mancia, the river-god, rising with his tributary streams around him, after bidding her despair of the city, goes into a tedious consolation, in which the triumphs of Charles and Philip are specifically, and with as much tameness as adulation, brought forward as her future recompense. A much worse passage occurs in the fourth act, where Lira, her brother lying dead of famine, and her lover of his wounds before her, implores death from a soldier who passes over the stage. He replies that some other hand must perform that office; he was born only to adore her. This frigid and absurd line, in such a play by such a poet, is an almost incredible proof of the mischief which the Provençal writers, with their hyperbolical gallantry, had done to European poetry. But it is just to observe that this is the only faulty passage, and that the language of the two lovers is simple, tender, and pathetic. The material accompaniments of representation on the Spanish theatre seem to have been full as defective as on our own. The Numancia is printed with stage directions, almost sufficient to provoke a smile in the midst of its withering horrors. French theatre; Jodelle. 19. The mysteries which had delighted the Parisians for a century and a half were suddenly forbidden by the parliament as indecent and profane in 1548. Four years only elapsed before they were replaced, though not on the same stage, by a different style of representation. Whatever obscure attempts at a regular dramatic composition may have been traced in France at an earlier period, Jodelle was acknowledged by his contemporaries to be the true father of their theatre. His tragedy of Cléopatre, and his comedy of La Rencontre, were both represented for the first time before Henry II. in 1552. Another comedy, Eugène, and a tragedy on the story of Dido, were published about the same time. Pasquier, who tells us this, was himself a witness of the representation of the two former. Otra mano, otro hierro ha de acabaros, Cette comédie et la Cléopatre furent représentées devant le roi Henri à Paris en l'Hostel de Rheims, avec un grand applaudissement de toute la compagnie; et depuis encore au collège de Boncourt, où toutes les fenestres estoient tapissées d'une infinité de personnages d'honneur, et la cour si pleine d'escoliers que les portes du collège en regorgeoient. Je le dis comme celuy qui y estois présent, avec le grand Tornebus en une mesme chambre. Et les entreparleurs estoient tous hommes de nom. Ĉar même Remy Belleau et Jean de la Peruse jouoient les principaux roullets. Suard tells us that the whole troop of performers, the Con The Cléopatre, according to Fontenelle, is very simple, without action or stage effect, full of long speeches, and with a chorus at the end of every act. The style is often low and ludicrous, which did not prevent this tragedy, the first-fruits of a theatre which was to produce Racine, from being received with vast applause. There is, in reality, amidst these raptures that frequently attend an infant literature, something of an undefined presage of the future, which should hinder us from thinking them quite ridiculous. The comedy of Eugène is in verse, and, in the judgment of Fontenelle, much superior to the tragedies of Jodelle. It has more action, a dialogue better conceived, and some traits of humour and nature. This play, however, is very immoral and licentious; and it may be remarked that some of its satire falls on the vices of the clergy.t Garnier. 20. The Agamemnon of Toutain, published in 1557, is taken from Seneca, and several other pieces about the same time, or soon afterwards, seem also to be translations." The Jules César of Grevin was represented in 1560. It contains a few lines that La Harpe has extracted, as not without animation. But the first tragedian that deserves much notice after Jodelle was Robert Garnier, whose eight tragedies were collectively printed in 1580. They are chiefly taken from mythology or ancient history, and are evidently framed according to a standard of taste which has ever since prevailed on the French stage. But they retain some characteristics of the classical drama which were soon afterwards laid aside; the chorus is heard between every act, and a great portion of the events is related by messengers. Garnier makes little change in the stories he found in Seneca or Euripides; nor had love yet been thought essential to tragedy. Though his speeches are frères de la Passion, whose mysteries had been interdicted, availed themselves of an exclusive privilege granted to them by Charles VI. in 1400, to prevent the representation of the Cléopatre by public actors. Jodelle was therefore forced to have it performed by his friends. See Recherches de la France, 1. vii. c. 6. Fontenelle, Hist. du Théâtre François (in Euvres de Font., edit. 1776), vol. iii. p. 52. Beauchamps, Recherches sur les Théâtres de France. Suard, Mélanges de Littérature, vol. iv. p. 59. The last immeasurably long, and overladen with pompous epithets, though they have often much the air of bad imitations of Seneca's manner, from whom probably, if any one should give himself the pains to make the comparison, some would be found to have been freely translated, we must acknowledge that in many of his couplets the reader perceives a more genuine tone of tragedy, and the germ of that artificial style which reached its perfection in far greater men than Garnier. In almost every line there is some fault, either against taste or the present rules of verse; yet there are many which a good poet would only have had to amend and polish. The account of Polyxena's death in La Troade is very well translated from the Hecuba. But his best tragedy seems to be Les Juives, which is wholly his own, and displays no inconsiderable powers of poetical description. In this I am confirmed by Fontenelle, who says that this tragedy has many noble and touching passages; wherein he has been aided by taking much from Scripture, the natural sublimity of which cannot fail to produce an effect. We find, however, in Les Juives a good deal of that propensity to exhibit cruelty, by which the Italian and English theatres were at that time distinguished. Pasquier says, that every one gave the prize to Garnier above all who had preceded him, and after enumerating his eight plays, expresses his opinion that they would be admired by posterity." 21. We may consider the comedies of Larivey, published in 1579, as making a sort of epoch in the French drama. This writer, of whom little is known, but that he was a native of Champagne, prefers a claim to be the first who chose subjects for comedy from real life in France (forgetting in this those of Jodelle), Larivey. P. 71. Suard, who dwells much longer on Garnier than either Fontenelle or La Harpe has done, observes, as I think, with justice: Les ouvrages de Garnier méritent de faire époque dans l'histoire du théâtre, non par la beauté de ses plans; il n'en faut chercher de bons dans aucune des tragédies du seizième siècle; mais les sentimens qu'il exprime sont nobles, son style a souvent de l'élévation sans enflure et beaucoup de sensibilité; sa versification est facile et souvent harmonieuse. C'est lui qui a fixé and the first who wrote original dramas in prose. His comedies are six in number, to which three were added in a subsequent edition, which is very rare." These six are Le Laquais, La Veuve, Les Esprits, Le Morfondu, Les Jaloux, and Les Ecoliers. Some of them are partly borrowed from Plautus and Terence; and in general they belong to that school, presenting the usual characters of the Roman stage, with no great attempt at originality. But the dialogue is conducted with spirit; and in many scenes, especially in the play called Le Laquais, which, though the most free in all respects, appears to me the most comic and amusing, would remind any reader of the minor pieces of Molière, being conceived, though not entirely executed, with the same humour. All these comedies of Larivey are highly licentious both in their incidents and language. It is supposed in the Biographie Universelle that Molière and Regnard borrowed some ideas from Larivey; but both the instances alleged will be found in Plautus. Theatres in Paris. 22. No regular theatre was yet established in France. These plays of Garnier, Larivey, and others of that class, were represented either in colleges or in private houses. But the Confrères de la Passion, and another company, the Enfans de Sans Souci, whom they admitted into a participation of their privilege, used to act gross and stupid farces, which few respectable persons witnessed. After some unsuccessful attempts, two companies of regular actors appeared near the close of the century; one, in 1598, having purchased the exclusive right of the Confrères de la Passion, laid the foundations of the Comédie Française, so celebrated and so permanent; the other, in 1600, established by its permission a second theatre in the Marais. But the pieces they represented were still of a very low class.b 23. England at the commencement of this period could a The first edition itself, I conceive, is not very common; for few writers within my knowledge have mentioned Larivey. Fontenelle, I think, could not have read his plays, or he would have given him a place in his brief sketch of the early French stage, as the father of comedy in prose. La Harpe was too superficial to know any thing about him. Beauchamps, vol. ii. p. 68, acknowledges his pretensions, and he has a niche in the Biographie Universelle. Suard has also done him some justice. b Suard. English stage. с boast of little besides the Scripture mysteries, already losing ground, but which have been traced down to the close of the century, and the more popular moral plays, which furnished abundant opportunities for satire on the times, for ludicrous humour, and for attacks on the old or the new religion. The latter, however, were kept in some restraint by the Tudor government. These moralities gradually drew nearer to regular comedies, and sometimes had nothing but an abstract name given to an individual, by which they could be even apparently distinguished from such. We have already mentioned Ralph Royster Doyster, written by Udal in the reign of Henry VIII., as the earliest English comedy in a proper sense, so far as our negative evidence warrants such a position. Mr. Collier has recovered four acts of another, called Misogonus, which he refers to the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. It is, like the former, a picture of Gammar London life. A more celebrated piece is Gammar Needle. Gurton's Needle, commonly ascribed to John Still, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells. No edition is known. before 1575, but it seems to have been represented in Christ's College at Cambridge, not far from the year 1565. It is impossible for anything to be meaner in subject and characters than this strange farce; but the author had some vein of humour, and writing neither for fame nor money, but to make light-hearted boys laugh, and to laugh with them, and that with as little grossness as the story would admit, is not to be judged with severe criticism. He comes, however, below Udal, and perhaps below the writer of Misogonus. The Supposes of George Gascoyne, acted at Gray's Inn in 1566, is but a translation in prose from the Suppositi of Ariosto. It seems to have been published in the same year. Gurton's Hist. of Dramatic Poetry, ii. 464. d Mr. Collier agrees with Malone in assigning this date, but it is merely conjectural, as one rather earlier might be chosen with equal probability. Still is said in the biographies to have been born in 1543; but this date seems to be too low. He became Margaret's professor of divinity in 1570. Gammar Gurton's Needle must have been written while the Protestant establishment, if it existed, was very recent, for the parson is evidently a papist. e Warton, iv. 304. Collier, iii. 6. The original had been first published in prose, 1525, and from this Gascoyne took his translation, adopting some of the changes Ariosto had introduced when he turned it into verse; but he has inserted little of his own. Ib. |