hero or heroine. 
 In Theophile de Viand's Pyrame et Thisbe, the nurse, Ber- 
 siane oversees the conduct of Thisbe whom she counsels and re- 
 proaches in quite maternal fashion. She appears in the tragi- 
 comedy Clotilde of Jean Prevost (1613), in Jean Auvray's 
 Marsilie (1609, republished as L'Innocence Decouverte, 1628) 
 where she plays an important role and shares the sentence of
 
 banisliment which has been pronounced against lier mistress. In 
 a number of other plays — especially in those of Hardy and in the 
 Heureux Naufraye of Rotrou — she is the counsellor and con- 
 fidante and, in some cases the "entremetteuse." Nowhere does 
 she become a comic character, nor is she such in the M elite 
 except at the very end. Everywhere else in the play she ap- 
 pears as a woman, full of worldly wisdom, counselling Melite 
 with the solicitude of a mother and in fact taking the place of 
 the heroine's mother Avho is mentioned two or three times but 
 does not appear upon the stage. She is really Melite 's confi- 
 dante and when Corneille in the Galerie du Palais metamor- 
 phoses the nurse into the Suivante, it Ls more her name that has 
 changed than her conduct. 
 
 Fournel (52) attributes to Corneille a transformation of the 
 nurse's role: C'est encore P. Corneille qui, dans ses premieres 
 comedies, a donne a la nourriee le role le plus caracterise. Fam- 
 iliere avec Melite, qu'elle tutoie, sa confidente et son inter- 
 mediaire, tres prudente, etc. The typical nurse-character as 
 presented by Corneille was however fully sketched by Hardy in 
 his Felismcne, Dorise, Fregonde, Gesippe, Alcmeon, Panthee, 
 etc. In the Dorise, the Fregonde, and the Oesippe especially 
 is she presented as the sort of mater-nal confidant who adAises 
 and comforts the heroines quite in the fashion of the Nourriee 
 in the Melite. In the Gesippe (Act I., sc. 2) she admonishes 
 the heroine : 
 
 JVIais madame, il ne faut qu'une fille en cela 
 Montre si clairement la passion qu'elle a, etc. 
 and in the Melite she sounds a similar warning : 
 
 line fille qui voit et que voit la jeunesse 
 
 Ne s'y doit gouverner qu'avec beaucoup d'adresse. 
 
 The conventional character of the nurse in Corneille 's first 
 comedy is made more apparent by the two young women of the 
 play who, compared with her, are relatively realistic creations. 
 Melite is represented as a true, honest, and reserved though 
 somewhat tenderhearted maiden who has little need of the 
 worldly-wise counsels which the nurse gives her. Her sentimen- 
 tality is lightened by a shade of irony ; she is always ready with 
 a wntty answer and she is not at all disposed to be carried away 
 by the flowery compliments of Eraste. Cloris is less reserved 
 and less sentimentally inclined. She is distinguished by practi-
 
 cal sense, and, although capricious, she remains very positive in 
 her views on lovers and their passions. 
 
 When Eraste has sent the forged letters which he claims to 
 have been written by Melite to Philandre, all the characters of 
 the play vie with one another in credulity. Philandre does hot 
 question for a moment the authenticily of these letters brought 
 to him by a messenger whom he docs not know, from a young 
 lady whom he has never met. Tircis, having seen the letters, 
 seeks no explanation but immediately begins to contemplate sui- 
 cide. Melite waits for no verification of the report of the death 
 of Tircis but promptly faints, while Eraste immediately becomes 
 insane at the news of the double tragedy. Cloris alone remains 
 calm and intolligent enough to do the sensible and obvious 
 thing; she shows the letters to Melite who denies having writ- 
 ten them. In this way she brings the imbroglio to an end and 
 her ''common sense" lends probability to her marriage at the 
 end of the pl.-n- with Eraste after he had been sufficiently pun- 
 ished for his duplicity. Eraste was rich as indicated by differ- 
 ci\t nllusions in the play, while she, like her brother, Tircis, was 
 little blessed with worldly goods. 
 
 Different as they are, the two young girls, the tender })ut 
 inconstant Melite, the practical but capricious Cloris, are both 
 ''young girls." Without attempting any profound psychologi- 
 cal analysis, Corneille succeeded in endowing his two heroines 
 with such characteristics and such features of the young girl 
 type that they are enough to clearly differentiate his comedy 
 from that of the sixteenth century. The role is rare in the comedy 
 of the sixteenth century. In most cases there is no place for 
 her in the immoral plots, and when she does appear, she bears 
 few of the characteristics of the modern "young girl" but 
 rather resembles the young women of the Italian stage who show 
 nd reserve in love but are apparently ready to receive their 
 lover or lovers immediately upon terms of the great(^st intimacy. 
 They have neither delicacy nor even decency. To' this type^ of 
 young women belong, for example, the Genevieve of Les Con- 
 tens (Odet de Turnebe) Grassette of Les EscoUcrs (Perrin), 
 Antoinette of La Rccovnue (Belleau), etc. 
 
 Corneille then, in the Melite, drew two young women of a 
 more elevated and refined type notwithstanding a few rather 
 dubious scenes which were removed in later editions of the play. 
 However, even here, it is easy +o exaggerate his originality for,
 
 between the comedies of the sixteenth century and this, liisiirst. 
 play, came the pastoral plays and the pastoral and sentimental 
 novels, which, with all their unreal and verbose sentimentality 
 of shepherd love, had established a finer conception of- the young 
 girl type (53) Mclite resembles many a sentimental and confid- 
 ing shephcrdness of pastoral novel and plays of the 1600-1630 
 period. The capricious and practical Cloris -too has her 'proto- 
 type in quite a number of shepherdesses who are changeable, 
 capricioiis and full of daring such as, for example, the Stelle of 
 the Astree. From the pastoral literature the finer type of 
 young girl passed into the novels and stories, taken or pretend- 
 ing to be taken from contemporary life. One finds in them 
 young girls with the same characteristics, the same attitude to- 
 ward the flowery compliments of their lovers as in the Mclite 
 and in the other early plays of Corneille. So, for instance, in 
 Les Amours cV Eurymcdon et de Lydie, the eighth story of 
 de Rosset's Histoires dcs anians volagcs dc ce temps (54). 
 Eurymedon finds, during a ball, occasion to present his homages 
 to Lydie: ''Ce fut la qu' il luy dist qu' anime dcs louauges que 
 tout le monde rendoit a son meritc, mais plus encores des eclats 
 de Divinite, que luy mcsme voyoit luyre en son beau visage, il 
 venoit pour luy sacrifier ses volontez. II la conjuroit de jetter 
 les yeux plutost sur V excez de son amour, que sur son merite, 
 et de ne dedaigner point de le tenir desormais au rang de ceux 
 qui luy offroient tons les jours leurs libertez. Lydie qui avoit 
 deja quelque inclination a vouloir du bien a ce Cavalier, quoy 
 qu' elle le dissimulast, fit au commencement paroitre quelque 
 petit traict de rigueur, ainsi que ces belles font ordinairenient, 
 et luy diet que si le bruict luy donnoit quelque louange, on de- 
 voit attribuer ceste gloire plustost a V opinion qu' a la verite. 
 ttt pour le regard de la divinite dont il luy parloit.elle n' estoit 
 pas si vaine, qu' elle Ae recogneust bien que ces.di&cours estoient 
 proferez par forme de raillerie, et non par desseinde la louer. 
 C' est pourquoy voyant que les louanges qu' il ■ luy ■ donnoit 
 estoient feintes, elle jugeoit aussi que ses volontez qu' il luy 
 presentoit ne pouvoient estre que feintises. Eurymedon repart, 
 et.dit qu* elle offensoit par trop sa beaute, qui, veritablement 
 belle, ne pouvoit produire que des desseins pour la servir. lis 
 eussent continue ce discours : mais parce que Lydie craignoit que 
 quelque une de ses compagnes ne tendist 1' oreille, avec un doux
 
 sousris pria Eurvmedon de • remettre ceste dispute en un autr§ 
 lieu." (p. 424-25). 
 
 Again the same- situation as in the Melite and other early 
 plays of Corneillet a lover paying conceited compliments to a 
 sweetheart rather scornful of his hyperbolic language, is found 
 in other stories of de Rosset, as in Lcs Amours d' Amador ct 
 de la belle Hypolite.- {Amans tyjlages dc c€ temps, p. 464-65) : 
 Tant de rares dons et -tant de qualitez qui luysoient sur le l?eau 
 visage d' Hypolit-e, est-oient autant de filets qui lioient estroicte- 
 ment la liberte de ce Cavalier, et qui luy ostoient la parolle. 
 Enfin sa langue venant a -se- delier, son coeur profera ce discours 
 plein esgallement d' Amour et de respect. Si je pouvois (belle 
 Hypolite) dire aussi belles parolles, que vostre beaute me donne 
 de belles pensees; je m' efforeerois de voiis representer et vostre 
 merite et ma passion. Mais ou trouveroit on un esprit aussi 
 disert, que vostre corps est beau,- afin de vous rendre des louan- 
 ges semblables a vos -perfections? II faut advouer que cela 
 estant impossible, je les dois seulement admirer, de peur de les 
 profaner en les louant : Heureux si en estant adorateur, vostre 
 divinite regardoit d' un oeil favorable les voeux, et permettoit 
 les sacrifices, que le devoir et la cognoissance m' obligent desor- 
 
 mais de luy rendre La Belle qui avoit desja considere la 
 
 beaute et la grace de ce Cavalier, et qui se sentoit aucunement 
 ambrasee d' un feu auquel nostre consentement sert d' amorce, 
 fit semblant de premier abord de n' entendre point ses paroles. 
 Neantmoins avec un doux sousris elle luy fit ceste responce : Si 
 les hommes estoient aussi veritables que dissimulez, vous me 
 feriez (Monsieur) desja entrer en quelque vaine gloire. Mon 
 peu de merite, et la croyance que j'ay, que c' est pour donner 
 carriere a vostre bel esprit, feront que je tiendray ce langage 
 ainsi indifferent . . . . " 
 
 Ironical verses against flowery love-declarations in the same 
 style as found in the Melite occur in the volume of miscellan- 
 eous verse, Le Banquet des Muses of the Rouen lawyer Jean 
 Auvray (1623) : Here too a complimentary courtier suffers a 
 more or less sincere rebuff from his lady : 
 
 Le courtisan : 
 
 Mais r ame qui est bieu assise 
 
 N ' astreint qu ' en bon lieu sa fi-anchise ; 
 
 Elle n' a poinct de passion
 
 •Si non pour la perfection; 
 Et si la cire de ses aisles 
 Se fond aux vives estincelles 
 D' une rare et grande beaute, 
 Benissant sa tenierite 
 Elle fait sa gioire et son lucre 
 D' un si honorable sepulchre, 
 ., . Bien heureuse de s' abismer 
 
 En si grande et fameuse mer. 
 
 Ne vous estonnez done, madame, 
 Si la vive et charmeuse flamme 
 Qui sort de vcs yeux, mes soleils, 
 111' embrazent de feux nonpareils, 
 Je cerche au mal qui me possede 
 En vous mon unique remede, 
 Et si au fort de mes douleurs 
 J' implore vos rares faveurs." 
 
 La dame : 
 
 Monsieur, ces facondes merveilles 
 
 Dont vous repaissez mes oreilles 
 
 Ne me touchent point jusqu'au coeur, 
 
 Je croy que d' un style moqueur. 
 
 Passant de 1' honneur la barriere, 
 
 Yostre esprit se donne carriere, 
 
 Et que toutes ces passions, 
 
 Ces beautez, ces perfections, 
 
 Ces feux, cet amour, ce martire, 
 
 Sont fragments de vostre bien dire 
 
 Et r ornement de vos discours." (p. 241). 
 
 We see then that the common sense of the young girls in 
 Corneille's Mel it e was not without examples in the literature 
 of the period, and that their anti-preciosity bears resemblance 
 to the attitude of other contemporary heroines of fiction and 
 poetry. 
 
 It is reasonably certain that Corneilie, in composing his 
 first play, looked about him for material. The initial story of 
 a lover supplanted by his friend in the affections of a young 
 woman; the letters forged by the disappointed lover, the mad- 
 ness of Eraste, his subsequent recovery all that appears repeat-
 
 edly in the literature of the early seventeenth century. The 
 characters are equally French. A long line of ancestors., pre- 
 ceded the love-sceptic Tircis; and Eraste does not differ from 
 the ordinary shepherd-rival. The young givls are clearly re- 
 flections of the novels of contemporary life of the times; and 
 the nurse was a convention of even longer standing. The plot 
 and development of the Meiite aie neither absolutely original 
 nor can they be interpreted, with any degree, of certainty as 
 entirely auto-biographical. At the same time the play does not seem 
 to be a servile imitation dependent on a single source. It seem3 a 
 rather skilful gathering of more or less traditional scenes and 
 situations and types; an assembling of reminiscences from Cor- 
 neille's reading rather than any direct transcript from the life 
 which he observed and in which he took part. (55). Yet, he 
 stated in his Examen de Meliie, in 1660 : La nouveaute de ce 
 genre de comedie dont il n' y a aucun exemple dans aucune 
 
 langue furent sans doute la cause de ce bonheur sur- 
 
 prenant et qui faisoit alors tant de bruit." (56). The differ- 
 ence of the Mel lie from the contemporary plays, on which Cor- 
 neille prided himself in 16G0, lies rather in the fact that he 
 brought, or rather attempted to bring, on the stage characters 
 from the France he knew, than in the invention of a new plot. 
 Yet, in this respect he had been preceded by the great number 
 of novels which treated of contemporary themes, and, frequently, 
 in the same setting as in Corneille's early productions: in Paris. 
 
 CORNEILLE'S EARLY PLAYS AND THE NOVELS OF 
 
 THE TIME 
 
 CorneiUe's Mel He differs from the stage of his day in that 
 the scene of this pastoral love-imbroglio is laid in Paris. "La 
 scene est a Paris." But the love-story of the two rivals — Eraste 
 and Tircis, — is not in any way related to this setting ; it remained 
 a pastoral intrigue, pervaded by the traditional pastoral gallan- 
 try. Corneille 's characters behave in Paris just as do the happy 
 or love-lorn shepherds in the shady groves of d'Urfe's Forez. 
 They walk along the beaten path of the pastoral in the rivalries 
 which are characteristic of this type of fiction; they adopt the 
 customary tricks of disappointed lovers; they fall into the cus- 
 tomary madness or despair, and end their arduous courtship 
 with the no less conventional pairing off at the denouement. 
 
 The young Corneille was in perfect good faith, no doubt,
 
 ■when he Galled his characters ''Parisians.'-' At the -time of the 
 UClitc he -^as a yomig lawyer of the Provinces, who had no inti- 
 mate acquaintance with the cultivated Parisian circles which he 
 tried to depict. He did not find his types in the real life of the 
 capital, for it was only later that he visited Paris for any consid- 
 erabl*. time. The anecdote related by Thomas Corneille and Fon- 
 tenelle. stating. -that the nucleus of the M elite was furnished to 
 •the- young • Corneille by .a personal- adventure at Rouen, impli- 
 cates -that he did- not depict lovers from the- refined Parisian 
 drawing -rooms, -but from the more provincial surroundings of his 
 iiative city. It is to be observed, as I have pointed out in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, that rather than portraying types from Paris or 
 from his o-m environment, he was largely reproducing charact- 
 ers and situations from the contemporary fiction or from the con- 
 temporary stage. 
 
 Critics -have generally attributed to Corneille, at the time of 
 his early plays, a good deal of independ-ent power of realisti<> ob- 
 serVaticm.- He is said to have portrayed in them the "precieux" 
 society of his day. Yet, one finds in his early productions, es- 
 pecially in- the M elite and the Clitandre, a number of incidents 
 •and situations, which could not be taken directly from daily life. 
 Tircis' credulity and Eraste's mythological madness, in his first 
 play, cannot be classified as common traits of the "honnete 
 homme." His heroes are closely akin to the shepherds of the 
 then flourishing pastoral, to the "gentleman" of the contempor- 
 ary, sentimental and pastoral novels. Now, since Corneille was 
 well acquainted with the literature of the epoch (57), it is clear 
 enough that he viewed his "contemporary" characters largely 
 through literary prototypes, that he modeled them after the pat- 
 tern of the "honnete homme", as he knew him through his read- 
 ings. 
 
 Corneille 's tendency toward the painting of contemporary 
 life — which grows stronger and more balanced in the three plays 
 following the Clitandre — had been exemplified before and after 
 J630, by the parallel effort toward contemporaneity which can be 
 traced in a great number of novels of the time, in those that un- 
 dertook to depict "real life," (58) as seen, more or less, through 
 the pastoral atmosphere. These novels present, in this respect, 
 a marked contrast to the development in theatrical composition, 
 which, from 1610 to about 1630, gave little or no place to the 
 French life of the time. The great variety of di-amatic forms
 
 prevalent at the beginning of the seventeenth century, all re- 
 mained alien to the portrayal of the actual life of the epoch. The 
 tragi-comcdy showed a preference for historical or foreign sub- 
 .ieets; the farce remained decidedly in the lower regions of life; 
 the pastoral clung to its conventional seUing of a shepherds' 
 country; the tragedy reproduced the subject-matter taken from 
 antiquity. 
 
 There is no doulit that these novels,— which devoted ranch' 
 attention to contemporary life, — influenced the stage in this di- 
 rection. It was quite a common practice during the early part 
 of the seventeenth century to adapt the plot of a novel to the 
 stage, and it has been said that the tragi-comedy, with all its ir- 
 regularities, was essentially an attempt to condense in a few acts, 
 all the adventures of .a long heroic novel. Examples of such adap- 
 tations are numerous. Hardy, for example, took his D arise, from 
 de Rosset's Amans volages de ce temps; his Gesippe from Boccac- 
 cio, etc.; Rotrou cut a play out of Sorel's Cleagenor et Doristce; 
 du Ryer took his Lisandre et Caliste from a novel of d'Audiguier, 
 aud put Barclay's Argenis on tlie stage. The late-Greek novel 
 of Tatios inspired his Cli^ophon, and Hai'dy used the same source 
 for one of his lost plays. Du Hamel imitated in his tragedy 
 . Acoubar (1603), the novel of du Perier, Lcs Amours de Pisiion. 
 The Amours de Dalchmion et de Deflore, a novel of J. Philippes, 
 is put on the stage as the Amours de Dalcmcon by Est. Bellone. 
 Giboin took his tragi- comedy, Amours de Philandre et de Marizee-, 
 (1619) from de Nerveze's story of the same title (1598). The 
 Astree was for years the source of plot material for de Scudery, 
 Rayssiguier, and various others (59). The playwrights of the 
 time delved with eager hands into the treasures of fiction that 
 the novels opened for them. 
 
 The theories and examples of the novelists Avere thus bound 
 to affect the composition of these plays as well as the literaiy at- 
 mosphere in gcueral. -Now, during the 16.00-1630 period, the 
 novelists voiced many times the need of turning to contempoi^aiy 
 life for literary subjects and tried to put their theories into prac- 
 tice in creating ''real" men and women. Their stories from 
 "real" life, however, continued to he filled with elements takeft 
 from the romancer of chivalry, from the Greek or- the" pastoral 
 novel. A magic'an, a wonderful shipwreck, a glorious fight of 
 the hero against overpowering odds, or even a satyr, appear in a 
 tale, pretending to be " entirely true. ' ' This curious mixture of
 
 " vraysemblable " and ' ' invraysemblable " is characteristic of the 
 ehaotic state of the literature of the time. Even in novels, which 
 made a claim to truthfulness, the elements of real life and those 
 of the pastoral or chivalric romance are strangely blended, 
 Guillaume Coste for instance, in his Lcs Bcrgcncs dc Vesper (60) 
 drew a picture — remarkable for the time — of the love adventures 
 of some shepherds, who were, in reality, lovers from the class of 
 the countiy nobility, with their characteristic customs. These 
 lovers are adorned with shepherds' names, says the writer, 
 "pource qu'il faut qu'ils conduizent et gouvernent Icurs pensees 
 amoureuses, qui sont des troupeaux assez souvent malaisez a 
 gouverner." The elements of reality are represented by clearly 
 portrayed meetings and Avalks in the country, convivial feasts, 
 and serenades; the elements from the pastoral tradition by fights 
 with a satyr, wandering cavaliers, etc. 
 
 When a novel of that type was put on the stage, it retained 
 these characteristics and presented the same mixture of the real 
 and the unreal. Hardy's play, Dorisc, taken from de Rosset's 
 Amans volages de ce temps, furnishes an example. The Persian 
 names of some of his heroes have no more significance than the 
 shepherd's names of the Bcrgc.ries de Vesper, for de Rosset claims 
 to picture contemporary noblemen. He says that in his book 
 "sous des noms empruntcz sont contenus les Amours de plusieurs 
 Princes, Seigneurs, Gentils-hommes, & autres personnes de marque, 
 qui ont trompez leurs Maistresses, ou qui ont este trompez d'elles." 
 The incidents of the story, and consequently of Hardy's play, are 
 strikingly resemblant to those of Corneille's M elite. Two friends, 
 Salmaces and Licanor, love Doris. During the absence of Sal- 
 maces, the rival, Licanor, wins the girl for himself by lying and 
 by a letter-trick. Salmaces runs off to the country and lives half- 
 mad in a hermitage, where he is discovered by Sydere, who loves 
 him. The " invraysemblable " elements are then introduced in 
 this alleged ''vraysemblable" love-story in the form of a female 
 magician, who discovers that the madness of Salmaces is occasion- 
 ed by a secret charm. With her supernatural power, she brings 
 him back to sanity and a double marriage ends the play. This 
 v.'ork is relatively more real than much of the contemporary and 
 later production. And for this, the influence of its source, — a 
 novel of contemporary life. — is largely responsible. 
 
 In the period 1600-1630, when the general tendencies of the 
 theater were either toward the pastoral or toward the extravagant
 
 tragi-comedy, these novels imitated thus, in a more or less con- 
 ventional manner, the life of the time. But they limited them- 
 selves to the love between noblemen and refined ladies, for they 
 disdained "ces amours vulgaires qui ne se pratiquent qu'entre 
 des ames de basse origine" (Timothee de ChillsiC-Oenvres, 1599). 
 Princes and princesses appear only by exception. The ordinary 
 characters are exactly those "honnestes gens" whom Corneille 
 depicted in his first phiys. In voicing their theories, in their 
 prefaces, the novelists opposed the enormous influence of an- 
 tiquity as well as the "foreign country" craze which later sent 
 so many novel-heroes to Turkey or to unknown lands. 
 
 The anonymous author of the Amours du brave Lydamas et 
 de la belle Myrtille, (Toulouse, 1594) says that he depicts "des 
 Amours frangois et non estrangers. " And du Souhait hi the 
 novel, Poliphile et Mellonimphe (1598), argues: "Qu'est il be- 
 soign de mendier chez les anciens le tesmoignage des effects de 
 I 'amour, puisque nostre siecle les faict naistre! Ne croirons nous 
 plustost a nos yeux qu' a nos oreilles? Qui sont ceux 
 tant amis de I'antiquite et ennemis de leur age, qui donnent 
 vie a des histoires rapportees de nos peres, pour ensevelir celles 
 qui naissent avec nous?" The author of La Constance d'Alisee 
 et de Diane opposes the custom of using foreign settings in 
 novels : ' ' Belles ames que la France a nourries et eslevees dans 
 son sein, pourquoy allez-vous mendiant parmy les estrangers les 
 ruynes d 'amour, pour en faire parade, laissant en depost a 
 I'oubliance les plus remarquables tragedies de ce tyran, advenues 
 entre les Francois?" While insisting on the necessity of finding 
 inspiration in daily life, some novelists ask for more truth in the 
 painting of love, for more " vraysemblance. " The anonymous au- 
 thor of the Amours de Melite et de Statiphile (1609), claims 
 his adherence to these principles in these terms: "Helas, qu'il 
 est besoign recourir aux masures de I'antiquite, remembrer les 
 siecles passees, escheler les cieux com me nouveaux Promethees, 
 
 pour y desrober quelque science d 'amour uour ne tenir 
 
 compte des estranges accidens qu 'ordinairement nous produit 
 I'exces d'une passion amoureuse, en nos contrees, en I'enclos de 
 
 nos villes, et de nos maisons On ne verra pas dans mon 
 
 livre, des evenemens tragiques, des fictions de Psyche avec son 
 Cupidon, ny les ruses d'une Medee; mais la verite de ma passion, 
 le progrez de mes amoureuses recherches et facheux accidens 
 d'icelles, la fidelite d'un serviteur paye d'inconstance." The
 
 sieur de la Regnerye in the Amours dc Liniason et de Palinoe 
 (1601) follows the same theory. He declares that his story was 
 "tres veritable", and that he told it "iiaivement." 
 
 FranCj'ois de Rosset in the Preface of his Hisioires tragiques 
 de nostre Temps (1st ed. 1616) exclaimed as so many other novel- 
 writers of the time : " Ce ne sont pas des contes de 1 'antiquite 
 fabulense, que je te donne (0 France mere de tant de beaux Es- 
 prits, qui font rougir de honte et la Grece et 1 'Italic;) Ce sont 
 des Histoires autant veritables que tristes et funestes. Les noms 
 de la plupart des personnages sont seulement desguisez en ce 
 Theatre, a fin de naffliger pas tant les families de ceux qui en 
 ont donne le suject " 
 
 The last sentence refers to an important element of contem- 
 poraneity in the novel of the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, the tendency to narrate actual events — sometimes embel- 
 lished with very improbable incidents — to flatter influential no- 
 blemen by making them the disguised heroes of a story. The 
 numerous "Romans a clef" thus created, fitted in with a similar 
 tendency in the pastoral play, which, staged mostly in the castles 
 of the nobles, in many cases pretended to put on the scene, under 
 a disguise, the constant or fickle loves of a noble protector of let- 
 ters. 
 
 One of the stories of Rosset 's Histoires Tragiques depicts 
 some incidents from the life of Francois de Lorraine, de Guise, 
 "Lieutenant General pour le Roy en Provence." In the Dedicace 
 
 to him, it is said : " vous estes 1 'autheur de la plus 
 
 belle partie de cest ouvrage. Vostre valeur s'y est depeiute avec 
 de si vives couleurs, que I'esclat en fait rougir de honte les plus 
 
 valeureux de ce siecle II n 'est pas besoing de reciter 
 
 en ceste Epitre ce que tout le monde salt admirer, puisque je I'ay 
 fidellement descrit en 1 'une de ces Histoires " 
 
 In a similar way, a great number of authors of the be- 
 ginning of the seventeenth century described, under assumed 
 names, the adventures of living personages. And this preoccu- 
 pation was bound to give to their work a certain measure of real- 
 ity and fidelity in the depicting of contemporary life. To this 
 category of "Romans a clef" belong, for example: Les amours 
 de la helle du Luc of J. Prevost (1597). La Galatee et les adven- 
 tures du Prince Astiages of A. Remy (1625) : — Histoire de la vie 
 et de la niort d'Arthemise by Jean de Lannel (1621) ; — La Caritee 
 of Gomberville (1621) ; — Le Cleandre d' Amour et de Mars of
 
 Pebrac de Montpesat (1620) •,—L'Arcadie Frangoise of Ollenix 
 de Mont Sacre (1625) ; — Le Roman des chevaliers de la Gloire of 
 de Rosset (1612) ; Romant royal ou histoire de nostre temps 
 of Piloust (1621) ;— Theatre d'Histoires of Phil, de Belleville 
 (1610) ; — Cleodante et Hermclinde ou Histoire de la Cour of A. 
 Humbert (1629); Endijmion of Gombauld {1&24:) ;— Histoire des 
 Amans vohujes de ce temps of de Rosset (1616) — Roman de la 
 Cour de Briixelles of Puget de la Serre (1628) Polyxene of 
 Moliere d' Essertines (1625) and other novels or collections of 
 stories. 
 
 Some authors claim that their stories are entirely true and 
 even add in some cases, that they were actually copied from real 
 life. Reze calls his Desespere contentement d' Amour (1599) an 
 "Histoire veritable et advenue." So does du Souhait for his 
 Amours de Poliphile et Mellonimphe (1599) and his Les Propri- 
 etez d' Amour (1601). To the same class belong: Les amours 
 d'Amisidore et de Chrysolite, "histoire veritable ou est descrite 
 rinconstance des amoureux de ce temps" of du Bail (1623); — 
 L'Olympe d' amour, histoire non faint e of Henri du Lisdam 
 (1609) ; — Les fidelles et constant es amours de Lisdamus et de 
 Cleonymphe of Henri du Lisdam (1615), where the hero is clear- 
 ly the writer himself ; — the Histoire tragi-comique de nostre temps 
 sous les noms de Lysandre et de Caliste of d'Audiguier (1615) ; — 
 Les agreables diversitez d'Amour of N. Moulinet (1613); — 
 Le tableau des deserts enchantes of N. Piloust (1614) containing 
 stories "aussi pitoyables que veritables" — Marechal's La Chryso- 
 lite ou le secret des romans (1627) — Les Amours de Philandre, 
 gentilhomme Bourguignon, of Des Escuteaux (1621) — La Mort 
 de VAmotir oil se list la veritable et nouvelle histoire des amours 
 de Calianthe et Florifile of Pr. Gauthier (1616),— L'Histoire des 
 amours tragiques de ce temps of Isaac de Laffemas (1607) — and 
 a number of other novels and collections of stories whose preten- 
 sion to depict contemporary life is more or less justified. 
 
 Men of greater renown than most of these now-forgotten 
 novel-writers, acclaimed the theory. The pious and prolific bishop 
 Camus reproached the authors of his time for disguising in 
 ancient frocks, the incidents of daily life and love. He ventured 
 his criticism as follows in the Preface of his Clear este, "histoire 
 frangoise-espagnolle, representant le tableau d'une parfaite 
 
 amitie" (1626) vous a qui un evenement arrive en des 
 
 lieux voysins, ou que vous frequentez d 'ordinaire, fait plaisir,
 
 aurez sans doute plus de plaisir d ouir ce qui s'est passe aupres 
 de vostre demeure, que si ce succes estoit avenu en des eudroits 
 
 plus esloignez Et cepeudaut il y a des esprits je ne 
 
 sQay comment faicts, qui ne peuvent se contenter que par le recit 
 des histoires aiiciennes, encore que ce soient des choux cuits et 
 recuits a taut de fois qu'ils exeitent mi desgoust plustost qu'ils 
 ne donnent de I'appetit; ou si elles sont modernes, qui les veulent 
 des pais si esloignez de leur connoissance qu'on n'en puisse avoir 
 
 de certitude asseuree De moy, j ' ay tousjours estime que 
 
 nous ne devions point aller chercher si loing de nous ce qui estoit 
 proche, soit pour les lieux, soit pour le temps, et qu'il ne falloit 
 point emprunter des livres escrits ce que Ton peut pescher dans 
 les evenements (lui tombent devant nos yeux, et dont nous sommes 
 temoins irreprochables. Cependant plusieurs escrivains ignorans- 
 
 ce secret pour multiplier leurs f antes en pensant bien 
 
 faire desguisent a I'antique ce qui est moderne, habillent 
 
 a I'estranger ce qui est domestique, mauvais tailleurs et cuisiniers. 
 Mais aussi de releguer en Asie, en Affrique, ou en Amerique ce 
 qui est avenu parmi nous, et feindre des religions profanes, ou 
 des lieux que les Cosmographes out de la peine a trouver dans 
 leurs cartes, c'est une extremite qui ne peut estre appreuvee." 
 (61). The heroes of the devout novelist, as a matter of fact, fre- 
 quently belong to the middle-class of the time. G. Bayer {Pierre 
 Camus und seine Romane 1906) has shown that some of the stor- 
 ies he narrates are based on actual incidents of Camus' own life 
 or of that of his acquaintances. Other, however, have too strong 
 a flavour of the " invraysemblable " to be a real picture of daily 
 incidents truthfully observed. And frequently his confessed in- 
 tention to prove in his tales the superiority of the religious voca- 
 tion distorts his point of view. Notwithstanding these shortcom- 
 ings, his numerous works were relatively more " vraysemblable " 
 than a great part of the contemporary literature and they in- 
 creased, in this way, the growing tendency toward more truth in 
 literary art. He was as much an outspoken enemy of the exag- 
 gerations of the ''roman d'aventure" and of the pastoral novel 
 as Sorel or Mareschal. He even claimed that he wrote his works 
 with the intention of combating their nefarious influence. "Or, 
 pour terrasser tant de livres fabuleux, je n 'entreprends pas mon 
 combat de droit front, comme si je refutais des heresies. Car il 
 n'est point besoin de se mettre en peine de prouver I'obscurite 
 des tenebres, ni de montrer la faussete de ces romans, bergeries,
 
 aventures, chevaleries et autres fatras, qui se confessent fabuleux 
 en leiirs prefaces, et dont la lecture pleine de caprice, de vers, de 
 feintes, d'impossibilites, d 'absurdites, d'enchantements, d 'ex- 
 travagances, et pareilles bagatelles, fait assez eonnaitre Timper- 
 tinence. Ce serait, comme dit I'apotre, combattre centre I'air et 
 courir sans but, ou tout au plus imiter cet empereur faineant qui 
 ne faisait la guerre qu'aux mouches. De quelle fagon est-ce done 
 que je taehe de defaire mes adversaires? C'est par diversion et 
 comme Jacob fit a Esau, par supplantation, mettant des revela- 
 tions chretiennes, veritables et utiles a la place de celles qui sont 
 profanes, fabuleuses, et non seulement in utiles, mais, pour la plus 
 grande part pernicieuses. " (62) Among his contemporary nov- 
 els may be mentioned : PHronille, accident pitoyahle de nos jours 
 (1610), La Memoire de Darie (1620), Elise, evenement tragique 
 de nostre temps (1621), Dorothee (1625), Flaminio et Caiman 
 (1626), Aloph ou le Parastre malheureux, histoire frangaise 
 (1626), Honorat et Aurelio (1628), Marianne (1629), Les spec- 
 tacles d'horreur, ou se decouvrent plusieurs tragiques effets de 
 nostre siecle (1630), L'Amphithetre sanglant (1630), etc. In 
 1629 Camus went to Rouen as vicar to the archbishop FranQois 
 de Harlay for whom, in 1633, Corneille wrote his "Excusatio." 
 It is thus very likely that the poet knew Camus and his works at 
 the very time that he was writing his Melite. 
 
 Among the novels taking inspiration from contemporary life, 
 a number are found which tell the adventures of lovers of the 
 capital and of the court, and introduce certain parts of ParLs as 
 a setting. In view of Corneille 's portrayal on the stage of the 
 same category of lovers in the same milieu, they may be styled 
 forerunners in prose of his endeavour in verse. The anonymous 
 Marianne de Filomele (1596) is called "histoire advenue, il n'y 
 a longtemps en ceste ville de Paris." Camus designates his Mari- 
 anne ou I' innocent e victime as an Evenement tragique, arrive 
 au faubourg St. Germain, and his La pieuse Julie (1625) as an 
 histoire parisienne. A number of novels relate incidents which 
 occurred at the court, and sketch living courtiers under assumed 
 names. The more psychological novels furnish, for instance. Les 
 diverses Affections de Minerve of d'Audiguier (1625), an inter- 
 esting study of a young woman, an artful coquette, surrounded 
 by her various suitors, like Corneille 's Veuve. The scene is laid 
 in Paris, as it is for La Floride of du Verdier (1624) which pre- 
 sents a similar subject. These two books lead us to that other
 
 study of a coquette'. Chrysulitc on le secret des romans of A. 
 Mareschal (1627) in which "Athens" is a transparent mask for 
 Paris. In his Preface he defends stronjjly the " vray-semblable" 
 and the contemporaneity of material. He finds in the novels of 
 his time, "rien de solide, rien de vraysemblable, ni qui se puisse 
 rapporter aux moeurs et a la puissance des hommes, ou du veri- 
 table cours du temps et des siecles Voyant que jusques 
 
 ici tous ceux qui se sont picquez en ce genre d'ecrire nous ont 
 vendu le fard pour le vray teint, et ont donne une face a leurs 
 livres, (jui pour estre pleine de piperies, de mensojjnes et d'impos- 
 
 sibilites. a pu entretenir et abuser beaucoup d'esprits J'ai 
 
 voulu reduire a nostre portee ce faste menteur, et cet orgeuil qui 
 
 ne sert que pour faire une pompe au dessus des nues Ici 
 
 je n'ay rien mis qu'un homme ne peust faire, je me suis tenu 
 dans les termes d'une vie privee, afin que chacun se peust mouler 
 sur les actions que je descry, et je ne me suis mis de I'antiquite 
 que pour donner une couleur estranpere au bien ou au mal de 
 nostre temps." Sorel, who exercised a very potent influence in 
 the direction of contemporaneity of material had attempted the 
 portrayal of contemporary life before illustrating; his theories in 
 a satirical way with his Berger extravagant. His Palais d'An- 
 gelie (1632) is composed of a number of love-stories, told by girls 
 and young men, and each tale starts or finishes by an abduction. 
 In his Preface he says: "Je me suis esloigne du tout de ces his- 
 toires monstrueuses qui n'ont aucune vraysemblance. Je ne rac- 
 onte que des actions qui se peuvent faire selon le temps." One 
 of the stories, Olynthe, (63) takes us to the fair of St. Germain, 
 to the Gallerie du Palais, etc. His observations of the higher 
 bourgeoisie are interesting in view of the appearance of these 
 types on the stage a few years later. With Les Nouvelles Fran- 
 Qoises (1623) he preserves to a certain extent the modernity of 
 the subject, although he introduces too many "invraysemblable" 
 adventures, atrocious fights with Turkish pirates, hidden treas- 
 ures, shipwrecks, etc. Notwithstanding this concession to the 
 taste of the time, some stories of the book take place in Paris, in 
 the Tuilleries or the Bois de Vincennes, as for example, Les Trois 
 Amans. Sorel, like the others, insists upon the necessity of turn- 
 ing to contemporary subjects, and he uses the identical terms of 
 
 Camus: "Beautez vous aurez sans doute plus de plaisir 
 
 d 'entendre une histoire qui s'est passee en des lieux que vous fre- 
 quentez ordinairement, qu'une autre, dont tous les succes seroient
 
 reservez en d'autres endroits. Cependaiit plusieurs qui ifjnorant 
 ce secret, ne vous donnent que des histoires des plus esloijjcnez, 
 lesquelles ne vous scauroient si bien toucher Tame, et commettent 
 line faute en pensant bien faire, desguisent le plus souveiit ce 
 qui est avenu en nostre contree en I'habillant a Test range re. Bien 
 qu' ils ayeiit acquis du renom, je ne les veux pas suivre en cela, 
 croyant que la gloire ne leur a pas este donnee judicieusement." 
 (Page 555). In his Franoion (1622) Sorel repeats, in satyrical 
 form, the demand for contemporary material and greater '*vray- 
 semblance. " lie speaks of a shepherd-novel in the following 
 terms: "Les bergers y sont philosophes et font I'amour de la 
 meme sorte que le plus gallant homme du monde. A quel propos 
 tout ceci? Que I'auteur ne donne-t-il a ces personnages la qualite 
 de chevaliers bien nourris? Leur fit il, en cet etat, faire des mir- 
 acles de prudence et de bien dire, Ton ne s'en etonneroit point 
 comme d'un prodige. L'histoire veritable ou feinte, doit repre- 
 senter les choses an plus pres du naturel ; autrement c'est une 
 fable qui ne sert qu'a entretenir les enfants au coin du feu, non 
 pas les esprits murs, dont la vivacite penetre partout. " And 
 later on in his Bihliothcque Francoise (64) he repeats while pass- 
 ing judgment on his own early novels: "Ce ne sont point de ces 
 grands sujets qu'on appelle Heroiques, ou il ne paroist que des 
 Roys et des Conquerans sur la scene : Ce sont des avantures de 
 quelques personnes de mediocre condition, mais on y trouvera 
 possible de la vray-semblance, et le stile est accommode au sujet." 
 
 The theory of the description of contemporary life in fiction 
 had thus been voiced and exemplified abundantly in a number 
 of novels which were in favour at the time of Corneille's youth. 
 This constant demand for contemporaneity and truth in literary 
 art — also reiterated by Theophile de Viau — hardly could remain 
 without influence upon the stage of the time. Yet, as far as is 
 known, it was only about 1630 that, rather suddenly, French con- 
 temporary life appeared on the stage. It is quite probable that 
 before that date, Hardy treated in some of his lost plays subject 
 matter taken from the life of the times. If rediscovered, they 
 would illuminate fully the meaning of Corneille's words, that he 
 began to write following the example of "feu Hardy." Since 
 Hardy constantlj^ took subjects from novels and novelettes, it 
 would be difficult to conceive that in his restless hunt for sub- 
 jects to be staged in his hundreds of plays, he would have left un- 
 touched the rich and inviting source of inspiration to be found
 
 in the novel of contemporary tendencies, of which he made use 
 for his Dorisc. Amonj; his known plays some are derived from 
 novels and stories, from Cervantes, Boccaccio Greene, etc. Par- 
 ticularly sifrnificant is it that Hardy's Dorise — as pointed out 
 above — is very similar in characterization, construction, and at- 
 mosphere to Corneille's M elite. Corneille's early plays have a 
 common trait: they all sta^e a pastoral love-imbroglio more or 
 less successfully interwoven with a realistic setting. Exactly in 
 this, lies their striking resemblance to a number of contemporary 
 novels which show the same method of composition. 
 
 The problem which Corneille, at his debut, had to solve was, 
 to combine a certain measure of contemporary truth with an arti- 
 ficial pastoral love-imbroglio. He solved it as before him novel- 
 writers had done by dropping the most unreal scenes of the pas- 
 toral plots, the echoes, the satyrs, the magicians, and by trans- 
 posing the remaining love-story into a well-known setting. That 
 his sense of the *'real" was, at first, not alwaj's sure, is shown by 
 his introduction into the plot of his Melite, such hackneyed and 
 mythological scenes as those of the madness of Eraste. Yet we 
 cannot doubt that he Avas helped in his attempt to depict contem- 
 porary life by examples of similar tendencies in the "quelques 
 modernes" which he confessed to have read at the time of his 
 debut (65). 
 
 For even the pastoral literature of the times was not alto- 
 gether artificial and unreal istically imaginative. Tinder the im- 
 pulse tOAvard the vraysemblable and toward more fidelity to na- 
 ture Avhich grows stronger in the first decades of the seventeenth 
 century, all that was actual and living in the pastoral plays of 
 the time w^as brought to the foreground and disengaged from the 
 unessential and traditional episodes of Spanish and Italian origin. 
 After all, the pastoral plays of the time were more real than we 
 now suppose. They had a certain bearing upon the life of the 
 period which time has dimmed for us and made difficult to esti- 
 mate. 
 
 To us, no relation at all seems to exist between those tradi- 
 tional satyrs, echoes, sighing shepherds, and capricious shepherd- 
 esses, and the real men and women of the epoch. Yet, many writ- 
 ers of pastorals had symbolical intentions and brought on the 
 stage real characters disguised as shepherds. They wrote for 
 court-circles and affected to represent "les aventures de quel- 
 ques grands princes" (66) under the transparent veil of the
 
 shepherd's tale then in vogue. In the introduction of the Astree, 
 Honore d'Urfe says that nobody ought to wonder at the refined 
 language of his shepherds as they are no real rustics, but well- 
 bred noblemen and women, who oidy took on this disguise to en- 
 able them to lead a more varied and interesting life. He defends 
 his symbolical attitude by pointing to the theater of the time, 
 where, he says, the shepherds were dressed in lace and silk, and 
 carried a gilded shepherd's crook. La Mesnardiere, in his 
 Poetique (1640), holds that the poets should lend only fine feel- 
 ings and sublime discourse to the shepherds. He takes the point 
 of view that a pastoral play is a description of the court, where 
 it is impossible to find "des dames laides et stupides." 
 
 For the courtier of 1600-1630, the dreamland of Arcadia, the 
 realm of love, was not blossoming "somewhere out of the world." 
 It was the country dreamed of by every perfect lover, a country 
 of eternal flowers, clear streams, mysterious woods, and glorious 
 evenings, through which a sublimated love would lead them. It 
 had for them the reality of a poetic fancy, gilding the cold 
 facts of daily life. They adopted this disguise, these names, and 
 these manner.s, half through fashion, half through sympathy for 
 its artificial but refined poetry. Half sincere, half make-believe 
 in play, they identified themselves with the shepherds of the pas- 
 torals, who were all "perfect courtiers" in pseudo-rustic dis- 
 guise. They named their sweethearts after these shepherdesses 
 of their favorite stories. Circles and academies were founded 
 where the fictitious shepherd's existence passed from the stage 
 into actual life. "Tons etaient frappes." Court-circles became 
 a sort of continuous masquerade, in which poets and men of 
 learning, the rich bourgeoisie and officials, and even grave the- 
 ologians and dashing generals took part. All followed the vogue. 
 The influence of the Astree on the Hotel de Rambouillet is well 
 known. The German princes offered to d'Urfe the presidency of 
 their shepherds' circle, while Vauquelin des Yveteaux lived in 
 the park of his hotel, in shepherd's dress, wearing a splendid 
 straw-hat with an inside of red satin, and guided through the 
 well-kept alleys an herd of imaginary sheep (67). There was, in 
 a word, a perpetual reaction from the pastoral plays and novels 
 upon the elegant life, and from this upon the literature. The 
 general tendency to the rustic disguise was not exclusively an 
 absurd and paradoxial fashion. It corresponded to a certain 
 reality in the mind of the spectators. It had a symbolical bear-
 
 ing on real life, and the love-stories represented seemed not so 
 absurdly unreal as they now seem to us. The audience often felt, 
 no doubt, that a real love-story was being told under the pastoral 
 mask. And it was precisely this love-story which acquired a 
 greater directness and reality as 1630 is approached. It is this 
 tendency toward actuality and verisimilitude, toward stressing 
 the love-story in the pastoral play more than the conventional ac- 
 cessories which, no doubt, was fostered by the novels of the time 
 which depicted, more or less successfully, the actual life of the 
 times. 
 
 Some hesitating realism appears already here and there in 
 the pastoral plays just before 1630 ; some of them announce the 
 coming change by some of their scenes or by their general spirit. 
 A few examples may be given : the pastoral play Aristhene of P. 
 Troterel (1626) — a writer whose publisher was usually Corneille's 
 friend David du Petit-Val — almost attained an imitation of reality 
 in the scene of a ti-ial where no solemn druid priest pronounces 
 a heaven-sent sentence, as in the pastoral plays, but where a real 
 judge appears surrounded by his court. The cross-examination 
 which ensues is in real comedy-style. The sieur de la Morelle in 
 his Philis ou V amour contraire (1627-28) paints the conflicting 
 aspirations of a prudent father and a liberty-loving daughter in 
 a way denoting a closer observation of reality than was the cus- 
 tom generally on the stage of the period. And Mareschal, who 
 with his novel Chrysolite had already entered a plea for vray- 
 semblance, — derived from the adventures of light-hearted Hylas 
 in the Astree, a pastoral which approaches the style of the com- 
 edy L'Inconstance d' Hylas (1629-30) (68). The chorus and the 
 echoes disappear from the plays before or around that time (69). 
 The satyr already humanized by Hardy, has no role at all in 
 some tragi-comedie-pastorales (70). 
 
 Thus we perceive how the fundamental love-story of the pas- 
 toral play disengaged itself from the superfluous and unreal em- 
 bellishments and episodes. This can be explained by the greater 
 demand for realism fostered by the novel of contemporary ten- 
 dencies, by the ironical attacks upon the invraysemblable of the 
 pastoral literature by Sorel, Mareschal, and Camus, while it was 
 no doubt greatly fostered by the Ballets wherein types of the 
 real life of the time appeared (71). When the exaggerated and 
 unreal episodes were dropped, there remained the eternal story of 
 a true love — as treated in Corneille's early plays — crossed by an
 
 envious rival or by avaricious parents or by the accidents of fate, 
 ending with a general triumph for the lovers and with the tra- 
 ditional marriages of all the parties concerned. But it was the 
 construction of plot which was changed and simplified, rather 
 than the characterization. The heroes of the "contemporary" 
 play remain true to the characteristics of the gentlemen-shepherd 
 of the pastoral and of the sentimental novel ; the lovers are still 
 adorned with shepherd names ; they still speak largely in precious 
 "style Nerveze"; they are easily deceived with false reports or 
 by a letter; they write poetry and complain in melodious verse; 
 they are tender-hearted, elegant, brave and constant, or they 
 make a display of methodic inconstancy after the manner of 
 Hylas in the Astree. Suicide and madness are the ordinary ef- 
 fects of a real or supposed infidelity. But the consequences of 
 their acts of despair are rarely tragic. Those who jump in the 
 rivers are rescued, those who retire to the desert are brought 
 back, those who go mad recover and the rustic pipes play the 
 dance hymns of the happy couples at the final day of happiness. 
 
 If this evolution of the pastoral play toward a greater reality, 
 under the influence of the novels and the stories of contemporary 
 life, is taken into account, the connection of Corneille's early 
 plays with the literary evolution of the times will be less proble- 
 matic. 
 
 If the current in French literature of 1600-1630 toward the 
 painting of contemporary life and toward more truthfulness in 
 characterization had affected the young Corneille alone among the 
 playwrights around 1630, it might be called an individual case, 
 of which no general principle could be deduced. But the same 
 phenomenon is to be observed about this same time, in the work 
 of other playwrights, influenced by the same general literary ten- 
 dencies. They attempted to bring contemporary life on the stage 
 without the Melite having exerted any influence upon their work. 
 Corneille's bitter and opponent in the Cid quarrel, Claveret, 
 seems to have produced at the time of the Melite his play Angel ie 
 ou I' esprit fort (1629-1630) (72) in which he shows really closer 
 and more critical observation of contemporary humanity than 
 Corneille in the Melite. The plot of the play is weak, though 
 Claveret was very proud of having observed all the rules. It con- 
 sists chiefly in the amusing courtship paid by suitors of various 
 kinds to the three bewitching daughters of Cloridan. Two of 
 the wooers are especially interesting from the point of view of
 
 the characterization of contemporary life: Criton, I'Esprit Fort, 
 and his satelite, Nicandre, I'Esprit Doux. The sharp-witted An- 
 gelie, one of the dauj^hters of Cloridan depicts I'Esprit Fort: 
 
 Ce rafiFine Cliton est un homme a la mode, 
 
 Dont le seul entretien vaut bien qu'on s 'incommode! 
 
 Affecter en parlant un ton imperieux ; 
 
 Blamer le feu d 'amour mais en feindre en tons lieux; 
 
 En effet n 'aimer rien, vouloir qu'une maitresse, 
 
 Admire leurs discours et leur fasse caresse; 
 
 Publier des faveurs que jamais ils n'ont eucs 
 
 Parle-t-on de Tetat, faire les politiques, 
 
 Tantot paraitre froids, reveurs, melancholiques. 
 
 Et puis se reveillant de ce profond sommeil, 
 
 Soutenir qu'ils out vu des taches au soleil. 
 
 Pester contre le sort, le destin, la fortune, 
 
 Et ne suivre jamais la creance commune 
 
 Dire un mot des bons vers, puis y faire une glose, 
 
 Jurer que Saint Martin fait mieux que Bellerose; 
 
 Lorsqu'on les contredit, faire les mutines: 
 
 Un collet en desordre, un manteau sur le nez 
 
 This style resembles more Corneille's manner in the Veuve, 
 the Galerie du Palais, and La Place Royal e than the M elite. The 
 satire is less pronounced in the Melite than in the latter plays 
 with the exception of the character of a fop, Philandre, who talks 
 "en style Nerveze." Claveret manifestly had read the satirical 
 writers of the time, Regnier, Courval-Sonnet, Jean Auvray and 
 others, and he betrayed their influence in the sketch of his Esprit 
 Fort. And for the plays following the Clitandre, Corneille also 
 seems to have imitated the tone of the satyrists. Even as Cor- 
 neille's characters, for instance, in the Galerie du Palais, the Es- 
 prit Fort gives his opinions about the literature of the day: 
 "Ah! J'oublie a vous dire une plaisante chose: 
 Criton dit que I'Astree est un sot livre en prose, 
 Que Malherbe en son temps n'entendait rien aux vers, 
 Comme il porte tou jours son manteau de travers. 
 Figurez vous, Monsieur qu'il a I'esprit de meme 
 
 Claveret 's chief defect in his play is that it remains too 
 much a literary satire. Corneille's Melite, less happy and realis- 
 tic in characterization, surpasses it by its lively action, by its 
 clever arrangement and succession of scenes, qualities which re- 
 veal the born playwright.
 
 Another eoniinon feature of both plays is their satire of pre- 
 ciosity and exaggerated compliments a la mode.... One of the 
 girls makes fun of the fine-mannered lover who, in his verses, had 
 called her a "soleil incendiaire" much after the fashion of Cor- 
 neille's heroines in the Melite and the Veuve. She says: "Je 
 
 crains en m 'arretant de vous reduire en cendre " and about 
 
 his verses: "Je vais les rendre au feu, puisqu'ils sont tout de 
 flamme...." And when Criton indulges in "parler Phebus", 
 Angelie does not show any more enthusiasm than Corneille's 
 Melite or his Veuve for his far fetched compliments and conven- 
 tional flattery : 
 
 Qui se pourrait resoudre a ne pas vous aimer, 
 
 Puisque aux beautes d 'esprit celle du corps sont jointes? 
 
 Vos cheveux seulement savent faire des pointes, 
 
 Vos boucles des prisons, les plus petits des traits, 
 
 Amour sur votre front met un arc tout expres. 
 
 Angelie: Monsieur, je suis d' humeur a rever aujourd'hui. 
 
 If Claveret did not disguise the truth in an attempt to prove 
 that his play was earlier than Corneille's Melite, when he stated, 
 in 1637, that he wrote his play nearly seven years previously to 
 this date, it becomes worthy of note for the history of the French 
 stage in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Its simi- 
 larity with Corneille's early works cannot be explained, in that 
 case, by influence of the one upon the other. It points clearly to 
 a common source of inspiration in its preference for contempor- 
 aneity and its general tone. And this common source we per- 
 ceive in the novels of contemporary life, with additional color 
 from the Ballets and from the satirical literature. 
 
 Another play represented about 1630, P. du Ryer's Lisandre 
 et Caliste, a tragi-comedy, of which the sceiie is laid in modern 
 France, was directly inspired by a novel treating of contemporary 
 events, by the Histoire tragi-comique de nostre temps by d'Audi- 
 guier (1615). It affords another example of the influence of the 
 novel in the direction of contemporaneity of material. The play 
 is too overloaded with romantic incident, murder, duels, disap- 
 pearances and heroic fights, to suggest a direct transcript from 
 actual life. In the second act, however, a scene is found between 
 a butcher and his wife, which was realistically staged in the Paris 
 of the time as the Memoire de Mahelot shows : "II f aut au milieu
 
 du theatre le petit ehastelet de la Rue de Sainct Jacques et faire 
 paroistre une rue ou sout les bouchers, etc." (73). 
 
 In 1633, Rayssiguier publishes his La Bourgeoise ou la Prom- 
 enade de Saint-Cloud, which may have beeu played in 1631, and 
 preceded Corneille's GaUerie du Palais (played probably in 
 1632). At least, it may be considered as having appeared at the 
 same time. It is built upon a complicated intrigue, engineered 
 by the "bourgeoise" who desires to marry either one of the two 
 suitors of her two friends. The stage scenery is specifically 
 Parisian. A tendency to introduce contemporary stage-setting 
 and, in a number of cases, Parisian stage-setting as a surround- 
 ing for contemporary characters, developed in the thirties of the 
 17th century. A lost play by La Pineliere was called La Foire 
 de Sainct Germain; P. du Ryer gave his Vendanges de Suresnes; 
 Mareschal his Railleur, Claveret's Eaux de Forges was not played 
 following the Reponse a I' Amy du Cid "par la discrete crainte 
 qu'ils (les comediens) eurent de facher quelques personnes de con- 
 dition qui pouvaient reconnoitre leurs aveiitures dans la repre- 
 sentation de cette piece." (74). Another play of Claveret, a 
 Place Royale, was represented in June or July 1633 (75). Bait. 
 Baro sketched the characters of a lawyer and painter in his lost 
 work La Force du Destin. The anonymous play Le matois Mary 
 ou la Courtizane atirapee (Com. prose. 1634) contains details 
 about the Parisian life of the time. Discret's Alizone depicts the 
 lower bourgeoisie-class; Gillet de la Tessonerie derived a very 
 indecent comedy from the satirical novel Francion, of Sorel, while 
 Desmarets Saint Sorlin in his Les Visionnaires (1637) makes 
 sport of the special forms of literary affectation of some fops and 
 precieuses. Rayssiguier used the Thuileries as stage-setting as well 
 as the Cinq Autheurs who desired to please Richelieu. Corneille's 
 Melite was one of the first examples of this tendency toward con- 
 temporaneity. Since we may reasonably accept that he was ac- 
 quainted with the literature of his times, the numerous novels of 
 contemporary life could not have escaped his attention. From 
 their example and from the theories expounded in their prefaces 
 he derived his tendency toward actuality in his first plays, more 
 than from a direct copy of the existing society of his times. The 
 influence which they exerted upon the young Corneille as well as 
 upon other playwrights of the time consisted in inspiring them 
 with a desire of bringing into their pastoral plots elements of 
 actuality and verisimilitude. And from 1630 to 1636 Corneille,
 
 with his rather positive sense of life — even positive and affirma- 
 tive in his heroic tragedies — followed more consistently this im- 
 pulse than his fellow playwrights. 
 
 In view of Thomas Corneille's and Pontenelle's testimonials, 
 it can be accepted that the first impulse to write the Melite was 
 due to a love-adventure of Pierre Corneille. Yet, while compos- 
 ing his first play, he took color from the contemporary literature. 
 Various episodes or characters of it denote conscious imitation of 
 stock themes, such as the madness of Eraste and the trick of the 
 false letters, or of traditional characters, such as the nurse. As 
 far as the characterization of the principal heroes and heroines is 
 concerned, his imitation seems less direct and more in the nature 
 of an influence: his heroes resemble closely, it is true, those of 
 the pastoral and of the sentimental novel, but they seem to be 
 specimens of the same type rather than slavish copies derived 
 from a direct source. A more conscious effort of art can be de- 
 tected in Corneille's endeavor to depict on the stage contempor- 
 ary life, after the fashion of many novels of the time. 
 
 Because of its predominant literary inspiration the MeJite 
 cannot be interpreted entirely as an auto-biographical document : 
 it throws more light on the fact that Corneille was well acquaint- 
 ed with the French literature of his day than on his life. Its 
 characters cannot be identified with living personages, with Cath- 
 erine Hue, Corneille himself and his sister, Marie. When the 
 purely literary elements are taken out of the play, the auto-bio- 
 graphical side is seen to shrink to slender proportions: it is ])rob- 
 able that the part relating to the sonnet "Apres les yeux de 
 Melite, il n' y a rien d' adorable", is a trace of Corneille's actual 
 experience, for Corneille printed this sonnet before the play, and 
 in the Melite it co)istitutes a kind of "hors d' oeuvre". without 
 any direct bearing on the action. 
 
 On the other hand the literary influences upon the Melite 
 here discussed prove that Corneille was well aware of the literary 
 life of his period, even at his debut, and that he cannot be con- 
 ceived as a young man, who, without literary preparation, sud- 
 denly began to write an original comedy merely to celebrate his 
 sweetheart's charms. His first work appears rather as a natural 
 outgrowth of the influences by which he was surrounded in Rouen, 
 a center of literary activity at the time. From this point of
 
 view, too, his early comedies are seen to be connected with the 
 literature of his epoch, which largely inspired him in various con- 
 vental episodes and in his early conception of character. No 
 "abyss" — as has been said — separates Corneille from the preced- 
 ing literature. The first blossoming of his art was a natural phe- 
 nomenon of development, due to his milieu and his natural cur- 
 iosity for literature; no sudden and spontaneous miracle of love. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 (1) Bouquet. — Points obscurs et nouveaux de la vie de 
 Pierre Corneille. Ch. VI. — Corneille et la Cour de Louis XIII 
 aux Eaux de Forges. 
 
 (2) La Bruyere. — Bes ouvrages de I' esprit. — Ed. Servais. 
 1912, I, p. 139. 
 
 (3) Boileau. — Reflexions critiques sur Long in. Ed. Gidel, 
 III, 363-64. 
 
 (4) Voltaire — Avis sur les comedies de Corneille. — Oeu- 
 vres. 1785, vol. 51, p. 447. 
 
 (5) La Harpe — Lycee ou Cours de Lift. 1820, V, 195. 
 
 (6) Nisard.— Hisf. de la Litt. jr. II, 96. 
 
 (7) Abbe d' Olivet cited by Le Brun : Corneille devant 
 trois siccles. 
 
 (8) Nisard.— H/sf. de la litt. jr., II, 87. 
 
 (9) Roger Le Brun. — Corneille devant trois siecles. — Intro- 
 duction, p. 11. 
 
 (10) F. Brunetiere.— f//sL de la litt. jr. classique. II, 173. 
 
 (11) 1108; Dictio7inaire geograp.hique. Word: Rouen. 
 
 (12) Marty-Laveaux, X. 
 
 (13) Nouvelles de la Repuhlique des lettres — 1685. p. 89. 
 Eloge de M. Corneille. Marty-Laveaux (I, 21 and 125) attri- 
 butes this article to an anonymous author. LT. Meyer in the 
 Zeitschrift /. Franz. Spr. und Lit. 1885 (p. 119, note 2) attri- 
 butes it to Fontenelle. Cf. Also the other studies on Corneille by 
 U. Meyer. 
 
 (14) Introduction to the edition of Corneille 's works by 
 the abbe Granet, 1738. 
 
 (15) Manuscript in the library of Caen. It has been dated 
 about 1785-90. 
 
 (16) Emm. Gaillard — Nouveaux details sur Pierre Cor- 
 neille, 1834. 
 
 (17) See his edition of Corneille, I, 128.
 
 (18) F. Bouquet, op. cit. 62. 
 
 (19) Marie Corneille was baptized on November 4, 1609. 
 Cf. Bouquet op. cit, 62. 
 
 (20) The most reliable account is, of course, the one given 
 by Thomas Corneille. Fontenelle was born at Rouen in 1657. 
 Pierre Corneille left that city for Paris in 1662, when his 
 nephew was five years old. Fontenelle himself confessed that 
 his knowledge of the historical facts of Pierre Corneille 's life 
 was limited and uncertain. Speaking about the edition of Cor- 
 neille 's works by the abbe Granet, in 1738, he said : On a 
 receuilli, avec soin et avec gout, ces differentes pieces, dont on 
 a fait un volume a la suite de son Theatre, reimprime en 1738, 
 et je ne puis mieux faire que de renvoyer sur toute cette 
 matiere. ... qu' a une preface judicieuse et bien ecrite, ou 1' on 
 trouvera de plus des traits historiques que je ne savais pas. L' 
 auteur y doute d ' un fait que j ' avals avance ; j ' avoue que son 
 doute seul m' ebranle ; c' est un fait que j' ai trouve etabli dans 
 ma memoire comme certain, quoique depouille de toutes ses 
 preuves, que j' ai eu tout le loisir d'oublier parf aitement. " 
 (Vie de Corneille par Fontenelle, ed. Belin, p. 348 and Hist, de 
 I' Academie Frangaise, by Pellison et d' Olivet, ed. Livet p. 
 208.) 
 
 (21) See my articles in Modern Philology: A common- 
 place in Corneille 's Melite. XVII, 141; and Corneille 's early 
 Friends and Surroundings, XVIII, 361. 
 
 (22) For a list of translations, see Lee Wolff. — The Greek 
 Romances in Elizahethan Prose Fiction, 1506. — Italian transla- 
 tion of books V-VIII by L. Dolce. — 1560. — Complete Italian 
 translation by Angelo Coccio. — 1597. — English translation by 
 Wm. Burton. 
 
 (23) Les Devis amoureux, traduits nagueres de grec en 
 latin et depuis de latin en frangois par I' Amoureux de Vertu. — 
 Paris. G. Corrozet. 1545. 
 
 (24) Lyon, C. Marchant. 1556.— Lyon B. Rigaud. 1573. 
 
 (25) See H. Carrington Lancaster. — Two lost plays by 
 Alex. Hardy. — Modern Language Notes. May, 1912. 
 
 (25a) See H. Carrington Lancaster — Pierre du Ryer, 
 dramatist. 
 
 (26) G. Reynier. — Le roman sentimental avant I' Astree, 
 p. 380
 
 (26a) Corneille's Illusion Comique, Mahelot's Memoire, and 
 Rampalle's Belinde. Studies in Philology, XVIII, 1. 
 
 (27) Probably 1628. 
 
 (28) A. Feuillerat. — Jolm Lyhj: Contribution a I' histoire 
 de la Renaissance en Angleterre. Cambridge, 1910, pp. 74-75; 
 274-75. 
 
 (29) Cf. S. Lee Wolff. — A source of Euphues. Modern 
 Philology, April, 1910. Also his book "The Greek Romances in 
 Elizabethan Prose." Fiction.— 1912, p. 248. 
 
 (30) Wilhelm Grimm {Kleinere Schriften, III), Erwin 
 Rohde {Der Griechische Roman and seine Vorlaufer, p. 274), 
 0nd Gaston Paris {La Hit. jr. au Moyen Age, p. 51) agree that 
 the probable source of the Rival -friends story is a lost Greek 
 romance. The old French poem Athis et Prophilias by Alex- 
 andre de Barnai seems to be based on it. Rohde and others 
 think it possible that Boccaccio made use of the lost Middle- 
 Greek romance for his Tito e Gisippo. A curious hypothesis is 
 set up by Mr. S. L. Wolff about Goldsmith's possible knowledge 
 of the Greek source and about the use he made of it for his 
 rival story : Septiniius and Alcander. — See L. Wolff, op. cit. p. 
 263. The essential features of the story are found in Petrus 
 Alphonsus Disci plina Clericalis (circa 1106) ; in the Gesta Ro- 
 manorum; in Thomas de Cantimpre's De Proprietatibus Apum 
 (after 1251); in Nicolas Pergamenus" Dialogus Creaturarum 
 (13th or 14th century) ; etc. 
 
 (31) 1535, f. 211-227. 
 
 (32) By Jean Barbe d'Orge. 1537. 
 
 (33) Phillippi Beroaldi Bononiensis Poete Carmen de Duo- 
 bus Amantibus 1530. — L' hystoyre de Titus et Gesippus et 
 autres petiz oeuvres de Beroalde Latin, interpretes en Rime 
 Frangoise par Francois Habert. 1431. — Cf. S. Lee Wolff op. cit. 
 and Violier des Histoires Romaines (translation of the Gesta 
 Romanorum). Republished in the Bibl. Elzevirienne, 1858. — p. 
 392-93. 
 
 (34) Astree. — Vol. II, story I and II; vol. V, story 5 and 
 p. 373. 
 
 (35) Adapted from the Astree: Histoire de Celion et de 
 Bellinde (I, story 10). Played about 1631, printed 1634. 
 
 (36) Hardy. — Oeuvres. — Ed. Stengel. 
 
 (37) Hardy's Dorise was adapted from a story of de Ros-
 
 set's Histoires des Atnans volages de ce temps ou sous des noms 
 empruntez sent contenus les Amours de plusieurs Princes, Seig- 
 neurs, Gentils-hommes, et autres personnes de marque, qui out 
 tronipe lews Maistresses, ou qui ont este trompez d' elles. 1614 
 ( ?) 1616, 1619, etc. 
 
 (39) 1632. Marsaii, 1m Pastorale dramatique. 
 
 (40) Bouquet. — op. cit. 57-58. 
 
 (41) These passages were erased in later editions. See 
 the footnotes in Marty-Laveaux's edition. 
 
 (42) I, 8; II, 3, 4; III, 7, 9 ; V, 1, 12. 
 
 (43) 1635; Cf. Marsan, La Pastorale dramatique. 
 
 (44) Mart3^-Lav. I, 156. 
 
 (45) Such a scene was quite general and conventional in 
 the pastoral plays of the time. It is also found in novels. The 
 second scene of the first act of T. Tasso's Aminta was an influ- 
 ential example. To Tasso's influence seems due that in Theocris, 
 a pastorale of P. Troterel, sieur d' Aves, (1610, Rouen, Du Petit- 
 Val.) the joyful Neridon gives to his friend Theocris the same 
 worldly-Axise counsels. 
 
 (46) By de Nerveze.— 1601 (?) 1602. Included in the col- 
 lective edition of de Nerveze 's stories: Amours diverses. 1606. 
 (The 6th story). 
 
 (47) Marty-Lav. I, 139. 
 
 (48) Gaste.— La querelle du Cid. p. 309. 
 
 (49) See my article in Modern Philology (July, 1910) : A 
 Commonplace in Corneille's Melite: fhe madness of Eraste. 
 The lovers of the novels, of the pastoral plays and of the tragi- 
 comedies of the 1600-1640 period were frequently represented 
 as mad, as attempting suicide, or rushing, in imagination, 
 through the infernal regions. Mad lovers are especially preva- 
 lent in the plays which appeared about the time that the Melite 
 was being composed or soon after its first representation, so 
 that they may have been acted before Corneille's play. The ar- 
 ticle refers, for similar scenes, to Hardy's Alcmeon ou la ven- 
 geance feminine, Racan's Bergeries, Pichou's Folies de Gar- 
 denia, Mairet's Sylvie, Rotrou's Hgpocondriaque, Mareschal's 
 Genereuse Allemande, Jacques Le Clerc's Guerrier Repenty, de 
 la Croix's Climene, de la Morelle's Philine ou I' amour contraire, 
 the anonymous play La Folie de Silene (1624), du Vicuget's Ad- 
 ventures de Policandre et de Basil ie.
 
 (50) Les Ocuvres de Philippes Des Fortes. Lyon, Rigaiid, 
 1593. f. 221. 
 
 Other forms of poetry also felt the influence of this conven- 
 tion. In the Franciade of Ronsard the madness of Clymene is 
 depicted. Learning that Franeus has rejected her love she los- 
 es her reason and runs, "hurlante par les champs" pursuing a 
 wild boar whom she takes for her lover. Another instance is 
 to be found in Les Chang ementz de la Bergcre Iris by J. de 
 Lingendes (Paris, 1605) where Philene having lost his sweet- 
 heart thus narrates his experiences : 
 
 Lors m'egarant en mes propos, 
 Sans nourriture et sans repos, 
 Et repaissant ma fantaisie 
 De ce qui I'alloit offensant, 
 Mon mal tous jours se renforgant 
 Enfin je tombe en frenaisie. 
 
 Et voyant, mais sans jugement, 
 Et prive de tout sentiment, 
 Un vieil Nautonnier pasle et sombre, 
 Je pensay que ce fust Charron, 
 Qui m'enlevait sur I'Acheron, 
 Croyant n'estre plus que mon ombre. 
 
 These conventional madness scenes became popular in the 
 novels of which Astree may be taken as a representative. In an 
 episode of the second volume {Histoire de Doris et Falemon) 
 Adraste becomes insane through love and the author, d'Urfe, 
 used the material for his pastoral play Sylvanire. In the His- 
 toire de Bosanire, Celiodante et Rosileon of the fourth volume, 
 Celiodante has the same misfortune. And this episode furnish- 
 ed the material for a lost play of Pichou, Rosileon, and for the 
 CUomedon of Du Ryer which was first played under the name 
 of Rossyleon (cf. Carrington Lancaster, P. Du Ryer). In the 
 seventh volume Azahyde makes an unsuccessful attempt to mur- 
 der Sylvandre. The father of Azahyde dies broken hearted 
 whereupon the latter shuns society and brooding over his sins 
 becomes insane. His description of his experience, which is 
 typical, shows how d'Urfe appropriated the processes to be 
 found in the tragedies, tragi-comedies and pastoral plays of the 
 time: Ainsi ne trouvant plus de paix dans la societe, je recourus
 
 a la solitude, et pour cela je me retiray en une maison que j'ay 
 aux champs, mais mon peche qui me suivoit partout ne me 
 donna pas plus de relasehe la qu'ailleurs; au contraire, eomme 
 si le ciel eust voulu me puiiir par mo^y-mesme, il permit que 
 durant plus d'un mois je u'eus jamais de pensees que celles de 
 ma faute, et de la punition que j'en pouvois eneourir. Ce qui 
 me troubla de sorte, que je recognus sensiblement que peu a peu 
 ma raison se perdit dans la Yiolence de ce ressentiment. Je 
 combattis quelque temps contre la naissance de ce mal; mais 
 les Dieux qui voulurent appesantir leurs mains sur moy, me 
 firent bien tost esprouver qu'ils pouvoient donner aux mortels 
 des peines plus grandes que celles qui proviennent de la perte 
 de la raison. et de fait, une nuict que j'estois enferme dans ma 
 chambre, et couche dans mon lit, j'ouys, tout a coup, ouvrir la 
 porte, avec un bruit espouventable, et soudain que j'eus porte 
 curieusement la vue pour apprendre ce que c'estoit, je \ns 
 Abariel (his father) convert de sang en plusieurs endroits ten- 
 ant dans I'une de ses mains un flambeau allume, et dans 1 'autre 
 un coeur perce de trois ou quatre cousteaux ; II avoit devant 
 soy I'une des Furies et les autres deux a ses costez, toutes trois 
 portants un Flambeau comme luy, et armee dans I'autre main 
 de fouets retors, qui se separoient en diverses pointes. . . .il se 
 retire deux ou trois pas, et faisant un certain signe aux Furies 
 qui I'accompagnoient aussitost elles se saisirent de moy, et 
 cependant que I'une me faisoit devorer le sein par des serpents, 
 I'autre me brusloit de son flambeau, et la troisiesme me dechir- 
 ant de coups sans s'amolir, sembloit accroistre sa rage par mes 
 
 cris et par mes plaintes Je fus dans ce tourment plus 
 
 d'une heure, apres laquelle un si grand assoupissement me 
 saisit, qu'il dura jusqu' au jour." (Vol. Y, Story 10, P. 345). 
 
 Another counterpart of the situation is found in Du Perier's 
 novel, La Haine et l' Amour d' Arnoul et de Clair emonde. 
 (1600) p. 10. 
 
 Other plays with madness scenes are: Stratonice ou le 
 malade d'Amour — Tragi-eomedie by de Brosse (1644), — Antioc- 
 lus loves his mother-in-laAV Stratonice. He feigns madness to 
 obtain her hand. Mairet's tragedy Roland (1640) imitates the 
 madness of Orlando furioso. The tragedy Arie et Petus, ou les 
 Amours de Neron by Gilbert (1659) ends with the remorse and 
 madness of Nero. 
 
 (52) La Comedie au XVII e siecle, p. 32.
 
 (53) Here sliould be noted that the platouic love theories 
 played an important pai-t in this transformation. Authors like 
 Castijrlione in his Corffffiano, Leo Hebreo in his Philosophie d' 
 Amour, Cornelius Ajirippa in his Declamatio de nobilitate et 
 preecellentia fcminei sexus; Heroet in his Parfaicte Amie, each 
 in their own way, had brought Platonism down from the clear 
 regions of abstract thought to practical life. Helped by the 
 numerous books in favor of women, connected with the eternal 
 quarrel of the sexes in French ami other literatures, they had 
 transformed it into a sort of society-science, a code of rules gov- 
 erning social conduct and conversation. Pastoral novels and 
 plays, being a mixture of things real and things ideal, of con- 
 temporary "perfect gentlemen" and of imaginary rustics, were 
 pervaded by the same atmosphere. 
 
 (54) The date of this book is given as 1()14. The Privi- 
 lege of the edition Denys Moreau, Paris, is dated July 31, 1616. 
 
 (55) It is reasonable to suppose that Corneille would have 
 read a number of the novels and plays published at Rouen, the 
 more that one of the principal publishers of the time, Raphael 
 du Petit-Val, was his friend. He must have been acquainted, 
 too, with the works of the various authors who dedicated verse 
 to him for his La Veuve. We also know the titles of some of 
 the books which he received as prizes in the school of the 
 Jesuits at Rouen. The known sources of his later Avorks prove 
 that he read contemporary Spanish plays and ballads, Amyot's 
 translation of Plutarch, and various Latin historians. 
 
 Martinenche {La Comedia espagnola en France) has nothing 
 to say about Spanish influence upon the M elite. Huszar in his 
 Corneille et le theatre Espagnol gives a list of very general fea- 
 tures common to rorneille's early plays and the Spanish Comed- 
 ia. But he cites no case of definite similarity. Corneille 's first 
 work resembles the French models cited in this study much 
 more closely in both spirit and detail than it does the Spanish 
 plays to which Mr. Huszar refers in a general way. 
 
 (56) Marty-La veaux, I, 139. 
 
 (57 Cf. my study on Corneille' s early Friends and Sur- 
 roundings. Modern Philology, XVTTT, p. 366, 
 
 (58) The expression "real life" is not taken here as a syn- 
 onym for "realism."" It means that the characters of the novel 
 or of the play ai-e taken from the humanity of the time, and not 
 from legend, history or mythology.
 
 (59) The following plays are inspired by the Astree: 1. 
 Rayssiguier, Tragi-comedie pastorale on les amours d' Astree et de 
 Celadon sont meslees a celles de Diane, de Silvandre et de Paris. 
 2. Maresehal — L'Inconstance d'Hylas. o. La Prise de MarciUif 
 de M. (Durval?) cited by the Memoire de Mahelot (fol. 41). The 
 play is lost. 4. Auvray ; La Dorinde. 5. Baro ; La Clorise. 6. 
 Rayssiguier: Palinice, Circene et Florice. 7. de Scudery; Lig- 
 damon et Lidias. 8. Cotignon : Madonte. 9. Auvray : Madonte. 
 
 10. Piehou : Rosileon (mentioned by Tsnnrd) lost play. 11. Du 
 Ryer: Rossylfon (same play as the "Cleomedon" Cf. Carrington 
 Lancaster: P. Du Ryer, p. 62-63), 12. Mairet: Chriseide et 
 Arimant. 13. de Scudery: Orante. 14. de Scudery: Eudoxe. 
 15. Abel de Sainte Marthe: Isidore ou la pudicite vengee. 16. 
 Gillet de la Tessonnerie: La Mort de Valentinien et d' Isidore. 
 
 17. Rayssiguier: Alidor et Orante ou la Celidee ou la Calirie. 
 
 18. d'Urfe: La Sylvanire. 19. Mairet: La Sylvanire. 20. de 
 Scudery : Le Vassal genereux. 21. de Scudery : . Le Trompeur 
 puny ou I'histoire septentrionale. 
 
 (60) Les Bergeries de Vesper ou les amours d^Antonin, 
 Florelle et autres Bergers et Bergeres de Placemont et Beausejour, 
 par le sieur Guillaume Coste, Gentilhomme proveneal. A Paris — 
 Rollin Baragnes — J. Bouillerot 1618." 
 
 (61) Clcoreste, II, f. 191. 
 
 (62) Preface of Les Eveneniens singuliers 1628. 
 
 (63) PP. 305, 462, 758. Not without importance too, is the 
 influence of works as Fancan's Tombeau des Romans 1626; the 
 Berger Extravagant and Barclaj^'s Euphormion. See Livre 
 
 11, chap. 3. . . .Tu verras comme I'autheur se moque de quelques 
 uns qui estiment si fort ce que les anciens ont fait qu'ils ne pen- 
 vent s'imaginer que ceux d' a present puissent mieux faire ou 
 mieux dire (Translation of Nau. 1626). 
 
 (64) 1664. 
 
 (65) Examen de M elite — Marty-Laveaux I, 138. 
 
 (66) P. Troterel: L' Amour triompJiant, 1615. 
 
 (67) Tallemant : Historiettes — Vigneul — M.dr\i\le, Melanges 
 d'Histoire et de Litterature, 1725, I. 177. 
 
 (68) This play was printed in 1635, but played in 1629 or 
 1630 as shown by the Avis au Lecteur where the author refers to 
 the applause which his play "a receus sur un theatre de cinq 
 ans." In the dedicace to Henry de Lorraine, he says about
 
 Hylas: "Qu'il vienne pare de ses graces naturelles qui I'ont fait 
 souvent admirer sur le theatre afin de vous aborder plus honor- 
 ablement des applaudissements qu'il a re^eus de tout Paris et 
 d'une vieille reputation continuee de cinq a six ans." 
 
 (69) Cfr. Marsan — La Pastorale dramatique, Chapter VII. 
 
 (70) Ihid, Ch. VI and VII. 
 
 (71) Cf. Ballets et Masoarades de Cour de Henri III a 
 Louis XIV — published by Paul Lacroix, 1870, 6 volumes, Henry 
 Prunieres; Le Ballet de cour en France avant Benserade et Lully, 
 1914. H. Carrington Lancaster: Relations between French Plays 
 and Ballets from 1581 to 1650. Publications of the Modern Lan- 
 guage Association, XXXI, No. 3. 
 
 (72) This play was printed in 1636, according to the Freres 
 Parfaict. They state the author said in his preface: '*I1 est 
 sorti de ma plume, il y a plus de sept ans." M. Linthillac testi- 
 fies that he does not know of any edition earlier than 1637 (Paris 
 Targa). The text referred to higher reads there: '*I1 est sorti 
 de ma plume il y a pres de sept ans." The play must therefore 
 be dated 1629 or 1630— Cf Linthillac : Histoire de la Comedie au 
 XVII, Siecle. p. 8. 
 
 (73) Cf. The important critical republication of Mahelot's 
 Memoire by Professor Carrington Lancaster. Paris Champion, 
 1921 ; and, for the enumeration of plays in this paragraph his 
 study : Relations between French plays and Ballets from 1581 
 to 1650. Publications of the Modern Language Association of 
 America. XXXI, No. 3. 
 
 (74) Gaste. — La querelle du Cid. p. 304. 
 
 (75) Corneille was accused by Claveret of having begun his 
 Place Royale "Des que vous sutes que j'y travaillois" Lettre du 
 sieur Claveret a Corneille. Gaste, op. cit. 305.
 
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