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Updated: August 2, 2024
Thus it was that the type of drama which he impressed upon French literature was not the romantic type of the English Elizabethans, but the classical type of Senecan tragedy which Jodelle had imitated, and which was alone tolerable to the French critics of the seventeenth century. Instead of making the vital drama of Hardy artistic, he made the literary drama of Jodelle alive.
The plot of the Jodelle, which belongs to Don Francisco de Roxas, is excellent; the style and the additions of Scarron have not been able altogether to disfigure it. All that is coarse, nauseous, and repugnant to taste, belongs to the French writer of the age of Louis XIV., who in his day was not without celebrity; for the Spanish work is throughout characterized by a spirit of tenderness.
Good God! how apposite are these verses of Jodelle: "'Et tant ceux d'aujourd'huy me fashent, Qui des lors que leurs plumes laschent Quelque-trait soit mauvais ou bon, En lumiere le vont produire, Pour souvent avec leur renom, Les pauvres Imprimeurs destruire." This has been translated as follows:
Light Literature: Ronsard Jodelle, Hardy, Malherbe, Scarron, Madame de Rambouillet, and others. 3. The French Academy. 4. The Drama: Corneille. 5. Philosophy: Descartes, Pascal; Port Royal. 6. The Rise of the Golden Age of French Literature: Louis XIV. 7. Tragedy: Racine. 8. Comedy: Moliere. 9. Fables, Satires, Mock-Heroic, and other Poetry: La Fontaine, Boileau. 10.
As JODELLE, a French tragical poet, being an epicure and an atheist, made a pitiful end: so our tragical poet MARLOW, for his Epicurism and Atheism, had a tragical death; as you may read of this MARLOW more at large, in the Theatre of GOD's judgments, in the 25th chapter, entreating of Epicures and Atheists.
In the first tragedies that were represented, the Cleopatra, and Dido of Jodelle, a prologue and chorus were introduced; Jean de la Peruse translated the Medea of Seneca; and Garnier's pieces are all taken from the Greek tragedies or from Seneca, but in the execution they bear a much closer resemblance to the latter.
Six other poets threw in their lot with him in his literary revolution this Remy Belleau, Antoine de Baif, Pontus de Tyard, Etienne Jodelle, Jean Daurat, and lastly Joachim du Bellay; and with that strange love of emblems which is characteristic of the time, which covered all the works of Francis the First with the salamander, and all the works of Henry the Second with the double crescent, and all the works of Anne of Brittany with the knotted cord, they called themselves the Pleiad; seven in all, although, as happens with the celestial Pleiad, if you scrutinise this constellation of poets more carefully you may find there a great number of minor stars.
Corneille's achievement was based upon a combination of what was best in these two movements. The work of Jodelle, written with a genuinely artistic intention, was nevertheless a dead thing on the stage; while Hardy's melodramas, bursting as they were with vitality, were too barbaric to rank as serious works of art.
He often had a meeting, in the evening, of poets, men of letters, and artists Ronsard, Amadis Jamin, Jodelle, Daurat, Baif; in 1570 he gave them letters patent for the establishment of an Academy of poetry and music, the first literary society founded in France by a king; but it disappeared amidst the civil wars. Charles IX. himself sang in the choir, and he composed a few hunting-airs.
Scarron, who only understood burlesque, has displayed this talent or knack in several comedies taken from the Spanish, of which two, Jodelle, or the Servant turned Master, and Don Japhet of Armenia, have till within these few years been occasionally acted as carnival farces, and have always been very successful.
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