Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/310

290 actors who made a precarious existence in the provinces, and, like their English contemporaries, sometimes travelled as far as the Low Countries and Denmark. Compelled to interest and amuse, these companies were driven to add to their répertoire something besides the outworn moralities, histories, romances, and farces. Valleran Lecomte seems to have experimented with the academic tragedies of Jodelle, de la Taille, and Garnier. In Hardy, however, Lecomte found some one who supplied exactly what he was feeling his way towards,—a dramatist who could produce tragedies not unlike those of Garnier, but with more of movement, and without wearisome monologues and choral odes; who could, in short, dramatise with the utmost rapidity stories of every and any sort drawn from all the most popular reading of the day. Encouraged by such an acquisition, Lecomte rented the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1599 from the Confrérie, who were beginning to realise their inability to cope with the superior attractions which Italian and provincial companies brought to Paris from time to time in spite of their protests. After some interruptions, and notwithstanding trouble with the Confrérie, and with occasional rivals, which cannot be detailed here, Valleran's company settled at the Hôtel under the name of the King's comedians, and was until 1629 the only company performing regularly in Paris. During these years Hardy was the mainstay of the company, and almost the sole French dramatist of importance. He poured forth plays with the utmost profusion—the number has been put as high as eight