These lines are truth itself; the Cid was an immoral play because it was the apotheosis of passionate love, whose rights it proclaimed at the expense of the most imperious duties. There was enough in the Cid to shock any social body holding firmly fixed opinions adverse to the public exhibition of intimate personal feelings; there were such bodies—the Academy was one of them—they made their own conditions, and the license of the prevailing morals was insignificant to them. The national idea of the superior rights of the family was well-grounded, and when the Academy reproached Chimène because she was "too sensible of the feelings of the lover—too conscious of her love ... too unnatural a daughter"—it did no more than echo a large number of voices.
Until he wrote the Cid Corneille was more exigeant than the Academy. The only thing required of lovers by the Academy was that they, the lovers, should govern their feelings and love, or not love, according to the commands of their families or their notaries. The Academy asked nothing of them but to control their actions regardless of their hearts; surely that was indulgence; beyond that there remained but one thing more,—to suppress the mind.
We do not consider it essential [said Sentiments Sur le Cid] to condemn Chimène because she loved her father's murderer; her engagement to Rodrigue had preceded the murder, and it is not within the power of a person to cease loving at will. We blame her because, while she was pursuing Rodrigue, ostensibly to his disadvantage, she was making vows and besieging Heaven in his favour; this was a too evident betrayal of her natural obligations in favour of her passion; it was too openly searching for a cloak to cover her wishes, and making less of the daughter than of the daughter's power to love her lover; in other words, it was cheapening the natural character of the daughter to the advantage of the lover.
The example was especially pernicious, because the genius of the author had rendered it seductive, and because the part which Chimène played assured her of the sympathy of the audience. Corneille was very sensitive to the criticisms of the Academy, and after the Cid appeared something more serious than synthetic form was placed under the knives of the literary doctors; either because the denunciations of his friends bore fruit, or because, in the depths of his heart, he harboured the feelings which the unbridled ardour of the Cid had aroused in the Academy and in the other honest people "who upbraided him, he retreated from the field of sentimental romanticism, and turned his talents in another direction.... Nature's triumph over a social convention was never given another occasion to display its graces or to celebrate its truths under his auspices and the love passion was not heard of again until it came forth in Horace (Camille), to be very severely dealt with."
We are led to believe that had Corneille met the subject of the Cid fifteen years later, he would never have granted Chimène and Rodrigue a marriage license.[71] Nor is this all. Having reformed, he was as fanatical as the rest of the reformers; having become Catholic, he was more Catholic than the Pope. He disclaimed love, and would have none of it; he affirmed that it was unworthy of a place in tragedy. In his own words, written some time later:
The dignity of tragedy demands for its subject some great interest of the State, ... or some passion more manly than love; as, for instance, ambition or vengeance. If fear is permitted to enter such a work it should be a fear less puerile than that inspired by the loss of a mistress. It is proper to mingle a little love with the more important elements, because love is always very pleasing, and it may serve as a foundation for the other interests and passions that I have named. But if love is permitted to enter tragedy it must be content to take the second rank in the poem, and to leave the first places to the capital passions.
Having chosen his bone in this high-handed fashion, Corneille gnawed at it continually; he could never get enough of it. Love had triumphed in the Cid, but that day was past; in Horace it struggled for existence; in Polyeucte it was vanquished, though not before it had opposed sturdy resistance. It was weak enough in Cinna. After the arrival of Pompée it gave up the struggle, though it was heard piteously murmuring at intervals. When Pompée appeared the ladies disappeared from the drama as if by magic; hardly a woman worthy of the name could be found in literature: a few beings there were draped with the time-worn title, but they were as virile as wild Indians.
A little hardness sets so well upon great souls!
Nothing could be seen but ambition, blood, thirst for power, and Fury, cup-bearer to the God of Vengeance. There was no more love-passion, the manly passions ramped upon the stage like lions, and, with few exceptions, all, male and female, were monsters of the Will.