Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille, portrait after Charles Le Brun
Born	6 June 1606 Rouen, Normandy, France
Died	1 October 1684 (aged 78) Paris, France
Occupation	Playwright, poet
Nationality	French
Period	1629–1674
Notable works	Le Cid Horace Cinna Polyeucte
Spouse	Marie de Lampérière (married 1640)
Children	7
Relatives	Thomas Corneille (brother) Fontenelle (nephew)
Signature

Pierre Corneille (French: [pjɛʁ kɔʁnɛj]; 6 June 1606 – 1 October 1684) was a French playwright (a writer of plays for the theatre). He was born in Rouen, in Normandy, and he died in Paris. He is one of the three most famous French playwrights of the 17th century, with Molière and Jean Racine. Many people call him "the father of French tragedy". A tragedy is a serious play about important conflicts and suffering. It often, but not always, ends badly.

Corneille wrote for the theatre for more than forty years, from 1629 to 1674. He wrote thirty-two plays of his own. Eight of them are comedies (funny plays), and most of the others are tragedies. He also took part in two plays written with other authors: La Comédie des Tuileries (1635) and Psyché (1671). His most famous play is Le Cid (1637). It made him famous in one winter. It also started a long argument about the rules of the theatre, called the "Quarrel of Le Cid". In the early 1640s he wrote three of his best-known tragedies: Horace and Cinna, which take place in ancient Rome, and Polyeucte, which is about a Christian martyr.

Many of his best-known plays show people with a strong will. They must choose between love and duty, or between their own happiness and the good of the state. Because of this, French speakers still use the word "cornélien" today. A "cornélien" choice is a very hard choice between two things that both matter. But Corneille's theatre is more varied than this image. Each of his plays has its own world, and recent critics prefer to study them one by one.

Corneille also thought and wrote about how plays should be made. In 1660 he published three essays (pieces of writing that discuss ideas) called the Discours. He was a member of the Académie française (the French Academy) from 1647. His younger brother, Thomas Corneille, was also a well-known playwright.

Early life

The house in the rue de la Pie, Rouen, where Corneille was born. It is now a museum.

A family of lawyers in Rouen

Pierre Corneille was born on 6 June 1606 in Rouen, on the river Seine in Normandy. Rouen was then the second largest city in France. He was baptized on 9 June, in the church of Saint-Sauveur.

He was born in a house on the rue de la Pie, near the old market square. His grandfather had bought this house in 1584. Corneille lived there until he was 56 years old. In 1608 his father also bought a small farm at Petit-Couronne, a village near Rouen, where the family spent time in the country.

The family was not noble, but it was not poor. Corneille's ancestors were tanners (people who make leather) in Conches, a small town in Normandy. His grandfather moved to Rouen, became a lawyer and worked for the Parlement, the highest court of justice in Normandy. His father, also named Pierre Corneille, was the official in charge of the rivers and forests near Rouen. His mother, Marthe Le Pesant, was the daughter of a lawyer.

Pierre was the oldest child of the family who lived to be an adult. His brother Antoine became a priest. His sister Marthe became the mother of Fontenelle, a famous writer and scientist of the 18th century. His youngest brother, Thomas, was born in 1625, nineteen years after Pierre. He also became a playwright, and the two brothers stayed very close all their lives.

School and law

From 1615 to 1622, Corneille studied at the Jesuit college of Rouen. The Jesuits are a Catholic religious order that ran many schools. Their pupils learned Latin, rhetoric (the art of speaking and writing well) and religion, and they acted in Latin plays. Corneille was a very good pupil. He won prizes for Latin poetry in 1618 and 1620, and he went on writing Latin verse all his life. The school is now called the Lycée Pierre-Corneille.

Like his father and grandfather, Corneille studied law. On 18 June 1624 he was received as a lawyer at the Parlement of Rouen. But he was shy, and he did not speak well in public. According to his family, he pleaded only one case.

At the end of 1628, his father bought him two offices (official jobs that could be bought and sold). Pierre became the king's lawyer (avocat du roi) at two special courts of Rouen: one for rivers and forests, one for ships and the sea. Both courts sat in the Palace of Justice, at a place called the Table de Marbre (the marble table). The pay was small: 170 livres a year for one office and 150 for the other, plus some fees. (The livre was the French money of the time.) But the work left him free time to write. He kept these offices until 1650. The court registers show that he did his work with care. For more than twenty years, Corneille worked as a lawyer in Rouen while also writing plays. He also kept the accounts of his parish church for many years.

First plays

Mélite

Corneille's first play was a comedy, Mélite. A young man, Tircis, falls in love with Mélite, and a jealous friend uses false letters to break them apart. According to Fontenelle, Corneille wrote the play after a real love story. He had loved a young woman of Rouen, Catherine Hue, who married another man.

A company of actors led by Mondory performed Mélite in Paris in the winter of 1629 to 1630. The name of the author was not given. The first performances attracted few people. Then people began to talk about the play, and it became a success. Corneille later wrote that the first three performances together had fewer spectators than any single one of the later ones.

This success was important for the theatre in Paris. Until then, the city had only one real theatre, the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Mondory's company settled in the district of the Marais, and it later became the Théâtre du Marais, the second theatre of the city. Corneille wrote most of his early plays for it. Mélite was also new in its style. It showed young people of good families who spoke in an elegant and natural way. Corneille said that comedy was "a picture of our actions and our words".

The comedies of the 1630s

After Mélite, Corneille wrote a play every year. Clitandre (1631) is a tragicomedy, a serious play with a happy ending, full of violent adventures. It was printed in 1632 with a small collection of his early poems. This was his first printed book. He then wrote four comedies: La Veuve ("The Widow"), La Galerie du Palais ("The Gallery of the Palace"), La Suivante ("The Lady's Companion") and La Place Royale. They show the young people of Paris in real places of the city. One play takes place in the gallery of shops inside the Palace of Justice. Another takes place on the square that is now called the Place des Vosges.

Alidor, the hero of La Place Royale, is a strange young man. Angélique loves him, and he loves her. But he is afraid of losing his freedom, so he breaks with her on purpose. Some critics see in him a first, comic version of Corneille's later heroes, who want above all to be masters of themselves.

By 1635, Corneille was one of the best-known young playwrights in Paris. But he did not move there. He worked at his court in Rouen, wrote his plays there, and travelled to Paris to see them performed.

Working for Cardinal Richelieu

Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister of King Louis XIII, was the most powerful man in France. He loved the theatre. In 1635, he chose five writers to work for him: Boisrobert, Colletet, L'Estoile, Rotrou and Corneille. People called them the "Five Authors". Richelieu gave them the plan of a play, and each writer put one act into verse. Their first play, La Comédie des Tuileries, was performed on 4 March 1635. Corneille is believed to have written the third act. Richelieu also paid him a pension (a yearly sum of money). But Corneille did not like to write on orders, and he seems to have left the group soon after.

Corneille's feelings about Richelieu were mixed. Richelieu gave him money and protection, and Corneille praised him in several dedications (letters printed at the front of a book, addressed to a powerful person). But after the cardinal's death in 1642, Corneille wrote four lines to say that he would never speak of him. The reason was this: "He did me too much good to speak ill of him, and too much harm to speak well of him."

Médée and L'Illusion comique

In 1634, Jean Mairet had a great success with a tragedy about the ancient world, Sophonisbe. Corneille followed him. His first tragedy, Médée (1635), tells the story of Medea, a witch who kills her own children to punish her husband Jason. He took it mainly from the Roman writer Seneca.

In 1635 or 1636 he wrote L'Illusion comique ("The Comic Illusion"), one of his best-known plays today. A father is looking for his lost son. A magician shows him the adventures of the son in a magic cave. At the end, the father learns that his son has become an actor, and that all he saw was a play inside the play. The last act is a defence of the theatre as an honest profession. The play also has one of Corneille's funniest characters, Matamore, a soldier who boasts about impossible victories but runs away from every fight. Corneille found this type in Spanish books. At the same time, he discovered a Spanish play about a medieval hero, the Cid.

Le Cid

Title page of Le Cid (1637)

The play

Mondory's company performed Le Cid at the end of 1636 or in the first days of January 1637. The success was enormous. Mondory wrote that the crowd at the doors was so great that great lords sat in the corners where the pages usually sat. The play was performed twice in Richelieu's palace and three times at the Louvre. According to Pellisson, the first historian of the Academy, people said "That is as beautiful as Le Cid" when they wanted to praise something.

Corneille took his subject from a Spanish play by Guillén de Castro, Las Mocedades del Cid ("The Youthful Deeds of the Cid", 1618). The Cid was a real Spanish knight of the 11th century.

The play takes place in Castile. Rodrigue loves Chimène, and she loves him. But her father, the Count, insults Rodrigue's old father and slaps him in the face. Rodrigue must choose. If he fights the Count, he will lose Chimène. If he does not fight, he will lose his honour. He fights the Count in a duel (a fight between two men with swords) and kills him. Now Chimène must choose. She still loves Rodrigue, but she asks the king for his death. That night, Rodrigue leads the soldiers against the Moors (Muslim armies from Africa) and wins a great victory. The Moorish kings call him "the Cid", which means "lord". At the end, the king tells Chimène to wait one year. Then, he hopes, she will marry the man she loves.

In January 1637, King Louis XIII made Corneille's father a noble. For a family of lawyers, this was a great honour.

The quarrel about Le Cid

The great success of Le Cid was followed by attacks from other writers. Personal rivalry and disagreements about the rules of drama both played a part. Under Richelieu, a quarrel about a play became a matter for the government. Corneille himself made things worse. Early in 1637 he published a poem, Excuse à Ariste. In it he spoke of himself with great pride: "I know what I am worth", "I owe all my fame to myself alone". Jean Mairet attacked him. Then Georges de Scudéry published his Observations sur Le Cid. He said that the subject was worthless and that the play broke the rules of dramatic poetry. He said that Chimène was an "unnatural daughter", that many lines were bad, and that the beauties of the play were stolen from the Spanish. Corneille answered that he had never hidden the name of the Spanish author.

Scudéry asked the Académie française to judge the play. Richelieu had founded the Academy in 1635 to protect the French language. Corneille did not want to be judged, but Richelieu wanted the Academy to speak. In October 1637, the cardinal ordered both sides to stop writing. The judgement, written mainly by Jean Chapelain, was published in December 1637. It agreed with Scudéry on many points. The subject was not "vraisemblable" (believable). Too many things happened in twenty-four hours. Chimène's marriage was shocking. But the Academy also said that the passion, the force and the "inexplicable charm" of the play had earned it a high place among French plays.

The judgement raised a question that Corneille thought about all his life. The Academy said that some true stories are "monstrous" and should not be shown on the stage. In such cases, it said, a poet must prefer what seems true to what is true. Corneille never agreed. Twenty-three years later, in his Discours of 1660, he was still arguing against the Academy.

Corneille was hurt. He published nothing new for three years. In January 1639, Chapelain wrote that Corneille "does nothing any more" and "only talks about rules". His father died in February 1639.

Three great tragedies

Between 1640 and 1643, Corneille wrote Horace, Cinna and Polyeucte. With Le Cid, they are often called his "tetralogy" (a group of four works). For three centuries, readers judged Corneille mainly by these four plays.

Horace

Horace was performed at the end of February or the beginning of March 1640. It was printed in January 1641 with a dedication to Richelieu. The story comes from the Roman historian Livy. Rome and the city of Alba are at war. Each city chooses three brothers to fight for it. But the two families are joined by marriage. Horace's wife, Sabine, is the sister of the enemy brothers, and his sister Camille is going to marry one of them.

Horace accepts the fight without any doubt. Two of his brothers die, and he kills the three enemies alone. Before the truth is known, someone tells his old father that Horace has run away. A woman asks the father what one man could do against three. He answers: "Qu'il mourût" ("Let him die"). This became one of the most quoted lines in French. When Horace comes home, Camille curses Rome, and Horace kills his own sister. The king judges him and pardons him, because Rome needs him. Corneille himself wrote later that this second action was a fault of the play.

Cinna

Cinna, ou la Clémence d'Auguste ("Cinna, or the Mercy of Augustus") was printed in January 1643. The date of its first performance is not certain. Most scholars now place it in 1642. Others prefer the winter of 1641 to 1642, and one witness even suggests 1640. Corneille took the main story from Seneca's book On Mercy.

Augustus, the first Roman emperor, has won power through civil war and many killings. Cinna, a young Roman whom he trusts, plans to kill him. Émilie, the woman Cinna loves, pushes him to do it, because Augustus killed her father. The plot is betrayed. After a night of doubt, Augustus chooses mercy. He tells Cinna: "Soyons amis, Cinna, c'est moi qui t'en convie" ("Let us be friends, Cinna, it is I who ask you"), and then: "Je suis maître de moi comme de l'univers" ("I am master of myself as of the universe"). His pardon changes everyone. Émilie gives up her hatred, and the play ends with a promise of peace for Rome.

Corneille dedicated the play to Montauron, a very rich financier (a man who had made a fortune by handling the taxes of the kingdom), and compared him to Augustus. People laughed at this dedication for years. Montauron gave him 600 livres. Corneille needed money. Richelieu had died in December 1642, and Corneille no longer received his pension.

Polyeucte

Polyeucte, martyr was performed early in 1643, before Lent. A martyr is a person who dies for his faith. The play takes place in Armenia in the year 250, when the Roman emperor ordered that Christians should be hunted and killed. Polyeucte, a noble Armenian, is married to Pauline, the daughter of the Roman governor Félix. He becomes a Christian in secret, breaks the statues of the Roman gods, and is condemned to death. Pauline tries everything to save him. Before her marriage she loved a Roman officer, Sévère, who has now come back, powerful and still in love with her. Polyeucte refuses to give up his faith. At the end he dies, and Pauline and her father become Christians.

Corneille took the story from a collection of lives of saints. The love story, the character of Sévère and the conversions at the end were his own inventions. He wanted the play to please religious people and fashionable society at the same time. According to Fontenelle, Corneille read the play before the performance at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the most famous salon (meeting place of educated people) of the time. The writers there told him that a Christian subject was not right for the stage. Fontenelle says that Corneille was so worried that he almost took the play back from the actors. This story comes only from Fontenelle, and it cannot be checked. The public did not agree with them. Polyeucte was a success, and Corneille dedicated it to the queen, Anne of Austria.

Marriage and family

In 1640, Corneille married Marie de Lampérière, the daughter of a royal official of Les Andelys, a small town in Normandy. The marriage contract is dated 23 June 1640. According to Fontenelle, the father of the young woman did not want the marriage. Richelieu called him to Paris, and he agreed at once. Just after the wedding, Corneille fell seriously ill, and a rumour said that he was dead. The couple had seven children between 1642 and 1656.

In 1650, his brother Thomas married Marie's sister, Marguerite. The two families lived side by side in the rue de la Pie, and later in the same house in Paris.

Success and difficulties, 1643 to 1652

New kinds of plays

Louis XIII died in May 1643. His son Louis XIV was four years old, and the queen, Anne of Austria, governed with Cardinal Mazarin. In 1643 Corneille received a pension of 1,000 livres from Mazarin.

In the following years, Corneille tried many kinds of plays. La Mort de Pompée (1643) is a Roman tragedy in which the hero never appears: Pompey is killed before the play begins. Le Menteur ("The Liar", 1643) is often considered his best comedy. Dorante, a young man just arrived in Paris, tells enormous lies to impress a young woman. Each lie leads to another. Corneille took the plot from a Spanish comedy by Alarcón. Molière is said to have declared: "I owe a lot to Le Menteur." Rodogune (1644) was Corneille's own favourite among his plays. Cléopâtre, queen of Syria, promises the throne to whichever of her twin sons will kill the princess they both love. At the end, she tries to poison her son and his bride, and she dies of her own poison. Théodore (1645), a second play about a Christian martyr, failed. Héraclius (1647), a very complicated play in which nobody knows for sure which young man is the son of the emperor, was a success. Corneille wrote that it needed to be seen more than once to be understood.

The Académie française

Corneille tried to enter the Académie française in 1644 and in 1646, and failed both times. In January 1647, with the help of friends, he was elected. He remained a faithful member. He appeared at the Academy for the last time on 21 August 1683, one year before his death.

Plays with machines, the Fronde and Pertharite

Andromède (January 1650) is a play with machines: moving scenery that could make gods fly through the air or open the sea. It has songs, with music by Dassoucy. It was performed before the king and queen, and it was a great success. At the same time, Corneille wrote Don Sanche d'Aragon, which he called a "heroic comedy".

From 1648 to 1653, France had a civil war, the Fronde. Great nobles and the judges of the Parlement fought against Mazarin. In January 1650, Mazarin had the governor of Normandy, the duke of Longueville, arrested. In February 1650, the government gave Corneille, who was loyal to the king, an important job in the assembly of Normandy. To take it, he sold his two old offices. But in 1651 Longueville came back, and Corneille lost his new job. He could not get his old offices back, and he also lost his pension.

Nicomède (February 1651), about a hero who answers the tricks of his father's court with a calm smile, was a success. But Pertharite (end of 1651 or beginning of 1652) was a complete failure. Corneille decided to stop writing for the theatre. He wrote later that the bad fortune of Pertharite had "disgusted" him with the stage.

Silence and religious poetry

Corneille's country house at Petit-Couronne, near Rouen, photographed around 1910. It has been a museum since 1879.

Corneille wrote no play for seven years. His main work in these years was religious. He translated into French verse the Imitation of Christ, a famous book of Christian prayer and advice, written in Latin in the 15th century. He began in 1651 and finished in 1656. The book was a great success and was printed again and again. He dedicated it to Pope Alexander VII. In the dedication, he wrote that one day he would have to give God an account of the talent he had received. Fontenelle thought that his uncle's grand style did not suit the simple text of the Imitation. Later, Corneille translated other religious works, such as the Office of the Virgin (1670).

These were not years of poverty. Corneille had his savings, his farms and the money from the Imitation. The plays of his brother Thomas were also very successful. Thomas's Timocrate (1656) was performed about eighty times in a row, a success even greater than that of Le Cid.

In 1658, Molière's company spent several months in Rouen. Its young actress Marquise Du Parc inspired Corneille, who was 52, to write the Stances à Marquise. In this famous poem, he tells her that his face has "some rather old features". But she too will be old one day, he says, and then only his verses will keep her beauty alive.

Return to the theatre

Œdipe

In 1658, Nicolas Fouquet, the minister in charge of the finances of the kingdom, was one of the greatest protectors of writers in France. He asked Corneille for a new tragedy and offered him three subjects. Corneille chose the story of Oedipus and wrote the play in two months. Œdipe was performed on 25 January 1659 at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. It was a great success, and Fouquet gave Corneille 2,000 livres. Corneille wrote that he would have kept silent if Fouquet had "allowed" him to. In 1661, Louis XIV had Fouquet arrested, and Corneille lost this new pension.

The edition of 1660 and the three Discours

In October 1660, Corneille published his theatre in three volumes. Each volume begins with a Discours (an essay), and each play is followed by an Examen (an examination), in which Corneille judges his own work. The three essays are the Discours de l'utilité et des parties du poème dramatique, the Discours de la tragédie and the Discours des trois unités. In them, Corneille discussed the ideas of Aristotle. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher whose Poetics strongly influenced ideas about drama in Corneille's time. He also answered, at last, the judgement of the Academy about Le Cid. In August 1660 he wrote to a friend that he was finishing "a very painful work on a very delicate subject". For the same edition, he rewrote many lines of his early plays to fit the more polite taste of 1660. Some younger writers began to make fun of the "great author" and his rules. The young Racine, whose first play had just been refused by the actors, and Molière both did so.

La Toison d'or

In 1660, Louis XIV married a Spanish princess, and France made peace with Spain. A rich nobleman of Normandy, the marquis of Sourdéac, celebrated these events with a great show. Corneille wrote for him La Conquête de la Toison d'or ("The Conquest of the Golden Fleece"), a play with machines about Jason and Medea. It was performed in November 1660 in Sourdéac's castle, and then in Paris from February 1661, where it ran for more than a year.

Tragedies of the 1660s

In 1662, Corneille left Rouen and moved to Paris with his brother. In 1663, Louis XIV made the first list of writers who would receive a yearly gift of money from the king. Corneille was on the list, with 2,000 livres a year. The money was often paid late. Corneille wrote a funny poem wishing the king a hundred years of life, "and may all your years be of fifteen months, as your clerks make ours".

He now wrote a new tragedy almost every year. Sertorius (1662), about a Roman general in Spain, was much admired. Corneille wrote that he did not think he had "written anything better". Sophonisbe (1663) caused a new quarrel, this time with the abbé d'Aubignac, a writer on the rules of the theatre. Othon (1664), about a Roman court where everyone is plotting, was a success. Agésilas (1666), written in lines of different lengths, failed. Attila (1667) was performed by Molière's company. A short poem by Boileau made fun of the two last plays: "Après lAgésilas, hélas! Mais après lAttila, holà!" ("After Agésilas, alas! But after Attila, stop!"). In November 1667, Racine's Andromaque had an enormous success. Corneille wrote nothing for the theatre for three years.

Corneille, Molière and Racine

Molière

Corneille's relations with Molière were not always good. Around 1660, Molière made fun of the Corneille brothers in some of his plays. But their relations improved in the second half of the 1660s. Molière's company performed Attila in 1667 and Tite et Bérénice in 1670, and Molière paid Corneille 2,000 livres for each play.

In December 1670, the king asked Molière for a grand show with music and dance. Molière did not have time to finish it, and he asked Corneille to help. Corneille wrote about 1,200 of the 2,000 lines in about two weeks. Quinault wrote the words of the songs, and Lully wrote the music. The result was Psyché, a "tragedy-ballet" about the love of Cupid and Psyche. It was performed before the king in January 1671, and it was a great success. Molière's company performed it 38 times in 1671, and it was still performed in 1710. Its love scenes are unusually tender for Corneille. Fontenelle said that his uncle allowed himself this "excess of tenderness" because the play carried the name of Molière.

Racine

Jean Racine was 33 years younger than Corneille. From 1667, his tragedies were the great success of the Paris stage. People have often contrasted the two poets in this way: Racine as the poet of love and passion, Corneille as the poet of will, honour and politics. This contrast, fixed by La Bruyère in 1688, is useful as a first idea, but it is too simple. Corneille also wrote about passion, and Racine also wrote about power.

In November 1670, the two rivals each produced a play on the same subject: the Roman emperor Titus must send away Berenice, the queen he loves. Racine's Bérénice was performed on 21 November at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. Corneille's Tite et Bérénice was performed one week later by Molière's company. Nobody knows for sure whether this was an accident. An old story says that a princess of the royal family asked both writers to treat the subject. Racine's play won. People cried at it. Corneille's play was well received at first, but its receipts fell in December.

Last plays and death

Pulchérie and Suréna

Corneille wrote two more plays. Pulchérie (1672) takes place in Constantinople in the 5th century. The empress Pulchérie loves a young man, but she refuses to marry him, because she does not want a master. She marries an old senator who agrees to a marriage in name only. Corneille wrote that the main characters of the play were "against the taste of the time".

Suréna, général des Parthes (December 1674) was his last play. Suréna is a great general who has saved the throne of his king. But his glory is too great, and the king fears him. The king wants Suréna to marry his daughter, so that he can control him. Suréna loves another woman and refuses. At the end, the king has him killed. The play is quiet and sad, with almost no action. It was not a success. In the 20th century, many critics came to think that it is one of Corneille's finest works.

Old age

Corneille was now 68. The theatre did not forget him. In October 1676, Louis XIV had six of his old plays performed at Versailles, one after the other. Corneille wrote a poem of thanks to the king. In it he said that his verses were old, but that the king had brought them back to life.

His last verses were written in 1680. In 1681, a friend wrote: "Corneille is dying." He recovered, but his mind was weak. His daughter Madeleine took care of her old parents. In 1682, he revised his plays for the last time. The royal pension, unpaid since 1674, was restored for the year 1682, and Corneille received the money in June 1683. In July 1682, the Comédie-Française performed Andromède again. A real horse played the winged horse Pegasus, which had never been seen on a French stage.

Old stories say that Corneille died in poverty. This is not true. He owned houses and land, and he had rents from his savings. But he had a large family to settle. His daughter Marguerite became a nun, and he paid a yearly sum to her convent. His son François was a soldier and was killed in 1674 at a siege in the Netherlands. His youngest son, Thomas, became an abbot (the head of a religious house) in 1680.

Death

The memorial plaque to Corneille in the church of Saint-Roch, Paris

Around 1682, Corneille moved to a flat in the rue d'Argenteuil in Paris, near the church of Saint-Roch. His brother Thomas lived a few steps away. Pierre Corneille died there in the night of 30 September to 1 October 1684. He was 78 years old. He was buried in the church of Saint-Roch on 2 October.

Thomas Corneille was elected to his brother's seat in the Académie française. On 2 January 1685, Racine, as director of the Academy, gave the speech of welcome. He praised Pierre Corneille in words that surprised everyone. He said that the stage still rang with the applause that had greeted Le Cid, Horace, Cinna and Pompée. He said that these works would live for ever "in the mouths of men".

Corneille's ideas about the theatre

Corneille was not only a poet. He also wrote about his art, in his prefaces, in his Examens and above all in the three Discours of 1660. The Discours are one of the few books on the technique of the theatre written by a working playwright of that time. Because Corneille was a lawyer, he argued like a lawyer: point by point, with examples taken from his own plays.

The rules

Many French playwrights and critics of the 17th century believed that plays should follow rules. These rules were not written by the ancient Greeks and Romans themselves. Italian and French scholars of the 16th and early 17th centuries built them from the writings of Aristotle and of the Latin poet Horace. The most famous rules were the three unities. Unity of action: a play should tell one story. Unity of time: the story should take one day, or a little more. Unity of place: the story should happen in one place. The play should also be "vraisemblable" (believable), and it should respect "bienséance" (decency). This meant that violent actions were usually not shown directly on the stage, and that shocking words were avoided. Characters were also expected to speak and act in a way that fitted their rank. Corneille himself had little interest in strict rules of decency.

In the 1620s, these rules were not yet fixed. In 1628, François Ogier wrote a preface against the unity of time. He said that the French should not be slaves of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and that pleasure was the aim of the theatre. In 1631, Jean Mairet wrote a preface in favour of the rules. The young Corneille never fully joined either side. His first comedies did not follow the rules exactly. After the quarrel about Le Cid, he followed them more closely. In Horace, Cinna and Polyeucte, he followed the unities much more closely than in Le Cid.

But he never loved the rules for themselves. In 1660, he wrote that he tried to follow Aristotle, but that he understood him "in his own way". His best commentary on Aristotle, he said, was "the experience of the theatre" and the study of what pleased or displeased the public. He also said that the unity of place could mean a whole city, not just one room. And he allowed the action to take up to thirty hours instead of twenty-four.

In 1648, in a note printed before Le Cid, Corneille explained why he thought his play was a true tragedy in the sense of Aristotle. Aristotle asks two things of the best tragedies. First, the person who suffers must be neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Second, the danger must come from someone who ought to love the sufferer. Corneille said that both conditions were found in Le Cid, and that this was why the play had moved so many people.

The true and the believable

The most important question for Corneille was the question of truth. The Academy had told him in 1637 that the subject of Le Cid was true but not believable, and that a poet should prefer the believable. Corneille answered in his Discours de la tragédie that "the subject of a beautiful tragedy must not be believable". Great tragic actions, he said, are always beyond the ordinary. Medea kills her children. Clytemnestra kills her husband. Nobody would believe such stories if history did not tell them. So the tragic poet must take his subjects from history, or from famous legends. This idea explains why almost all of Corneille's tragedies are taken from history, and mostly from Roman history.

Admiration and the hero

Aristotle said that tragedy should produce two feelings in the spectator: pity and fear. Corneille accepted this, but he added a third feeling: admiration. He wrote about Nicomède that the play showed "greatness of courage" in a man who looks at his misfortune so calmly that it cannot draw a single complaint from him.

The heroes of these plays want glory. In the language of the time, "gloire" (glory) did not only mean fame. It meant a person's sense of his own worth, and the image of himself that he wants to give to others. The hero is also "généreux". In the 17th century, this word meant "noble in heart and in action". Chimène says that her generosity must equal that of Rodrigue. For this reason, Corneille's characters often talk about their choices before they act. Rodrigue, in Le Cid, stops to think in a long poem before he goes to fight Chimène's father. Augustus, in Cinna, spends a whole scene alone, asking himself what he should do.

For a long time, critics spoke of "the Cornelian hero" as if he were one and the same person in every play, a man of pure will who always chooses duty. Recent critics warn against this idea. They point out that Corneille's characters are often full of contradictions, and that each play has its own form, its own rules and its own way of speaking. They prefer to read the plays one by one.

Love and duty

People often say that the heroes of Corneille choose duty over love. This is only partly true. In Le Cid, Rodrigue does his duty, and by doing it he becomes worthy of Chimène's love. Chimène pursues Rodrigue, and by doing it she stays worthy of him. Love and duty support each other. Corneille wrote that love was only an "ornament" of tragedy and should never be its main subject. But almost all his plays have love stories, and some of his lines about love are among the most tender in French.

Corneille's women are often as strong as his men, or stronger. Chimène, Camille, Émilie, Pauline, Cléopâtre and Pulchérie push the action forward. In the later plays, it is often the women who see clearly and who give up their love for the good of the state.

The hero and the state

The critic Michel Prigent argued that politics is central to Corneille's tragedies. They are about kings, emperors, generals and the people around them. In the early tragedies, the hero serves the state, and the state rewards him. Rodrigue saves Castile, and the king gives him Chimène. Horace saves Rome, and the king pardons him. Augustus, by his act of mercy, founds a new order of peace.

In the later plays, the relation changes. The state becomes suspicious of the hero. Kings like Prusias in Nicomède or Orode in Suréna are weak men who fear the great men who serve them. Politics becomes a game of lies and secret plans. The hero is no longer the founder of the state. He becomes its victim. Some critics have connected this change with the growth of royal power under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, and with the changing place of the old nobility.

Religion

Corneille was a Catholic educated by the Jesuits. Two of his tragedies, Polyeucte and Théodore, are about Christian martyrs. But his religion is also present in a less direct way. The critic Myriam Dufour-Maître compared the mercy of Augustus in Cinna and the divine grace in Polyeucte. In both plays, a sudden change of heart ends the story. The characters do not slowly evolve. They suddenly "see" what they could not see before.

Corneille had to defend the theatre against religious writers who thought that plays were sinful. In 1667, the prince of Conti and the theologian (a scholar of religion) Pierre Nicole attacked the theatre and named Corneille as their main example. Corneille answered in a preface. Fontenelle wrote that his uncle often needed to be reassured by priests about his plays, and that they always reassured him.

Style and language

Verse

Corneille wrote his plays in verse. The line he used is the alexandrine. An alexandrine has twelve syllables, with a pause after the sixth syllable. The lines rhyme in pairs. Corneille used this form for more than forty years. Many of his lines are easy to remember, and readers have often praised their clarity and force.

Sometimes he used other forms. In some plays, a character alone on the stage speaks in stances: lyrical verses in stanzas (groups of lines), with lines of different lengths. The most famous are the stances of Rodrigue in Le Cid, which begin: "Percé jusques au fond du cœur" ("Pierced to the bottom of my heart"). In Agésilas (1666), Corneille wrote the whole play in lines of different lengths. He said that nobody in France had ever done this for a tragedy. The public did not like it, and he did not do it again.

Famous lines

Many lines by Corneille are still famous and often quoted in French. Here are some of them:

• "Rodrigue, as-tu du cœur?" (Le Cid, act I, scene 5): "Rodrigue, have you a heart?" (Here "heart" means courage.)
• "Ô rage! ô désespoir! ô vieillesse ennemie!" (Le Cid, act I, scene 4): "O rage! O despair! O old age, my enemy!"
• "À vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire" (Le Cid, act II, scene 2): "To win without danger is to triumph without glory."
• "Va, je ne te hais point" (Le Cid, act III, scene 4): "Go, I do not hate you." Chimène says this to Rodrigue. It is her way of saying that she loves him.
• "Et le combat cessa faute de combattants" (Le Cid, act IV, scene 3): "And the fight stopped for lack of fighters."
• "Qu'il mourût" (Horace, act III, scene 6): "Let him die."
• "Je suis maître de moi comme de l'univers" (Cinna, act V, scene 3): "I am master of myself as of the universe."
• "Le désir s'accroît quand l'effet se recule" (Polyeucte, act I, scene 1): "Desire grows when its fulfilment is delayed."

Corneille liked maxims: short general statements that sum up an idea. His characters speak in maxims when they argue. This gives his dialogues the tone of a debate in a court of law.

Vocabulary

In 1967, the linguist (a person who studies language) Charles Muller published a study of the vocabulary of Corneille's theatre. He counted every word of thirty-two plays. The whole theatre has about 530,000 words, but it uses only about 4,600 different words (not counting proper names). The tragedies alone have about 303,000 words and only about 3,560 different words. Le Cid has about 16,700 words, but only about 1,500 different words.

These numbers are very low. Muller wrote that he had never seen so few different words in such a long text. People often say that Racine wrote with a very small vocabulary and Corneille with a rich one. Muller's counts do not support this idea. Racine's Phèdre uses more different words than almost all of Corneille's tragedies. From Le Cid onwards, Corneille used a small number of noble words again and again. Examples are gloire, honneur, devoir, vertu, cœur and sang ("glory, honour, duty, virtue, heart, blood"). The repeated use of these words is an important feature of his style.

Sources of the plays

Corneille rarely invented his stories. He took them from books, and he said so in the prefaces of his plays. The American scholar Lawrence M. Riddle studied the sources of the tragedies from Médée to Pertharite. Here are the main ones:

• Médée: Seneca and Euripides.
• Le Cid: Guillén de Castro, and the Spanish historian Mariana.
• Horace: the Roman historian Livy.
• Cinna: Seneca's On Mercy, with details from Dio Cassius, Suetonius and Appian.
• Polyeucte: the life of Saint Polyeuctus by Simeon Metaphrastes, in the collection of Surius.
• La Mort de Pompée: Lucan's Pharsalia.
• Rodogune: the historians Appian and Justin.
• Théodore: Saint Ambrose and Surius.
• Héraclius: the church historian Baronius, and a Spanish play by Mira de Amescua.
• Nicomède: Justin, and possibly Polybius.
• Pertharite: Paul the Deacon, a historian of the Lombards.

Riddle argued that Corneille preferred fact to invention. When he needed a link between two events, he looked for it in the pages of the historians, before and after his story. He also borrowed from the plays of his French rivals, such as Mairet and Scudéry.

Reputation

Statue of Corneille in Rouen

In his lifetime

Corneille was famous from 1637 to the end of his life. In 1656, a character in a novel said that she could not speak of Corneille "without respect, without veneration" (deep respect). In 1663, a writer said that Corneille was "a great man among us who honours our whole nation". His plays were translated into several languages while he was alive.

In his last years, the younger generation preferred Racine. In 1688, La Bruyère wrote a famous comparison of the two poets. He said that Corneille paints men "as they should be" and Racine "as they are"; that Corneille "elevates, astonishes, masters, instructs" and Racine "pleases, moves, touches, penetrates". For two centuries, almost everyone repeated this comparison.

From Voltaire to the 20th century

In 1764, Voltaire published a large edition of Corneille's works with his own Commentaires. He examined the plays line by line and pointed out every fault. His work fixed the image of Corneille for a long time: a great genius, but only in four or five plays.

The 19th century saw Corneille as a poet of energy, duty and the state. In 1802, he was one of the first French authors put on the programme of the new secondary schools. Stendhal spoke of his "Jacobin genius". After the French defeat of 1870, the schools of the Third Republic used Corneille as a teacher of duty and love of country. The plays were studied as texts, not as shows. Around 1910, Charles Péguy wrote pages on Corneille that are still read. He saw in the four great plays one single movement, from Le Cid to Polyeucte, towards holiness.

After 1945, critics such as Octave Nadal, Paul Bénichou and Georges Couton looked at Corneille in new ways. Later, Serge Doubrovsky, Marc Fumaroli, Georges Forestier and John D. Lyons studied Corneille as a master of the art of speech and of the building of plays, and questioned the old idea of a single "Cornelian hero". Modern critics study a much wider range of Corneille's plays, and not only the four plays that were traditionally considered his best.

Today

The Comédie-Française, founded in 1680, has performed Corneille since its first months. At that time, only the plays written up to 1662 were still performed. In the 20th century, critics and directors also returned to the plays of his old age, such as Suréna.

The French language keeps Corneille's name in the adjective "cornélien". A "cornélien" hero is a person of great will, who acts according to his idea of honour. A "cornélien" choice, or a "cornélien" dilemma, is a choice between two things that both matter, such as love and duty, where any choice brings a loss.

In Rouen, the house where Corneille was born, in the rue de la Pie, is a museum. The farm of Petit-Couronne is also a museum. The Jesuit college where he studied is now the Lycée Pierre-Corneille.

Family after Corneille

Thomas Corneille, his younger brother, painted by Jacob van Loo

Thomas Corneille (1625–1709) outlived his brother by twenty-five years. He wrote more than forty plays and opera librettos (the words of operas). In 1677, he put Molière's Dom Juan into verse. He also helped to direct the newspaper Mercure galant and published a large dictionary of geography and history (1708).

Fontenelle (1657–1757), the son of Corneille's sister Marthe, became the permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences and lived to be almost one hundred years old. He wrote the first biography of his uncle, and many of the stories about Corneille's life come from him.

Charlotte Corday, who killed the revolutionary Marat in 1793, was a descendant (a member of a later generation) of Pierre Corneille through his oldest daughter, Marie.

Works

Corneille wrote thirty-two plays of his own and took part in two plays written with other authors. The dates are those of the first performance. For the early plays, the exact year is not always certain. Most of the plays can be read in French at Wikisource.

Comedies

• Mélite (1629–1630): his first play, a success in Paris. French text
• La Veuve (1631–1632). French text
• La Galerie du Palais (1632–1633): the most successful of the early comedies. French text
• La Suivante (1633–1634). French text
• La Place Royale (1633–1634): the hero, Alidor, wants to stay free. French text
• L'Illusion comique (1635–1636): a play inside a play, with the character Matamore. French text
• Le Menteur (1643–1644): after Alarcón; often considered his best comedy. French text
• La Suite du Menteur (1644–1645): sequel of Le Menteur. French text

Tragicomedies

• Clitandre (1630–1631): his first printed play (1632). French text
• Le Cid (1637): later called a tragedy; an enormous success, followed by the Quarrel of Le Cid. French text

Tragedies

• Médée (1635): his first tragedy, after Seneca. French text
• Horace (1640): dedicated to Richelieu. French text
• Cinna (1642 or 1641): the mercy of Augustus. French text
• Polyeucte (1643): a Christian martyr. French text
• La Mort de Pompée (1643–1644): after Lucan. French text
• Rodogune (1644–1645): Corneille's own favourite. French text
• Théodore (1645–1646): a Christian martyr; a failure. French text
• Héraclius (1646–1647): a very complicated plot. French text
• Nicomède (1651): a success during the Fronde. French text
• Pertharite (1651–1652): a failure; Corneille stopped writing plays. French text
• Œdipe (1659): his return to the stage, asked for by Fouquet. French text
• Sertorius (1662). French text
• Sophonisbe (1663): the quarrel with the abbé d'Aubignac. French text
• Othon (1664): a success at court. French text
• Agésilas (1666): in lines of different lengths. French text
• Attila (1667): performed by Molière's company. French text
• Suréna (1674): his last play. French text

Plays with machines

• Andromède (1650): music by Dassoucy. French text
• La Toison d'or (1660–1661): for the marriage of Louis XIV. French text

Heroic comedies

• Don Sanche d'Aragon (1649–1650). French text
• Tite et Bérénice (1670): the same subject as Racine's Bérénice. French text
• Pulchérie (1672). French text

Plays written with other authors

• La Comédie des Tuileries (1635): written with the Five Authors for Richelieu. French text
• Psyché (1671): with Molière and Quinault; music by Lully. French text

Other works

• Mélanges poétiques (1632): early poems, printed with Clitandre. French text of the poems
• Excuse à Ariste (1637): the poem that started the Quarrel of Le Cid.
• L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ (1651 to 1656): translation in verse of the Imitation of Christ. French text
• Stances à Marquise (1658): a poem for the actress Marquise Du Parc.
• Trois Discours sur le poème dramatique and the Examens (1660): essays on the theatre. French text
• L'Office de la Sainte Vierge (1670): translation of prayers to the Virgin Mary.
• Poems for the king, such as the poem of thanks of 1676 for the performances at Versailles.

The modern edition of the complete works is by Georges Couton (Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 3 volumes, 1980 to 1987).

Notes and references

The notes give the author, the year of the book and the page. Full details of every book are in the next section.

Books used to write this article

• Abraham, Claude (1972). Pierre Corneille. Twayne's World Authors Series. New York: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8057-2244-4.
• Clarke, David (1992). Pierre Corneille: Poetics and Political Drama under Louis XIII. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-40434-1.
• Corneille, Pierre (1980). Couton, Georges (ed.). Œuvres complètes. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (in French). Vol. 3 volumes (1980–1987). Paris: Gallimard. Volume 1 (1980): ISBN 978-2-07-010946-3; volume 2 (1984): ISBN 978-2-07-011083-4; volume 3 (1987): ISBN 978-2-07-011121-3.
• Dufour-Maître, Myriam (2014). La Clémence et la Grâce. Étude de Cinna et de Polyeucte de Pierre Corneille (in French). Mont-Saint-Aignan: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre. ISBN 979-10-240-0360-3.
• Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de (1989). "Vie de Monsieur Corneille". In Niderst, Alain (ed.). Œuvres complètes (in French). Vol. 2. Paris: Fayard. ISBN 978-2-213-02292-5.
• Herland, Louis (1954). Corneille par lui-même. Écrivains de toujours (in French). Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
• Le Gall, André (1997). Pierre Corneille en son temps et en son œuvre. Enquête sur un poète de théâtre au XVIIe siècle (in French). Paris: Flammarion. ISBN 978-2-08-067212-4.
• Mantero, Robert (1964). Corneille critique et son temps. Ogier, Mairet, Scudéry (in French). Paris: Buchet/Chastel. Contains the prefaces and the Discours of Corneille, with texts by other writers of his time.
• Muller, Charles (1967). Étude de statistique lexicale. Le vocabulaire du théâtre de Pierre Corneille (in French). Paris: Larousse.
• Niderst, Alain (2006). Pierre Corneille (in French). Paris: Fayard. ISBN 978-2-213-62865-3.
• Pellisson, Paul (1653). Relation contenant l'histoire de l'Académie française (in French). Paris: Pierre Le Petit.
• Prigent, Michel (1986). Le Héros et l'État dans la tragédie de Pierre Corneille (in French). Paris: Presses universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-039279-8. Paperback edition in the series Quadrige, 1988, ISBN 978-2-13-042175-7.
• Riddle, Lawrence Melville (1926). The Genesis and Sources of Pierre Corneille's Tragedies from Médée to Pertharite. Baltimore and Paris: The Johns Hopkins Press and Presses universitaires de France. Reprint: New York, Johnson Reprint, 1973.

Related pages

• Thomas Corneille
• Jean Racine
• Molière
• Cardinal Richelieu
• Louis XIV
• Académie française
• Tragedy
• Theatre
• French literature
• Rouen

Other websites

• Works of Pierre Corneille in French at French Wikisource
• Théâtre classique: the plays of Corneille with a search tool (in French)
• Mouvement Corneille, Centre international Pierre Corneille (in French)