SOURCE: Lancaster, Henry Carrington. “Tragi-comedy from 1630 to 1634: Tragi-comedies by Scudéry, du Ryer, and Rotrou.” In A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century. Part I: The Pre-Classical Period, 1610-1634, Volume II, pp. 472-500. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1929.

[In following excerpt, Lancaster analyzes Scudéry's tragicomedies, discussing their sources and providing original production information.]

We come now to three authors who were well known in their century and have preserved a certain amount of celebrity even today, Georges de Scudéry, the soldier, Pierre Du Ryer, the scholar, and Jean Rotrou, the magistrate. Of these the last two had written plays before 1630, while Scudéry made his début probably in this year. His father belonged to a noble family of Provence, but had taken up his residence at Le Havre because of his career as an army officer and administrator. There he married and became in 1601 the father of Georges, of the more famous Madeleine in 1608¹. After the death of his parents, Georges was apparently brought up by his relatives and served in the army for a number of years, taking part in the affair of the Pas de Suze (March, 1629). He left the regiment of Guards not long after this date and wrote his first play², which could hardly have been composed and acted before 1630. His first published work had appeared in 1629³. Two years later he brought out Le Temple, a poem in honor of Richelieu, and, the following year, published an edition of Théophile's works with a fiery introduction in which he defends this “grand et divin” author. But his literary activity during this decade is largely dramatic. He composed sixteen plays⁴ and took a leading part in the attack made upon Corneille's Cid. Long before he retired from the stage he was one of the principal dramatists of the day, distinguishing himself in comedy and tragedy as well as in his favorite genre, tragi-comedy. His subsequent collaboration with his sister in the novels that appeared under his name, but for which the chief credit is due to her, is well known. They were both prominent figures in the upper society of their day. Georges became a member of the Academy and was for a number of years Governor of Notre Dame de la Garde at Marseilles. His epic, Alaric, appeared in 1654. He died in 1667.

Both by nature and by his life in the army he was fitted for the kind of tragi-comedy, depending chiefly on startling episodes and rapid action, to which he first devoted himself. He began his dramatic career by writing three tragi-comedies based upon the Astrée. The first of these, Ligdamon et Lidias ou la Ressemblance, was printed in 1631⁵ with an introduction in which he defies his critics and defends his action in stooping to write plays, although he is a nobleman and an officer, by citing the example of Julius Caesar⁶!

The subject is one of the most extraordinary episodes of d'Urfé's romance. Plautus could claim for his Menaechmi that it was based upon the phenomenon of identical twins, but, as life offers no example of such resemblance elsewhere, d'Urfé's story and Scudéry's imitation of it are as impossible as the marvelous resemblance between brother and sister upon which Shakespeare based his Twelfth Night. Like Shakespeare, again, these French authors were interested in writing a romantic love story rather than a Plautine comedy⁷.

In his A qui lit Scudéry takes the position that when you are dramatizing a fabulous subject, you have the right to change it as you please, then he goes on to excuse himself from obeying the law of the three unities:

le ne suis pas si peu versé dans les regles des anciens Poëtes Grecs et Latins, et dans celles des modernes Espagnols⁸ et Italiens, que ie ne sçache bien qu'elles obligent celuy qui composent vn Poëme Epique à le reduire au terme d'vn an, et le Dramatique en vn iour naturel de vingt-quatre heures, et dans l'vnité d'action et de lieux; mais i'ay voulu me dispenser de ces bornes trop estroites, faisant changer aussi souuent de face à mon Theatre que les Acteurs y changent de lieu; chose qui selon mon sentiment a plus d'esclat que la vieille Comedie.

The freedom here described is, indeed, characteristic of the play. While the greater portion of the plot is based on the Astrée, Part I, Bk. XI, and the last scene on Part IV, Bk. XI, the part of the story devoted to the love of Mélandre for Lidias is entirely omitted. The interest is centered chiefly upon Ligdamon and to Silvie is given a larger rôle than she has in the Astrée, but the other lovers are not forgotten and appear in all of the acts except the second. Certain scenes are developed and others are added. The events connected with the siege of Marcilly are omitted and the play is brought more promptly to a close by the introduction of Lidias and Silvie into the scene in which their sweethearts are revived. Nevertheless the action remains a double one and its unity is further destroyed by the large rôle given to chance. It takes place at Rouen, in Forez, and on a battle-field in northern France. The time covered is probably several months.

Both the ridiculous and the heroic characteristics of the author are displayed in this tragi-comedy. Nothing can be more absurd than Ligdamon's monologue in which he is seeking a means of committing suicide (I, 1):

Alons à chef baissé nous abismer dans l'onde;
Mais la mer pour cela n'est point assez profonde,
Car à chaque moment mes yeux font des ruisseaux,
Et ie vy cependant au milieu de ces eaux,
Ioint que le feu cuisant qui me force à me plaindre
Ressemble au feu Gregeois que l'eau ne peut esteindre:
Comme Porcie encor finit ses accidens,
Essayons de mourir par des charbons ardens;
Nullement, ce trespas n'a garde de me prendre,
Car ie suis tout de flame, etc.

Again, in the description of a battle (III, 1) we learn that

A chaque coup donné sans doute on voyait bas
Ou la teste, ou la cuisse, ou la iambe, ou le bras;
L'abondance du sang respandu par la plaine
Augmenta d'vn ruisseau les ondes de la Seine,
Et rougit tellement la riuiere en son flus,
Qu'à l'abord l'Ocean ne la connoissoit plus.

On the other hand such lines as

Mais vn cœur genereux est maistre de son sort

(I, 1)

and

Celuy meurt doublement qui vit sans se vanger

(II, 1)

would not be out of place in a Cornelian tragedy⁹. Moreover there is a patriotic spirit about the play that is shown not only by the fact that the scene is laid in France and that a French ruler is introduced, but by the following passage with its appeal for unity under a strong king, the kind of unity that Scudéry represented in his own person by his union of Norman and Provençal blood (II, 3):

Faites donc adorer la puissance Royale
Des flots de Normandie à la mer Prouençale,
Et regnant souuerain qu'vn clin d'œil, qu'vne voix
Fasse courber chacun sous la rigueur des loix.

Scudéry has no objection to killing on the stage, but at times the limits of dramatic art oblige him to make use of récit rather than action. For this reason, although a duel had been witnessed by the audience in the first act, the battle is described, not acted (III, 1), and, after the hero has been placed in the lion's enclosure, the fight is related to us by the judges. According to Mahelot, the back stage represented the palace where the trial takes place. On the right is a forest, probably the one in which Silvie speaks her stances of lament in III, 2; on the left a temple, used for the marriage ceremony of the last act, and a prison, underneath which is a cave out of which come lions, also a “barriere garnie de ballustres”. The lions must, then, have been seen, just as the lion had appeared in Théophile's Pyrame, but the fight must have taken place behind the scenes, as its representation before the audience would not have been convincing. This play, like the following, formed a part of the repertory of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. It was performed three times in succession before the court at Fontainebleau, according to the preface to Scudéry's Arminius.

Scudéry claims similar success for his second play, Le Trompeur puny¹⁰, which formed part of the repertory of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and was played by Floridor's troupe “with better approbation than the other¹¹” in the Cockpit Playhouse in Drury Lane, London, on April 4, 1635¹². It was published early in 1633¹³ with a dedication to M^me de Combalet¹⁴, subsequently the Duchess of Aiguillon, a preface by his friend de Chandeville, and complimentary poems from Mairet, Boisrobert, Corneille, Du Ryer, the actor Montdory, etc. Chandeville finds in Scudéry “mieux qu'en aucun autre cet enthousiasme et cette esleuation d'esprit qui a fait appeler la Poésie diuine,¹⁵” declares that the subject of the play is drawn from the Astrée and from Polexandre, and mentions le Vassal généreux and la Comédie des comédiens as soon to appear¹⁶. The sources indicated by Chandeville have been studied in detail by Batereau, who shows that they are contained in the Astrée, Part III, Bk. IV, and in Gomberville's Polexandre, Part II, Bk. IV, pp. 770-833 (ed. of 1637). Scudéry probably began with the Astrée¹⁷, but, finding the material insufficient, added to it from the other novel. The first three acts follow the Astrée closely enough, except for the change of names and the addition of the villain's death. Two scenes (I, 5, and III, 2) are added to prepare for the second part of the plot, which is contained chiefly in the last two acts. Here the location in Denmark, the rescue of Alcandre, and the tournament are suggested by Gomberville. Not only the names, but the incidents are considerably altered, notably in respect to the termination. Scudéry has, in short, used Gomberville merely to complete a plot derived from another novelist.

The play lacks unity in a different way from Ligdamon, for its two plots are no longer parallel, but one follows the other. The scene is laid in England and in Denmark and probably represents a period of several months. The language is somewhat less rhetorical and the incidents not quite so extraordinary as in the earlier play. Batereau calls attention to a conversation in every-day language between Nérée and her aunt (I, 6) and to a comic monologue of the keeper of the inn at which the hero finds lodging in Denmark (IV, 5):

Apres auoir traisné quatorze ans vne gaine
Auec peu de profit, auec beaucoup de peine,
Enfin espouuentail ie fais peur aux corbeaux …

He omits, however, some of the most interesting lines:

Apres auoir passé par les degrez d'honneur,
Goüjat, Fiffre, Tambour, Viuandier sans bon-heur …
Non, non, contentons nous, nostre auenture est belle,
Vne Table, vn Chaslit, vn Banc, vne Scabelle,
Quatre Plats, deux Linceuls, vn muid de Vin clairet,
Ne suffisent-ils pas à tenir Cabaret?
Heureux celuy qui craind aussi peu qu'il espere
Mesurant sa fortune à celle de son pere,
Esueillé chaque iour (pour empoigner le soc)
Par l'horloge reglé de la voix de son Cocq(18) …

We learn from Mahelot that on the stage he was known as Capitaine l'Ormeau. We have already seen an innkeeper's rôle made humorous by Mairet in Chryséide. Here there seems to be the influence of the picaresque novel and also of life, for Scudéry had doubtless seen veterans established as keepers of inns. It is unfortunate that he did not give the rôle more importance in his play.

The Trompeur puny contains two examples of stances (II, 3 and V, 1), a letter in prose (II, 5), and a sonnet (III, 6). There is a conflict between love and friendship, insufficiently developed, which makes the hero cry (V, 3):

                                                            Riual que ie cheris
Que ne peut vne fille espouser deux maris.

The belief in monarchy that we have seen expressed in Ligdamon is found here (V, 4):

Pour iuger des Rois, il faut estre des Dieux.

But apparently this maxim does not hold if the king is not your own sovereign, for the hero promises to be so little mindful of respect for a royal presence that he will find his rival in Denmark (III, 10)

Et là, dessus le Thrône, osant se prendre à moy,
Ie le poignarderay dans les bras de son Roy.

The stage setting given by Mahelot helps to explain the play. In the background is seen a house with two doors side by side, where the trick is played upon the hero. Next to this, on the right, is the garden of the King of England. Evidently the villain enters one of the doors and reappears within the garden when the hero has departed. The hero's room is on the right, near the front of the stage, separated from the palace by the garden. In it are seen a table, two seats, a writing-desk with books, paper, pens, and ink. On the left, opposite this room, is the palace of the King of Denmark and next it is the inn with the sign “L'Ormeau”. The sea is also represented, though it is not shown in the drawing. It must be visible in IV, 3, when Arsidor lands on the coast of Denmark, and probably was represented by a curtain or a piece of movable scenery, which replaced one of the other decorations.

Scudéry's Vassal généreux will be discussed under the next heading, for it is built too much round an idea to be considered a typical tragi-comedy. It was followed by his Comédie des comédiens, which belongs in the next chapter. After this realistic play, it is not surprising to find that his next tragi-comedy, Orante, is nearer than the preceding ones to ordinary life. The author notes this fact himself in the preface to his Arminius and attributes to it the play's success: “ie repris le ton ordinaire dans mon Orante: et par elle, ie tirai cent et cent fois des larmes, non seulement des yeux du Peuple, mais des plus beaux yeux du monde.” It was probably acted as early as 1633, by Montdory's troupe, rather than by that of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, for it is not mentioned by Mahelot. It was published in 1635¹⁹ with a dedication to the Duchess of Longueville.

It is the fourth play that Scudéry extracted from the Astrée. Batereau has shown that it is taken from the seventh book of the third part, which concerns the early portion of the history of Chryséide and Arimant, before the episode that Mairet had treated in 1625. Batereau finds few changes except in the last act and even notes certain close verbal resemblances. The location of the play and the names of the persons are altered. The villain becomes an old man and the author makes changes necessitated by the dramatic and poetic form the story has received²⁰. Although the action is practically unified and there is a brief struggle in the hero's soul (V, 1), the play shows no conversion to classicism, for the action, which covers many days, takes place both in Naples and Pisa and there is killing on the stage. The important rôle assigned the heroine's mother is somewhat unusual at this time. There is a good deal of metrical variety, manifested by two examples of stances (I, 5, II, 2), a sonnet (I, 1), three letters (II, 3, 8, III, 2), and a challenge (V, 1). Batereau suggests as a source for the following verses (III, 7):

Ordonnez-luy de mettre Osse sur Pelion.
I'attaqueray le ciel et dans cette escalade
Ie seray plus heureux que ne fut Encelade.
Si ces lambris d'azur peuuent plaire à vos yeux,
I'oseray vous placer dans le throsne des cieux,

lines 184, 197-200 from Hardy's Gigantomachie, which show a striking resemblance both in thought and rime:

Or sus venez enter Osse sur Pelion …
Ma dextre suffiroit, ouy le seul Encelade
Hardy peut emporter l'Olympe d'escalade,
Son farouche regard met en fuite les Dieux,
Et ne pretends borner mon Empire des Cieux.

Another passage (V, 9) resembles in thought, if not in form, the qu'il mourût of Horace:

Qu'il reuienne vainqueur, ou qu'il reste vaincu,
Ie desire qu'il meure ainsi qu'il a vescu.

Another Cornelian line is found in I, 5:

La mort n'est point vn mal, à qui la connoist bien.

On the other hand, less heroic sentiments, inspired by existing situations in Italy and in France are expressed by these two passages:

La haine hereditaire (execrable folie,
Qui semble estre fatale à toute l'Italie).

(V, 3)

O dangereux voisins, temeraires Gaulois,
Dont les mauuaises mœurs ont peruerty nos loix,
Que par vous mon esprit souffre vne peine amere,
Suiuant ce point d'honneur qui n'est qu'vne chimere.

(V, 1)

Scudéry's last tragi-comedy of this period possesses somewhat the same stuctural qualities as those we have just noted, but is characterized by greater unity, a more exciting intrigue, and a more spectacular setting. The Prince Déguisé was probably first acted in 1634. According to the author's preface to his Arminius, it met with extraordinary success:

Iamais ouurage de cette sorte n'eut plus de bruit; et iamais chose violente n'eut plus de durée, tous les hommes suiuoient cette Piece, par tout où elle se representoit; toutes les Dames en sçauoient les Stances par cœur; et il se trouue mesme encor auiourd'hui [in 1643] mille honnestes gens qui soûtiennent que ie n'ay iamais rien fait de plus beau.

He had previously noted, when he published his play²¹, “le superbe appareil de la Scene, la face du Theatre, qui change cinq ou six fois entierement, à la représentation de ce Poëme, la magnificence des habits, l'excellence des Comediens,” as contributory causes of its popularity²². It has, indeed, many qualities that won for it deservedly the honor of being designated²³ with Du Ryer's Cléomédon as giving a typical example of a play with a “belle intrigue”²⁴.

Batereau was unable to discover the source of this play. M. Reynier²⁵ holds that it was the Jugement d'Amour, otherwise known as the Histoire d'Aurelio et d'Isabelle, a Spanish novel by Juan de Flores that appeared at the end of the fifteenth century and was often translated into French and Italian during the sixteenth. Indeed this novel does appear to have inspired the main portion of the play, the arrest of the lovers, the law that the first offender should be burned, the contest in generosity between the lovers, and the thought of suicide on the part of each, but, as the first three acts of the play and the dénouement are largely free from such influence, it is clear that Scudéry got a good deal of material from other sources, more especially, it seems to me, from his favorite source-book, the Astrée²⁶, where he could find parallels for the fact that the hero is a Gaulois, for the snoring gouvernante (III, 5), the bribing of the jailer, the heroine's escape from prison by the help of an attendant who takes her place, and the claiming of a reward for offering up one's self as a criminal. These episodes he might have found elsewhere, but, as his four previous tragi-comedies had been based on the Astrée, and as in one of these he had drawn his story partly from that novel, partly from another, it is reasonable to suppose that in the Prince déguisé he again used “contamination”, taking his episodes partly from d'Urfé and partly from Flores²⁷. In spirit, however, it is much more like the Astrée, for the Jugement d'Amour is primarily concerned with the debate as to whether, in a case of seduction, the man or the woman is more to blame, its ending is tragic, and its tone brutal, while Scudéry, like d'Urfé, is most interested in writing a good story, in emphasizing the self-sacrificing love of the chief characters, and in bringing his plot to a happy termination.

The structure possesses real rather than formal unity. The action covers ten days and takes place in several localities in the city of Palermo. The efforts of the hero's friends to rescue him have no effect upon the action, but take up so small a part of the play that they violate its unity little. The events preceding the arrival of the hero at Palermo are told in a lengthy récit²⁸, after which the action moves rapidly from that point to the dénouement. It furnishes a good example of the tendency towards a well constructed plot even among those who had not yet accepted Mairet's formulae.

The spectacular elements include the temple ceremony before a large number of people, the garden scenes in which the hero goes through a magic ceremony and digs up a cup and jewels he pretends to have discovered, the use of night and moonlight, the judicial contest between the lovers, disguised by their armor. The hero recites stances to the heroine²⁹. Scudéry makes use of such familiar romantic devices as disguise, recognition, and overheard conversation. The self-sacrificing conflict between the two lovers must have added to the play's attractions. There is also a conflict in the mind of the gardener's wife (II, 3) and in that of the queen (IV, 7):

Ie suis Reine, il est vray; mais pourtant ie suis mere
Et de quelque discours que ie flatte mon dueil,
Ie songe à son berceau pensant à son cercueil.
Hélas! ie n'en puis plus, en vain ie m'éuertüe
Fille, ie t'ay faict naistre, et ta faute me tuë.

The queen finds herself in another difficult situation when she discovers that the man her daughter loves is the prince she holds guilty of her husband's death. Nobody seems to have noticed that the situation is here remarkably like that of Chimène in the Cid, a fact that is the more striking as, only a few years later, Scudéry was to criticize Corneille because his heroine does not refuse to marry her father's slayer. Argire, it is true, seeks to kill herself, saying (V, 8):

Vn nom me faict horreur dont i'aime la personne,

but when her mother consents to her marriage, she shows no further hesitation in the matter. Her father, too, had not been poisoned by Cléarque, but neither she nor her mother had any proof of the hero's innocence, and at any rate the king's death had been caused by the war which was begun on account of Cléarque. The queen and her daughter agree to the marriage, while Chimène merely leaves us to understand that she will marry Rodrigue a year later. Scudéry was evidently criticizing Corneille for a situation for which he had himself furnished a model, much as Mairet criticized him for imitating a Spanish play when he had himself just made an adaptation of an Italian tragedy.

Notes

1. The best account of Georges de Scudéry's life, with abundant biographical references and elaborate analyses of his plays, is found in A. Batereau's Georges de Scudéry als Dramatiker, Leipzig, Emil Stephan, 1902. It should be supplemented by the frequent references to this author in Lachèvre's Bib. Rec. and Rec. Lib.

2. “Ligdamon que je fis en sortant du Régiment des Gardes, et dans ma premiere jeunesse”, Au Lecteur to his Arminius.

3. A sixain to the Archbishop of Aix in the Ostreomyomachie, a collection of poems by various authors published at Toulouse by S. David in 1629.

4. This is a list of them with the most probable dates of the first performance of each: Ligdamon et Lidias (early in 1630), le Trompeur puny (1631), le Vassal généreux (1632), la Comédie des comédiens (1632), Orante (1633), le Fils supposé (1634), le Prince déguisé (1634), la Mort de César (early in 1635), Didon (end of 1635 or early in 1636), l'Amant libéral (1636 or first half of 1637), l'Amour tyrannique (1638), Eudoxe (1639), Andromire (1640), Ibrahim (end of 1641 or 1642), Arminius (written in 1642 or 1643, but not acted before the end of 1643), Axiane (end of 1643). These dates are determined partly by the time of printing, partly by the following considerations: the first was composed after he left the army; the third and fourth are mentioned in the preface to the second; the Gazette states that the fourth was played on Nov. 28, 1634; the fifth, sixth and seventh are mentioned in the preface to the fourth; the Mort de César was in its third act when La Pinelière's Parnasse (1635) was prepared for publication and before April 3, 1635, when reference is made to it by Guez de Balzac; Scudéry was at work on Didon when he wrote the preface to the Comédie des comédiens, printed April 10, 1635; l'Amant libéral is mentioned during the controversy over the Cid. L'Amour tyrannique probably followed the Sentiments de l'Académie sur le Cid; Eudoxe preceded Andromire, which was Scudéry's thirteenth play; L'illustre Bassa was not written till after Andromire was published; the last two plays had not been acted when the preface to Arminius was written. This last document is especially important, as Scudéry gives in it the names of his previous plays and the order in which he had composed them. These dates differ considerably from those given by Batereau, whose usually reliable book is marred in respect to dates of acting by his pathetic confidence in the frères Parfaict.

5. Paris, Targa, 8°; priv., July 17, achevé, Sept. 18. It is dedicated to the duc de Montmorency and accompanied by complimentary verses from Hardy, Corneille, Du Ryer, Rotrou, Scarron, and others.

6. The absurdity of this preface did not escape Scudéry's enemies. Cf. A. Gasté, la Querelle du Cid, Paris, Welter, 1898, p.148: “Vous ne vous estes pas souvenu que vous avez mis un A qui lit, au devant de Ligdamon, ny des autres chaleurs Poëtiques et militaires, qui font rire le lecteur, presques dans tous vos livres”.

7. Ligdamon et Lidias live in different parts of France and do not meet until the end of Scudéry's play. The former, unable to get from Silvie an admission of love, attempts suicide, but is persuaded to try war instead and joins the Frankish army. He kills a stranger, Nicandre, who had challenged him to a duel for killing his cousin, of whom Ligdamon had never heard. After being captured in battle, he is accused of murdering Nicandre, of fighting against his country, and of denying that he is named Lidias. For these offences he is condemned to be thrown into the parc aux lions, but, permitted to use a sword, he kills a lion and is rescued by a girl named Amerine on condition that she be allowed to marry him. This she is glad to do, since she takes him for her lover, Lidias, who had fled to Forez after killing a man in a duel. As Ligdamon is resolved to die rather than to be unfaithful to Silvie, he sends his attendant to a physician for poison and when he reaches the point in the ceremony where he is to drink from the holy cup, swallows what the physician has sent and, after explaining his motives, falls unconscious. Amerine also swoons. An epitaph is prepared for the couple, but Lidias and Silvie, who have met in Forez, where she mistook him for Ligdamon, enter the temple and their sorrow is turned into joy by the physician, who explains that the supposed poison is only a sleeping-potion.

8. Scudéry could have read neither Spanish plays nor Lope's Arte nuevo de hacer comedias when he wrote this. Even the Spanish classical critics were so free in their interpretation of the unities that he must have been ignorant of them also; cf. René Bray, la Formation de la doctrine classique en France, Paris, Hachette, 1927, pp. 28, 29.

9. Magendie, Maurice, Du nouveau sur l'Astrée, Paris, 1927, p. 444, compares two passages to lines in Polyeucte.

10. For its possible influence on Isolite, cf. my study of that play.

11. Either Corneille's Mélite or Du Rocher's Mélize.

12. Cf. J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic poetry, London, 1831, II, 67.

13. Paris, Pierre Billaine, 80; priv., Dec. 18, 1632, achevé, Jan. 4, 1633. It was reprinted by Sommaville in 1634 and 1635.

14. Richelieu's niece. Scudéry dedicated his first play to Montmorency, whom Richelieu had beheaded only a few months before the Trompeur puny was published. Evidently his loyalty to Théophile did not extend to the latter's protector.

15. Cf. Batereau, op. cit., p. 46.

16. This means, of course, that they were soon to appear in print and shows that they had probably been played by this time, though Batereau dates the latter 1634.

17. Unable to win Nérée, Cléonte tells his rival, Arsidor, that he is to spend the night with her and that he may see him enter her house. He leads him to the door and goes in, but passes the night in the palace garden. Next, Cléonte gets Arsidor to write for him a letter thanking a woman for granting her favors to the king, but instead of giving it to the latter he shows it to Nérée. Each of the lovers is thus brought by Cléonte to believe the other faithless, but when they meet, they exculpate themselves easily, for Nérée had not been at home on the night that Cléonte entered her house and Arsidor explains how he came to write the letter. As the hero kills Cléonte in a duel, the play would end with the third act, except that the author has introduced the new element from Polexandre, namely, that the heroine's hand has been promised by the King of England to Alcandre, a favorite of the King of Denmark. It is to the latter country that Arsidor flees after his duel and there he saves Alcandre from three men who have attacked him. They become good friends and agree to fight each other for Nérée. Alcandre falls. Arisdor bids him rise and continue the fight, but Alcandre, touched by this generosity, gives up Nérée, who has come to Denmark and will remain there with Arsidor unless their pardon is obtained from the King of England.

    A long quotation from the play is given in the Bib. du th. fr., II, 116, 117.

18. Cf. with this last line the couplet cited above, p. 271, from La Morello, Endymion, IV, 3.

19. Paris, Courbé, 80; also 1636; priv., June 30, achevé, Sept. 1, 1635.

20. Isimandre, son of the Governor of Naples, and Orante are in love, but the latter's mother objects to their marriage on account of the hostility that exists between the two families and takes her daughter to the home of her relative, Ormin, Governor of Pisa, who plans to marry the girl to Florange, a wealthy old man, and then, although he is married himself, make her his mistress. Orante, however, resists, and, as she has been bled for a fever, tears off the bandage, writes a note with her blood to her lover, and falls to the ground. Ormin is so moved that he promises her she shall not marry Florange. Meanwhile Isimandre, who had thought of killing himself when he heard of her death, now learns the truth, disguises himself as a merchant, gets an interview with Orante, and persuades her to fly with him. Attacked by Florange, Isimandre wounds, but spares him, and the lovers escape to Naples. Ormin follows and challenges the hero to a duel, but when the latter reaches the appointed place, he sees Ormin attacked by two bandits and by Florange, who holds Ormin responsible for breaking off his marriage. Isimandre kills the old man and puts the ruffians to flight. In gratitude for this, Ormin allows Orante to be married to her lover, and returns to his wife.

21. Paris, Courbé, 1636, 80; priv., Aug. 11, 1635, achevé, Sept. 1, 1635. It is dedicated to M^lle de Bourbon. Tallemant des Réaux declares this to have been the piece that Richelieu ordered to be played for his amusement by young Jacqueline Pascal, but he must have confused it with Scudéry's Amour tyrannique, the play designated by M^me Périer and one that was a more recent production when the performance was given in February, 1639. Cf. Tallemant, op. cit., IV, 119, 122.

22. It is among the plays mentioned in Poisson's Baron de la Crasse as forming part of provincial repertories as late as 1662.

23. Cf. the abbé d'Aubignac, op. cit., p. 67.

24. In order to win the hand of Argire, a Sicilian princess, Cléarque, son of the King of Naples, must win her affection and overcome her mother's belief that he had poisoned the late king, her father, who had died at the court of Naples after he had been captured in battle. The war had been begun in order to force this King of Sicily to give his daughter to Cléarque, but now the latter has caused the fighting to cease while he makes use of another method. In disguise he reaches the Sicilian court and is present in the temple when Argire's mother, Queen Rosemonde, swears to give her daughter's hand to anyone who will bring her Cléarque's head. Then he bribes the gardener to take him as his assistant and thus succeeds in meeting Argire and gaining her love, but he also infatuates the gardener's wife, who, to avenge herself for his cold reception of her advances, listens to his conversations with Argire and reports their love to the queen. The lovers are arrested and the law is read declaring that the one who first showed love must be burned. Each claims to be guilty and the decision is left to a judicial contest. Cléarque bribes his jailer and goes to fight for Argire, who, leaving her fille d'honneur to take her place, also puts on armor and meets Cléarque in the lists. The fight leads to a double recognition. Cléarque reveals his identity and demands the hand of Argire as a reward for bringing his head to the queen. Rosemonde hesitates, but the efforts of the lovers to commit suicide move her so much that she finally consents to their union.

25. Le Roman sentimental avant l'Astrée, Paris, A. Colin, 1908, pp. 76-86.

26. Episodes of Chryséide and of Lidias. The queen's offer of Argire's hand may come from la Fidelle tromperie, or its source, the Amadis.

27. M. Martinenche, la Comedia espagnole, p. 155, notes a resemblance between the gardener scene and scenes in Lope's No son todos ruiseñores and his Ramilletes de Madrid. As the first of these was not published until 1635, it could not have influenced the Prince déguisé. The resemblance to the other play amounts to little more than the fact that in each the hero is disguised as a gardener. La ley ejecutada, attributed to Lope, descends from the novel of Juan de Flores, but gives no evidence of having been imitated by Scudéry.

28. While condemning lengthy narratives in general, the abbé d'Aubignac (op. cit., p. 295) admits that they are not utterly “insupportables” at the beginning of a play, for which reason the description of the tempest in the first act of the Prince déguisé “a passé pour bonne, quoy qu'elle soit trop chargée de paroles”. Indeed the speech that contains it occupies 6[frac12] pages. In his edition of the Pratique du théâtre, M. Martino notes that Scudéry describes a naval battle, not a tempest.

29. For the text of these verses cf. Bib. du th. fr., II, 122, 123.