Corneille, Pierre

born June 6, 1606, Rouen, France

died Oct. 1, 1684, Paris

French poet and playwright.

He studied law and was a king's counselor in Rouen (1628–50). He wrote his first comedy, Mélite (performed 1629), before he was 20; other comedies followed. He responded to the call for a new approach to classical tragedy by writing Médée (1635) and then Le Cid (1637), an instant success that established him as the creator of French classical tragedy; the play has come to be regarded as the most significant in the history of French drama. His next tragedies, Horace (1641), Cinna (1643), and Polyeucte (1643), have joined Le Cid as Corneille's "classical tetralogy." He returned to comedy with The Liar (1644), which occupies a central place in French classical comedy. From 1660 he wrote one play a year, ending with the tragedy Suréna (1674).

Pierre Corneille, detail of an oil painting attributed to Charles Le Brun, 1647; in the ...

Cliche Musees Nationaux, Paris

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▪ French poet and dramatist

Introduction

born June 6, 1606, Rouen, France

died Oct. 1, 1684, Paris

 French poet and dramatist, considered the creator of French classical tragedy. His chief works include Le Cid (1637), Horace (1640), Cinna (1641), and Polyeucte (1643).

Early life and career.

      Pierre Corneille was born into a well-to-do, middle-class Norman family. His grandfather, father, and an uncle were all lawyers; another uncle and a brother entered the church; his younger brother, Thomas, became a well-known poet and popular playwright. Pierre was educated at the Jesuit school in his hometown, won two prizes for Latin verse composition, and became a licentiate in law. From 1628 to 1650 he held the position of king's counselor in the local office of the department of waterways and forests.

      Corneille's first play, written before he was 20 and apparently drawing upon a personal love experience, was an elegant and witty comedy, Mélite, first performed in Rouen in 1629. When it was repeated in Paris the following year, it built into a steady (and, according to Corneille, surprising) success. His next plays were the tragicomedy Clitandre (performed 1631) and a series of comedies including La Veuve (performed 1632; The Widow), La Galerie du palais (performed 1633; The Palace Corridor), La Suivante (performed 1634; The Maidservant), La Place royale (performed 1634), and L'Illusion comique (performed 1636). His talent, meanwhile, had come to the attention of the Cardinal de Richelieu, France's great statesman, who included the playwright among a group known as les cinq auteurs (“society of the five authors”), which the Cardinal had formed to have plays written, the inspiration and outline of which were provided by himself. Corneille was temperamentally unsuited to this collective endeavour and irritated Richelieu by departing from his part (Act III) of the outline for La Comédie des Tuileries (1635). In the event, Corneille's contribution was artistically outstanding.

      During these years, support had been growing for a new approach to tragedy that aimed at “regularity” through observance of what were called the “classical” unities. Deriving from Italy, this doctrine of the unities demanded that there be unity of time (strictly, the play's events were to be limited to “the period between sunrise and sunset”), of place (the entire action was to take place in the one locus), and of action (subplots and the dramatic treatment of more than one situation were to be avoided). All this was based on a misunderstanding of Aristotle's Poetics, in which the philosopher attempted to give a critical definition of the nature of tragedy. The new theory was first put into dramatic practice in Jean Mairet's (Mairet, Jean) Sophonisbe (1634), a tragedy that enjoyed considerable success. Corneille, not directly involved in the call for regular tragedy of this kind, nevertheless responded to Sophonisbe by experimenting in the tragic form with Médée (1635). He then wrote Le Cid (performed early 1637), first issued as a tragicomedy, later as a tragedy.

      Le Cid, now commonly regarded as the most significant play in the history of French drama, proved an immense popular success. It sparked off a literary controversy, however, which was chiefly conducted by Corneille's rival dramatists, Mairet and Georges de Scudéry, and which resulted in a bitter pamphlet war. Richelieu, whose motives are not entirely clear, instructed the then recently instituted Académie Française (French Academy) to make a judgment on the play: the resulting document (Les Sentiments de l'Académie française sur la tragi-comédie du Cid, 1637), drafted in the main by Jean Chapelain (Chapelain, Jean), a critic who advocated “regular” tragedy, was worded tactfully and admitted the play's beauties but criticized Le Cid as dramatically implausible and morally defective. Richelieu used the judgment of the Académie as an excuse for suppressing public performances of the play.

      Corneille, indeed, had not observed the dramatic unities in Le Cid. The play has nevertheless been generally regarded as the first flowering of French “classical” tragedy. For the best French drama of the “classical” period in the 17th century is properly characterized, not so much by rules—which are no more than a structural convention—as by emotional concentration on a moral dilemma and on a supreme moment of truth, when leading characters recognize the depth of their involvement in this dilemma. In Le Cid, Corneille rejected the discursive treatment of the subject given in his Spanish source (a long, florid, and violent play by Guillén de Castro y Bellvis, a 17th-century dramatist), concentrating instead on a conflict between passionate love and family loyalty, or honour. Thus Le Cid anticipated the “pure” tragedy of Racine (Racine, Jean), in whose work the “classical” concept of tragic intensity at the moment of self-realization found its most mature and perfect expression.

Major tragedies.

      Corneille seems to have taken to heart the criticisms levelled at Le Cid, and he wrote nothing for three years (though this time was also taken up with a lawsuit to prevent the creation of a legal office in Rouen on a par with his own). In 1640, however, appeared the Roman tragedy Horace; another, Cinna, appeared in 1641. In 1641 also Corneille married Marie de Lampérière, the daughter of a local magistrate, who was to bear him seven children to whom he was a devoted father. Corneille's brother Thomas married Marie's sister, and the two couples lived in extraordinary harmony, their households hardly separated; the brothers enjoyed literary amity and mutual assistance.

      Le Cid, Horace, Cinna, and Polyeucte, which appeared in 1643, are together known as Corneille's “classical tetralogy” and together represent perhaps his finest body of work for the theatre. Horace was based on an account by the Roman historian Livy of a legendary combat between members of the Horatii and Curiatii families, representing Rome and Alba; Corneille, however, concentrated on the murder by one of the patriots of his pacifist sister, the whole case afterward being argued before the king (a “duplicity” of action admitted by Corneille himself, who otherwise seems by now to have decided to follow the classical rules). Cinna was about a conspiracy against the first Roman emperor, Augustus, who checkmates his adversaries by granting them a political pardon instead of dealing them the expected violent fate, boasting that he has strength enough to be merciful. The hero of Polyeucte (which many critics have considered to be Corneille's finest work), on adopting Christianity seeks a martyr's death with almost militaristic fervour, choosing this as the path to la gloire (“glory”) in another world, whereas his wife insists that the claims of marriage are as important as those of religion.

      These four plays are charged with an energy peculiar to Corneille. Their arguments, presented elegantly, rhetorically, in the grand style, remain firm and sonorous. The alexandrine verse that he employed (though not exclusively) was used with astonishing flexibility as an instrument to convey all shades of meaning and expression: irony, anger, soliloquy, repartee, epigram. Corneille used language not so much to illumine character as to heighten the clash between concepts, hence the “sentences” in his poetry which are memorable even outside their dramatic context. Action here is reaction. These plays concern not so much what is done as what is resolved, felt, suffered. Their formal principle is symmetry: presentation, by a poet who was also a lawyer, of one side of the case, then of the other, of one position followed by its opposite.

Contribution to comedy.

      The fame of his “classical tetralogy” has tended to obscure the enormous variety of Corneille's other drama, and his contribution to the development of French comedy has not always received its proper due. The Roman plays were followed by more tragedies: La Mort de Pompée (performed 1644; The Death of Pompey), Rodogune (performed 1645), which was one of his greatest successes, Théodore (performed 1646), which was his first taste of failure, and Héraclius (performed 1647). But in 1643 Corneille had successfully turned to comedy with Le Menteur (The Liar), following it with the less successful La Suite du Menteur (performed 1645; Sequel to the Liar). Both were lively comedies of intrigue, adapted from Spanish models; and Le Menteur is the one outstanding French comedy before the plays of Molière, Corneille's young contemporary, who acknowledged its influence on his own work. Le Menteur, indeed, stands in relation to French classical comedy much as Le Cid does to tragedy.

      In 1647 Corneille moved with his family to Paris and was at last admitted to the Académie Française, having twice previously been rejected on the grounds of nonresidence in the capital. Don Sanche d'Aragon (performed 1650), Andromède (performed 1650), a spectacular play in which stage machinery was very important, and Nicomède (performed 1651) were all written during the political upheaval and civil war of the period known as the Fronde (1648–53), with Don Sanche in particular carrying contemporary political overtones. In 1651 or 1652 his play Pertharite seems to have been brutally received, and for the next eight years Corneille wrote nothing for the theatre, concentrating instead on a verse translation of St. Thomas à Kempis' Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ), which he completed in 1656, and also working at critical discourses on his plays that were to be included in a 1660 edition of his collected works.

Years of declining power.

      Corneille did not turn again to the theatre until 1659, when, with the encouragement of the statesman and patron of the arts Nicolas Fouquet (Fouquet, Nicolas), he presented Oedipe. For the next 14 years he wrote almost one play a year, including Sertorius (performed 1662) and Attila (performed 1667), both of which contain an amount of violent and surprising incident.

      Corneille's last plays, indeed, were closer in spirit to his works of the 1640s than to his classical tragedies. Their plots were endlessly complicated, their emotional climate close to that of tragicomedy. Other late plays include La Toison d'or (performed 1660; The Golden Fleece), his own Sophonisbe (performed 1663), Othon (performed 1664), Agésilas (performed 1666), and Pulchérie (performed 1672). In collaboration with Molière and Philippe Quinault he wrote Psyché (1671), a play employing music, incorporating ballet sequences, and striking a note of lyrical tenderness. A year earlier, however, he had presented Tite et Bérénice, in deliberate contest with a play on the same subject by Racine. Its failure indicated the public's growing preference for the younger playwright.

      Corneille's final play was Suréna (performed 1674), which showed an uncharacteristic delicacy and sentimental appeal. After this he was silent except for some beautiful verses, which appeared in 1676, thanking King Louis XIV for ordering the revival of his plays. Although not in desperate poverty, Corneille was by no means wealthy; and his situation was further embarrassed by the intermittent stoppage of a state pension that had been granted by Richelieu soon after the appearance of Horace in 1640. Corneille died in his house on the rue d'Argenteuil, Paris, and was buried in the church of Saint-Roch. No monument marked his tomb until 1821.

Assessment.

      Corneille did not have to wait for “the next age” to do him justice. The cabal that had led the attack on Le Cid had no effect on the judgment of the public, and the great men of his time were his fervent admirers. Balzac praised him; Molière acknowledged him as his master and as the foremost of dramatists; Racine is said to have assured his son that Corneille made verses “a hundred times more beautiful” than his own. It was left to the 18th century, largely because of the criticisms of Voltaire, to exalt Racine at Corneille's expense; but the Romantic critics of the late 18th century began to restore Corneille to his true rank.

      It cannot be denied, however, that Corneille signed much verse that is dull to mediocre. Molière acknowledged this fact by saying: “My friend Corneille has a familiar who inspires him with the finest verses in the world. But sometimes the familiar leaves him to shift for himself, and then he fares very badly.” But the importance of his pioneer work in the development of French classical theatre cannot be denied; and, if a poet is to be judged by his best things, Corneille's place among the great dramatic poets is beyond question.

      Not only did Pierre Corneille produce, for nearly 40 years in all, an astonishing variety of plays to entertain the French court and the Parisian middle class: he also prepared the way for a dramatic theatre that was the envy of Europe throughout the 17th century. His own contribution to this theatre, moreover, was that of master as much as of pioneer. Corneille's excellence as a playwright has long been held to lie in his ability to depict personal and moral forces in conflict. In play after play, dramatic situations lead to a finely balanced discussion of controversial issues. Willpower and self-mastery are glorified in many of his heroes, who display a heroic energy in meeting or mastering the dilemma that they face; but Corneille was less interested in exciting his audiences to pity and fear through visions of the limits of man's agony and endurance than he was in stirring them to admiration of his heroes. Thus, only a few of his plays deal in tragic emotion. Nevertheless, because his most famous work, Le Cid, anticipated the tragic intensity of plays by Jean Racine, his younger contemporary, Corneille has often been referred to as the “father” of French classical tragedy; and his contribution to the rise of comedy has, in comparison, often been overlooked. From a 20th-century vantage point, however, it is as a master of drama that he appears, rather than of tragedy in particular.

Robert J. Nelson

Major Works

Plays. Le Cid (published 1637); Horace (1641); Cinna, ou La Clemence d'Auguste (1643); Polyeucte martyr (1643); La Mort de Pompée (1644)—all in English in The Chief Plays of Corneille, trans. by Lacy Lockert, 2nd ed. (1957). Rodogune, princesse des Parthes (1647; Rodogune; or, The Rival Brothers, trans. by S. Aspinwall, 1765); Nicomède (1651; Nicomede, trans. by J. Dancer, 1671).

Additional Reading

The standard edition of the dramatist's work, Oeuvres de P. Corneille, ed. by Charles Martylaveaux, 13 vol. (1862–68), is still generally reliable, although a number of more recent editions—by Maurice Rat (1962–66), and by Jacques Maurens (1968)—have profited from extensive work by modern scholars on dating and various historical aspects. A number of convenient one- or two-volume modern editions are available, notably Oeuvres complètes, ed. by André Stegmann (1963). Many of the plays have also been published in critical editions (see list in Alexandre Cioranescu, Bibliographie de la littérature française du 17^e siècle, 1965). Adequate modern translations into English have been provided by Lacy Lockert, The Chief Plays of Corneille, 2nd ed. (1957), and Moot Plays of Corneille (1959); and more recently by Samuel Solomon, Pierre Corneille: Seven Plays (1969). Modern criticism of Corneille has begun to reverse the monotonous, reductionist view first set forth in Voltaire's Commentaires sur Corneille (1751) that had cast him chiefly as Racine's precursor in the perfecting of French classical tragedy. For a comprehensive sampling of the Corneille–Racine parallels across the centuries, see Corneille and Racine: Parallels and Contrasts, ed. by Robert J. Nelson (1966). Bibliographies of the author and his works include Auguste-Émile Picot, Bibliographie cornélienne . . . (1876); and Pierre Le Verdier and Edouard Peley, Additions à la bibliographie cornélienne (1908), which are both still useful. Also, a number of more recent general bibliographies, such as A Critical Bibliography of French Literature, vol. 3, The Seventeenth Century, ed. by Nathan Edelman (1961), contain extensive, updated sections on the dramatist.

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