S
848
C8c0
V275P
?
usbroec
W
22
******
***
Corneille's
1.
Cia
.......
ܐܐܘܐܐ
DESI
the
**
な
​
ARTES
LIBRARY
LAURIZIO FREDDYİYİ
1817
VERITAS
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
FLURIBUS UNUM
TCEBOR
CIRCUMSPICE
WADADAWATOSAR
ITILILIHIII.
SCIENTIA
SI QUERIS PENINSULAM-AMŒNAM.
OF THE
THOMININKYTI
let
MERETTEILLES FILMSnie
THE GIFT OF
Minnesota Univ. Library
………………………………úmmíř
mum
„Su

The Purpose of Corneille's Cid.
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
PIONEER PRINTERS
MINNEAPOLIS
192 1
MU

To
PROFESSOR CARLETON BROWN
A slight tribute to the distinguished scholar,
in recognition of friendly encouragement.
Va
848
C8c0
V2758
Corneille's early plays have been generally considered as a more
or less successful portrayal of the life of the times, or almost entirely
as realistic creations, interspersed with some auto-biographical de-
tails. His tragedies, on the contrary, have been conceived as abstract
and intellectual conflicts; as evolved without being influenced by his
own life as a man. With them Corneille is said to have changed en-
tirely his methods. Beginning with the Cid he is supposed to have
deliberately foregone the portrayal, in any form, of contemporary
life, to bring on the stage superhuman heroes, who are incarnations
of abstract principles rather than living beings. His heroic char-
acters have been styled creations only of dramatic sensibility, into
which not a part of his personality entered.
Yet, various critics have called attention to certain unmistakable
traces in his tragedies of the moral and political preoccupations of
his epoch and of his personal life. Levallois in his Corneille Inconnu
pointed out that both Sertorius and Pulchérie were influenced by
Corneille's love for Mlle. Du Parc; and, furthermore, that his trage-
dies contain a number of allusions to the political events of the time.
(1) For Gustave Lanson, Corneille's plays are true mirrors of the
France of Richelieu. The Cornelian hero is no abstraction, not the
splendid dream of a passionate soul, but an historical reality. He is
the true image of these courtly heroes, dashing and generous lovers.
as well as strong-willed dictators. Richelieu, Condé, Montmorency,
Turenne or the unhappy Cinq-Mars. (2) Mr. Lanson's theory
has been happily supplemented by a study of Professor Nitze (3)
on the influence of the Cortegiano and of the courtly ideal of the
time upon Corneille's conception of character. Corneille's tragic
hero was, no doubt, inspired by the aristocratic type of the seven-
teenth century; yet he is an idealization of this type. He is the
seventeenth century aristocrat viewed through his own ideal; mag-
nified according to his own conception of heroic and cultured life.
Modern criticism thus generally stresses a closer contact of Cor-
neille's work with his times.
And, in fact, the creation of every outstanding literary work is
a complex process. Even when the subject-matter is historical,
fabulous or even mythological, the poet necessarily incarnates in
his heroes some of his own thoughts and feelings, some of his own
sorrow and joy. That is why the work of the genius is superior
to that of a mediocre author, irrespective of whether the subject-
matter be identical. For this very reason, the Faust of Goethe is
superior to the traditional Faust. Corneille's historical personages
reveal thus, in a measure, his own internal life as well as the life of
4
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
the time. It is self-evident that he never copied directly any of the
events or of the types of his times; but he is inspired by them. He
transposes them into the region of ideal conceptions. "Il ne faudrait
pas croire, says Lanson, que Corneille travaillait sur l'actualité
comme un romancier ou un dramaturge d'aujourdhui qui exploite
le scandale récent ou le fait-divers sensationnel. Sa tragédie n'est
jamais un reportage, c'est évident, mais la vie contemporaine l'en-
veloppe, l'assiège, le pénètre; elle dépose en lui mille impressions
qui se retrouvent lorsqu'il aborde un sujet, qui, à son insu, dirigent
son choix, et dans quelques lignes indifférentes d'un historien
médiocre lui font découvrir une tragédie puissante. Elle lui fournit
la représentation précise qui réalise dans son esprit les vagues et
abstraites données de l'histoire. Il pense le passé dans les formes et
les conditions du présent." (4)
It is obvious that Corneille, in his heroic plays, did not copy
reality as a modern realist, who holds that the very essence of his
art consists in the reproduction, scrupulously exact, of closely ob-
served facts and individuals. With the Cid the purely realistic
tendencies disappear almost entirely from his work and their place
is taken by the heroic interpretation of character. Even as Mlle.
de Scudéry idealized, in the Grand Cyrus, the heroic figure of
Condé, Corneille idealized and exalted his impression of the men
and the life of his time, and transformed this humbler material into
the lofty situations and the dauntless heroes of his plays.
One can perceive now, in a glimpse, the essential importance of
studying Corneille's surroundings, and the external influences which
acted upon him, in order to arrive at a true and adequate concep-
tion of his works. His daily life is the soil producing and nourish-
ing the rare flowers of his ideal concepts, the root of his art.
The question it is proposed to elucidate in the present study is:
"What facts of Corneille's experience brought him to the choice of
the Cid theme ?"
→
I. THE PROBLEM.
Every historian has noted the fact that, from the esthetic point
of view, the Cid constitutes a sudden break, an almost absolute
change in Corneille's work. It was an unexpected blossoming of
higher art after a period of estimable work, superior, without doubt,
to most of the contemporary production, yet far inferior to the
Cid. The earlier plays of Corneille, however interesting in parts,
did not promise his later superior performance. Yet, here and there,
one catches a glimpse of the coming change in his characteri-
zation: Angélique of La Place Royale already presents a first outline
of Chimène; the strange Alidor of the Place Royale and Medée both
stress their overgrown will-power and exalt their Ego. But all of these
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
5
LO
characters lack the intensity of feeling and the relief of Corneille's
later heroes. They only show that slowly he was evolving
to another and a more aristocratic conception of character; they
do not explain how the Cid came to be a higher work of art. This
production of his thirtieth year reveals a finer ripeness of expres-
sion, a deeper insight into human nature, and a more constant
glow of beauty than any of his preceding plays. And the develop-
ment of these qualities is all the more striking in that it was written
immediately after the Illusion Comique, which, together with the
Clitandre, is the most unoriginal play Corneille ever produced.
+F
Çan its esthetic excellence and psychological depth be attributed
to the vivifying influence of Guillen de Castro upon Corneille's art?
But nearly all critics agree that Corneille has gone far beyond his
model in a deeper comprehension of the dramatic struggle which
torments the soul of Chimène and of Don Rodrigue. Whatever
external incidents he may have borrowed from the play of his
Spanish predecessor, whatever color he may have taken from its
clash of violent action, he made the essential addition of the deeper
insight into character and of the sharper analysis of feeling which
stamp his play as a masterpiece. And this addition, all-important
from the esthetic point of view, remains quite apart from de Castro's
influence and fully his own.

"Je me trouve toujours en état de l'aimer.
Je me sens tout ému quand je l'entends nommer.
Auguste Dorchain (5) has suggested a possible if somewhat ro-
mantic explanation: he thinks that Corneille's genius had been
quickened about the time of the Cid by sorrow for a disappointed
love. Catherine Hue, who, rightly or erroneously, has been identi-
fied with Mélite of his first play, married about that period, and
Mr. Dorchain supposes that the sharp disappointment of Corneille
might have produced an intensity of feeling which made the crea-
tion possible not only of the Cid but also of the other masterpieces
which followed it soon. This explanation however, rests on slender
evidence. It is not proved that Catherine Hue can really be identi-
fied with Mélite, with Philis and with the woman about whom
Corneille wrote in his Excuse à Ariste:
." (6)
This reduction of Corneille's love-adventures to a single one
makes him, indeed, too much of a "Constant Céladon" after the
style of the Astrée. There is no ground for believing that Corneille
would have played the role of dismissed but ever constant lover for
eight or nine years. In his early poems, he called himself "incon-
stant comme la lune" and stressed his light-hearted disdain of the
charms of woman. Besides, why would pains of love, which, after
so many years, were no new experience for Corneille, have
increased his dramatic powers in the direction of the portrayal of
heroic character? Woman as woman plays but a subordinate role
6
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
in Corneille's tragedies, whereas very real studies of women are
found in his early works, before the marriage of Catherine Hue.
Nowhere in his tragedies, from the Cid to Polyeucte, is found a
study of unfaithful love, whereas in his early productions love in all
its forms is the main theme. It would be very strange that the very
feeling of disappointment and jealousy which is supposed to have
aroused his poetical powers to such an extraordinary degree should
not have left a trace in his tragic masterpieces, while at the time
when his love is supposed to have been successful, these feelings are
described and analyzed with care and minuteness.
The "Why?" of Corneille's sudden rise to superior art with
the Cid is to be found less in the realm of pure document than
through psychological appreciation and understanding. And the
present state of knowledge of Corneille's early years does not per-
mit a consistent attempt at a Corneille psychology. As long as the
external events which, no doubt, spurred on and guided his in-
ternal evolution, remain dim and mysterious, no satisfactory ex-
planation can be advanced of the deepening of his art with the Cid
and the subsequent tragedies. It is by following this line of thought
that. Jules Lemaître calls the Cid: "Inexplicable par sa soudaine,
éblouissante, immense supériorité. . . un de ces phénomènes qui
montrent le mieux qu'aux grandes révolutions littéraires, après
qu'on a bien determiné les préparations, les conditions, le moment,
il y a encore une cause mystérieuse, imprévoyable, irréductible,
providentielle si vous voulez, et sans qui tout aurait avorté: Le
génie d'un homme" (7).
II.—If it seems as yet too early in the present state of knowledge
about Corneille, to answer the ultimate problems, the problems of
his esthetic and spiritual evolution, nevertheless light may be
thrown upon the historical circumstances which surrounded the
birth of his epoch-making tragi-comedy, the Cid.
From the historical point of view the appearance of this play
raises a number of problems, which can be reduced to seven prin-
cipal points: ~1. The Cid celebrated a Spanish hero and a Spanish
heroine at a time that France was at war with Spain. Was it
the custom of submissive and success-seeking Corneille to court
disfavor of the public or of the court by the choice of any
subject by which he would run a risk of arousing hatred and mis-
understanding? Why did he choose just then to glorify the
high conception of honor in a hero of a nation with which his
country was at war?
2. Corneille's Cid had an enormous success at Paris. This,
of course, can partly be explained by the literary excellence of
the play. But why were a Spanish hero and a Spanish heroine
so loudly acclaimed at the Capital when patriotism had risen to
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
7
a high pitch and when the enemy was still near enough to be a
constant danger?
3. What has been the role of M. de Châlon, identified by M. de
Beaurepaire as a secretary of the Queen, Anne of Austria, in
Corneille's choice of the Cid as a subject?
4. It is certainly remarkable that the ennoblement of Corneille's
father followed almost immediately the first representation of the
Cid, the more so because he had resigned seventeen years before
from his position as a minor government official. Why exactly at
that moment this sudden remembrance of the humble services
which he had rendered as Maître des eaux et des forêts? Besides,
according to contemporary testimonials, this ennoblement was due
to the interference of the Queen? What were the Queen's reasons?
5. The attitude of Richelieu toward the Cid is still a riddle.
Pelisson's narration of the Cid-quarrel, accepted for a long time
without challenge, suggests that the Cardinal was jealous of the
literary success of the Cid and that, since he himself had literary
ambitions, he inspired the Cid-quarrel. But it is certain that his
attitude toward the Cid underwent changes. At first he was not
inimical toward the play. Later, however, he insisted with the
Academicians that the Cid should be condemned. Why?
6. It has not been sufficiently noticed that de Scudéry's Amour
Tirannique, highly protected and favored by the Cardinal in 1638,
constitutes, in certain parts, an intentional counterpart of the Cid.
One of the characters, Queen Ormène, has to solve the problem of
filial versus marital love just as Corneille's Chimène.
7. With the Cid, Corneille decidedly renounced the portrayal
of contemporary characters, an object which had been uppermost
in his artistic endeavours until that date. All his early plays, with
the exception of the classical tragedy, Médée, are alien to the heroic
characterization which from then on he adopted. "Si c'était
rencontre ou hasard dans le Cid, c'est de parti-pris maintenant
qu'il va rompre avec l'imitation de la vie commune; et dans le
dessin des charactères, il ne se laissera plus désormais guider que
par la recherche, de l'illustre et de l'extraordinaire" (Brunetière).
These several problems can be solved by a single historical
identification which fits equally well the various aspects of this
complex question: by the identification of an allusion to the queen
of France, Anne of Austria, in the Chimène of Corneille's play.
The explanation, which will be expounded in this study, can
be resumed as follows: The queen of France, Anne of Austria,
was the daughter of Philip III, king of Spain (8). The anti-
Spanish politics of Richelieu and the suspicion of Louis XIII had
made her position at the Court a difficult one, even before the
Franco-Spanish war of 1635-38. When that war was declared, she
8
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
was confronted with a moral problem similar to Chimène's: she
had to choose between her father and her husband-elect, between
her mother-country and her adoptive country. In Chimène filial
love has to give way to her love and admiration for the young
hero, Don Rodrigue. And Anne of Austria was, of course, sup-
posed to give up her love for her father and for Spain in favor
of Louis XIII. She had to deal, in reality, with the problem of
filial love versus marital love which Corneille depicted with his
Chimène./
i
This analogy of the Cid and the moral problem of the Queen
would have been easily understood by the audience of the time,
trained to discover allusions to actual events in literary works.
Was it not about that time that the Romans à clef abounded and
that the Grand Cyrus portrayed, under the pretext of a historical
novel, the whole learned and precious society of the epoch? Various
allusions to contemporary events are known to exist in the plays
written more or less under the inspiration/ of the Cardinal de
Richelieu. Any symbolical meaning in the Cid, would thus easily
have been deciphered, and this allusion to a contemporary event
and a well-known personage would explain the fact that the Cid
was successful, notwithstanding its presentation of a Spanish hero
and a Spanish heroine at a time that French patriotism was exalted
by the war with Spain./
Corneille, always preoccupied with "pleasing the public," must
have had a reason for choosing Spanish heroism as a subject at such.
a time. Probably through Alphonse-Rodrigue de Châlon, Queen
Anne's secretary, and a relative of Corneille, the subject of the Cid
was suggested to the poet,. And, in fact, the Cid can be interpreted
as an apology for the Queen, who, like Chimène, preferred her hus-
band and lover, covered with glory and honor, to her father!
Chimène's character in the play is put in a favorable light, and the
opponents of the Cid who sometimes claim to be "bons Français"
and to hate everything Spanish, will call her "une fille dénaturée.”
On the other hand, the pro-Spanish Court-party, no doubt, formed
the nucleus of the admiring public, and one unidentified courtier
thought it necessary, in 1638, to write a cryptic "L' Innocence et le
Véritable Amour de Chymène" which in its exalted tone seems a
defense of the Queen, rather than of Corneille's Chimène. These
circumstances must have played an important role in the success of
the Cid, fully merited, on the other hand, by its literary excellence
Very soon after the first representation of the Cid, Corneille was
ennobled through his father's ennoblement. This honor was, as
contemporaries testify, destined to the author of the Cid, rather
than to his father, and due to the queen's influence. It can be ex-
plained as a recompense for his veiled defense of the moral attitude.
of the Queen by his play.
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
9
Richelieu's behavior towards the Cid does not show any real
animosity toward Corneille. To point only to four important facts
in this connection, it must be remembered that he continued Cor-
neille's pension; that he did not oppose the ennoblement of the poet's
father, and of the poet himself; that the Cid was played in the
Palais Cardinal and dedicated to his niece. Later, however,
Richelieu insists with the Academy that the play should be con-
demned. I will try to show that his early attitude toward the Cid was
modified by certain political reasons, and especially by new diffi-
culties between him and the Queen. At first, when fortunes of war
were not favorable to France, he treated the Queen discreetly: she
might be a welcome pawn in the diplomatic game, whereupon, rather
than upon tragi-comedies, his attention was concentrated. Once
the triumph of France was assured, the old animosity reappeared
and, besides, about the time of his most decided change in attitude
toward the Cid, Richelieu discovered that the Queen had been keep-
ing up a secret correspondence with her Spanish relatives.
De Scudéry's Amour Tirannique, a play which the Cardinal
"preferred to any other of the same kind," brought on the stage a
queen, Ormène, whose father and whose husband are at war, as,
in reality, Queen Anne of Austria's father, Philip III, and her
husband, Louis XIII. Ormène has to struggle with the same prob-
lem of filial love versus marital love, as Corneille's Chimène. But
the solution which de Scudéry gives to this moral problem is differ-
ent from Corneille's: Ormène is entirely submissive to her husband
and agrees that kings have "only subjects, but no relatives."
At last, the closer connection of Corneille with the Court, whence
the inspiration for the Cid seems to have some, goes far in explain-
ing his change from the more realistic to the heroic characterization,
for the heroes of Corneille's tragedies are the incarnation of the
contemporary courtly ideal of the nobleman.
*
*
*
The question can be raised: Was the position of the Queen
of such a nature that a veiled defense, or a favorable allusion,
would have been wanted or welcomed? Anne of Austria was sus-
pected of being in sympathy and in secret correspondence with the
court of Spain. L. Battifol says about her situation at the court
before the war of 1635-38: "We have her letters; they are small
notes without great importance; her father, who loved her much
gave her news about himself, sent money to her; she wrote also to
her brother, the future Philip IV; to the duke de Lerme; to the
duke of Olivares; she had special messengers. Uneasy about this
correspondence, Louis XIII suspected his wife of being in con-
nivance with his enemies. It happened that he said so. Anne pro-
tested. At the moment when the court of Spain became untrue to
its engagements about the Valteline, Louis XIII said to the Queen,
"Write to the king your father and tell the Spanish ambassador
Um
10
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
200
....
that I am resolved to demand the execution of the treaty of Madrid,
or that otherwise, I will make use of all my power"; and the Queen,
astonished, replied that since His Majesty had commanded her to
write, she would write to the king of Spain and speak to the am-
bassador, but that she begged him to believe that she was not
Spanish, that she was altogether French. (9). "Is it believed, she
said to her confidants, that because I am born in Spain, I am
Spanish? This is a mistake, I am French and I do not want to be
anything else." To Luynes she repeated: "Nothing in the world is
so conjoined as are my interests and those of the king." (10)
During the years 1620-35 the misunderstandings between Louis.
XIII and Queen Anne multiplied. Mention must be made here
especially of the "Conspiration des Dames" of 1626 directed against
the King's project of marrying Mlle. de Montpensier to his brother
Gaston d'Orléans. During the trial of the conspirators, the Queen
was more or less implicated in the accusations of plotting against
the safety of the state and the life of Louis XIII. Père G. Daniel
says: (11) "Il paroît qu'il y eut encore d'autres dépositions, qui
furent tenues plus secrettes; car on ajoute que Chalais, soit par la
force de la vérité, soit par l'esperance d'arrêter les procédures, en
nommant parmi ses complices une reine, que l'on ne pouvoit
s'empêcher de ménager, avoit déposé, qu'il s'étoit agi parmi les
conjurés de faire déclarer le roi impuissant et incapable de régner,
de lui ôter la couronne; de faire casser son mariage avec Anne
d'Autriche, qui auroit ensuite épousé Monsieur (Gaston d'Orléans)
et que cette princesse étroitement liée avec la duchesse de Chévreuse,
et par elle avec la plupart des conjurés, ayant eu connoissance de ce
projet y avoit donné les mains; mais cette déposition ne fut point
rendue publique, et c'est ce que le cardinal de Richelieu paroît
insinuer dans son testament politique, lorsque parlant de la conspi-
ration de Chalais, il adresse ces paroles au roi: "Etant contraint
de dire à mon grand regret, qu'une personne de la première con-
sidération s'y trouva insensiblement engagée avec plusieurs autres,
qui fomentoient et suivoient ses passions, je ne puis omettre le
mérite que vous acquitiez devant Dieu, et devant les hommes, en
supprimant l'éclat qu'eût eu sa conduite imprudente, si vous n'eussiez
sagement dissimulé ce que vous pouviez réprimer avec autant de
séverité que de raison." Il est certain que Louis XIII concut dès-lors.
une aversion pour elle qui dura jusqu'à sa mort, et que l'idée de cette
accusation demeura si profondément gravée son esprit et dans son
coeur, qu'étant au lit de la mort, lorsque la reine lui fit dire par mon-
sieur de Chavigny, qu'elle n'avoit jamais pensé à ce qu'on lui avoit
imputé dans l'affaire de Chalais, il répondit: En l'état où je suis, je
me crois obligé de lui pardonner, mais je ne suis, pas obligé de la
croire."
MU
C.
Now, in 1636, when the war with Spain had been under way
for a year, the position of the queen at the court and with the people-
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
11
was not improved. On the contrary, as a Spanish princess, she was,
of course, more than ever attacked by the Richelieu party and de-
fended by the pro-Spanish partisans and by all the malcontents,
who desired rather the fall of Richelieu through an unsuccessful
war than the triumph of the French arms and the strengthening of
the Cardinal's tyranny. It may be safely asserted that the enemies
of Richelieu loudly acclaimed the Cid. Even if they had not guessed
the relation between the moral problem of Chimène and the moral
problem of the queen-a supposition entirely devoid of probability
to anyone knowing the preference of the times for allusion and
allegory-still they would have acclaimed a Spanish play with
Spanish heroes were it only to oppose by this manifestation the
anti-Spanish politics of the Cardinal.
II. A PASSAGE OF CH. SOREL.
An argument against this explanation of the purpose of the Cid
might be drawn from what the historians call the "argument of
silence." And in this case, it would be: If such a relation between
the moral problem of the Queen and the moral problem of Chimène
had been perceived at the time, why does there not exist a clear
and undubitable statement of that fact in the Mémoires of the time?
But the argument of silence is not justified in this case because
there exists a testimonial which refers to the Queen's relations with
her husband as the reason for the aversion of Richelieu for the
Cid. In a cryptic passage in his Bibliothèque françoise, Sorel makes
a direct allusion to the role of the Queen and of Richelieu in the
Cid-quarrel. After having told the well-known facts, he says
"Mais il y a des mémoires de ce temps-là qui ne sont pas imprimés,
lesquels trouvent une cause plus fine de l'aversion que le Cardinal
concevoit pour le Cid, et de l'inclination qu'il témoignoit pour
l'Amour tyrannique. C'est que dans le premier il y avoit quelques
paroles qui choquoient les grands Ministres, et dans l'autre il y en
avoit qui exaltoient le pouvoir absolu des Roys, mesmes sur leurs
plus proches." (p. 187) (12)
Mr. Taschereau has dismissed this testimonial on the ground
that the Amour Tirannique is considerably posterior to the Cid, and
that, therefore, the Cardinal could not have preferred the one to
the other. He dates it from 1639. But, although the Privilège of
the play was given on February 23, 1639; the achevé d'imprimer
of the first edition is dated February 2, 1639, and, since the Amour
Tirannique had been represented a number of times, it must be
dated from 1638.
On the other hand, it must be observed that the utterance of
Sorel does not imply that the Cardinal praised loudly the Amour
Tirannique exactly at the time of the early representations
of the Cid. All that he says is that there existed a common reason
•
=
12
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
for the aversion and the sympathy of the Cardinal for the Cid and
for the work of de Scudéry. And he hints that the common reason
was that the Cid contained allusions to relatives of the king, which
did not please Richelieu, while the Amour Tirannique, manifestly
written under the inspiration of the Cardinal, defended the right of
a king to treat even those most near to him-his mother or his
wife, for instance-with all the severity and all the authority
which the "raison d'état" might dictate to him. The fact
that the "Amour tirannique" followed the Cid by a year or more,
does, therefore, not destroy the value of Sorel's argument.
Sorel was placed in a very favorable position for being aware
of all that was connected with both the literary and the historical
events of his time; as a voluminous author he was intimately ac-
quainted with all those who wrote at this epoch; as historiographer
to the king all the historical events of the time and a great number
of documents necessary for his work, were naturally brought to
his notice. He was a contemporary of the Cid quarrel wherein
he seems to have participated. Mr. Gasté attributes to him the
pamphlet entitled “Le Jugement du Cid, composé par un bourgeois
de Paris, marguillier de sa paroisse” (La Querelle du Cid-p. 230)
He had uncommon insight into the secret background of the life.
of the times and a temperamental delight in discovering and expos-
ing the weak side of the heroes of the day. His impressions about
contemporary theater merit confidence: "Non seulement il disait son
mot, le mot du bon sens, dans toutes les querelles littéraires, mais il
suivait assidûment toutes les représentations dramatiques, et il con-
signait au jour le jour ses impressions, dans des cahiers qu'il avait
commencés à l'age de dix-huit ans, et qu'il continuait encore en
1666, au témoignage de Furetière" (13). In his “Bibliothèque Fran-
çoise" he refutes the narration of Pellisson, who attributes the op-
position of Richelieu entirely to jealousy; and documents published
in our times confirm the fact that his criticism of Pellisson was
justified (14). He had a very positive sense of life and history;
little idealism, but a desire of positive truth, unparalleled among
early seventeenth century authors. His attempts toward the trans-
formation of the methods of writing history are a clear testimonial
as to his aspiration to present only the trustworthy. From all this
it must be concluded that Sorel's information can be considered as
accurate and reliable. (15)
Besides, we can test Sorel's passage, relating to the Cid quarrel,
by means of the evidence still within our reach. His first affirmation
that the Cardinal was not favorable to the Cid is borne out by fact.
That he preferred the Amour Tirannique is equally sure. The
introduction to this play by Sarasin lays great stress on the high
praise with which Richelieu overwhelmed it: ". nous jugeons
que cette Tragédie est au dessus des attaques de l'Envie, et par son
propre mérite, et par une protection qu'on seroit plus que sacrilège
•
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
13
de violer, puisque c'est celle d'Armand, le Dieu Tutélaire des
Lettres."
C'est de la voix de cet Oracle, que sont sorties ces propres
paroles: Que l'Amour Tirannique estoit un Ouvrage qui n'avoit
point besoin d'Apologie, et qui se défendoit assez de soy-mesme
(16)" De Scudéry's dedication of the play to Madame la
duchesse d'Aiguillon is equally explicit: "Car après la gloire
qu'il a eu d'estre representé quatre fois devant Monseigneur
et devant vous; après les choses que S. E. en a dites en présence
de toute la Cour; après l'honneur qu'elle m'a fait, de vouloir avoir
ce poème en manuscrit dans son cabinet; et après le rang que vous
luy avez donné tout haut, parmy ceux de cette nature; (This refers,
of course, to the Cid) ma plus ardente ambition est tellement
assouvie, qu'elle ne trouve rien à desirer . .
""
Now as to the play itself. The text makes it perfectly clear
that the Mémoires, from which Sorel drew his information, meant
that Richelieu condemned the Cid and praised the Amour Tiran-
nique because of the allusions which these plays contain to the
relations between the queen, Anne of Austria, and the king, Louis
XIII. Sorel's expression "qui exaltoient le pouvoir absolu des Roys,
mesme sur leurs plus proches" does not refer to the queen mother
Marie de Medici with whom Louis XIII had the well-known diffi-
culties and with whom he struggled for power. In the Amour
Tirannique no conflict is described between a mother and her son,
the king, but a conflict between a queen with her husband, the king.
The character which stands out in the play is that of the queen,
Ormène. It is certainly no accident and no coincidence that she is
placed exactly in the same situation as Chimène in the Cid and as
the queen Anne of Austria. She is the daughter of Orosmane,
Roy de Capadoce, and married to Tyridate Roy du Pont. Her
husband had declared war on her father and her brother, and
Ormène has to choose between her father and husband exactly in
the same way as Chimène in the Cid and Anne of Austria in reality.
Now Ormène, although her husband, the king Tyridate, is unjust
and even cruel to her and her family, never revolts against him
but carries her submission indeed to the extreme and protests on
various occasions that the royal dignity has conferred upon him
the right of acting according to the interests of the state. She ex-
claims:
and:
“Quelque injuste rigueur qu'il exerce envers moy,
Je me souviens qu'il est mon époux et mon Roy"
"Je me dois souvenir au milieu de mes maux,
Et du pouvoir d'un prince, et du peu que je vaux."
Il n'appartient qu'aux Dieux de conseiller les Rois."
K
14
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
She even consents to a separation from the king, Tyridate. It
must be remembered that the question had been secretly considered
whether it would not be in favor of the state to remarry
Louis XIII with another princess, because the queen Anne of
Austria, after many years of marriage had not borne a successor
to the throne. This situation was changed shortly after the repre-
sentation of the Amour Tirannique by the birth of Louis XIV
(September 1638) Ormène speaks about her possible divorce in
the tones of a patient Griseldis:
"Je recoy ma disgrace avec submission,
Et mon respect s'oppose à mon affliction"
and in Act IV, sc. 4:
La loy de nos pays luy permet ce divorce:
Et que ne peuvent point les armes et la force?
It can hardly be supposed that de Scudéry in writing down
these verses and Richelieu in praising them, would have been una-
ware of their bearing on the situation of the queen of France at the
Court. The analogies are too close to allow us to dismiss them as
mere coincidences.
The Amour Tirannique ends with the triumph of the patient
and submissive Queen Ormène. After many incidents she regains
her husband's heart and reigns happily afterward. And, in 1638,
when the play was represented, Anne of Austria was reconciled
with Louis XIII. Her child, the later Louis XIV, was born on
September 7, 1638. That de Scudéry paid much attention to that
event is proved by the fact that he dedicated in 1638 his play
"L'Amant Libéral" to the queen, and referred in his dédicace to the
birth of the heir to the throne.
In the Amour Tirannique the pompous King Tyridate pronounces
the maxims to which Sorel ascribes Richelieu's favorable attitude
to the play. Yet it must be noticed that the political principles of
'Tyridate are not approved of in the tragi-comedy. On the contrary,
they are constantly and sharply criticized by the wise Pharnabaze,
the former governor of the king, who does not fear to point out
that his pride is leading him astray. It is not possible to identify
Louis XIII with the tyrant Tyridate, for this boastful, heartless,
and unintelligent tyrant was not a portrait which any playwright
would have dared to draw of the king. Nothing more can then be
accepted than exactly what Sorel said, that some of the allusions in
the play pleased Richelieu extremely. And these allusions referred
obviously to the Queen.
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
15
Act I, Scene 2
Tiridate:
The following verses declaimed by Tyridate aim manifestly at
the difficulties which existed formerly between the royal couple:
Ceux qui tiennent un rang de puissance infinie,
Sont instruits seulement par un divin Génie,
Qui fait toujours céder au coeur d'un potentat,
Cette raison commune, à la raison d'Estat.
Ne jugez point des Rois, âme vulgaire et basse;
Ne les mesurez pas avec une autre race;
Pour les y comparer, ils sont trop différens,
Les Rois ont des sujets, et n'ont point de parens.
Act II, Ormène pleads in favor of her imprisoned brother;
Tiridate answers:
Enfin je voy vostre âme, et je remarque en elle
Cette lasche pitié qui la rend criminelle
L'intérest d'un mary qui vous devroit toucher
Cède à celuy d'un frère, infidelle, et plus cher ;
Et par cette requeste, à bon droit rejettée,
Vous-oubliez le rang où vous estes montée;
Mais bien que vostre esprit, soit pour luy contre moy
Si suis-je vostre espoux, si suis-je vostre Roy.
Ormène:
Seigneur, ces noms sacrez, sont gravez en mon âme;
Mais quoy, je suis sa soeur!
Tiridate:
Mais vous estes ma femme.
Ormène :
La Nature me parle, elle a bien du pouvoir.
Contre ce que je suis, rien n'en devroit avoir.
Tiridate:
Ormène:
Ce n'est qu'avec respect que je vous solicite.
Tiridate :
La fausse humilité vient d'un coeur hypocrite.
Helas! dois-je oublier
Tout pour n'oublier pas
Que la rebellion mérite le trespas.
Ormène:
Tiridate:
16
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
Act III, Sc. 3.
Pharnabaze:
Ha! Seigneur! Ha! Seigneur, oubliez vous son rang?
Et le respect du Trosne, et le respect du sang?
Quoy? N' escoutez vous plus, dedans ceste advanture
La voix de la raison, la voix de la Nature,
Elles de qui la terre observe et suit les loix?
Tiridate:
Il n'est point d'autre Loy que le vouloir des Roys;
C'est de nous qu' elle depend, tous puissants que nous sommes ;
C'est nous qui sommes Dieux, qui la donnons aux hommes ;
Act IV, Sc. 2.
Tiridate:
Les Roys sont au dessus des crimes,
Toutes choses sont légitimes
Pour les princes qui peuvent tout;
Et quelque aversion qu' ait la personne aimée
Il y va de leur gloire et de leur renommée
Si leur pouvoir n' en vient à bout.
-
The passage of Sorel is then confirmed by the preceding ex-
amination of the Amour Tirannique. The absolute power of a king
upon his near relatives, in this case his wife, is expounded in it.
And the happy results are shown of a queen's submissiveness. If
to these facts it be added that the play is intentionally a study of a
character similar to Chimène's in Corneille's Cid, it is clear that
both plays must have had a bearing upon actual events in the kingly
household.
The probability that allusions to Anne of Austria's situation
at the Court were read into the Cid is further enhanced when the
historical circumstances which surrounded the first representation
of Corneille's work are recalled.
T
III. THE WAR WITH SPAIN.
1. The Cid was played in the last days of December, 1636, or
in the early days of January, 1637. The work, therefore, must have
been written during the year 1636. Now, when Corneille was
making in his masterpiece, the eulogy of Spanish honor and Spanish
glory, France had been at war with Spain for eighteen months. Fight-
ing had begun on the 29th of May, 1635, and, at certain stages of
the struggle, France had seemed near to ruin. Patriotism was
burning high and fiercely, and yet, while the enemy was still near,
enough to be a constant danger, all Paris went to acclaim a play
which after all, sang the praise of the enemy's ancestry, of its-sense
of honor and its chivalry.
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
17
This enthusiasm is all the more extraordinary when the fluctua-
tions of the fortunes of war in that year are recalled. After the
declaration of war, in 1635, the French armies invaded Belgium, at
that time a Spanish possession. The Spaniards were defeated in
the plain of Avein, but soon, having received heavy reinforcements
from Austria, they turned on their victors and forced them to re-
treat. In 1636 when Corneille began to write the Cid, the Spaniards.
invaded France from the North and drove the French back in the
direction of Paris. In August, 1636, they took the fortified town of
Corbie and, having passed the Somme, menaced Paris. Dareste
(Hist. de France, V. 18) describes as follows the effect on the popu-
lation of the capital: "The agitation was extreme in Paris. The
people stood in the streets, excited, waiting for news, accusing the
Cardinal of having brought the enemy to the very heart of the
kingdom. Many already fled; the roads toward Chartres and
Orléans were obstructed with carriages and vehicles. Fortifications
were constructed rapidly at St. Denis and at the points where the
new city-quarters had been built outside of the walls of the old
fortifications. In the midst of the agitation and of the diversity of
feelings shown, the patriotic ardor was very keen. . ." Richelieu
testifies in his Mémoires that the seven associations of merchants
and artisans of Paris were called before the king and that they put
at his disposal their goods and their lives. The Mémoires of the
chief-justice Molé and the Gazette of Renaudot confirm that the
patriotic fervor was general and enthusiastic. "Le 5 août le Roi se
rendit au Louvre, dans la galerie, dite des rois. . . Tous les corps.
de métier vinrent saluer Sa Majesté et lui faire offre de leurs.
personnes et de leurs biens . . Ils se présentèrent à genoux aux pieds
de sa Majesté, qui leur fit l'honneur de les saluer et leur temoigner
combien elle avoit agréable leur bonne volonté, dont ils donnèrent.
toutes les preuves imaginables, plusieurs d'eux baisant la terre et
embrassant les pieds de Sa Majesté . . . Les Parisiens, au sortir
de là fendirent l'air de tant d'acclamations de joie et de tant de cris
redoublés de Vive le Roi! qu'il y a fort longtemps qu'il s'en est
point oui de plus grands. . (Gazette de Renaudot) Loans were
concluded, soldiers called, and many extraordinary measures taken.
The prospect of a siege and the outburst of patriotism assured the
king of hearty co-operation. On the first of September the king
left Paris at the head of a large army. The Spaniards retired over
the Somme. For months heavy fighting continued on French soil
until the end of 1636 and the first months of 1637. The danger of
a siege was scarcely removed, when all Paris acclaimed the Cid, an
apotheosis of a Spanish hero and of a Spanish heroine.
How are these apparent contradictions to be understood? By a
certain indifference of the population toward the war with Spain?
But all the contemporaries agree that patriotism rose to a very high
pitch. By the influence of the Spanish court-party, which certainly
18
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
could not have failed to acclaim this homage to the country of their
sympathies? This enthusiasm may have been an important factor
in the success of the Cid, but by itself alone it seems not sufficient
to explain it.
About the time when the Cid was staged, public sympathy
for the Cardinal was at a low ebb. Those who favored the play
not only for its literary excellence and dramatic effectiveness, but
also for political preoccupations, saw their ranks increased by
many who accused the Cardinal of having brought France to the
brink of disaster merely to satisfy his measureless ambition
Aubery says in his "Histoire du Cardinal Duc de Richelieu"
(Paris, 1660, p. 290): "Murmures contre le Cardinal-Ils ne
l'acusoient pas de moins que de trahison, et se plaignoient haute-
ment, que sous prétexte d'agrandir Paris du costé du faux-bourg
Saint Honoré, il en avoit fait abatre les rempars et les murs
afin d'exposer la Ville, qui restoit sans munitions, à la mercy des
Espagnols et au pillage." The Cardinal found it necessary to
make a bid for popularity: "L'on remarqua particulièrement du
Cardinal, qu'il se faisoit voir exprez au peuple, et qu'au plus
fort de l'émotion et du trouble il fut sans ses gardes ordinaires
depuis son Palais jusque à l'Hôtel de Ville et à l'Arsénal; afin
de témoigner de la confiance aux Parisiens, et de leur apprendre
à mépriser les discours de ceux qui faisoient le mal beaucoup
plus grand qu'il n'estoit." ((p. 293)
It was in such an atmosphere that the rehearsals and the first
representation of the Cid took place. The almost general tri-
umph of the play can hardly be explained on the score solely of
its literary qualities for they would not have blinded the people
at such a moment of national danger and exalted pariotism, to
the fact that it glorified the enemy. Its success, no doubt, was
magnified and powerfully helped by the political circumstances
of the moment: it may have taken slowly the character of a mani-
festation against Richelieu's politics.
IV. THE ROLE OF M. DE CHALON.
A question which has not been answered in the preceding
divisions of this study is:. Why did Corneille choose, in 1636,
during the war with Spain a Spanish play as a model? Why did
he glorify a Spanish hero and a Spanish heroine at exactly that
time? Accident cannot be invoked, because all the evidence
which exists about Corneille's character points to the fact that
he was always anxiously striving for success, and that he was
submissive-if not altogether to the French Academy-at least
to the taste of the public and to civil and royal authority. And
not the slightest doubt exists about his patriotism. He was, on
the other hand, at Rouen very well aware of all the incidents
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
19
of the war with Spain. The duc de Longueville, to whom he
dedicated his Clitandre, was fighting in the French army with a
number of the poet's fellow-citizens. Besides, the province of
Normandy was oppressed and devastated by the great number
of soldiers quartered everywhere. (17)
It is then probable that Corneille in choosing the Mocedades del
Cid for a model followed some incentive, some influential counsel
Beau-
or some important considerations of a practical nature.
champs in his "Recherches sur les Théâtres de France" (II, 157)
reports a story which, in the form it is found there, has inspired
but little confidence in historians. Yet, and this is important,
Beauchamps says that he knew these facts from a very good source,
from the Jesuit Tournemine, regent of the Jesuits of Rouen, where
Corneille had been educated and in whose cloister he always had
very good and intimate friends, as for instance, Father de la Rue.
'They seem, therefore, to merit more confidence than they generally
received:
"M. de Châlon, sécrétaire des commandements de la reine mère,
avait quitté la cour et s'était retiré à Rouen dans sa vieillesse:
Corneille, que flattait le succès de ses premières pièces, le vint voir.
"Monsieur" lui dit M. de Châlon après l'avoir loué sur son esprit
et sur ses talents "le genre de comique que vous embrassez ne peut
vous procurer, qu'une gloire passagère. Vous trouverez dans les
Espagnols des sujets qui, traités dans notre goût par des mains
comme les vôtres, produiront de grands effets; apprenez leur langue,
elle est aisée; je m'offre de vous montrer ce que j'en sais, et, jusqu'à
ce que vous soyez en état de lire par vous-même, de vous traduire
quelques endroits de Guillen de Castro."
The full name of the M. de Châlon referred to by Beauchamps
was Alphonse-Rodrigue de Châlon, born at Rouen in 1615, and
hence twenty-three years old at the time of the Cid. It is alto-
gether probable that he knew Spanish and Spanish literature, for
he belonged to a Rouen family of Spanish descent, to the Jalons,
the name de Châlon being a French form for Jalon. Now, the
family de Châlon was related to the Corneille's by marriage, from
two or three sides, so that no doubt can be entertained about the
fact that he knew the poet Pierre Corneille. (18)
In one important point modern historians have misunderstood
Beauchamps' text. He calls M. de Châlon, sécrétaire des com-
mandements de la Reine Mère. This has been taken to mean secre-
tary of the queen mother of 1637, i. e. of Marie de Médici, mother
of Louis XIII. But Beauchamps, writing at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, referred to the latest "Reine Mère" he knew
himself, to Anne of Austria. (19) That such is Beauchamps' mean-
ing cannot be doubted since M. de Beaurepaire has identified de
Châlon as born in 1615, and as a secretary of Anne of Austria.
Now if this Alphonse-Rodrigue de Châlon was in close contact
20
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
with both the queen of France and with Corneille in 1636, and sug-
gested to Corneille at that moment the subject of the Cid, a possi-
ble link at least is found between the queen or at all events her en-
tourage, and the poet of Rouen. And is it hazardous to see in the
counsel of de Châlon, a suggestion coming if not from the queen
herself, from her pro-Spanish intimates? Such a suggestion com-
ing from high-placed personages would have been for Corneille a
powerful incentive to treat material which he would naturally have
avoided during a war with Spain. Besides there seems to have
been a powerful practical reason for Corneille to side with the
queen at that moment; the ennoblement of his father and of him-
self which was decreed in January 1637.
V. THE ENNOBLEMENT OF CORNEILLE.
At the very moment when the Spanish hero of the Cid was
reaping laurels in Paris, the father of Corneille was ennobled at
Rouen, and by that fact Pierre Corneille himself was elevated to
the nobility. The letters of the king conferring the title of Ecuyer
upon all the male members of the family is dated "Donné à Paris,
au mois de janvier, l'an de grace mil six cent trente sept." They
were registered by the Parlement at Rouen (at the Cour des
Aides) on the 24th of March, 1637, and at the Chambre des Comptes
three days later.
The text lays stress upon the merits of Corneille's father as a
servant of the state: "Et d'autant que, par le témoignage de nos
plus spéciaux serviteurs, nous sommes dûment informé que notre
amé et féal Pierre Corneille, issu de bonne et honorable race et
famille, a toujours eu en bonne et singulière recommandation le
bien de cet Etat et le nôtre en divers emplois qu'il a eus par notre
commandement et pour le bien de notre service et du public et
particulièrement en l'exercice de l'office de maître de nos eaux et
forêts en la vicomté de Rouen, durant plus de vingt ans, dont il
s'est acquitté avec un extrême soin et fidelité pour la conservation
de nos dites forêts, et en plusieurs autres occasions où il s'est porté
avec tel zèle et affection, que ses services rendus et ceux que nous
espérons de lui à l'avenir nous donnent sujet de reconnaître sa vertu
et mérites, et les décorer de ce degré d'honneur pour marque et
mémoire à sa postérité."
It has been remarked that this honor was less intended for the
father of Corneille than for the son. Indeed, Corneille's father had
been a loyal and even rigid and stainless "maître des eaux et des
forêts." In various occasions he had given evidence of an unflinch-
ing devotion to duty even at the peril of his life. But, on the other
hand, he had “les défauts de ses vertus". . . He was punctilious
and rather quarrelsome and, at various times, he resigned from his
position as a protest against what he considered an encroachment
THE PURPOSE of CorneILLE'S CID
21
upon his exclusive rights. (20) Besides, in 1637, he had been out
of the king's service for seventeen years. His last resignation was
the end of his troubles with his inferiors and his neighbors. Why
then was he suddenly ennobled at the exact moment that his son
was acclaimed as the author of the Cid? Why this sudden revival
of interest in the services of a forgotten and, after all, a humble
servant of the State? What services could Louis XIII expect from
him "in the future"-as the letters say-since he was out of his
service since so long a time?
Corneille's contemporaries saw in the title given to the father
a recompense for the son. Mairet exclaims:: "Vous nous avez
autrefois apporté la Mélite, la Veuve, La Suivante, La Galerie du
Palais, et, de fraiche mémoire, le Cid, qui d'abord vous
a valu
l'argent et LA NOBLESSE” (21). And, at Rouen, the same opin-
ion was accepted for Faucon de Ris, sieur de Charleval, of Rouen
says in another document of the Cid-quarrel: “. . . . et certes il est
bien difficile qu'il peust rendre ses Acteurs plus vaillans puisque
luy-mesme n'a pas si tost la permission de prendre une espée qu'ils
se déclare par une lettre imprimée, indigne de la porter et qu'à peine
a-t-il reçeu celles de noblesse qu'il faict une action assez infame
pour l'en degrader" (22).
Claveret refers to him as a "nouveau noble" and scoffs at him
for that his letters of nobility "sont encore si fraîches qu'elles se
peuvent aisement effacer" (Lettre du Sr. Claveret au sr. Corneille—
Gasté, 190) and, finally, Corneille himself, testifies that the ennoble-
ment was due to his work:
"La noblesse, grand roi, manquoit à ma naissance,
Ton père en a daigné gratifier mes vers"
(1657 Oeuvres X, 135)
The fact then stands quite clear that for the contemporaries
of Corneille as well as for Corneille himself, the elevation of his
father and his family to the nobility was the direct result of the
success of his theatrical productions, and that the Cid was the
occasion, at least, for the recognition of his merit. The following
citation still confirms this view and reveals another aspect of the
ennoblement of Corneille's father which is of importance in the
present argumentation. The pro-Corneille pamphlet Le Souhait
de Cid en faveur de Scudéri (Gasté, 186) says: "On me connoîtra
assez si je dis que je suis celui qui ne taille point sa plume qu'avec
le tranchant de son epée, qui hait ceux qui n'aiment pas Chimène, et
honore infinement celle qui l'a autorisée par son jugement, procurant
à son autheur LA NOBLESSE qu'il n'avoit pas de naissance."
There is no doubt that "Celle qui l'a autorisé par son jugement"
means the Queen, for she was the only one who could have been
instrumental in having the title granted, who had indirectly the
22
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
C
power of "procuring" nobility. That the queen looked favorably
upon the Cid is already evidenced by the passages presented above.
Besides Corneille himself says in his Lettre Apologétique (Gasté,
p. 148) "quand vous avez traité la pauvre Chimène d'impudique, de
prostituée, de parricide, de monstre; ne vous estes-vous pas souvenu,
que la Reyne, les Princesses, et les plus vertueuses Dames de la
Cour et de Paris l'ont reçeue et caressée en fille d'honneur ?”
No less an authority than Gustave Lanson doubts that the title
given to the Corneilles was a recompense of the Cid. He explains
in his "Corneille" (p. 12): On a voulu que le fils ait plus que le
père contribué à cette élévation de la famille. C'est possible, à la
condition qu'on n'en fasse pas la récompense du Cid. Comment
Richelieu se fût-il déjugé au point de gratifier ainsi l'auteur de la
pièce qu'il allait si obstinément poursuivre? Puis le Cid ayant paru
au plus tôt dans les derniers jours de décembre 1636, il eût fallu, au
premier éclat du succes, bien de la hâte à demander chez le poète,.
bien de l'empressement à accorder chez Richelieu pour qu'en moins
d'un mois l'ordonnance fût préparée, signée et publiée. La faveur
dut être sollicitée avant le Cid, donnée au succès encore supportable
des dernières oeuvres, et, quand le Cid fit courir tout Paris, les
lettres d'anoblissement étaient prêtes: il n'y avait pas moyen de les
révoquer."
The fact that the letters of nobility were granted to Corneille
so soon after the first representation of the Cid, is not to be ex-
plained if one represents the Cardinal as inimical to the play from
the start. But, as already pointed out, such was not the case. It
seems hardly possible that Richelieu, if Corneille had displeased
him, would have found no means of revoking them in the early
days of January 1637. He could have annulled them before they
were registered in Normandy, in the month of March. But the
problem is solved, in all its aspects, if one takes into consideration
that the Queen was instrumental in the ennoblement of Corneille,
and that Richelieu, at first, was not adverse to seeing the unity of
the kingly household alluded to openly and at a moment of political
crisis. That the letters of nobility followed so soon the first repre-
sentation of the Cid is explained by the fact that the Queen, through
her secretary de Châlon, was aware of, or concerned in the genesis
and the production of the play, and could have taken measures for
the ennoblement of Corneille while the rehearsals were taking place.
Since it was not openly to be confessed that, during the war with
Spain, a play eulogizing Spanish bravery and sense of honor had been
suggested to one of the most successful French playwrights, or that
the Queen was acting in favor of Corneille for political reasons, the
services rendered seventeen years previously by Corneille's father
were used as a pretext for the letters of nobility. But by this pre-
text, as I already pointed out, no one at the time was deceived.
In this connection it must be remembered that Corneille was.
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
23
protected his whole life long by the queen, Anne of Austria. On
February 17, 1650, he was made Procureur-syndic des Etats de
Normandie, replacing a sieur Baudry, a partisan of the Duke de
Longueville. Soon, however, the Duke de Longueville was recon-
ciled with Mazarin and the queen, and, after little more than a year,
on March 23, 1651, Baudry was reinstalled in his former office.
But the letter by which Corneille was nominated Procureur-Syndic,
is instructive in regard to the Queen's opinion of Corneille: "Sa
Majesté ayant, pour des considérations importantes à son service,
destitué par son ordonnance d' aujourd'hui le sieur Baudry de la
charge de procureur des Etats de Normandie, et étant nécessaire
de la remplir de quelque personne capable et dont la fidélité et affec-
tion soient connues, sadite Majesté a fait choix du sieur Corneille,
lequel, per avis de la Reine Régente, Elle a commis et commet à
ladite charge, au lieu et place dudit sieur Baudry. ... (February 15,
1650).
It is upon her desire that he pursues, in 1652, the paraphrase of
the Imitation. Even at the time of her mourning for Louis XIII
she did not give up seeing the plays of Corneille. Madame de
Motteville, her confidente, says. "Elle alloit à la comedie, à demi
cachée par une de nous qu'elle faisait asseoir auprès d'elle dans une
tribune où elle se mettait, ne voulant pas pendant son deuil paraître
publiquement à la place qu'elle devait occuper dans un autre temps.
Corneille, cet illustre poète de notre siècle, avait enrichi le théâtre
de belles pieces dont la morale pouvait servir de leçon à corriger le
dérèglement des passions humaines; et parmi les occupations vaines
et dangereuses de la Cour, celle-là du moins pouvait n'être point
des pires." (Dorchain 282.)
In the various pamphlets which were published at the time of
the Cid-quarrel here and there allusions are found to the queen of
France. Some of them—those who refer to the ennoblement of the
Corneille family by the Queen-have already been cited in a pre-
ceding division. Others are listed here. De Scudéry wrote in his
"Observations sur le Cid" (Gasté, 85) after having accused Cor-
neille of having drawn with his Don Rodrigue a caricature of a
Spaniard, instead of a Spanish hero: "Les Espagnols sont nos
ennemis (il est vray) mais on n'en est pas moins bon François, pour
ne les croire pas tous hipochondriaques. Et nous avons parmi nous
un Exemple si illustre et qui nous fait si bien voir que la profonde
sagesse et la haute vertu peuvent naistre en Espagne, qu'on n'en
sçauroit douter sans crime. Je parlerois plus clairement de cette
divine Personne, si je ne craignois de prophaner son nom sacré, et
si je n'avois peur de commettre un sacrilège, en pensant faire un
acte d'adoration."
Such a "sacrilège en pensant faire un acte d' adoration" was
exactly what, according to his argument, Corneille had done. He
24
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
accused him indirectly of having tried to flatter the Queen by bring-
ing Spanish heroism on the scene, and of having committed a
"sacrilège" in depicting the Spaniards as vain and boastful. For
him Corneille had offended the Queen instead of defending her.
In any case, de Scudéry implicates that the Queen could not be in-
different to the way Spanish honor was depicted in the Cid.
Corneille's answer to this allusion clearly shows that he under-
stood de Scudéry's insinuation. He replied with the "Lettre
Apologétique du sieur Corneille" (Gasté, 147): "Je n'ay pas si
peu de bon sens que d'offencer une personne de si haute condition,
dont je n'ay pas l'honneur d'être cogneu, et de craindre moins ses
ressentiments que les vôtres."
It must be noted here that when Corneille states that he had
not "l'honneur d'être cogneu" by the queen, he manifestly meant
that he was not personally acquainted with her. For the next page
of his "Lettre” shows that the queen had applauded the Cid: “Ne
vous estes vous pas souvenu que le Cid a esté representé trois fois
au Louvre, et deux fois à l'Hostel de Richelieu, Quand vous avez
traisté la pauvre Chimène d'impudique, de prostituée, de parricide,
si la gloire de cet auteur (Corneille) donna de la jalousie à ses con-
de monstre; Ne vous estes vous pas souvenu que la Reyne, les
princesses, et les plus vertueuses dames de la Cour et de Paris, l'ont
receüe et caressée en fille d'honneur?"
That, in certain circles, the Cid was opposed because it was a
Spanish play may be gathered from a passage from another docu-
ment of the Cid-quarrel; "La voix publique à Monsieur de. Scudéry
sur les observations du Cid" (Author unknown): "Monsieur-
c'est trop faire le bon François que de vouloir perdre le Cid, parce
qu'il est Espagnol; il faut estre plus généreux, et puisqu'il est en
France, donnés luy la vie si vous le pouvés faire à celuy que son
Autheur a desja fait immortel, et le traittant en prisonnier de guerre,
souffrez que nous luy donnions nos cabinets pour prison." (Gasté,
152) (23).
It may be concluded that the circumstances of the ennoblement
of Corneille's father and of Corneille point to the interference of
the Queen. And by what other reason could the Queen have been
moved at that time than by the desire to reward the poet for a
service rendered her by an allusion to her in the Cid?
VI. THE ATTITUDE OF RICHELIEU TOWARD THE
"CID."
I-The principal source of information about the attitude of
Richelieu toward Corneille's Cid is the "Histoire de l'Académie
Françoise" by Pellisson, dated 1652. He is not altogether affirmative
about the Cardinal's role in the dispute: "Il ne faut pas demander
si la gloire de cet auteur donna de la jalousie à ses
con-
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
25
currents; plusieurs ont voulu croire que le Cardinal lui-même n'en
avoit pas été exempt, et qu'encore qu'il estimât fort M. Corneille,
et qu'il lui donnât pension, il vit avec déplaisir les reste des travaux
de cette nature, et surtout ceux où il avoit quelque part, entièrement
effacés par celui-là. Pour moi, sans examiner si cette âme, toute
grande qu'elle étoit, n'a point été capable de cette foiblesse, je
rapporterai fidèlement ce qui s'est passé sur ce sujet, laissant à
chacun la liberté d'en croire ce qu'il voudra, et de suivre ses propres
conjectures.
Entre ceux qui ne purent souffrir l'approbation qu'on donnoit,
au Cid, et qui crurent qu'il ne l'avoit pas méritée M. de Scudéry
parut le premier, en publiant ses Observations contre cet ouvrage,
ou pour se satisfaire lui-même, ou, comme quelques-uns disent,
pour plaire au Cardinal, ou pour tous les deux ensemble. Quoi
qu'il en soit, il est bien certain qu'en ce différend, qui partagea toute
la cour, le Cardinal sembla pencher du côté de M. de Scudéry, et
fut bien aise qu'il écrivît, comme il fit, à l'Académie françoise, pour
s'en remettre à son jugement. On voyoit assez le désir du Cardinal,
qui etoit qu'elle prononçât sur cette matière; mais les plus judicieux
de ce corps témoignoient beaucoup de répugnance pour ce dessein.
Ils disoient "que l'Académie, qui ne faisoit que de naître, ne devoit
point se rendre odieuse par un jugement, qui peut-être deplairoit
aux deux partis, et qui ne pouvoit manquer d'en desobliger pour
le moins un, c'est à dire une grande partie de la France; qu'à peine
la pouvoit on souffrir sur la simple imagination qu'on avoit qu'elle
pretendoit quelque empire en notre langue: que serait-ce si elle
témoignoit de l'affecter, et si elle entreprenoit de l'exercer sur un
ouvrage qui avoit contenté le grand nombre et gagné l'approbation
du peuple? que ce seroit d'ailleurs un retardement à son principal
dessein, dont l'exécution ne devoit être que trop longue d'elle-même ;
qu'enfin M. Corneille ne demandoit point ce jugement; et que par
les statuts de l'Académie, et par les Lettres de son érection, elle ne
pouvoit juger d'un ouvrage que du consentement et à la prière de
l'auteur." Mais le Cardinal avoit ce dessein en tête, et ces raisons
lui paroissoient peu importantes, si vous en exceptez la dernière,
qu'on pouvoit détruire en obtenant le consentement de Corneille.
(24.)
""
.,
Pellisson narrates then how Corneille at first refused to submit to
the demand that his play be examined by the Academy and how,
after having learned that Richelieu desired that it should be done,
he replied: "Messieurs de l'Académie peuvent faire ce qu'il leur
plaira; puisque vous m'écrivez que Monseigneur seroit bien aise
d'en voir le jugement et que cela doit divertir son Eminence, je
n'ai rien à dire.
•
"Il n'en falloit pas davantage, au moins suivant l'opinion du
Cardinal, pour fonder la juridiction de l'Académie, qui pourtant se
défendoit toujours d'entreprendre ce travail; mais enfin il s'en
26
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
expliqua ouvertement, disant à un de ses domestiques. "Faites
savoir à ces Messieurs que je le désire, et que je les aimerai comme
ils m'aimeront.”
According to Pellisson the Academy began the examination of
the Cid in its assembly of June 16, 1637.
Although Pellison speaks with much reticence about Richelieu's
attitude in the Cid-quarrel and does not affirm that he was really
jealous of Corneille's reputation as an author, the succeeding gen-
erations of historians have found in his envy of a literary nature
the origin of the Cid-quarrel. Among those who have charged the
Cardinal with a regular persecution of Corneille, Voltaire stands
out. He, for the first time, narrates the anecdotes of the conflict
between the poet and the minister, about the Comédie des Tuileries.
Corneille would have dared to change the third act of that play,
for which he, as one of the "cinq autheurs," had to supply the
verses. This act of independence would have brought him the dis-
favor of the Cardinal, who angrily would have remarked: “Il faut
avoir un esprit de suite." And the Cid-quarrel would have been an
occasion for Richelieu to take revenge upon the independent lawyer-
author of Rouen.
Now, this anecdote, told on uncertain authority (25) and for
the first time by Voltaire, more than a century after its supposed
utterance, has been proved to be apocryphical. (26.)
In an article in the Revue d'Histoire Litéraire (1914; p. 345),
Professor Searles criticizes the assertion of Pellisson that the
Academicians would have opposed the examination of the Cid. He
points out that the clause in the statutes of the Academy, forbidding
the examination of the works of any author without his consent,
which, according to Pellisson, the Academicians would have op-
posed to Richelieu's desire before the 10th of June, 1637, was only
approved and inserted in the statutes on the 9th of July, 1637.
Pellisson's narration of the role of the Academy in the Cid
quarrel is also unreliable because of other inaccuracies, which seem
intentional since he was able to rectify his errors being personally
acquainted with most of the Academicians who took part in the
strife. Pellisson says, for example, that "the Academy did not
begin deliberating about the Cid before the sixteenth of Juin," and
after the receipt of a letter which Corneille would have written,
against his will, on the thirteenth of Juin, to signify them his sub-
mission to their judgment. He affirms this twice and emphatically:
"Je sais par les régistres de l'Académie, qui sont fort fidéles et
fort exacts en ce temps là, qu'on ne commença d' y parler du Cid
que le 16 juin 1637; que ce fut après qu'on y eut lu une lettre de
M. Corneille." (p. 97.) That this assertion is false can be made
up from a letter which Chapelain wrote to Balzac on Juin 13, 1637:
"Vous ne pourrés manquer au premier jour à souscrire l'arrest
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
27
que le Corps doit prononcer là dessus, si tost que Corneille nous
aura fait la même sousmission (as de Scudéry), et ne croyés pas
que je me moque: L'affaire est passée en Procès ordinaire et moy
qui vous parle en ay esté le rapporteur et en dois encore parler à la
premiere séance." (Lettres de Chapelain, I, p. 156.)
It is sure that the Academy had already begun the examination
of the Cid, before Corneille consented to it. In a letter of December
23, ‍1637, Corneille wrote to Boisrobert: "Tout ce qui m' a faché
c'est que ces Messieurs de l'Académie, s'estant résolus de juger
de ce différend, avant qu'ils sussent si j'y consentois ou non, et
leurs sentiments étant déjà sous la presse, à ce que vous m'avez
écrit, avant que vous eussiez veu ce temoignage de moy. (Pellisson,
op. cit. p. 96.)
Pellisson has also advanced the date of Richelieu's direct com-
mand to the Academy to publish a criticism of the Cid. "Faites
savoir à ces messieurs que je le désire, et que je les aimerai comme
ils m' aimeront," to create the impression that the hesitating
Academy was absolutely forced into action by Richelieu. (27.)
It is clear that Pellisson's narration was not altogether unbiased.
He presents the incidents of the Cid-quarrel in a most favorable
light for the Academicians and loads the blame, if prudently, yet as
much as possible on the Cardinal de Richelieu. What reasons
moved Peilisson to compose in 1652, this narration favorable to a
number of the judges of the Cid still living and members of the
Academy by that time? It must be noted that Pellisson read his
history before the Academy in December 1652. Whether Corneille
agreed with his narration is impossible to know, since the records
of the meetings, prior to 1672, are lost. Pellisson was recompensed
by the Academicians. He was promised the first vacant place in
the Assembly and, in the meantime, he was allowed to attend its
meetings as a supernumerary with all the rights of a regular
Academician. This procedure was so extraordinary that a formal
declaration was made that the entrance of Pellisson in the Academy
should not constitute a precedent and that a similar privilege, to
be accepted as a supernumerary member, should never again be
accorded. The Academicians had manifestly certain reasons for
being grateful to Pellisson. Now, in the light of the facts pointed
out in the preceding divisions of this study, it seems likely that some
of them wanted to reward him for his defense of their attitude in
the Cid quarrel, which he manifestly treated with the greatest possi-
ble leniency. And if it can be accepted that the Cid contained an
allusion to the queen Anne of Austria, their desire of seeing their
role in the Cid quarrel favorably interpreted, is easily explained by
the fact that they, no doubt, desired to prove to Anne of Austria,
then in power, that they had been forced to action against their
will, by the indomitable Cardinal.
28
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
II. Richelieu was at first not unfavorable to the Cid. He did
not suppress Corneille's pension; he allowed his niece, Madame de
Combalet, to accept the dédicace; he did not oppose the ennoble-
ment of Corneille's family; he had the play staged twice in his own
"Palais Cardinal." Not too much importance must be attached to
the anecdote reporting that Boisrobert played before him a parody
of the Cid. The "plaisant abbé" in his capacity of official "amuseur"
seems to have had the custom of giving parodies of all the
successful plays of the day..
If Richelieu had seen in the play solely an attack on his politics
in general or toward the duel or any danger for the state, then at
war with Spain, he would certainly not have asked the Academy
to condemn the play. He had at his disposition much more effica-
cious means of disposing of the play and the poet. He could have
simply forbidden the representations, and, in case of opposition, he
could have sent the author to the Bastille. And, considering his
imperious character, he would not have hesitated to imprison a
Rouen lawyer, when he did not hesitate to lay hands on the most
powerful princes and noblemen. If he was suffering from a deep-
seated literary jealousy, why would he not have taken advantage of
the pretext that in the Cid heroes of an enemy country were glorified
to forbid the play?
Instead of taking any such action, logical in the circumstances
and with his character, he allows the work to be staged in his own
palace and the author to be ennobled. To explain these facts it must
be observed that his attitude toward the play in the months of
January to March 1637 was parallel with his attitude toward the
queen Anne of Austria.
So long as the fate of arms was not altogether favorable to
France and so long as his own popularity was at a low ebb, he
treated the queen discreetly. He manifestly did not want to exas-
perate his enemies in France at the moment that he had serious
difficulties with foreign invaders. He must have welcomed, at
first, the political allusion to the Queen in the Cid, because it showed
openly how the queen preferred France to Spain, her husband to
her father, and sanctioned, in a sense, his own anti-Spanish politics.
Such an affirmation of perfect accord in the kingly household was
needed and welcome after the well-known difficulties which had
arisen in previous years, for instance, at the time of the Conspiration
des Dames. It re-enforced the prestige of the throne, which he was
trying to affirm for political reasons. For, Richelieu's own fate
was bound to the fate of Louis XIII. All that diminished the
kingly prestige was a stimulus to revolt in France of the nobility,
still powerful at that time.
Later, the Cardinal's attitude changed. The fortunes of war
turned in favor of France and his power grew with his popularity.
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
29
At the same time the Cid seems to have become a kind of rallying
point of all the pro-Spanish and anti-Richelieu malcontents. Be-
sides, the Cardinal may not have been altogether indifferent to the
attacks made on Corneille by some of his own protected playwrights,
who were driven on by professional jealousy. In June 1637 de
Scudéry submitted himself to the judgment of the Academy, and,
even at that time Richelieu seems to have only mildly insisted
upon the trial of Corneille's work before the court of the Academi-
cians. They seemed to lose their inclination for criticizing Cor-
neille's work. Chapelain, who, on the thirteenth of June, 1637, had
written to Balzac with enthusiasm about the examination of the
Cid, wrote in quite the opposite spirit to him, on the 22d of August:
"Ce qui m' embarasse, et avec beaucoup de fondement, est d'
avoir à choquer et la cour et la ville, les grands et les petits, l' une
et l'autre des parties contestantes, et, en un mot, tout le monde,
en me choquant moymesme sur un sujet qui ne devoit point estre
traitté par nous; et, croyez-moy, Monsieur, qu'il n'y a rien de si
odieux, et qu'un honneste homme doive éviter davantage que de
reprendre publiquement un ouvrage que la réputation de son autheur
ou la bonne fortune de la pièce a fait approuver de chacun.”
And about the same time Gombauld wrote to Boisrobert:
"C'est une fascheuse aventure pour l'Académie qu'il faille
que le premier ouvrage qu'elle met au jour soit la censure d'un
autre, et ce n'est pas le moyen d'attirer les suffrages du public que
de blasmer ce qu'il approuve." (Lettres I, p. 164)
It is only by the end of July 1637 that Richelieu showed any
real interest in the Academy's criticism of the Cid. It seems that
the famous phrase of the Cardinal: "Faites savoir à ces messieurs
que je le désire, et que je les aimerai comme ils m' aimeront" be-
longs to this stage of the Cid quarrel rather than to its very begin-
ning as stated by Pellisson. (28)
Now, at the end of July and during the month of August 1637,
there arose between the King and the Cardinal, on one side, and
the queen Anne of Austria, on the other, a new series of difficul-
ties, which gave the Cardinal absolute supremacy in their struggle.
If the Cardinal had perceived in the Cid an allusion to the Queen,
his attitude toward the play would thereby have been influenced
at this date. In any case, he was aware that Corneille had been
ennobled on the instances of Anne of Austria as a recompense for
his play, for this was not even a secret for the pamphleteers who
took part in the Cid quarrel. (29) And it is quite natural that in
turning more decidedly against the Queen, he would have turned.
also more decidedly against the play and the author she patronized.
By the end of July 1637 Richelieu made a discovery which con-
firmed certain suspicions which he had entertained about the
Queen's correspondence with her native country, Spain, with which
30
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
France was at war. In a bundle of intercepted letters he found an
answer upon a letter of the Queen by the Marquis de Mirabel, the
former Spanish ambassador at Paris. On the 11th of August, the
messenger of the Queen, a certain La Porte, was arrested and it
soon became apparent that she had been secretly in correspondence
not only with the Marquis de Mirabel, but also with her brother,
the Cardinal-Infant of Spain, governor of the Spanish Netherlands,
and with Madame de Chévreuse, then exiled at Tours. Not only
did she complain about her fate at the Court of Louis XIII, but she
betrayed certain state secrets. She warned the ministers of Madrid
that a certain monk was a French spy; she deplored the intentions.
of the court of England to break off the alliance with Spain; she
mentioned that Richelieu had begun secret negotiations with the
Duke of Lorraine. This compromising correspondence was carried
on from the Cloister of Notre Dame de Val-de-Grâce, where she
retired from time to time under pretext of devotion. The prioress-
of that convent, Louise de Mili, was devoted to the Spanish
cause. (30)
When La Porte was arrested, the Chancellor Seguier and the
archbishop of Paris, Jean-François de Gondi, went to Val-de-Grâce
to interrogate the prioress, who, although menaced with excom-
munication, did not reveal anything about the Queen's corre--
spondence. She was banished, with three other sisters, to the
Abbaye de la Charité and deprived of her rank:
Then the Queen was interrogated:
"Le chancelier étant venu à Chantilli, pour rendre compte au
roi de ce qui s'étoit passé au Val-de-Grâce, reçut ordre d'aller inter-
roger la reine. Elle repondit d'abord qu'elle n'avoit jamais eu
aucune mauvaise intelligence avec les enemis de l'État. Le chance-
lier lui ayant presenté la copie de la lettre qu'elle avoit reçue du
Marquis de Mirabel, elle avoua qu'elle avoit écrit dans les pays
étrangers, et qu'elle en avoit reçu des lettres; mais elle nia consta-
ment qu'il eût jamais été question des affaires d'état dans celles
qu'on lui écrivait, ni dans ses réponses. "Là-dessus, dit M. de
Brienne, on lui exagéra la grandeur de sa faute, en lui disant que
l'on répudioit les reines en Espagne pour un moindre sujet." Elle
tâcha de s'excuser en versant beaucoup de larmes. Les ennemis
du cardinal affectoient de dire que la reine étoit innocente, et que
le cardinal ne la persécutoit que parce que l'ayant recontrée au
cours, elle n'avoit pas fait arrêter son carrosse devant le sien; que
ce n'étoit pas la première calomnie qu'il eut inventée pour la
chagriner . . (Père G. Daniel-Histoire de France XIII, 48)
""
La Porte, imprisoned in the Bastille, obstinately refused to make
any further revelations about the Queen's letters. But Anne of
Austria soon confessed:
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
31
"La reine de son côté, ayant appris du sieur le Gras, que le
cardinal en savoit beaucoup plus qu'elle n'en avoit dit, résolut de
s'ouvrir davantage. Ells avoua d'abord au sieur le Gras une partie
des faits, niant toujours les principaux, et elle le chargea de dire
au cardinal qu'elle vouloit lui parler, pour lui dire tout ce qu'elle
savoit. Richelieu se rendit chez elle par ordre du roi, le matin,
avant qu'elle fut levée, avec le père Caussin, le père Fauce, les
sieurs de Chavigni, Desnoyers et madame de Senécé. Il commença
par lui déclarer que le roi étoit fort en colère de ce qu'elle avoit
écrit plusieurs lettres dans les pays étrangers, sans sa permission,
pendant que la reine d'Espagne n'avoit pas la liberté d'écrire en
France. Il ajouta qu'elle n'ignoroit pas que ses frères étoient en
guerre avec le roi, et qu'il étoit étroitement défendu d'entretenir
aucun commerce avec les ennemis de l'Etat; qu'il importoit ex-
trêmement au roi de savoir ce que contenoient les lettres qu'elle
leur avoit adressées, et celles qu'elle en avoit reçues, et qu'il lui
répondoit que si elle vouloit lui dire dans le plus grand détail et
dans la plus exacte, vérité le contenu de ces lettres, dont elle avoit
fait jusqu'alors un si grand mystère, le roi oublieroit tout ce qui
s'étoit passé, et lui rendroit infailliblement ses bonnes grâces. La
reine qui n'étoit pas disposée à faire une déclaration si ample et si
detaillée, répondit qu'il étoit vrai qu'elle avoit écrit en Flandre,
à M. le cardinal infant des lettres qui n'avoient point passé par les
voies ordinaires: mais qu'elles ne contenoient que des compliments
et des choses indifférentes, qui n'avoient aucun rapport aux affaires
d'État. Le cardinal lui repliqua qu'elle ne disoit là qu'une partie
de la vérité; que le roi en savoit davantage; que si elle désiroit se
servir de lui, il pouvoit l'assurer qu'en avouant tout, elle rentreroit
sans peine dans les bonnes grâces du roi; mais qu'il la supplioit
de le dispenser d'intercéder pour elle, si elle vouloit user de dis-
simulation, qu'il n'étoit venu que pour pacifier, et que si elle
continuoit à déguiser la vérité, il alloit se retirer. Elle le pria de
rester, et lui promit de lui dire tout, pourvu que ce ne fut pas en
presence de madame de Senécé, et des deux secrétaires d'état, qui
etoient venus avec lui. Ils sortirent aussi-tôt, et la reine lui avoua
tous les faits qu'elle avoit niés jusqu' alors. Elle témoigna par ses
larmes beaucoup de déplaisir et de confusion, d'avoir fait tant de
protestations contraires à la vérité. (Père Daniel. Op. cit. p. 50
according to the Mémoires de Richelieu.)
After this interview, Richelieu and the king asked Anne of
Austria to sign a declaration, in which the various points of her
confession were mentioned, and which ended with a promise of
submissive conduct in the future. (31). After that the Queen was
reconciled with her husband.
Although Richelieu in his Mémoires, presents his own conduct
in the difficulties with the Queen in a favorable light, it may be
safely asserted, in view of many contemporary testimonials, that
32
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
his old animosity toward her was not really diminished by them.
It is remarkable that his opposition to the Cid becomes more marked
at the same date as his enmity toward Anne of Austria. By in-
sisting with the Academicians that the play should be condemned,
he tried to diminish the prestige of a play, highly esteemed by the
Queen, and of an author protected by her. This alone would be
sufficient to make Richelieu's attitude less problematic. | And, if
he had perceived in the play, as Sorel says, "something shocking
to great ministers," or if he had been aware of an allusion to the
position of the queen of France in Corneille's Chimène, his action
in the Cid-quarrel would be far better understood. For, he acts
toward the Cid as toward the Queen./ He dislikes both, yet treats
them discreetly enough. The play was not forbidden, and Corneille
kept much of the "bonnes grâces de son maitre" and his pension.
The Queen, after a humiliating confession, is reconciled with the
King, for this was in the interest of Richelieu's politics. He wanted
an heir to the throne, for as long as Anne of Austria was estranged
from her husband and had no children, the presumptive heir to
the throne was an arch-enemy of Richelieu, the weak and moody
Gaston d'Orléans. (32)
•
{
Two other explanations have been advanced for the unfavorable
attitude of Richelieu toward the Cid. The first is that Richelieu
was adverse to its glorification of the duel for honor's sake, at a time
that he was trying to repress the numerous duels between unruly
noblemen. But the cardinal was not the first minister to forbid
the duel in France. Henry IV gave edicts against this custom in
1602, and 1610. In 1617 and 1623, before the reign of Richelieu,
these edicts were promulgated again by Louis XIII. In 1626 and
1634 the prohibitions are repeated although, in the former year,
Richelieu proposed to the Assembly of the Notables to moderate.
the penalties for the duel. Richelieu asked Lescot, his confessor,
"S'il ne peut donner aucun cas où les roys puissent permettre les
duels en querelle particulière; en cas qu'il ne se puisse pas, comment
on peut sauver les permissions qu' on en a données autrefois en
France et autres Etats, permissions autorisées des Églises en divers
lieux Il y a grande apparence que par cette permission on vien-
droit à bout de la multitude de duels, ou qu' en promettant la licence
de se battre à ceux qui en auront juste cause, chacun se soumettroit
au juge député à cet effet, espérant avoir la permission. ."
In
1638 and in 1640, Richelieu obtained a general amnesty for all the
nobles concerned in duel-affairs. Besides, in the Aveugle de
Smyrne, a play inspired by Richelieu, a character, Philarque, says in
the first scene: Il s'attend que par un lasche effort, sans me battre
avec luy, je luy donne la mort.", and further: "Je veux bien voir
Philiste en un juste duel." (Cf. Note 12) Other evidence confirms
the view that the Cardinal was not altogether turned against the
duel, but made a distinction between a duel in a just cause and a
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
33
duel for slight reasons. And, according to the code of honor of
the times, a duel as Don Rodrigue's in the Cid was most just and
honorable. It is therefore that the Sentiments de l'Académie Fran-
çaise sur le Cid, written under the eye of the Cardinal, sanctions
the words of revenge of Don Rodrigue: "Elle estoit excellente dans
la bouche de Rodrigue" (Cf. Searles, op. cit. p. 348). On the other
hand, many playwrights of the epoch staged duels without losing
the favor of the Cardinal. In Corneille's Mélite and in his Clitandre
duels are proposed or fought and yet the Cardinal pensioned him
afterward.
It has been said, in the second place, that Richelieu favored so
much the Rules, to which he was converted by Chapelain, that his
sense of the necessity of discipline in plays, he wanted to discipline
authors as much as princes and noblemen-would be sufficient
ground for his opposition to Corneille's Cid, which does not observe
strictly the pseudo-Aristotelian precepts. It seems, however, doubtful
whether the Cardinal took such a decided stand on the question of
the Unities. G. Collas in his Jean Chapelain, (1912 p. 97-98) has
proved that the story of the abbé d' Olivet relating the early con-
version of Richelieu to the Aristotelian doctrine, must be regarded
as a legend. It is probable that Chapelain did not present his views.
to Richelieu before February, 1635. (Collas, op. cit, p. 117).
While it is true that the Unities are observed in the plays of the
"Cinq Autheurs,"-perhaps through Chapelain's influence-it must
yet be noted that submission to the Aristotelian precepts was no
"conditio sine quâ non" of the Cardinal's favor. De Scudéry, whom
he esteemed from about 1631 on, when his Le Trompeur puny ou
l'histoire septentrionale was represented, gave, between 1631 and
1637, not less than eight plays which are not "dans les règles." If
Richelieu had been so strongly in favor of the Rules, de Scudéry.
who flattered him even more than Chapelain, would not have hesi-
tated to adopt them. As late as 1638 Chapoton dedicated to Riche-
lieu his Le véritable Coriolan, and, although this play is irregular,
the Cardinal accepted the dedication. It is then not for an academic
difference of opinion about the more or less strict interpretation of
the Aristotelian rules that the Cardinal turned against the Cid.
after having it represented twice in his palace.
Lanson (Hist. de la litt. franç. p. 424) points out that in the
Cid quarrel “aucun principe, aucune doctrine d'art n'est en jeu."
For further illustration of this fact one can turn to de Scudéry's
Didon, printed in May, 1637, at the moment that he reproached
Corneille for not observing strictly enough the Rules of Tragedy.
He ends the Advertisement of his play as follows. "Après cela, il
ne me reste plus qu'à vous confesser ingenuement, que cette pièce
est un peu hors des Règles, bien que je ne les ignore pas; mais
souvenez vous (je vous prie) qu'ayant satisfait les sçavants par
elles, il faut parfois contenter le peuple par la diversité des spec-
34
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
tacles et par les différentes faces du Théatre." Corneille made use
of exactly this argument in defending his own irregularities.
The other well-known facts about the Cid quarrel-that some of
Corneille's competitors, as Mairet, de Scudéry or Claveret, were
jealous of his success and that some of the proud verses of the
Excuse à Ariste aroused their ire,—are not contradicted by the ex-
planation of the purpose and of the historical background of the
Cid attempted in this study. It is sure that professional rivalry
and the apprehension of Corneille's superiority played an important
role in the Cid quarrel, but whereas they explain sufficiently
Mairet's or Claveret's attacks, they do not explain Richelieu's
changing attitude. Besides, they have no bearing upon the other
problems here presented: Why did Corneille write the Cid during
the war with Spain? Why had the play such a success? Why was
Corneille ennobled, through the influence of the Queen, almost
directly after its first representation? Could de Châlon have had
any reason for suggesting the choice of the Cid subject to Corneille?
*
*
*
*
When the various facts pointed out in this study are brought
into relation with one another, they connect in such way as to give
a consistent view of the genesis of Corneille's Cid, which explains
the several rather complicated problems related to it. Corneille is
seen to have been well acquainted with Mr. de Châlon, a secretary
of Queen Anne of Austria, who, according to tradition, suggested
the Cid subject to the poet. Because of a suggestion coming, directly
or indirectly, from, the Spanish court-circles Corneille chose to
write, at a time of war with Spain, a play of Spanish heroism. The
position of Queen Anne of Austria at the Court was such that a
veiled allusion to her preference for her husband's love to the love
for her father would have been welcome. She was placed between
her father, the king of Spain, and her husband, the king of France,
in a position which recalls the strife between filial love and marital
love in Corneille's Chimène. This allusion to the Queen's moral
problem did not escape the attention of some of the contemporaries :
Sorel states that manuscript Mémoires of the time dealt with politi-
cal allusions in both Corneille's Cid and de Scudéry's Amour Tiran-
nique. And since in both plays a heroine is brought on the stage,
who has to make the painful choice between her father and her
husband, these political allusions obviously refer to Anne of Aus-
tria's situation. Almost at the same moment that the Cid was rep-
resented, Corneille was ennobled, through his father, but the con-
temporaries as well as Corneille himself, attribute this ennoblement
to the merit of his Cid. The Queen is said to have been instru-
mental in having the letters of nobility granted, and her interference
explains why they were granted so soon after the Cid. The quar-
rel of the Cid, no doubt, originated largely in professional jealousy
of other playwrights; but Richelieu's attitude is seen to have changed
1
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
35
from half-hearted support to almost open enmity. This cannot
be explained as occasioned by the references to the duel in the
play, nor by literary rivalry. Pellisson's narration of the Cid quar-
rel is a defense of the attitude of the Academy and cannot be ac-
cepted as accurate. Besides, Pellisson is very hesitant about ascrib-
ing literary jealousy to the Cardinal. Political motives rather than
an Academic desire for the triumph of the Rules, determined Riche-
lieu's conduct, as seems consistent with his character as a statesman.
His attitude toward the Cid runs in a parallel with his attitude
toward the Queen. It is by the end of July, 1637, when new diffi-
culties arose between him and her, that he becomes insistent that
the play-and the moral character of Chimène-should be con-
demned. Soon after he protects ostentatiously de Scudéry's Amour
Tirannique, in which a queen is found, who is entirely submissive
to her husband, because he is her king first and her husband after-
ward.
The suggestion of the Cid subject coming directly or indirectly
from the pro-Spanish court-circles must have acted upon Corneille
as an incentive to turn from realistic to heroic characterization.
When, with the Cid, he alluded to courtly models, he incarnated
quite naturally in his historical heroes the courtly ideal of the times.
The inspiration which he drew from literature-here from Guillen
de Castro-was vivified and intensified by this reference to the
actual life he observed. This points to the fundamental unity of
Corneille's method in both his early plays and his later tragedies:
a fact in his own experience turns his attention to a certain subject.
He treats of it, no doubt, as a "littérateur" does, taking color and
inspiration from his readings, but he animates it by reference and
allusion to his own life or to the life of his times: So with the
Mélite and so with the Cid.
36
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
NOTES:
(1) Levallois-Corneille Inconnu, pp. 143-146.
(2) G. Lanson-Pierre Corneille, p. 170 sq.
(3) 'W. A. Nitze-Corneille's Conception of Character and
the Cortegiano. Modern Philology, 1917.
(4) Lanson-Pierre Corneille, p. 170.
(5) A. Dorchain-Pierre Corneille, p. 167.
(6) See my study: "The Genesis of Corneille's Mélite.-Kruse
Publishing Co., Vinton, Iowa, 1921.
(7) F. Brunetière-Hist. de la litt française classique, II, 187.
(8) After two years of negotiations her marriage with Louis
XIII was at last decided and announced on March 23, 1612, and
celebrated on October 18, 1615. She was the daughter of Philip
III of Spain. Her dates are from 1605 to January 20, 1666.
(9) Dépêche de Pisaro of February 10, 1623, Bibliothèque
Nationale. Ms Italien, 1779 p. 221.
(10) Chaulnes-Relation exacte, p. 484-Lettre d'Anne d'
Autriche à Luynes of July 26, 1620.—Archives du Château de
Dampierre Cf. L. Battifol Le Roi Louis XIII à vingt ans.
(11)
Histoire de France, 1756, XIII, p. 515.
(12) The words "Quelques paroles qui choqoient les grands
ministres" do not refer to the duel, as has been said. Richelieu did
not disapprove of the duel of Don Rodrigue. Cf. U. Meyer.-
Beiträge zur Kenntniss Pierre Corneilles, vornehmlich in den Jahren
von Mélite bis zum Cid. Bautzen, 1911 p. 39. U. Meyer's study
merits more attention than has been paid to it.
(13)
Em. Roy-La Vie et les Oeuvres de Charles Sorel, p. 301.
(14) See the division about Pellisson's Histoire de L'Acadé-
mie française in this study.
(15 Avertissement sur l'histoire de la Monarchie française,
1628.
(16) Les Oeuvres de monsieur Sarasin-1663, p. 342.
(17) N. Périaux-Histoire de la Ville de Rouen:
1636. On fit le 13 août, des enrôlements à Rouen pour aller,
avec le duc de Longueville, combattre les Espagnols en Picardie.
Cette levée necessita la création de subsides extraordinaires. La
foule des soldats répandait en même temps la désolation dans les
campagnes. Des plaintes ayant été portées au Parlement "contre
les ravages, désordes, brulements, violences et inhumanités que
commettaient les gens de guerre en logement dans les provinces."
-Ordre de les persécuter rigoureusement.
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
37
(18) Cf. Le Verdier and E. Pelay-Additions à la Bibli-
ographie Cornélienne, no. 9.
de Beaurepaire Bull. de la sociéte de l'Histoire de Normandie,
131-134-year 1906.
G. Dubosc-Trois Normands, p. 7- I Guillaume Corneille, uncle
of the poet, had a son, Noel Corneille, whose daughter Catherine
married Daniel de Châlon, sieur de Dequey, son of Mathieu de
Châlon, sieur du Hamel, and of Suzanne Le Claustier-
2. Louis François de Châlon, son of François de Châlon, sieur
de Canleon, and "maître des comptes" at Rouen in 1644, was mar-
ried to Fleurimonde Le Pesant, related to Corneille's mother.
3. In 1655, Alphonse-Rodrigue de Châlon, referred to by
Beauchamps, married Catherine Briffault, related to Anne Briffault,
wife of Pierre Corneille's uncle, François Corneille.
(19) The statements of Beauchamps are manifestly at fault
in one respect. He says that, in 1636, when M. de Châlons made
his suggestion to Corneille, he had "quitté la cour et s'était retiré
à Rouen dans sa vieillesse." Now, Rodrigue de Châlons did not
retire to Rouen than about 1650. He was born in 1615 and mar-
ried in 1655, at Rouen. The confusion in the statement of Beau-
champ, probably arose from the fact that Rodrigue de Châlons
lived at Rouen in his old age, after 1650.
1
(20) See E. Gosselin-Pierre Corneille (le père), maître des
Eaux et des Forêts-Rouen-1864.
(21) Épître familière du Sieur Mairet-Gasté, p. 283..
(22) Lettre à xxx, sous le nom d' Ariste, Gasté, p. 202.
(23) Another of Corneille's partisans, probably Sirmond, an-
swered de Scudéry with the pamphlet: "Le Souhait du Cid en
faveur de Scuderi-Une paire de Lunettes pour faire mieux ses
observations." What he says about the queen adds but little to
the present study.
Another pamphlet of the Cid-quarrel, the latest to appear, is
singular in tone and defends Chimène with lyrical enthusiasm. Its
author dedicates his work "Aux Dames"-"L'estime que je fais
de votre mérite m'a obligé de défendre votre honneur, defendant
celuy de Chimène." (Gasté, 477) And: "Pouvez-vous bien souffrir,
Mes-dames, que celle qui a paru comme un soleil au Ciel de vos
Beautez, et qui a été adoreé comme une Divinité dans le Temple de
vos Vertus, où vous confessiez à genoux, qu'au seul Autel de ses
perfections les mortels devoient apporter toutes leurs offrandes de
respect et de service, soit aujourd'huy obscurcie et prophanée par
des blasphèmes insupportables.
Les Hommes qui doivent aux Dames toute sorte de services et
de devoirs, ont mauvaise grâce d'offenser l'innocence, et vouloir
38
GUSTAVE L. VAN ROOSBROECK
ternir la perle des Beautez du monde, Chymène, par une tache noire
de calomnie: mais comme les foibles nuages ne servent que pour
augmenter la lumière du Soleil et luy donner des nouveaux charmes :
ainsi ces vapeurs de calomnie feront briller avec plus d'éclat la
splendeur de sa vertu." (L'Innocence et le veritable Amour de
Chymène. Gasté -466.)
Would one not think that the author is speaking about a living.
person, instead of about a heroine of the stage?
(24) Edition of Ch. L. Livet, pp. 86-88.
(25) Beiträge zur Kenntnis Pierre Corneilles vornehmlich in
den Jahren von Mélite bis zum Cid—1629. p. 16 Cf. also, the other
studies of Ulrich Meyer on Corneille.
(26) L'Académie Française et le "Cid"-Revue d'Histoire
Litteraire-1914, p. 345.
(27) Searles Op. cit. p. 360.
(28) Idem-Op. cit. 359.
(29) See the preceding division on the Ennoblement of Cor-
neille.
(30) G. Daniel-Histoire de France, XIII. p. 42.
(31) Declaration de la Reine Anne du 17 Aoust 1637: (Cf.
V. Cousin-Mme. De Chévreuse p. 253)
The Queen confessed: "Qu'entre autres choses nous avons
quelques fois tesmoigné du mécontentement de l'estat auquel nous
estions, et avons reçu et escrit des lettres au marquis de Mirabel
qui estoient en des termes qui debvoient déplaire au Roy: "Que
nous avons donné advis du voyage d'un Minime en Espagne pour
que l'on eust l'oeil ouvert à prendre garde à quel dessein on
l'envoyoit :
"Que nous avons donné advis audit marquis de Mirabel que l'on
parloit ici de l'accommodement de M. de Lorraine avec le Roy, et
que l'on y prit garde.
"Que nous avons tesmoigné estre en peine de ce que l'on disoit
que les Anglois s'accommodoient avec la France au lieu de demeurer
unis avec l'Espagne:
“Et que la lettre dont La Porte a esté trouvé chargé devoit estre
portée à Mme. de Chévreuse par le sieur de la Thibaudière et que
la dite lettre fait mention d'un voyage que la dite dame de Chév-
reuse vouloit faire incogneue devers nous. Nous promettons
de ne retourner jamais à pareilles fautes, et de vivre avec le Roy
nostre très Honoré Seigneur et Espoux comme une personne qui
ne veut autres interêts que ceux de sa personne et de son Estat. En
tesmoing de quoi nous avons signé la présente de nostre propre
main, et icelle faict contresigner par nostre conseiller et secrétaire
•
THE PURPOSE OF CORNEILLE'S CID
39
de nos commandements et finances. Fait à Chantilly, ce dix-
septiéme aoust 1637, signé Anne Et plus bas, Legras. The King
added: "Après avoir veu la franche confession que la Reyne
nostre tres chère espouse a faite de ce qui a pu nous desplaire depuis
quelque temps en sa conduite, et l'assurance qu'elle nous a donnée de
sa conduite à l'advenir selon son devoir envers nous et nostre Estat.
nous lui declarons que nous oublions entièrement tout ce qui s'est
passé, n'en voulons jamais avoir souvenance, ains voulons vivre
avec elle comme un bon roy et un bon mary doibt faire avec sa
femme. En tesmoing de quoi j'ay signé la présente et icelle faict
contresigner par l'un de nos conseillers et sécrétaires d'Estat. Fait
à Chantilly, ce dix septième jour d'aoust, 1637. Signé Louis. Et
plus bas: Bouthillier."
(32) Richelieu:-Relation de ce qui s'est passé en l'affaire de
la Reyne au mois d'août 1637 sur le sujet de la Porte et de l'abbesse
du Val-de-grâce. Bibliothèque nationale-Manuscrit 4068—Cf. V.
Cousin Madame de Chévreuse, p. 250.


#A
Photomount
Pamphlet
Binder
Gaylord Bros., Inc.
Makers
Syracuse, N. Y.
PAT. JAN 21, 1908
。
THE OTHE
1
军人
​T
Mag
;
1


.
w
273
P
A
S**.*
3.
.**.
MAS
La
ܠܡܗ ܡܬ ܕ