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298 gusto, or recalls some of the Elizabethans more vividly. It was only under Corneille's influence that Rotrou essayed tragedy. Though he is a less great and less interesting writer, Mairet is the more important historically, because in tragedy his relation to Corneille resembles in some degree that of Marlowe to Shakespeare.

Born in Besançon in 1604, educated in Paris, Mairet was only sixteen when in 1625 he produced his first tragi-comedy Chriséïde et Arimande, based on an incident in the Astrée. It is not a good play,—Mairet himself called it "un péché de ma jeunesse,"—but it was successful, and gained him the patronage of the Duc de Montmorency, which he enjoyed till the death of the latter in 1638. Sylvie appeared in 1626, and was an immense success. In 1629 he wrote Silvanire, an essay in more correct Italianate pastoral, which was published in 1631 in elaborate form, and with a preface on the Unities which has generally been taken to mark an epoch in the history of French dramatic theory and practice. Les Galanteries du Duc d'Ossone, a rather coarse experiment in comedy, followed in 1632, and Sophonisbe, the herald of the new tragedy, in 1634. The Cid eclipsed Mairet's star, greatly to his own chagrin. While Corneille effected the triumph of tragedy, Mairet slipped back to tragi-comedies. Alike as a dramatist and a poet he was outshone, and his