Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/335

Rh mythological piece written merely for elaborate spectacular presentation; and it was followed in 1651 by Nicomède, which, though entitled a tragedy, is almost as romantic in spirit as Don Sanche, though more entirely a play of character. It is a kind of counterpart to Mairet's Sophonisbe. Barbaric virtue here proves victorious over Roman policy. Pertharite (1652), which was apparently intended to magnify the power of marital affection, failed rather ludicrously, and Corneille withdrew for a time from the stage.

When he returned in 1659 a new spirit was beginning to make itself felt. The high ideals of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, of the first age of gallantry and refinement, were yielding to an increasing regard for nature and truth. Corneille's exaltation of the will, the power to choose and follow at all costs ideals lofty or perverted, had conduced to a neglect or conventional treatment of the normal passion of the heart. A reaction set in. In the plays and operas of Philippe Quinault sentiment—"tendresse"—is supreme. From extravagance in this direction the drama was saved by Racine, not by any reversion to the heroic, but by a more truthful and beautiful delineation of the passions of the heart and their power to make, or more often to mar, the destinies of men and women. Corneille, when he was tempted back to the stage by Fouquet in 1659, found himself out of touch with the prevailing taste. His own style had grown harder. In Nicomède he had already shown his tendency to portray an almost passionless strength of will. In his later political