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Corneille was the restorer of true taste, and the founder of the French theatre; although rather inclined to the Italian 'Concetti' and the Spanish 'Agudeze'. Witness those epigrams which he makes Chimene utter in the greatest excess of grief. Before his time, those kind of itinerant authors, called troubadours or romanciers, were a species of madmen who attracted the admiration of fools.
Their dramatic value lies in their piquancy of confrontation. The tug-of-war between Alceste and Celimene, between Rodrigue and Chimene in "Le Cid," is what we think of as dramatic; and it is this same element which is found as well in the complicated and overflowing English plays.
It is very humiliating that no adorer has yet turned up for me. I am a marriageable girl, but I have brothers, a family, relations, who are sensitive on the point of honor. Ah! if that is what keeps men back, they are poltroons. The part of Chimene in the Cid and that of the Cid delight me. What a marvelous play! Well, good-bye.
Duchesnois in the character of Chimène, meaning by this comparison to stigmatize her attitude and language as theatrical. So effective was her appeal that he felt the need of something to save his own rôle, and accordingly he bowed her to a chair, and in the moment thus gained determined to strike the key of high comedy.
She underlines old Corneille for his blunt way of speaking, as in, "A heap of men ruined by debt and crimes." "Chimène, who'd have thought it? Rodrigue, who'd have said it?" "When their Flaminius haggled with Hannibal." "Oh! do not embroil me with the Republic." She still has her "Tout beau, monsieur!" on her heart.
The great rebel York dies with a paper crown on his head; Hamlet's black suit is a kind of colour-motive in the piece, like the mourning of the Chimene in the Cid; and the climax of Antony's speech is the production of Caesar's cloak: I remember The first time ever Caesar put it on.
Corneille was the restorer of true taste, and the founder of the French theatre; although rather inclined to the Italian 'Concetti' and the Spanish 'Agudeze'. Witness those epigrams which he makes Chimene utter in the greatest excess of grief. Before his time, those kind of itinerant authors, called troubadours or romanciers, were a species of madmen who attracted the admiration of fools.
Once in the antechamber of King Louis XVIII., while the Marquis de Chimène and the Duke de Lauraguais, two old heroes of the frivolous era, in which the boudoir and the petites maisons were the battle-field, and the myrtle instead of the laurel the reward of victory, while these gentlemen were conversing of some occurrence under the old government, the Duke de Lauraguais, in order to more nearly fix the date of the occurrence of which they were speaking, remarked to the marquis, "It was in the year in which I had my liaison with your wife."
In the "Journal inedit" of Baron Gourgaud when speaking of an interview with the Queen of Prussia after the battle of Iena he expresses himself in the following terms: "She received me in tragic fashion like Chimene: Justice! Sire, Justice! Magdeburg! Thus she continued in a way most embarrassing to me. Finally, to make her change her style, I requested her to take a seat.
"Mademoiselle " he murmured, trying to soothe her. "Try and understand," she said with wonderful calm, "and do as I tell you. Aunt Marie has obeyed. Will you do likewise?" "To the death!" he whispered eagerly. "Then a love-scene," she entreated. "Surely you know one. Rodrigue and Chimene!
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