Henry Carrington Lancaster

SOURCE: "Subsequent History of the Tragi-Comedy," in The French Tragi-Comedy: Its Origin and Development from 1552 to 1628, 1907. Reprinted by Gordian Press, Inc., 1966, pp. 148–54.

[In the following excerpt, Lancaster explains the decline of French tragicomedy in the late seventeenth century.]

Toward 1650, … the number of tragi-comedies that appeared each year was decreasing and by 1660 had become very small, if one may judge by those of which the names have been preserved. With the Psyché of Corneille, Molière, and Quinault (1671) and the Parfaits Amis of Chappuzeau (1672) the genre practically ceases to exist, although sporadic examples of the use of its name recur during the following centuries. The causes of this decay are not far to seek.

In the first place the popular taste had reacted from the spirit of the early seventeenth century, which had found expression in the romanesque tragi-comedy, as well as in the précieux Hôtel de Rambouillet and in the romances of Honoré d'Urfé and Madeleine de Scudéry. The Parisian public, grown weary of the multiplicity of incident and exaggerated portrayal of character, found in the tragi-comedy, turned from that genre to the truer representations of life that they found on the classical stage. It is after the appearance of Horace and Polyeucte that the tragi-comedy begins to decline, not long after the successes of Molière and Racine that it ceases to exist.

But in addition to the change in the taste of the Parisian public and the increasing popularity of the classical stage, the tragi-comedy suffered from certain changes in its own composition and in the use of the terms, tragedy and comedy, which brought about its confusion with these genres. As early as Mairet's Chriseide et Arimand (1625) tendencies toward unity of plot existed in tragi-comedies. In his Silvanire, a tragi-comédie pastorale, and his Virginie, a tragi-comedy, Mairet continued these tendencies, which were carried further by Desmarests in Mirame, a tragi-comedy which preserves the classical unities. At the same time psychological struggles, which had formerly held a distinctly subordinate place in tragi-comedies, became important in the dénouements of La Fidelle Tromperie and Agésilan de Colchos and formed the essence of the plot of Rayssiguier's Celidee. Thus it is that the unity and psychology of the Cid did not prevent its being called a tragi-comedy, a title that fitted well its romanesque plot and happy dénouement.

While the tragi-comedy was thus approaching the tragedy by a greater unity of plot and a more careful study of the emotions, another barrier that had separated the two genres in France, the nature of the dénouement, was removed by Corneille, when, following the example of Euripides, he showed in Cinna, and partially in Horace, that a tragedy could have a happy dénouement, a usage approved by d'Aubignac…. Thus, the more serious tragi-comedies, which showed an approach to classical unity and psychology, came to be called tragedies, in spite of their happy dénouement. The Cid, first known as a tragi-comedy, was called a tragedy along with Polyeucte and Rodogune.

On the other hand, certain tragi-comedies, as L'Ospital des Fous, approached the comedy by an increase in the comic element, as did others by a bourgeois spirit that enters more especially into La Bourgeoise and L'Esperance Glorieuse. The term comédie, moreover, was now applied to translations of the Spanish comedia and related plays, which differed little in their essential qualities from the lighter forms of the tragi-comedy. Thus some tragi-comedies were confused with comedies, as others were with tragedies. The two terms that had the sanction of Greek and Latin usage were gradually extended to occupy the intermediate ground formerly held by the tragi-comedy. Thus French dramatists, answering the demands of their age, either ceased to write tragi-comedies, or called them by another name. As an independent genre, the tragi-comedy ceased to exist.

Such is the history of the French tragi-comedy. Drawing its substance from the medieval drama and its form from the Greek and Roman stage, it united these elements after the example of the genre in other European countries and came into existence in 1552. During the sixteenth century it represented a number of medieval genres, connected by their partially classical form and happy dénouement. One variety, the romanesque, showed its superior qualities, becoming with Hardy in the seventeenth century the only active form of the tragi-comedy. Before the establishment of the classical tragedy this romanesque tragi-comedy became the most popular and extensively written dramatic genre in France. But its preëminence was brief, for, encroached upon by the closely related tragedy and comedy, and out of harmony with the classical spirit of the time, it fell into disuse and, toward 1672, ceased to have a more than sporadic existence.

Unless the Cid be considered a tragi-comedy, the genre left behind no great literary monument, since it neglected the study of character and passion for the romanesque and the melodramatic, thus attaining a large popularity, but making no permanent or universal appeal. But the tragi-comedy holds an important position in the history of the French stage, serving as a connecting link between the theater of the middle ages and that of the classical period, and by its influence making it possible for Corneille's tragedy to succeed where Jodelle's had failed. It preserved the popular qualities of the medieval drama, modernized them, and passed them to the classicists, thus establishing itself as an integral part of the most continuously excellent of national theaters.

Marvin T. Herrick

SOURCE: "French Tragicomedy from Gamier to Corneille," in Tragicomedy: Its Origin and Development in Italy, France, and England, University of Illinois Press, 1955, pp. 172–214.

[In the following excerpt, Herrick examines several tragicomedies by mid-seventeenth-century dramatists Pierre Du Ryer and Jean de Rotrou.]

[Pierre Du Ryer's] best tragedy, and the most famous of all his plays, is Scevole (1647), which is actually a tragedy with a happy ending.

Du Ryer found the plot of Scevole in Roman history (Livy) and added a love intrigue. The Etruscan king Porsenne (Lars Porsinna), an ally of the deposed Tarquin, has defeated the Romans and begun the siege of Rome. A captive Roman maiden, Junie (Cloelia), is brought before Porsenne for questioning. Du Ryer made Junie the heroine of the play and the lover of the Roman hero Scevole (Gaius Mucius, called Scaevola or "Left-Handed"). Junie has given up Scevole as dead, but now hears that he is also in the Etruscan camp, either as a prisoner or a traitor. Her doubts are resolved early in Act 2 by the appearance of Scevole himself, who informs her that he has come to assassinate Porsenne. Junie, who admires the Etruscan king, argues with her lover to spare him. Thereupon Scevole's jealousy is aroused, and the complication of a lovers' quarrel animates the action. There is a further complication as well, a triangle, for Arons (Arruns), the son of Porsenne, is also in love with Junie. Tarquin, who is growing impatient, accuses Porsenne of allowing his fondness for the Roman girl to delay his prosecution of the siege. In Act 3, Junie urges Porsenne to raise the siege and to repudiate his alliance with the tyrant Tarquin. When Porsenne fails to make up his mind one way or the other, Junie reluctantly decides that Scevole is right, that the Etruscan king must be assassinated. And so the action reaches a crucial turning point at the close of the third act.

Act 4 … is very dramatic, full of suspense and discoveries. Junie's confidante reports a camp rumor that Porsenne has been assassinated. Scevole is suspected, of course, and apprehended. But Porsenne has not been killed, nor was Scevole his attacker, though the Roman hero openly laments the failure when he learns that the Etruscan king is still alive. Arons, who has been friendly to Scevole, now learns that his friend not only seeks to kill his father but is also his rival in love. Thereupon Arons is placed in a tragic dilemma, unable to decide how he should act: "Whatsoever I can do, if I do my duty, I shall injure myself." When Scevole is brought before Porsenne and Tarquin he boldly admits that he came to the Etruscan camp to kill Porsenne, the enemy of Roman liberty.

Porsenne: Did ever an assassin show more audacity? It is he who ought to tremble, and it is he who threatens.

Scevole: It is for tyrants to fear and tremble; it is for Romans to conquer and destroy them.

Porsenne: Good gods, what madness!

Scevole: It is not madness that urges my hand and heart … I am like the ministers of the gods.

(4.6)

When Tarquin asks why he was not attacked instead of Porsenne, Scevole scornfully replies that his tyrant's blood is not worthy of a Roman sword. Since Scevole refuses to name any accomplices, he is led away to torture by fire.

At the opening of Act 5, Arons is still debating with himself as to what he should do. Junie pleads with him, and finally offers to give up Scevole if Arons will save him. A captain brings word that the fires have been lighted for the torture. Before Arons can act Porsenne enters exclaiming at the prodigious courage and fortitude of the Roman prisoner, who has already held his right hand in the flames until it burned off. Now Porsenne cannot bring himself to order more torture for so brave an enemy. When Junie quarrels with him, however, he resolves to continue the torture, until Arons persuades him to be more merciful. Then Tarquin and Scevole enter. Tarquin demands the death of Scevole, but Porsenne, who has never liked Tarquin, sets the Roman hero free and tells him to return to his people.

Scevole: Truly, noble Porsenne, you could never subdue me by the fear of pain; but I must admit that you have vanquished me by this notable act of generosity.

(5.5)

Not to be outdone in generosity by his father, Arons resigns all claim to Junie. Porsenne gives the young couple his blessing: "Burn, then, with an immortal flame. I shall never break the love-knot which so nobly joins such generous hearts; and since they have both gained the victory, let each one be the prize and the glory of the other. Rome owes this marriage to your just desires, and to celebrate it I give her peace." And so the outcome is a happy one for both hero and heroine. Only the villain, Tarquin, is discomfited.

Scevole, which appeared ten years after the Cid, is a good example of tragedy with a happy ending. The unities are carefully preserved save for the unity of action, which wavers somewhat between the story of Scevole and the story of Porsenne. There are no deaths on stage; in fact, there are no deaths. All deeds of violence, e.g., the attempted assassination of Porsenne and the burning of Scevole's hand, take place off-stage. All the characters are of noble blood and all save Tarquin are highminded and virtuous. The style is consistently elevated, and there are no comic passages. Like [Pierre-Sylvain] Mareschal, Du Ryer followed the various stages that French tragi-comedy passed through between 1630 and 1640, from drame libre to neoclassical tragedy with a happy ending, from Clitophon to Scevole.

…..

Jean de Rotrou was Corneille's chief rival and himself a fairly prolific writer who drew upon a variety of sources, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Spanish, borrowing from Seneca, Plautus, Euripides, Italian novelle, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and others. Lancaster calls him the "first French adapter of Spanish plays." His 35 plays have been divided into 7 tragedies, 12 comedies, and 16 tragicomedies; but this classification is not very satisfactory since his tragicomedies overlap with both his comedies and tragedies. His first play, for example, L'Hypocondriaque ou le mort amoureux (c. 1628), was a tragicomedy resembling the pastoral as well as comedy. In it two pairs of lovers undergo a series of intrigues and misadventures which drive the hero temporarily insane. The heroine disguises herself for a time in male attire. There is a happy ending, nevertheless, and the lovers are properly matched. Rotrou's best known play, Venceslas (1648), was called indifferently tragedy or tragicomedy, and the majority of his plays were tragicomic.

Laure Persécutée (1638), adapted from a play by Lope de Vega, is, I think, the best of his tragicomedies, and one of the best French tragicomedies of the time. This play has an admirably dramatic beginning. There is no prologue, no long-winded soliloquy, but a swift plunge in medias res. A count, accompanied by guards, accosts the hero, Orantée, Prince of Hungary.

Count: Seigneur, I arrest your Highness in the name of the king.

Orantée: You're joking?

Count: I am obeying, and my duty is clear.

Orantée: Count!

Count: Seigneur!

There is no joke; the king has had his son arrested in order to break up his love affair with a young woman of unknown birth called Laure. The king has already arranged a match for the prince with a Polish princess.

Laure, the heroine, is introduced in the next scene, talking to her confidante Lydie. Octave, a courtier supposedly friendly to the prince, tells Laure about the arrest of Orantée. This news places Laure in a very unhappy and dangerous position.

Laure: Very well! If this is the decree of fate, I must die. No one avoids death though many have wished to. After all, this is the fruit of Orantée's love.

Octave: Happily enough, one remedy presents itself.

Laure: What?

Octave: Disguising yourself.

Laure: And in what attire?

Octave: As one of the prince's pages, and in this attire to occupy a place near him as mistress and as page. One of those who waited on him died three days ago. But you must hurry.

Laure: Gods, be my refuge!

Before the first act is over, Laure, now disguised as Celio the page, comes face to face with the king, who questions her about herself. Then she meets Orantée, who easily sees through her disguise. The two lovers discuss the impending marriage of Orantée with the Polish princess, and the prince tries to reassure Laure that he will never desert her. They are interrupted by the re-entry of the king, who demands an explanation for his son's escape from prison. This scene (1.11) is especially good theater; the disguised Laure has to stand by while the king abuses her and the prince defends her. The count, who carries the traditional role of counselor, tries to calm the angry king. Finally Orantée tells his father that he will obey him, but he soon demonstrates, after the king and his suite have left, that he has no intention of abandoning Laure.

This first act, containing twelve short scenes, is lively theater throughout. It is conventional exposition, to be sure, but so skillfully presented that the audience is caught up in what seems to be straightforward action. It would be difficult for any playwright to maintain such a pace, and Rotrou did not; the action slows down in the next act and the speeches grow longer.

The first scene of Act 2 is a soliloquy by the prince, a traditional complaint of the frustrated lover in tragicomedy. The language, however, though hardly devoid of conceits, is relatively simple and direct: "I know, Love, your everlasting power; my soul is your temple and my heart your altar. But do not demand this shameful sacrifice; rather make both altar and temple perish. Gods, but I love Laure!" In the next scene, the treacherous Octave informs the king that he can break up the affair between the prince and Laure for a price.

King: But what will pay for this very great favor?

Octave: You will pay it, Sire, with Laure herself. If I render this service to your majesty, that is the price I want for my fidelity.

King: Done. Steal Laure, and Laure will be yours.

The king has only contempt for a sycophant like Octave, but is willing to use him.

In 2.4, the count, who is an honorable man, introduces a beautiful stranger to the king. This ravishing young lady gives the name of Eliante and relates a sad tale of disappointed love. Now she demands punishment for her betrayer. The king is so charmed by her that he orders the count to track down the villain who deceived her, and meanwhile to court the lady as well. The king has fallen in love with her, and the count arranges an assignation for him. The lady, of course, is Laure. But Orantée soon enters to disclose her true identity and thereby to confound his father.

Villainous complications begin to appear in Act 3. Octave conspires with Laure's confidante, Lydie; he persuades her to disguise herself as her mistress. Octave shows himself a pretty accomplished villain, though not of the strictly tragic kind; he is closer akin to Marston's Mendoza than to Shakespeare's Iago.

Octave: With these various detours, the path is difficult; but in this labyrinth one must be a Theseus; one must promise all and do all for himself. In order to cheat the prince, one must cheat the king. We shall use Laure herself in this comedy; the one will mistake Lydie for Laure, the other Laure for Lydie…. Love, subtle boy, support my project.

(3.2)

It is a comic project, or at all events a tragicomic project, because it is ex amore; but Octave realizes that he is playing a dangerous game.

In 3.7, the king, the prince, and the count eavesdrop on a love scene between Octave and Lydie (disguised as Laure). The passionate young prince, like Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, is quickly convinced that his mistress is faithless; he seethes with anger while his father triumphs. Orantée then confronts Octave with his treachery, but the villain maintains that it was Laure who pursued him. Now Orantée's temple and altar of love are actually shattered. Now he seeks vengeance on the wicked traitress. When she appears he savagely upbraids Laure, who is bewildered by this sudden change in her lover.

Laure: Alas! what have I done?

Orantée: (aside to Octave): She dissembles well.

Octave: Very well.

Laure: What is this secret talk between you? In what, my dear Octave, have I offended him?

Orantée: "My dear Octave"! Infamous!

Laure protests her innocence, but Orantée orders her to leave him.

Thus, as is proper in a regular play, the action reaches a crisis at the close of the third act.

Although the prince has ordered Laure to leave him, he cannot leave her, and Act 4 discloses him standing with drawn sword at her door. He declaims a rather extravagant lament: "Beautiful heaven of my sun, house so longed for, street where my freedom has been so led astray, fair portal of Laure, where that star of love, opening or closing you, rejects or offers daylight, window hereafter forbidden to my eyes, why, caitiff, did I ever see you?" Octave joins the prince and rebukes him for his weakness. Orantée admits that his love for Laure endures together with his jealousy. After some discussion Orantée commands Octave to knock on the door. When Octave protests, Orantée draws his dagger.

Orantée: Do it quickly, or I plunge this dagger in your breast.

Octave: Very well, I'm going to knock.

Orantée: No, don't do it, stop! My honor holds me back when my love is ready, and the one blinds me while the other opens my eyes.

Octave: Honor surely counsels you better. Let us withdraw.

Orantée: Wait until this transport subsides.

The prince asks Octave to tell him a love story, but pays no attention to it. Then Octave offers to call Laure, and he does call her as Orantée hides himself near the doorway. Like Cyrano, Octave disguises his voice to sound like Orantée's. Rotrou, in this scene (4.2), which became celebrated, was closely imitating Lope de Vega. Finally the prince himself knocks at the door, and disguises his voice to sound like Octave's. Laure talks with "Octave" a while, giving every indication of innocence; but the prince has made up his mind that she still dissembles. Then Laure, accompanied by Lydie (holding a torch), comes down to the street. And then the truth about the imposture comes out, for both Lydie and Octave confess.

Thus the fourth act, which contains the most theatrical scene in the whole play, comes to a close with a promise of better times to come for hero and heroine. The struggle between love and honor seems to be over, with love the victor.

The opening of Act 5 shows Orantée and Laure happily reconciled. But this play has a catastasis; a servant brings word that the Polish princess is arriving in Hungary. At the same time, one Clidamas, like Crito in the Andrian of Terence, like Carino in Guarini's Pastor fido, like many another last-act character in comedy and tragicomedy, appears on the scene. This Clidamas, Laure's guardian and supposedly her father, obviously holds the key to important information, in this instance information about the heroine's obscure birth: "My daughter, bless this happy day; she [the princess] will teach you from whom you are descended. With the arrival of the princess the moment has come when your illustrious station must be revealed to you, when you must shake off the yoke of my distress, and when you will lose and recover a father." (5.3)

The Polish princess enters with the king, the prince, and the royal suite. Laure appeals directly to the princess; she frankly confesses her love for a young man whose father has refused to sanction the match. The princess very graciously acknowledges the justice of Laure's plea: "Love is not bound to a parent's consideration; he relies upon himself alone; that willful boy, in order not to comply with a father, was willing to be born without one. Immortal, he holds absolute power, and pays no heed to the law of duty." (5.8) Laure thanks her, and then reveals that Orantée is her lover. The princess is taken aback at this disclosure, but, after eloquent pleadings from both Laure and the prince—Orantée now waxes almost as wordy as the heroes of Italian tragedy—finally yields to her own advice.

At this propitious moment, old Clidamas steps forward with a letter to the princess from her mother, the queen of Poland. Not altogether to the surprise of the reader, the letter reveals that Laure is herself the sister of the Polish princess. Clidamas explains that the Polish king, fearing dissension between two rival heirs, had ordered the queen to get rid of one. The queen, unable to destroy her child, had entrusted the infant to Clidamas, who brought her up. When the king of Hungary learns that Laure is of royal blood, his objections to her marrying Orantée vanish, and he offers himself as a consolation to the disappointed princess. Stretching a double knot to a triple one, Laure persuades Octave to marry Lydie. As Guarini had recommended for tragicomedy, the villain and villainess repent and reform, the good people are rewarded, and all ends with a comic catastrophe.

The best French tragicomedy, excepting Corneille's Cid, Rotrou's Laure Persécutée is similar to tragedy with a happy ending. Nevertheless, despite its lack of comic passages—the only flurry of humor is in Orantée's servant, who makes a brief appearance in 5.2—the emphasis on romantic love, the disguises, the mistaken identities, the machinery of transforming an obscure heroine into a princess put the play into the now traditional class of tragicomedy. Laure Persécutée resembles the lighter kind of Cinthian tragedia di lieto fin, the Antivalomeni; but Rotrou had a lighter and surer dramatic touch than did Cinthio. Rotrou had a better understanding of action; his action is sustained throughout every act. His strokes at characterization, while not profound, are sharper than Cinthio's. His dialogue for the most part is excellent, lively and natural, admirably fitted to the stage. How far Rotrou's excellencies in Laure Persécutée were owing to Lope de Vega I shall not presume to estimate.

Rotrou's Venceslas (1648) was definitely closer to tragedy than was Laure. The romantic, rather violent argument was taken from another Spanish play, one by Francesco de Rojas. Venceslas, the king of Poland, has two sons, Alexandre and Ladislas, both of whom are in love with the duchess Cassandre. The hot-tempered Ladislas does not suspect his brother of being a rival, but does suspect Frédéric, a duke, who is actually carrying on a love affair with Théodore, sister to Alexandre and Ladislas. In the dark of the night Ladislas goes to Cassandre's bedroom and stabs her bedfellow, who turns out to be his brother Alexandre, secretly married to the duchess.

Such in outline is the melodramatic action up to the denouement in the last act. In a very moving scene (5.4), King Venceslas condemns his own son, Ladislas, to death. As the prince is led away to execution, Venceslas speaks in soliloquy: "O inhuman justice and hostile duties! To save my scepter I must destroy my son! But let them act, importunate fondness, and you, my eyes, hide your tears and my weakness. I can do nothing for him; blood yields to the law, and I cannot be a good father to him and a good king." (5.8)

The situation here is genuinely tragic; the good king must suffer, whatever he does. The people, however, rescue Ladislas from the executioner, and the king, bowing to the will of the mob, places his own crown upon the head of the prince, saying, "Be king, Ladislas, and I, I shall be a father." (5.13) To complete the happy catastrophe, Frédéric is matched with the princess Théodore, and Cassandre, like the heroine of the Cid, will in time accept a murderer for husband.

Venceslas is a tragedy with a happy ending, which could be called, as it sometimes was, a tragicomedy. Unlike his great rival, Corneille, the author did not excel in both tragicomedy and tragedy, for Rotrou's dramatic gifts were essentially tragi-comic.

Perry Gethner

SOURCE: "Providence by Indirection in Seventeenth-Century Tragicomedy," in Themes in Drama, Vol. 5, 1983, pp. 39–51.

[In the following excerpt, Gethner discusses the use of moral and religious conventions in seventeenth-century tragicomedy.]

The seventeenth century, called the golden age of French drama, was not conducive to the development of religious theatre. Except for two brief periods of interest in the 1640s and 1690s, plays on religious themes virtually disappeared, and the handful of acknowledged masterpieces produced during those few years failed to initiate a national tradition. At the same time, France produced some of her most brilliant religious writers, and general interest in spiritual matters is known to have been intense. This astonishing development had, to be sure, quite a number of causes, such as the Church's hostility to all forms of theatre, increasing sophistication of the audiences with a marked effect on popular taste, and the proscription in classical theory of the merveilleux chrétien. Yet all these factors seem somehow inadequate to explain the radical secularization of the art form that tapped so much of the country's creative genius.

A possible answer to this problem emerges from a close study of a minor genre that flourished in much of Europe in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Tragicomedy, having evolved from diverse sources and in various countries during the Renaissance, was becoming recognizable, if not uniform, as an independent genre, characterized by its action-filled plot, aristocratic characters and happy ending. Less noted, but no less frequent, are the references to divine providence in these plays. Almost invariably, the happy ending of the play, displaying the rewarding of the virtuous and the disgrace or destruction of the evildoers, is perceived by the characters as the work of heaven.

These references to the justice and direct intervention of the gods, too numerous to be considered accidental, are often dismissed as meaningless clichés. Such an interpretation is hardly satisfactory, however, since the clichés call attention to the structural inadequacies and the sheer implausibility of the plots. It is as if the playwrights were reveling in their careless plot construction and the blatant artificiality of their dénouements.

If, on the other hand, one takes the theological references seriously, they appear to serve a useful function by providing a moral and religious framework for the action. The characters use their belief (or disbelief) as a guide to their conduct and as a source of hope during their many vicissitudes. The convention of poetic justice vindicates both the heroes and their gods, whose primary aims seem to be enforcing ethical rules and promoting human happiness.

The phenomena just described hardly suffice to make the tragicomedies genuinely religious plays. In fact, with very few exceptions, these works limit themselves to secular subjects with only occasional references to sacred matters. It must be remembered, however, that in this period, following the definitive break (especially in France and England) between liturgical drama and the secular stage, God could no longer be represented directly. As biblical and other sacred subjects became less popular, writers interested in conveying the idea of transcendence had to find new techniques. What I shall call indirection (hinting at the existence of the sacred from within a purely human world) could be accomplished in at least three ways in drama. The first and most obvious of these is through the dénouement, by means of the convention of poetic justice. The fortunate outcome, insuring that all the characters get their just deserts, is called miraculous, although explainable in terms of ordinary cause and effect. The miracle is at bottom the contrivance of the playwright, for the dizzying succession of adventures culminating in poetic justice is a time-honoured convention of romance, which in turn provided the plot for many a tragicomedy. Providence may also be evoked through language … and through the décor.

It should be stated at the outset that the doctrine of providence found in these plays does not coincide with discussions of the same subject in writings of Reformation or Counter-Reformation theologians. In attempting to combat materialist theories that eliminated God and attributed the governance of the universe to blind chance, the theologians focused on the bestowal of grace that made salvation or conversion possible for the righteous and also on the punishment of tyrants, notably those who persecuted Christians. Especially appropriate for their view of retribution were the biblical concept of the 'scourge of God' (an evil man chosen to execute divine wrath upon others but who eventually will receive his own punishment) and the Stoic doctrine that divine justice, however, delayed, is inevitable. That God shows concern for the plight of the virtuous and ultimately rewards them is never disputed by these writers, but the rewards are usually reserved for the next world. This view of providence did in fact inspire a number of secular tragedies, especially in England, but it simply would not do for tragicomedy, where heaven is expected to arrange events in such a way that everything will turn out right in this life and that the young lovers (the normal protagonists of such plays) will still be young when they are finally united. Since discussions of poetic justice, often found in the concluding scene of a tragicomedy, tend to follow the same general pattern, a single example should suffice:

Our bark at length has found a quiet harbour,
And the unspotted progress of our loves
Ends not alone in safety, but reward;
To instruct others, by our fair example,
That, though good purposes are long withstood,
The hand of Heaven still guides such as are good.

The closing lines of an English tragicomedy, Fletcher and Massinger's The Custom of the Country, exhibit all the standard features: 'the hand of Heaven' has been continuously

at work in the preceding action, although the characters were previously unable to understand the hidden plan; the love, always respectful and chaste, between the hero and heroine has received divine sanction, culminating in their marriage at the end of the play; and there is the didactic technique of casting the protagonists and their adventures in an exemplary role.

Although the gods sometimes intervene directly in the action in the form of oracles, dreams or warning signs (such devices occurring mostly in pastoral plays), their role is normally limited to that of silent spectators and protectors, invoked or discussed by the human characters. In moments of grave danger, a helpless innocent may appeal to heaven for aid or warn the villain that the gods will not let him act with impunity. Here, for example, is the cry of a prince surrounded by assassins hired by a king:

Le Roy peut commander; mais le Ciel plus puissant
Peut contre vous, & luy sauver un innocent,
Ses favorables soins à vos destins sinistres
Puniront d'un tyran les infames ministres….
Et le visible effect d'un secours invisible,
Te fera voir le Ciel à mon affront sensible.
(Rotrou, Les Occasions perdues, I, ii)

(The King may command, but stronger Heaven can save an innocent man despite you and him. Its favoring care, fatal to your designs, shall punish a tyrant's infamous henchmen…. And the visible outcome of an invisible aid will show you that Heaven is sensitive to my wrongs.)

As is usual in such cases, the hero is rescued just in the nick of time, thus vindicating his faith in providence. The very thought of heaven may suffice, in the case of a male hero, to restore his confidence and spur him on to act:

Dieux! qui voyez ce crime enorme comme il est,
Par sa punition montrez qu'il vous déplaist.
Mais sans chercher au Ciel le secours du tonnerre,
Ayde toy des moyens que tu trouves en terre.
(Mairet, Sidonie, IV, iii)

(Gods, who see the enormity of this crime, show by its punishment that it displeases you. But without seeking the aid of the thunderbolt in Heaven, help yourself with the means that you find on earth).

Faith in divine justice may also serve to sustain morale even in the most difficult circumstances. One of the most eloquent of such declarations occurs in Du Ryer's Alcimédon:

Daphné, le mesme Dieu qui nous veut faire naistre,
Est curieux aussi de conserver nostre estre.
Si comme les plus hauts, les plus bas des humains,

Táchent à proteger l'ouvrage de leurs mains,
Si mesme par l'instinct dont l'animal abonde
Il conserve & deffend ce qu'il a mis au monde.
Penses-tu que ce Dieu qu'on implore au besoin,
Ayt formé les mortels pour en perdre le soin?
Non, non, sa providence est tousjours sans pareille.
(V, i)

(Daphne, the same God who wills our being born is also concerned with preserving our life. If the highest and lowest of humans try alike to protect the work of their hands—if even the animals operating by instinct preserve and defend their young, do you think that this God whom one implores in time of need has formed mortals only to lose his care for them? No, no, his providence is always peerless.)

Since the heroes of tragicomedy are not presented as totally flawless, they may momentarily yield to frustration and despair. On such occasions they ask heaven why it has failed to intervene and redress earthly wrongs. Such anguished questioning always stops short of blasphemy and rejection of faith.

Il semble que les Dieux ont changé de nature,
Ou que tout icy bas n'aille qu'à l'adventure,
Puis qu'on void l'injustice en ce degré qu'elle est,
Et la vertu soumise à tout ce qui luy plaist.
(Scudéry, L'Amour tyrannique, I, iii, 213–16)

(It seems that the gods have changed their nature, or that everything in this lower world moves only by chance, since we see injustice at its pinnacle, and virtue subjected to whatever pleases vice.)

The obvious complement to such a passage is the statement of gratitude and admiration when the character realizes that all's well that ends well.

Qu'en tous lieux ce miracle eternise vos faits,
Dieux! de qui la justice a de si beaux effaits;
Que la place, & le jour soyent à jamais celebres,
Où vous avez tiré la clarté des tenebres,
Et fait voir clairement aux yeux de l'Univers,
Que vos mains tost ou tard punissent les pervers.
(Mairet, Virginie, V, vi)

(May this miracle everywhere give eternal fame to your deeds, gods, whose justice has effected such splendid things! Forever famous be the day and place where you brought forth light from darkness and showed clearly to all the universe that your hands sooner or later punish the wicked.)

While most references to the gods are provoked by specific events, several plays feature lengthier discussions of providence which bear no immediate relevance to the plot. Rotrou's tragicomedy, La Pèlerine amoureuse, opens with a debate between two rivals on the question of whether the gods take any interest in human affairs. This atypical introduction can hardly be the result of inadvertence; it has no parallel in the Italian play which was almost certainly Rotrou's source, and the French poet was by no means a careless craftsman. The opening debate serves to justify the manifold surprises of the dénouement, in which the two debaters are supplanted by a third suitor, who turns out to be the long-lost brother of one of his rivals and to bear the same first name as the other. Lucidor, the unbeliever who had declared that the gods are too busy with the management of natural phenomena to intervene in human affairs, is refuted by the arrival of his beloved Angélique, whom he had thought dead. Angélique, the amorous pilgrim of the title, lives up to her name by devoting herself to the quest of the man whom heaven had destined for her and to the service of any person who requests her assistance. Her religious convictions are sincere enough to cause her uneasiness about using a religious guise to cover her search for an earthly lover:

Je ne visite point les temples de nos Dieux,
Vers eux, nostre priere arrive de tous lieux
Je suy d'aveugles feux dont mon ame est atteinte,
Une profane ardeur prend le nom d'une saincte.
(III, ii)

(I do not visit the temples of our gods; our prayer arrives to them from all places. I am following a blind passion with which my soul is smitten; a profane love takes the name of a holy one.)

Nonetheless, Angélique believes, and the dénouement confirms, that her quest enjoys the sanction of heaven and is not really a sacrilege. The play could properly be subtitled 'Faith Rewarded'.

I have mentioned décor as the third method of indirection in tragicomedy. In the period before the unity of place was officially recognized as a key element in French dramaturgy, the unhampered use of scene changes permitted a visual, as well as symbolic, representation of the difference between sacred and profane space. It also allowed for neutral space, in which divine intervention could be clearly manifested. Tragicomedies of the preclassical era abound in episodes, usually set in a forest or on a sea-coast, in which a hero or heroine is assailed by assassins, robbers or pirates. In every instance the virtuous protagonist escapes with his life, while the villains often meet their death, confessing with their last breath that the gods are just and vigilant, after all.

Sacred space may enter the world of tragicomedy in a concrete and visible form through the use of temples and sacred groves as stage settings. Besides providing a conducive setting for prayer and meditation, such scenes may introduce religious ceremonies (especially weddings and funerals) and priests or seers. The Mémoire de Mahelot, the notes of one of the earliest professional Parisian stage designers, list no fewer than eight tragicomedies, most of them pastoral tragicomedies which featured temple scenes, as well as a sizable number of plays utilizing cemeteries, magician's grottos and prisons—all of which could sometimes though not invariably, serve as places for prayer or religious rites.

The effect which such décor can exercise upon the characters should not be underestimated. The most rebellious souls cannot help feeling awed in the presence of the sacred world. One particularly striking example is the sudden transformation of the blaspheming tyrant Gondebaut in Jean de Mairet's Chryséide et Arimand. Upon learning that his captives have escaped, the King rails at the gods for thwarting his plans, denies that their power is greater than his own, vows to overthrow their altars and them, and finally proclaims that they are nought but inert marble (IV, i). Yet in his next appearance, Gondebaut is persuaded to appease the gods and seek their aid. In the sacred grove, the 'sacrificateur' delivers a solemn lecture, warning the King that what the gods require of men, far more than sacrifice, is purity of heart and upright conduct. The special aura of this grove, coupled with the nobility of soul exhibited by the protagonists, makes the tyrant relent and liberate the lovers. His change of heart is also a religious conversion, since he finally comes to admit the justice and superior might of the gods. When the officiant declares that the hand of providence is manifest in these events, Gondebaut agrees without hesitation:

(Celebrant. Sir, I for one believe that we cannot without offense hate those whom Heaven undertakes to defend. It truly seems to me that this affair shows a power more than human.

King. I have the same impression. I believe that all these events, so different in their courses, have their invisible source not elsewhere than in Heaven.)

There is one special case where an evil character is not cowed by his entry into a sacred space. When armed with a device furnished by black magic, the character has the impression that the powers of darkness have definitively prevailed. In Rotrou's L'Innocente infidélité, the villainous Hermante disrupts a royal wedding ceremony by entering the temple with a magic ring that instantly casts a spell over the King and rekindles his lustful passion for his former mistress. The speed of her triumph leads Hermante to gloat:

Enfers, dessus les Cieux, vostre pouvoir l'emporte,
Superbes habitants de ces champs azurés
Qui par nostre ignorance estiés seuls reverés,
Cedés à d'autres Dieux cet orgueilleux Empire….
Et qu'au lieu de monter descendent nos encens!
(II, ii, 326–32)

(Hades, your power wins out over Heaven. Haughty denizens of the azure fields, who through our ignorance are alone revered, yield this proud dominion to other gods…. And let our incense descend rather than rise!)

L'Innocente infidélité is a particularly remarkable tragicomedy, because in addition to exploiting to the fullest all of the techniques of indirection discussed above, it shows the forces of good and evil becoming progressively incarnated by the main characters. Hermante, in fact, begins as a distraught but not wicked woman who had been seduced by the King of Epire under promise of marriage. With the magic ring on her finger, she willingly assumes the personification of lust, and in the final act she seems to believe that she really is what the other characters have already called her: a witch. When the ring is finally snatched away and the spell is broken, Hermante becomes hysterical, calling for the total destruction of the universe to accompany her execution. Her final appeal to chaos reveals the extent to which she has merged herself with her role as the champion of evil:

Que l'Enfer pour le moins, s'ouvre aux voeux que je faicts,
Qu'il engloutisse tour, Roy, sorciere, & Palais,
Pour reparer un crime au Ciel épouvantable
Confondés l'innocent avecque la coupable,
Faictes pour mes forfaicts souffrir tous les mortels,
Renversés les Cités, les throsnes, les autels….
Que le cahos renaisse, et que tout soit confus
Dieux! tonnés, Cieux, tombés, Astres, ne luysés plus.
(V, v, 1331–6, 1351–2)

(May Hell at least open at my wish; may it swallow up tower, king, witch and palace! To expiate a crime abhorrent to Heaven, confound the innocent with the guilty; make all mortals suffer for my villainy! Overthrow cities, thrones, altars! … May chaos be reborn, and may all things be jumbled! Gods, sound your thunder; skies, fall; stars, shine no more!)

At the same time, Parthénie, the fair young Queen, appears more and more like the exemplary figure of a saint. Her total submission to the King's orders, however cruel and unjust, her trust that heaven will one day restore her husband's affection, and her unhesitating acceptance of her death sentence seem to go beyond the ordinary dimensions of the virtuous heroine. She goes so far as to implore the gods to tolerate her husband's philandering and to inflict any suffering he might merit upon her (III, iii). But because this is a tragicomedy, the heroine, despite her desire for martyrdom, cannot be allowed to die. The good counselor Evandre, who represents prudence and loyalty, pretends to carry out the King's sentence of execution on Parthénie and spreads the false report of her death. Once the monarch has repented, Evandre produces her in a highly theatrical fashion: he brings her into the temple while a funeral service is being performed upon her empty tomb. All present believe that she has come back from the grave, which indeed she has in terms of the play's symbolism. Hermante's profanation of the temple earlier in the play, leading to the King's fall into lust and criminality, is fittingly undone by a new interruption in the same temple and with the same characters present. The King, who had earlier flaunted his double personality, apropos of his taste in women:

J'ayme au temple leur crainte, et leur honnesteté,
Au lict leur belle humeur, et leur facilité
(II, iv, 459–60)

(In temple I like their reverence and honesty; in bed, their docile humor and facility.)

moves, quite symbolically, in act V from the spatial representation of lust (the bedroom, where he has just spent the night with Hermante) to the sacred precincts of the temple, where he remains in prayer at the conclusion of the play.

As the preceding remarks have suggested, Rotrou has evoked, behind the suspenseful and sensational plot, an allegorical battle of abstractions, reminiscent of the medieval morality play. The names of the characters were almost certainly chosen for their symbolic value: Parthénie suggests virginity, Evandre means good man, Félismond would seem to indicate that the King has been predestined for happiness. The name Hermante may be derived from the Spanish hermana, or sister, suggesting a forbidden sexual relationship. Likewise, despite the supposedly pagan setting, Christian rites and symbols are very much in evidence in this play. Marriage is described as an inviolable sacrament, and the royal marriage ceremony, performed on stage by a priest, is first profaned by Hermante and her magic ring and later restored by the penitence of Félismond and the 'resurrection' of Parthénie. Since this is not an explicitly Christian play, the Queen's rescue is effected, not by a supernatural event, but by the courageous acts of her faithful friends. Nevertheless, the happy ending is ascribed to the gods, even by those active characters who are, on the human level, responsible for it. It is not surprising that Evandre's triumphant proclamation of poetic justice, constituting a direct reply to Hermante's earlier gloating monologues, is unusually explicit:

L'Enfer n'a plus de droict, son pouvoir abatu
Laisse du vice enfin triompher la vertu,
Le Ciel marche à pas [lents] au chastiment des crimes
Sa Justice irritee ouvre tard ses abysmes,
Mais quand son bras enfin s'applique au chastiment
Il repare le temps, par l'excés du tourment.
(V, iv, 1315–20)

(Hell's sway is no more; its power overthrown lets virtue triumph over vice at last. Heaven moves with slow steps towards the punishment of crimes; its angered justice opens its abysses late; but when its arm finally applies itself to chastisement, it compensates for the delay by the excess of the torture.)

In total contrast to the Christian symbolism and the neutral references to 'the gods' are the allusions to specific figures in Greco-Roman mythology, which occur almost exclusively in the speeches of the sinful characters. These focus on the sexual permissiveness and criminality of the gods; in short, the types of story used by the early Church to discredit paganism as a religious doctrine. To cite the most striking example, Félismond, in his ecstasy at obtaining a kiss from Hermante, exclaims that their delights surpass those enjoyed by other adulterous lovers of classical fame:

Tels ne furent jamais les baisers de l'Aurore
Treuvant son favory sur le rivage More,
Ny tels ceux de Venus, embrassant ce chasseur
Qui nasquit d'un inceste, & fut fils de sa soeur.
(III, i, 589–92)

(The kisses of Aurora, finding her beloved on the Moorish shore, were never so sweet, nor were those of Venus, embracing the hunter born of an incest, who was his sister's son.)

Rotrou does not fail to profit from the sensuality and the poetic power of his mythological references, while at the same time exploiting them to suggest the forbidden world of evil. The subtle but pervasive use of Christian and pagan themes contributes to the suggestion of a spiritual dimension that is not shown in direct form.

Since the use of religious motifs in tragicomedy was by no means limited to France, I would like to conclude with an example from England, even though virtually no contact existed between dramatists of the two countries in this period. I have selected John Fletcher, a writer whose interest in religious questions and dramatic didacticism was hardly extensive or profound, the better to show that the idea of providence had become a fixed component of the genre. The explicit use of religious vocabulary is rare in Fletcher's works, but spiritual themes are present, however indirectly, in the majority of his tragicomedies.

The Loyal Subject, subtitled Honour's Martyr, portrays a world sharply polarized between good and evil characters, and focuses on the heroic defense of an ideal under the most adverse conditions. Nothing—not even disgrace, poverty, imprisonment and torture—can make the fanatically loyal general, Archas, break faith with his King. Further enhancing the hero's sublimity is the shocking ingratitude and immoral behavior of that King, which eventually drive most of the other honorable characters into open rebellion against him. Archas's shining example and simple eloquence shame the rebels into submission and help convert the young monarch to the ways of goodness. The term 'martyr' is fully appropriate, for the general unhesitatingly undergoes every test of his loyalty and comes close to dying for it.

There are at the same time features which serve, perhaps deliberately, to detract from the play's didactic force. For one thing, Archas's ordeal is presented as gratuitous. The King is not fundamentally depraved, and on several occasions he appears to have reformed, only to fall back into his old ways under the prompting of the wicked counselor, Boroskie. The decision to subject Archas to the ultimate ordeal of wrongful imprisonment, which leads to the mutiny of the army, occurs after the King is converted, this time permanently (we are to assume), through the efforts of Archas's fair daughter. We never learn why the King deems this additional test necessary, but Fletcher clearly had a tendency to sacrifice motivation to emotional effect. The other surprise from the didactic point of view is the sudden deflation of the evil characters in the final scene, making the audience wonder whether evil truly has an independent existence or is simply a bad dream that is easily dispelled. Fletcher was certainly not the only playwright to allow his villains to repent hastily as soon as they see the finality of their defeat, but it is rare for a conquering hero to be as trusting as Archas, who after recommending that the punishment of his enemy, Boroskie, be suspended predicts that, if given another chance, this erstwhile villain will be found a perfect man!

Fletcher's most explicit use of religious themes occurs in The Island Princess. Even here the religious conflict is introduced fairly late in the play and without any warning. The first half of the tragicomedy shows how a valiant young Portuguese adventurer named Armusia succeeds against all odds in liberating the imprisoned King of Tidore and in winning the affection of his lovely sister, Quisara. The swashbuckling but totally secular world of the play is suddenly transformed when the princess demands, upon orders from a fanatical hermit, that Armusia, as final proof of his love, renounce his faith and become a pagan. Hitherto unconcerned with the religious differences between him and his beloved, the hero must now confront his experiences in the spiritual categories of temptation, lust and damnation. When Armusia is arrested and threatened with death, his role begins to resemble that of the Christian martyr: steadfast, fearless of death and contemptuous of all things worldly. This saintly heroism, as in the Acta Sanctorum, does not fail to have an effect on the pagan onlookers. Quisara, enthralled by Armusia's perfect virtue, embraces Christianity and demands to die with him. At the end of the play the King indicates that he may convert, as well. Thus, the events in the play may be interpreted retroactively as a salvific tale in which Armusia's earlier adventures serve to produce the combination of circumstances leading to the conversion of the Moluccan rulers to Christianity.

The differences between Armusia and the usual pattern of saints' lives indicate a second type of providential scheme within the play; namely, the divine dispensation of rewards and punishments in this life, known as poetic justice. This is, as we have seen, a standard feature of tragicomedy, and, even in this play, does not require a Christian formulation. In the final lines of The Island Princess, the King proclaims:

An universal gladness fly about us;
And know, however subtle men dare cast,
And promise wrack, the gods give peace at last.
(V, v, 90–2)

Since this is not a tragedy but a tragicomedy, the hero and heroine must be delivered by their loyal friends. As in other plays in his corpus, Fletcher surrounds the protagonists with virtuous sympathizers who need but a sufficient pretext to mount a full-scale rescue mission, often comprising a general insurrection. For the same reason, the miraculous deeds of the martyr, which would ordinarily accompany and follow his death, here precede his death and obviate the necessity for actual martyrdom.

The Island Princess fails as religious drama for a number of reasons. Armusia's transformation from chivalrous lover to Christian martyr in the space of one scene is unconvincing, and Fletcher, who uses such metamorphoses with some frequency in his plays, seems to have gone out of his way to make this one implausible. Armusia's extravagant protestations of love at the beginning of the scene culminate with the equation of courtly love and paradise:

'Tis equity that man aspires to heaven
Should win it by his worth, and not sleep to it.
(IV, v, 19–20)

Moments later the same love is placed at the furthest possible distance from paradise:

Love alone then—
And mine another way, I'll love diseases first, …
Have mercy, heaven! how have I been wand'ring!
Wand'ring the way of lust, and left my Maker! …
Trod the blind paths of death! forsook assurance,
Eternity of blessedness, for a woman!
(IV, v, 52–61)

Part of the problem is the fundamental lack of opposition in the play between East and West. Since, as the technique of indirection requires, Moluccans and Portuguese share the same code of honor and virtue, which is quite independent of Christianity, there is never any genuine incompatibility between them. The pagan characters are just as outraged by the hermit's bloodthirsty counsels as the friends of Armusia, and the reason which the princess gives for her own conversion is the hero's accomplishments according to the secular code:

I have touch'd ye every way, tried ye most honest,
Perfect, and good, chaste, blushing-chaste, and temperate,
Valiant without vain-glory, modest, staid,
No rage, or light affection ruling in you;
Indeed, the perfect school of worth I find ye,
The temple of true honour.
(V, ii, III-16)

In fact, as Eugene Waith has accurately stated, 'The whole pagan attack upon Christianity has masked the fundamental attack upon honor and chastity…. Armusia's noble defiance of heathendom is merely the culminating proof of his heroic individuality.' Finally, as the audience knows all along, the play's religious crisis is precipitated by fraud, since the sinister hermit is actually the villain in disguise. Having relied primarily on the rhetorical technique of ethos (proof of the speaker's good moral character) to persuade the Moluccan rulers, his unmasking in the final scene is deemed a full refutation of all his religious views. It is as if the truth-value of a religious sect depended solely on the moral integrity of its adherents and not at all on its tenets.

If Fletcher's use of sacred themes seems, in the word of one recent critic, 'meretricious', one may legitimately wonder why he returned so often to poetic justice and to the spectacle of honor persecuted. I should like to suggest that Fletcher and some of his colleagues found the religious elements accidentally rather than by design within the conventions of tragicomedy and were capable of reacting to religious motifs latent in the plots they chose, while never bothering to make those motifs central to the plays. In Fletcher's theatre, the glimpses of a sacred world are mere epiphenomena, appearing briefly and sporadically, with no inevitable link to the play's main theme. This excursion into English dramatic history seems to confirm what we have found in France: playwrights were sensitive to the religious motifs latent in the tragicomic vision and were capable of appreciating both the exciting, action-filled plots on one level and the spiritual world which could on occasion emerge from those plots. Writers with a profound interest in religious subjects, such as Rotrou, could devise methods of integrating these more fully into the secular plot, but the presence of what I have called indirection in a preponderance of tragicomedies indicates that the age desired a theatrical outlet for its abiding interest in sacred subjects and that indirection, whatever its inadequacies on this score, helped meet a very real need.

Perry Gethner

SOURCE: "Affairs of State and French Tragicomedy in the Seventeenth Century," in Renaissance Tragicomedy: Explorations in Genre and Politics, edited by Nancy Klein Maguire, AMS Press, 1987, pp. 177–95.

[In the following excerpt, Gethner contends that a political dimension is typically present in seventeenth-century French tragicomedies and is often closely related to other elements of the plot.]

The difficulty of providing a comprehensive definition of tragicomedy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has long been recognized. The corpus is so amazingly diverse that one is entitled to wonder whether the authors themselves maintained a consistent view of the genre and whether the audiences, as a new tragicomedy was announced, could accurately predict what they were about to see. Further complicating the process of definition is the fact that the genre underwent evolution in several key respects over the course of its slightly more than one hundred years of existence in France. Even the theorists, who generated a sizable body of writings about poetics and dramatic theory, provide little assistance. Most fail to discuss the intermediate genre at all, while those who do are often vague and superficial.

The present [essay] will not attempt to arrive at a new, all-encompassing definition of French tragicomedy, nor to summarize the results of previous scholarship. Its aim is rather to explore a significant aspect of the genre that has generally been overlooked. Political considerations, although never a sine qua non of the genre, are found in over half of the plays, and indeed in the overwhelming majority of tragicomedies composed after 1650. They are sometimes tangential, but in many cases they play a crucial role in the plot. Roger Guichemerre, in the best comprehensive study of French tragicomedy to date, notes that certain political themes recur in a number of the plays: reflections on tyranny and the legitimate exercise of royal power, on the nefarious effect of bad advisors, on the benefits of peace and the misfortunes produced by war. Discussions of these political topics are sometimes well integrated into the action but at other times appear to be superfluous. However, Guichemerre considers such faults minor because, in his view, it is always love, rather than politics, that constitutes the central motivation of the protagonists, thus dominating the plots. He adds that the minimal role accorded to affairs of state is one of the major features that distinguish tragicomedy from tragedy:

Certaines tragi-comédies s'inspireront tout de même de l'histoire, mais, à la différence des tragiques qui analysent les desseins des princes et des grands ambitieux, ou qui exposent longuement les problèmes politiques de l'époque qu'ils évoquent dans leurs pièces, les auteurs de tragi-comédies ne s'intéressent guère qu'aux passions et aux problèmes sentimentaux de leurs personnages, c'est-à-dire à ce qui a le moins retenu l'attention des historiens et qui laisse donc toute liberté à leur imagination romanesque. [Guichemerre, Tragi-comédie]

[Certain tragicomedies will be based on history all the same, but, as opposed to writers of tragedies who analyze the projects of princes and men of great ambition, or who expound at length the political problems of the period which they evoke in their plays, the authors of tragicomedies show minimal interest in matters other than the passions and sentimental problems of their characters; in other words, the aspect that has least engaged the attention of historians and which, therefore, leaves complete freedom to their fictional imagination.]

This statement contains a certain amount of truth, but needs careful reexamination. Leaving aside the suggestion that French authors took more liberties with history when they called their plays tragicomedies, I shall turn to the corpus of tragicomedies as a whole, looking for trends in regard to two main features: the presence and function of kings and queens in the dramatis personae, and the impact of political or patriotic considerations on the protagonists' internal conflicts and on their resolution. We shall see that, although politics never fully displaces romantic love and divine providence as the dominant themes, it may share the spotlight with them and become an indispensable component of the plot.

If one looks at the development of French tragicomedy in a purely chronological fashion, the period preceding the emergence of Pierre Corneille, roughly from 1550 to 1630, offers little of interest to our discussion. In the heterogeneous works written in the period, few of which have any literary merit, the political dimension is frequently non-existent. Even in tragicomedies of the next generation that feature romanesque plots, affairs of state are not necessarily a major factor. To the extent that the lovers are constantly moving from place to place and battling diverse obstacles to their union, the plots leave little room for the conventional representatives of law and order. The world that the characters experience in their travels is unstable and often chaotic. Kings, when they appear, are frequently lustful, tyrannical, and blasphemous; robbers and pirates abound unchecked; judges and priests (unwittingly, for the most part) condemn innocent victims. To compensate for the lawlessness within or between human societies, the gods emerge as the genuine policemen of the universe, rescuing the good characters and punishing the villains. In some cases, the dénouement includes the restoration or selection of a legitimate and just ruler, but the political stabilization is overshadowed by the reuniting of lovers and of families. Likewise, the texts of the plays rarely feature detailed critiques of lawless societies and unjust rulers, even when such discussions would be directly relevant.

It was Corneille who most clearly perceived the need to achieve a fusion of political issues and adventure-filled plots in tragicomedies. As he would later admit, his first serious play, Clitandre (like many other tragicomedies of that period), failed to integrate these components successfully, but the proper role of the sovereign and the conflict between justice and tyranny are two of the principal themes. Most of the action is set in two contrasting locales: the king's palace and a nearby forest, each representing a different type of order and justice. The palace is the seat of government and law. King Alcandre sincerely believes in justice, although he acts improperly by condemning

to death the innocent Clitandre on a charge of murder. Even though the evidence against him is purely circumstantial and though both the intended murder victim and the members of the royal council request a regular trial, the king orders Clitandre's immediate execution. Of course, since the play's original subtitle is L'Innocence délivrée, Clitandre's best friend must arrive in the nick of time, having found the real felon.

In contrast to the depiction of flawed human justice within the palace, reinforced by several prison scenes, the forest episodes reveal a world of total anarchy and unbridled sensuality and criminality, restrained only by divine providence. It is only through a series of fortunate coincidences, which the virtuous characters attribute to the gods, that the schemes which the criminals attempt to perpetrate in the forest are thwarted and their intended victims saved. The gods' benevolent influence then spreads to the palace, making the final restoration of order and justice possible. The melodramatic plot of Clitandre inspires little faith in the efficacy of human political and judicial systems, but, unlike the practice of Corneille in his mature masterpieces, there is not much sustained discussion of these issues.

Looking back at the play in 1660, Corneille found the king's role unsatisfactory because Alcandre acts not as a king or as a man, but strictly as a judge. Such a peripheral role is beneath his dignity as a monarch: "il est introduit sans aucun intérêt pour son Etat ni pour sa personne, ni pour ses affections, mais seulement pour régler celui des autres…." ["He is introduced with no interest for his state, nor for his person and affections, but solely to settle the interests of others," Corneille, Théâtre complet, ed. Georges Couton, 1971]. Clitandre is totally unconcerned with affairs of state; in fact, Corneille does not deign in the original edition to specify the country where the action—admittedly fictional—is set. The second edition (1644) places it in Scotland, but no further reference to geography occurs in the text. The plot deals with the love affairs of the king's two daughters, but they could just as well have been any young noblewomen, and the king could have been replaced by a non-royal father with minimal impact upon the dénouement.

Le Cid (1637) marks a radical departure from earlier French tragicomedy. It features genuine heroes, rather than a group of victims and aggressors, and the most significant conflicts are internal. For the most part, it is reason, as opposed to unruly passions, that guides the protagonists' actions and helps them establish their priorities when faced with conflicting obligations. Moreover, the characters find that they can to a large extent control their own destinies, and there is no need for the playwright to rely for his happy ending on the intervention of divine providence (which receives only a few passing references in the play).

Among Corneille's innovations in Le Cid is the fusion of the love story with a political drama. So tightly are they linked that neither strand of the plot can be resolved without the other. Don Fernand, King of Castille, aiming to transform his country into a nation-state in which centralized royal authority takes absolute precedence over that of the feudal lords, is frustrated by his dependence on Don Gomès, Count de Gormas, an obstinate representative of the feudal mentality who places self-interest and self-affirmation (values belonging to the traditional Spanish conception of honor) above obedience to the king. The obstacle that will come between the two lovers, Rodrigue and Chimène, arises from the refusal of the heroine's father, Don Gomès, to ratify the king's choice of Don Diègue, Rodrigue's father, for a special honor he desired for himself. The ensuing quarrel between the fathers leads to a duel, but one in which Don Diègue, too aged and feeble to fight, is replaced by his son. The young man wins, but in the process loses all hope of marrying Chimène.

It is Don Fernand's incalculable good fortune that Rodrigue proves to be, not merely the equal in prowess of Don Gomès, and a brilliantly effective general in the battle against the Moors, but also a partisan of the new view of kingship, accepting the principle of absolute loyalty to the monarch. (That all of this is anachronistic for eleventh-century Spain need hardly be stated.) At the end of the play Don Fernand adopts, or annexes, Rodrigue as an instrument of the crown, who will henceforth owe sole loyalty to the king, rather than to his clan. The young hero's amorous misadventures have a direct bearing on the destiny of the state, since they lead immediately to Rodrigue's whirlwind campaign against the Moors and to the promulgation of a new political order. At the same time, Rodrigue, a newly-made knight who has never fought prior to the start of the play and whose first duel is against one of the most powerful men in Spain, needs a royal protector, and the king cements the alliance between them by ordering Chimène to wed the hero (whom she has never ceased to love).

In addition to giving special prominence to the political aspect of the story, Corneille effects a remarkable transformation of the concept of love. No longer a given, love is now something to be earned and justified—a rational goal fully compatible with the heroic code. Such a view of love leads to the paradoxical, and potentially tragic, situation of Rodrigue and Chimène: if either shirks his or her duty to safeguard the family honor, he or she becomes unworthy of the other's esteem. This means that Rodrigue must fight a duel with Chimène's father, while she must do all she can to bring her father's slayer to justice. In addition, the lovers believe they have a moral obligation to one another: Chimène promises to commit suicide if she causes Rodrigue's death, and he declares that he will not even try to defend himself against any champion she sends against him. The only way to overcome this seemingly hopeless situation is for the king to intervene, changing Rodrigue's name and status. Thus, a third type of obligation, loyalty to the sovereign, both supersedes and protects the allegiance to one's family and to one's beloved. It can hardly be an accident that the king has the final say and that the very last word in the play is "roi."

Despite the triumphant success of Le Cid, Corneille abandoned tragicomedy for tragedy, largely due to pressure exerted by the French Academy and by Cardinal Richelieu. The theorists, although not the theatregoing public, were showing growing hostility to tragicomedy—a genre not acknowledged by Aristotle and Horace. Corneille must also have recognized his extraordinary talent for political drama and grasped the possibilities that Roman history provided for the type of heroic tragedy that suited his temperament.

When Corneille returned to tragicomedy with Don Sanche d'Aragon, he produced a play that differed markedly from his earlier works in the genre although it does retain several of the main themes of Le Cid (the relationship between weak sovereign and invincible general, the dilemma of a princess who loves a man of inferior rank but superior merit, the happy ending effected by the hero's change of name). He chose the label "comédie héroïque" when he first published Don Sanche in 1650 and would use it for two subsequent plays. The term had actually been coined by Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin for a political allegory play, Europe, performed privately in 1642 for Cardinal Richelieu, who may well have been its real author, but neither the play nor the term made much impact at the time. Moreover, Corneille, presumably as a concession to his critics, expunged the term "tragicomedy" from his collected works, relabeling Le Cid a tragedy in the edition of 1648. He would accord the same honor to Clitandre in the edition of 1660.

The question at once arises whether Corneille thought of comédie héroïque as a brand new genre or rather as a somewhat modified form of tragicomedy. The dedicatory epistle of Don Sanche indicates that he was not fully certain on this point. He begins by declaring that a playwright's paramount consideration must be to please his public, even at the expense of fidelity to the ancients:

Voici un poème d'une espèce nouvelle, et qui n'a point d'exemple chez les anciens. Vous connaissez l'humeur de nos Français; ils aiment la nouveauté; et je hasarde non tam meliora quam nova, sur l'espérance de les mieux divertir…. Je vous avouerai toutefois qu'après l'avoir faite je me suis trouvé fort embarrassé à lui choisir un nom. [Corneille, Théâtre complet, ed. Maurice Rat, 1960]

[Here is a poem of a new type, which has no example among the ancients. You know the temperament of our Frenchmen; they like novelty; and I am hazarding something not so much better as new, in the hope of better entertaining them. I will admit, though, that after writing it I found myself quite embarrassed as to the choice of name for it.]

Obviously, Corneille was undisturbed by generic impurity, provided that the play was well received. In 1650 he seemed more willing to engage in serious dialogue with the theorists, even though some of his ideas about dramatic genres were strikingly original and unorthodox. The Don Sanche dedication contains a number of significant observations about genre: the hero of tragedy does not have to be of noble birth; if tragedy is to produce pity and fear in the spectator, it ought to do so more successfully if the hero's condition resembles the spectator's (a justification for bourgeois tragedy); a play cannot be a tragedy unless the hero faces genuine, life-threatening peril; a comedy is not required to make us laugh. The first two observations, however much they anticipate developments in later centuries, were to have no effect on Corneille's own production, and the latter two fail to clarify the existence of an intermediate genre between tragedy and comedy.

An analysis of Don Sanche suggests that comédie héroïque is not a totally new departure, but rather a type, or subgenre, of tragicomedy. Its main characteristics may be summarized as follows: 1) the plot centers around the marriage of young kings and queens, involving a conflict between love and reasons of state; 2) the latter term refers to the sovereign's power and prestige, but no real danger faces the state as a result of the choice of spouse; 3) the guaranteed happy ending involves no deaths, no villains to be punished and no risk of death for the protagonists; 4) serious ethical and political issues can be debated without great risk, since the dénouement obviates the need to take the arguments to their logical conclusion. At the same time, certain elements of the older romanesque tragicomedy could be retained.

In Don Sanche there are several potentially explosive issues: namely, a commoner's love for two queens (reciprocated by both ladies), and the possibility of his rise into the aristocracy, even to the throne, solely on the basis of his heroic exploits. Carlos, a dashing and invincible young adventurer, utters ringing declarations that deeds, not birth, are the sole genuine criterion for nobility (I. 2; V. 5), and his example makes the ladies incline to that view. Thanks to the traditional devices of deus ex machina and the switching of children in infancy, Corneille can skirt these intriguing questions in his last act. Carlos is revealed to be the long-lost heir to the throne of Aragon; his feeling for Elvire, discovered to be his sister, is attributed to the conventional "call of blood"; and all the obstacles to the marriage of the lovers abruptly disappear. Yet, although the play's happy ending restores peace and stability to Spain, the hero's change of name, unlike that of Rodrigue in Le Cid, does not lead to the formation of a new political order. In fact, Carlos, who seems constantly bent on teaching the arrogant grandees a lesson, ultimately makes his peace with the feudal system. With the revelation that he is indeed Don Sanche, his unsettling theory is exorcised: heredity and heroism are synonymous, after all, and the traditional view receives a striking new confirmation. Of course, given the label of the play and the way the plot is constructed, it would be hard to imagine Corneille writing any other ending.

In the final scenes the characters refer with increasing frequency to divine justice, which is expected to arrange human affairs properly and which is ultimately credited for the happy ending. The play's last words are "digne récompense" (fitting reward). Nevertheless, the concept of reward clashes with that of genetic determinism or predestination, already rejected by Carlos in his theory of merit divorced from heredity. If the hero must act in a certain way because of his birth, to what extent does he deserve a reward? The play suggests this dilemma but makes no attempt to resolve it; a decade later Corneille would face up to it squarely in his Oedipe and conclude in favor of free will.

The preceding discussion suggests a possible definition of comédie héroïque: it is a type of political tragicomedy with a nonhistorical plot that raises serious issues within a potentially tragic situation, only to avert the tragedy and dispel any disturbing hypotheses. André Stegmann is in basic agreement when he suggests that Don Sanche unveils not a new genre, but a new technique in which irony comes to supersede the tragic and produces an ambiguous emotion in the spectator. Although his characterization of that emotion as "un pathétique issu de la dissonance du sublime et du dérisoire" seems excessive, he is perfectly right to note that the play creates doubt about the basic assumptions of the heroic code, such as the primacy of honor and merit, and the importance of self-sacrifice as the outward sign of moral nobility. Comédie héroïque, more than other types of tragicomedy, is a play that makes the audience wonder "what if."

It should be noted that Corneille never composed any further plays in the manner of Don Sanche. The two late plays to which he also gave the label of comédie héroïque, Tite et Bérénice and Pulchérie, are not tragicomedies at all, but rather historical tragedies dealing with the matrimonial problems of kings and queens and involving no loss of life. Both plays end with the royal lovers sacrificing their happiness for reasons of state and parting forever. Presumably, Corneille felt obliged to deny the label of tragedy to these works since he had earlier listed as one of that genre's prerequisites that the protagonist must be put in a life-threatening situation. In any event, the label comédie héroïque, although used by a number of subsequent playwrights, did not displace that of tragicomedy. Both virtually disappeared by the 1670s.

Having followed the career of the genre's most illustrious practitioner in France, we have been able to observe some of the ways that tragicomedy changed over time. In order to gain a fuller understanding of the genre's relation to political themes, however, historical and chronological considerations need to be supplemented by a more synchronic perspective. Perhaps the most practical manner of gauging the importance of these themes is to examine the role of characters who care profoundly about affairs of state: kings, ministers, generals, and would-be kings. I have decided, for reasons of space, to restrict consideration primarily to reigning monarchs. In analyzing the role of these characters we need to pinpoint those factors which 1) make the monarch a prominent figure in the play and 2) give weight to the political discussions which may occur in the course of the play. Table I, though hardly exhaustive, is at least a useful point of and without warning, may evaporate just as suddenly at

a.	Age Young Old (usually father or father-figure)
b.	Amorous status In love, requited In love, unrequited Indifferent (often father or judge)
c.	Moral status Good, just Tyrannical Switches from one to the other
d.	Position within state Strong Weak (often dependent on young hero)
e.	Concern with affairs of the state Conscientious Indifferent to the common weal
f.	Centrality to plot Is protagonist Is friend of protagonist Is enemy of protagonist (The friend/enemy either has important decision-making power, or has no impact on dénouement.)
g.	Status at end of play Gets married to proper partner, makes peace Relents or abdicates or yields beloved to rightful partner Killed or deposed

A.	Young, falls in love with the wrong person (or becomes estranged from the right person), turns from a good ruler into a tyrant (or at least commits a series of unjust and irrational actions), is forgetful about affairs of state.
B.	Young, falls in love with the right person and is loved in return, just, strong, concerned about affairs of state (and it is here that the obstacles to the marriage tend to occur).
C.	Old, father, either indifferent to love or rival of his own son, tyrannical, opposed to the lovers' union (concerned about making a politically expedient marriage, against misalliance).
D.	Old, father, indifferent to love, just, friend to the lovers, powerless to help them, dependent on the hero's aid.

departure.

Since it is obvious that the possibilities listed here may be found in other dramatic genres besides tragicomedy, we must try to find the combinations that occur most often in tragicomedy, limiting the examples to seventeenth-century France. The next step will be to determine whether there is an inherently tragicomic quality to such scenarios. Leaving aside those plays where the role of the king is marginal, the most frequent combinations seem to be those listed in Table II.

Pattern A might well be labeled "reason lost and regained." The sovereign is a basically just and conscientious ruler whose misconduct is but a passing episode, quickly corrected and forgotten. Since the dénouement restores the order found at the beginning of the play, it allows for a straightforward ternary (A-B-A) structure. The royal misbehavior normally arises from a violent and unrequited passion or from a serious misunderstanding, frequently due to disguise and/or deception on the part of those surrounding the sovereign. The latter is thus a kind of victim, whose temporary loss of control does not cause the audience to hate him. Moreover, there is no sense of tragic inevitability since 1) the love that erupts suddenly the end of the play, thanks to a) the birth of a new love for a more appropriate partner, or b) the reemergence of the king's nobility of character; alternatively, 2) the misunderstanding or disguise or deception is revealed and cleared up in time to avert catastrophe.

One of the crucial components in Pattern A is the monarch's metamorphosis. Although such drastic changes of personality may be induced by black magic, as in Rotrou's L'Innocente infidélité, they usually do not receive adequate explanation. The playwrights, more often than not, sacrifice verisimilitude and psychological coherence in order to maximize the impact of the surprising situation. No preparation need be given during the play's exposition for the character's later outbursts of jealousy or vindictiveness, but likewise, none is required at the dénouement when the transformation is undone. It is clear that the monarch in this scenario cannot appear as a melodramatic villain devoid of all redeeming qualities. Even in an extreme case, such as Tiridate in Scudéry's L'Amour tyr annique, who is already wicked at the start of the play and who undertakes a bloody expedition to destroy his father's kingdom and to take possession of his sister-inlaw, with whom he has become infatuated, the audience is repeatedly told that the character is not dead to virtue and is capable of reform. In some cases the king has a monologue in the course of which his will and reason prevail over his illicit passion (notably in Tristan L'Hermite's La Folie du sage). What counts in all plays of this group is that the misconduct is to be viewed as something separable from the essence of the king, so that the happy ending remains an ever-present possibility.

The monarch's temporary insanity or injustice obviously has a profound effect upon the other characters. Persecuted heroines display heroic defiance, rejected fiancées feel confusion and anguish, rejected wives demonstrate saintly patience and humility. The most fascinating response is the shattering of an innocent and virtuous character's metaphysical beliefs, raising the specter of "what if." In Rotrou's Don Bernard de Cabrère the title character optimistically maintains his belief in divine justice, while his friend, Don Lope de Lune, loses all trust in a rational power governing human affairs. Don Lope's endless series of disappointments raises an unsettling possibility: what if a hedonistic king and court fail to recognize and honor their greatest warrior, driving him into despair and exile? Rotrou avoids tackling a solution by arranging a belated happy ending. Perhaps the most extraordinary loss of faith is that of the sage Ariste in La Folie du sage, who, faced with the suicide of his virtuous daughter who has preferred death to the lustful advances of the king, denounces the philosophers who taught him the existence of a rational order guiding the universe and who confidently proclaimed man's ability to control his emotions and remain firm amid life's vicissitudes. Ariste's two full-length "mad scenes" call into question the nature of man and the role of the gods with an intensity reminiscent of King Lear. As always, the nightmare vision (the "what if) must be fully dispelled in the last act.

Pattern A does not exist, to my knowledge, in any French tragedy of the classical period, although an analogy might be made with certain plays, especially in the eighteenth century, in which an odious villain unexpectedly repents on his deathbed, usually under the influence of divine grace, as in Voltaire's Alzire. It is, therefore, a basically tragicomic scenario, and it counts among its prerequisites such features as the ultimate restoration of sanity and justice and sudden transformations of character. There may be a diabolical villain, such as Amalfrède in Quinault's Amalasonte or Hermante in L'Innocente infidélité, who is eventually destroyed, but this villain can never be the king. Villainous usurpers who require elimination—a not uncommon element in tragedy—are understandably rare in tragicomedy, and even then they are normally kept completely offstage, as in such plays as Don Sanche, Molière's Don Garcie de Navarre and Quinault's Agrippa. Montfleury's Trasibule, a play once thought to have been based on Hamlet, is an atypical work in that it features the usurper as one of the major characters.

Pattern B is mostly confined to tragicomedy, although there are occasional examples in tragedy, either ending happily with one or more royal marriages, as in Racine's Alexandre, or unhappily with the sovereign's heroic death, as in Thomas Corneille's Comma. This scenario, like the preceding, is inherently tragicomic in that the audience strongly sympathizes with the virtuous young couple and hopes for a marriage at the dénouement. In theory there need be no insurmountable obstacle to their union, for at least one member of the couple is a head of state. Thus, the playwright must select a problem of sufficient gravity to make the happy ending appear truly jeopardized; at the same time, he must be able to dispose of the problem by the end of the play. One of the most unsatisfactory and least common obstacles is religion. Convincing a character to abjure a false religion, especially if that character is a paragon of virtue, does not suffice to fill up an entire tragicomedy. In Mairet's Athénaïs, in fact, the pagan heroine's conversion to Christianity only occupies one act, and the other acts introduce other delays and complications in violation of the unity of action. When a religious conversion involves more serious psychological or political complications, the play tends to end in martyrdom and is labeled a tragedy. Likewise, if the adherent of the true religion fails to convert his or her beloved, there can be no marriage, and the play will probably end tragically.

More frequent is the danger of incest. Real incest has been a standard theme of tragedy ever since the time of Sophocles, but in a tragicomedy the taboo must be avoided and the final revelation of the protagonist's real identity must enable him or her to marry the beloved. In cases where there has been a double substitution of infants, the protagonist receives two staggering revelations: the first leads him/her to believe that the adored fiancé(e) is a brother/sister, while the second, either by confirming the protagonist's original identity or by granting him/her yet another one, eliminates all obstacles to the desired marriage. Such plays necessarily feature confusing and convoluted plots (for example, Boisrobert's Cassandre, or Quinault's Le Mariage de Cambyse where the threat of incest hangs over two couples).

In other plays affairs of state may be the force separating the lovers. Magnon's Tite combines several redoubtable challenges: the traditional hostility of Rome to foreign-born queens, Tite's obligation to his most valuable friend and supporter, Mucian (dictating a marriage to the friend's daughter, Mucie), and the queen mother's strong endorsement of that match. Ultimately, everyone relents, moved by Bérénice's beauty and nobility of character, so that the marriage between the Roman emperor and the Judean queen may take place, contrary to history. The most common obstacle is that of war. A number of tragicomedies show a queen in love with the most valiant of her generals. Unless he is not of noble birth, as in the case of Don Sanche (an obstacle easily removed by the traditional device of a last-minute revelation of the hero's true parentage), the match is contingent upon winning the battle in progress or about to begin. Defeating the enemy is required to preserve the queen's throne and to confirm the hero's worthiness, but a further complication may arise if the leader of the opposing army is also in love with the queen and aims to get possession of her by force. The unwanted suitor is never successful, and in some cases he finds the strength of character to conquer his passion and make peace, as in Scudéry's Eudoxe and Andromire.

The most complex obstacle arises when the hero and heroine come from warring kingdoms. The young prince or king must disguise himself in order to gain access to the beloved, and if she has been sequestered in an all-female retreat, the hero must pass for a woman, as in Du Ryer's Argénis et Poliarque or Rotrou's Agésilan de Colchos. Meeting the lady and gaining her love is, of course, only the first step. Obtaining parental consent depends on the hero's performing service in battle for the heroine's country or on his fulfilling certain conditions set by the parent. An especially paradoxical situation is the following: the heroine's mother, bent on avenging her late husband's death in a war, has vowed that the princess shall wed none other than the man who presents her with the head of the enemy ruler. If that enemy ruler happens to be the young hero, he may, after arriving in disguise, reveal his true identity to the queen and demand to wed the princess before being executed, at which point the mother either relents or abdicates (for example, Scudéry's Le Prince déguisé, Thomas Corneille's Timocrate, billed as a tragedy but very much in the style of romanesque tragicomedy). Plays where war and peace are central issues sometimes feature extended political discussions, although such passages are not as common as one might expect. It seems that the public was keenly interested in such topics, so that the choice of including them or not may have depended on the skill or preference of the individual playwright.

The third and fourth patterns feature older monarchs, who are usually parents of the young lovers. It should be stated at once that these patterns may overlap with the first two whenever one of the young people is also a head of state. Pattern C, which tends to show the king as unjust and heartless, is potentially the closest to tragedy. In fact, since the king does not have to relent unless reasons of state are satisfied, this pattern does occur in tragedies, especially those of Corneille (Rodogune, Nicomède, Oedipe, Suréna). The fathers are not only insensitive to the feelings of their offspring; they are not above using devious, even criminal methods to carry out their plans. Furthermore, they tend to act in a more sternly authoritarian manner than the circumstances warrant. Thus, the king in Rotrou's Laure persécutée, who has a legitimate reason to block his son's marriage to the beautiful but poor heroine (he has already arranged a match between the prince and the Infanta of Poland), expresses his indignation in terms most suited to an evil tyrant: he solemnly swears that if his son dares to disobey him, the punishment will be so exemplary

Que tout langage humain, tout âge et toute histoire
En gardera l'horreur avecque la mémoire;
Sans rendre ni raison ni compte de mes voeux,
Je veux ce que je veux, parce que je le veux.
(I. 10. 336–339)

[That every human language, every age, every history will preserve the horror of it along with the memory. Without giving any reason or accounting for my wishes, I want what I want because I want it.]

On occasion the father may become the rival of his own son, for whom his feelings alternate between love and hatred or jealousy (Quinault's Stratonice, Mile. Desjardins's Manlius), although ultimately his better nature prevails. If the motives for the king's refusal include genuine reasons of state, the happy ending requires a last-minute revelation, normally of a character's true identity, occasionally of a character's guilt or innocence.

The fourth pattern, by showing the monarch as a benevolent but basically impotent figure, tends to spotlight the vulnerability of the institution of monarchy. The king or queen may be victimized by evil plotters or by a set of bizarre circumstances beyond his or her control. In Mairet's Virginie, for example, the impeccably virtuous Queen Euridice, already engaged in a protracted war, is threatened from within by ambitious enemies who seek to depose her by accusing her of adultery with a hand-some young stranger. The good-hearted monarch may be faced with an anguishing dilemma when a child (nephew, protégé, etc.) has, either in fact or in supposition, committed a capital crime. Unwilling to appear capricious and unjust, the king must do violence to his paternal affection and sentence the criminal to death. In Rotrou's Venceslas, called a tragicomedy in the first edition of 1648, the title character, realizing that he cannot save his beloved son from the scaffold so long as he retains power, decides to abdicate in his favor. In plays like Célie and Don Lope de Cardone, by the same author, the ruler learns in the nick of time that a character believed to have been killed has in fact survived, thus allowing the offenders to be pardoned. Billard's Genevre uses a deus ex machina figure to unmask the villain and rescue the innocent heroine, whose royal father is powerless to intervene on her behalf. Plays dealing with the sacrifice of Iphigenia, although labeled as tragedies, use Diana as a literal dea ex machina to save the heroine, after the efforts of her irresolute father Agamemnon and her impetuous lover Achilles have failed.

Pattern D is perhaps the least conducive to sustained political discussions since in most instances the monarch is a secondary figure whose dilemmas are rarely explored in depth. Venceslas, a play dominated by the imposing and moving royal father, is the most notable exception. One might also mention Le Cid here, since the king functions as a surrogate father for the young lovers. In the majority of cases, though, the monarch is passive and must rely on prayer in moments of supreme peril. The queen in Virginie, like so many ladies in medieval romance, must hope that a champion will arrive to undertake her defense (V. 5). Following the providential deliverance, the rescued rulers can do little more than express their gratitude and astonishment.

The search for patterns in the function of rulers in tragicomedy has confirmed our original hypothesis: since the massive disruption and final restoration of order constitutes one of the basic elements of the genre, it is natural to find the destiny of states interwoven with that of heroic individuals. At the same time, however, human effort does not suffice to solve the complex obstacles that arise: despite the undeniably heroic qualities of the protagonists, the dénouement is usually miraculous. Even the characters may find the fantastically implausible resolution of events a bit hard to believe. This imbalance between the efficacy of human activity and divine providence helps to explain why references to the latter are ubiquitous in tragicomedy, whereas sustained political discussions are found only sporadically. As for the gods, ever vigilant over the lives of individuals, their intervention may preserve or restore the fortunes of whole states, as well. The happy ending suggests the ideal of cooperation between just heaven and an enlightened ruler, even though in the course of the tragicomedies this ideal is never realized.

Or puisqu'il plaît aux Dieux de sauver cette terre,
Eteignons pour jamais le flambeau de la guerre.
(V. 7. 1905–06)

[Now, since it pleases the gods to save this land, let us extinguish forever the torch of war, Scudéry, L 'Amour tyrannique.]

The difficulty in trying to reduce all the French tragicomedies to a coherent pattern stems largely from the fact that the relation between heaven, romantic love, and affairs of state is never mandatory in these plays. Providence consistently pays attention more to individuals than to states; the reuniting of heroic lovers may cement the prosperity of a kingdom by providing it with a virtuous monarch or an invincible general, but this additional benefit does not always occur. Likewise, the protagonists may or may not view loyalty to the state as one of their personal obligations. The political dimension, as Guichemerre correctly pointed out, is not an indispensable prerequisite. But it is often closely linked with the other main elements of the plot, and that link provides much of the richness in the finest tragicomedies.