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Updated: May 2, 2025
The public will only stand genius in infinitesimal doses, sprinkled with mannerisms and fashionable literature.... A 'fashionable genius'! Doesn't that make you laugh?... What waste of power! Look at what they have made of a Mounet. What has he had to play the whole of his life? Two or three parts that are worth the struggle for life: the Oedipus and Polyeucte. The rest has been rot!
In 1840 she added to her list of impersonations Laodie and Pauline in Corneille's "Nicomède" and "Polyeucte," and Marie Stuart in Lebrun's tragedy. In 1841 she played no new parts. In 1842 she first appeared as Chimène in "Le Cid," as Ariane, and as Frédégonde in a wretched tragedy by Le Mercier.
Without anyone knowing how it had come about, however, the conversation had suddenly changed; and somebody inquired: "So the revival of the piece is postponed?" "Yes," said Gerard, "I heard this morning that 'Polyeucte' wouldn't get its turn till April at the earliest."
To-day it has been the turn of "Polyeucte" and "La Morte de Pompee." Whatever one's objections may be, there is something grandiose in the style of Corneille which reconciles you at last even to his stiff, emphatic manner, and his over-ingenious rhetoric. But it is the dramatic genre which is false. His heroes are roles rather than men.
No forgiveness was possible between them; they would still hate one another even in the family tomb, where some day they would sleep side by side. All the same, that evening Baroness Duvillard excused herself from attending the performance of "Polyeucte" at the Comedie Francaise. She felt very tired and wished to go to bed early, said she. As a matter of fact she wept on her pillow all night long.
He referred to a stubborn caprice of Silviane d'Aulnay, who, although she had hitherto only reaped a success of beauty on the stage, obstinately sought to enter the Comedie Francaise and make her debut there in the part of "Pauline" in Corneille's "Polyeucte," which part she had been studying desperately for several months past.
Roman polytheism, which tolerated everything except the kicks administered by Polyeucte to the statue of Jupiter, gave a place to the God of Israel. Afterwards came the Christians, and they were tolerated till they conspired against the laws. They were often confounded with the Jews, because they came from the same corner of the East.
"I would rather act that page than Pauline in Polyeucte, though Mademoiselle swears I speak her tirades nearly as well as an actress she once saw at the Marais, who was too old and fat for the character. How I should love to be an actress, and to play tragedy and comedy, and make people cry and laugh! Indeed, I would rather be anything than a lady unless I could be exactly like Lady Castlemaine."
The descent from "Polyeucte" to "Ruy Blas" is great, not so much in the poetry of form as in the elevation of thought; but the descent from "Ruy Blas" to the best drama now produced is out of poetry altogether, and into those flats of prose which give not even the glimpse of a mountain-top. But now to the opera. S in Norma! The house was crowded, and its enthusiasm as loud as it was genuine.
Posterity has justified the poor comedian against the Hotel Rambouillet; amongst so many of Corneille's masterpieces it has ever given a place apart to Polyeucte; neither the Saint-Genest of Rotrou, nor the Zaire of Voltaire, in spite of their various beauties, have dethroned Polyeucte; in fame as well as in date it remains the first of the few pieces in which Christianism appeared, to gain applause, upon the French classic stage.
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