Vieillesse langoureuse, hélas! qu’attens-tu plus? (V. 82).
Of the same type are the two tragedies of 1574, Hippolyte and Cornélie.
Act I of Cornélie is again a prelude consisting of a fine monologue and a chorus. In II Cornelia and Cicero remind each other of the past and moralize on human life. The theme of mutability, carried out in the chorus, ends on the hope of another deliverance from tyrants. In III the chorus continues this theme after dialogue with Cornelia and her receiving of Pompey’s ashes. IV brings on first Cassius and Brutus, then Caesar and Antony. V, though more nearly an act, makes extravagant use of the messenger.
Marc-Antoine (1578), surer perhaps in its oratory and finer in its lyric, is no more dramatic.
Philostratus, a minor person, is added (II. i) merely to expound the situation in a monologue. Octavius and Agrippa appear only in IV. Lucilius is in III only to receive the exhalations of Antony; and Charmion has little more function in II and V. Once more V is mainly a series of tirades. Act II, scene iii adds to Cleopatra’s oratory a flash of jealousy and the suggestion of Diomedes that she save the situation by using her fatal beauty on Caesar; but neither is carried out.
In La Troade (1579) Garnier turned to Euripides.
Act I, for the first time more than a prelude, consists nevertheless, after Hecuba’s opening monologue, of responsive lyrics between her and the chorus. The envoy Talthybius arrives toward the end. Act II, mainly a debate between Andromache and Ulysses, introduces Helen and Astyanax and closes with a chorus. Act III, bringing back Hecuba and Talthybius, adds Pyrrhe, Agamemnon, Calchas, and Polyxena. Act IV brings together Hecuba and Andromache. The murder of Astyanax and the death, already forecast, of Polyxena are announced by messenger. Act V gives main place to Polymestor, who appears for the first time. The act is in effect an appendix, adding the Hecuba of Euripides to Seneca.
Evidently Garnier has not grasped the composing habit of Greek tragedy. At most he has managed somewhat more interaction between such groups of persons as he had begun by keeping apart in separate acts. He is working at literature, not at drama. Hence his evident intelligence carries his experience only so far. The argument of Antigone (1580) cites the Theban plays of all three great Greek dramatists, and adds Statius to Seneca. The plot generally uses Seneca for the first three acts, the Antigone of Sophocles for the last two. The combination is rather piecing than fusion, and shows no appreciation of the dramaturgy of Sophocles. In 1582 Garnier was adventurous enough to attempt a dramatization of Ariosto. Bradamante, which he calls a tragicomedy,[45] is hardly more than a division of certain parts of the Orlando into scenes which are far from being dramatic units. As in the earlier plays, the five acts are in effect three. Some characterization is achieved in the minor persons Aymon and Beatrix. Bradamante herself is chosen, of course, for those lyric tirades with which Ariosto had delighted the century.
But Garnier lived to vindicate tragedy within his own limits. Les Juifves (1583) has more values for representation and, in the pervasive suggestion of the inextinguishable mission of Israel, a certain unity of tone. “The subject is taken,” says the argument, “from the 24th and 25th chapters of the fourth book of Kings, the 36th chapter of the second book of Chronicles, and the 29th chapter of Jeremiah, and is more amply treated by Josephus in the 9th and 10th chapters of his Antiquities.”