Page:Musset - On ne badine pas avec l'amour, 1884.djvu/25

THE PROGRESS OF FRENCH COMEDY. 1 3 of comedy, they lent themselves well enough to develop- ment and adaptation under the influence of the Terentian drama when the Renaissance made the study of classical literature fashionable. The style of these farces themselves had already fastened strongly on the French taste, and it suffered, as has been said, very little and gained much from the all-reforming energy of the Pleiade. Eugene, which enjoys the title of being the first French regular comedy, and which was written and represented simultaneously with the first French tragedy Cleopdtre, is much more advanced in scheme and scale than the earlier farces. It has a succession of situa- tions, not a single one ; it aims at some display of indi- vidual as well as typical character. But it is after all only a farce complex instead of a farce simple. The main dif- ference is the regular division into acts and scenes, and the greater complexity of action which is due to a following of the regular classical comedy. There is a double plot with minor characters who have something like individuality, and the difference may perhaps best be expressed by saying that the play gives a complete story and not merely a chapter of a story. But Eugene is, like the farces, written in octosyllabic lines, a metre insufficient for theatrical dia- logue. The example was taken up by Jodelle’s followers. Jacques Gre*vin wrote two comedies, Les Esbahis and La Trteoriere, which are improvements on Jodelle ; Re"my Belleau, one of the chiefs of the Pleiade, produced La Re- connue, which is perhaps a still greater improvement ; Baif, another important member of the group of seven, adapted the Allies Gloriosus in his Taillebras. But neither dared to discard the inconvenient and cramping octosyllable. Some of their contemporaries were bolder, and threw the dialogue into prose, which at once afforded far greater ease, and in which, notwithstanding a certain relapse into deca- syllabics or Alexandrines of an easier and less elaborate kind than that used in tragedy, all the best comedies in French have been written, with rare exceptions, for the last three centuries. The chief of these innovators, and in- deed the most remarkable name in French comedy before