Aspects of the Development of French Drama in the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century, with Special Reference to Schelandre's “Tyr et Sidon”

Abstract

The first thirty years of the seventeenth century represent a period of transition in the history of the French theatre, and like all periods of transition they are of particular interest, although the features peculiar to them are difficult to analyse and to reduce to a formal pattern. In the plays of this period can be seen the passing of an old dramatic ideal and the gradual emergence of a new resthetic. The present paper attempts to trace this development in the tragedies and tragi-comedies written during these thirty years, a field not as restricted as it might seem, since the plays called by these names at this time fall rather into the category of drame libre. This transitional period cannot in fact be regarded simply as representing the decline of the French Renaissance theatre or the rise of the Baroque, but rather as a distinct phase of development in itself. The terms Renaissance and Baroque are more usually, and perhaps more strictly, applied to the plastic arts; but if one considers the differences in tone, in artistic outlook and in approach to the subject which distinguish a Renaissance painting from one in the baroque style, and then applies these criteria to the theatre, it is apparent that the Renaissance play is typified by clarity and certainty, and that of the Baroque period by obscurity and uncertainty. French Renaissance tragedy is 'concerned with the logical exposition of noble sentiments and great emotions, while the baroque tragi-comedy presents a complicated action in which unruly passion lies beneath an orderly surface. Underlying the formal regularity of baroque art can be seen seventeenth-century man's uncertainty about himself and the world he lived in, as opposed to the humanism and scientific optimism of the Renaissance, a contrast of outlook exemplified by Montaigne's early Stoicism and rigid essay form compared with the scepticism and fluid form of his later essays. The true baroque spirit in the theatre can be seen only after about 1630. The theatre in the period of transition which preceded it is sometimes called the romanesque baroque.! It comes into prominence after the collapse of the Renaissance drama, but writers had presumably been entertaining the common people with their drames libres for some years before the beginning of the seventeenth century, away from the main cultural streams in France. One must imagine a professional playwright like Hardy touring the country and trying to induce the provincials to accept the modern tragedies based on classical models on the same footing as the medireval mysteries and miracle