Corneille purified both thought and language of the bad taste due to the prevailing Spanish influence. He subordinated the actor to the play, instead of composing, as his predecessors had done, lengthy monologues for mere histrionic display. He did away with absurdly tangled plots, and focussed the interest of tragedy on character. Tragedy thus purified, he made immortal by the strength and elevation of his moral teaching. His principal plays are Le Cid (1636), Cinna (1639), Polyeucte (1640).
The new tragedy shaped by Corneille, Racine carried to its highest perfection of form. Nothing in his plays betokens struggle, innovation, or effort. His is the polished finish of ease and ripeness. Subtle delineation of the passions, profound tenderness, faultlessness of style and expression, distinguish him above all others. Yet this very perfection of form robs him of some of the rough, wholesome vigor, which makes Corneille's plays the most healthy reading in the French language. Corneille speaks by the mouths of heroes, Racine speaks by the mouths of men.
Voltaire is only to be placed by their side for the extraordinary skill, amounting to genius, with which he followed in their footsteps. We must not look to him for new departures, nor indeed for the lofty authority of the one, or the harmonious richness of the other. Yet in each particular he succeeds, by the force of art, in getting within measurable distance of his models: his Zaïre (1733) and Mérope (1743) would hardly have been disowned by either.
After Voltaire, new times demanded new methods. The nineteenth century reacted against the portraiture of character alone, and required more complete representation of the action; it called for deeds enacted on the stage, and not in the slips. Hence, a new form, with a new name, le drame, has taken exclusive possession of the French tragic stage.
3. PRODUCTION OF "ESTHER."
In the year 1687, Mme. de Maintenon had founded at St. Cyr, in the vicinity of the royal residence of Versailles, an establishment for the education of two hundred and fifty girls, belonging to noble families in reduced circumstances. To this institution she devoted much of her time and care.
It was usual, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, to consider the acting of plays a valuable aid to liberal education, suitable pieces being often written by the heads of the institutions in which they were to be performed. Dissatisfied with the compositions of Mme. de Brinon, the first superior of St. Cyr, and objecting to the love-making that held such a large place in the works written for the public stage, Mme. de Maintenon applied to Racine, requesting him to write a play that should be entirely suitable for performance by very young ladies. The courtier poet could not refuse, and the result was the play of Esther, performed in January, 1689, by pupils of St. Cyr, not one of whom was over seventeen years of age.
The success of the play was startling. The king witnessed it repeatedly, and insisted that all his court and guests should do likewise. The performances of Esther, at St. Cyr, became great events for the fashionable society of the day. This unlooked-for result was not slow to alarm Mme. de Maintenon: their very success became a danger for the youthful actresses. Accordingly, Mme. de Maintenon discountenanced the resumption of Esther after the first series of performances was concluded, and she entirely withheld from public representation the second play, Athalie, written by Racine in the following year for the same purpose. Subsequently Mme. de Maintenon banished dramatic performances altogether from St. Cyr; she concluded it was better to train the reason[1] by the solid[1] truths of philosophy than the imagination by the unrealities of dramatic literature.
4. THE PLAY OF "ESTHER."
The subject of Esther is admirably chosen for the purpose Racine had in view. The story of Esther, owing mainly to the noble character of the queen, is as touching as it is lofty. The poet found it entirely in the Bible, which should be read side by side with the play from beginning to end. Several inspirations, notably that of the beautiful prayer in the first act, are drawn from the "Rest of the Book of Esther," i.e., those chapters which being found only in the Greek, and neither in the Hebrew nor in the Chaldee MSS., are relegated to the Apocrypha.