Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/342

322 1639 to his native town, though continuing to write for the stage, and died there bravely discharging during a pestilence his duty as a magistrate.

The researches of scholars, French and German, have deprived Rotrou of much claim to originality of invention. His earlier tragi-comedies are translated more or less closely from the Spanish of Lope de Vega or the Italian of Da Porta. But while Corneille was attracted by the chivalrous spirit of the Spanish drama, what Rotrou reproduces most happily is its fancifulness and naturalness. Rotrou's imagination plays round the situations in his stories in a way that occasionally reminds an English reader of the Elizabethans. The feelings his characters express are natural, not merely conventional and stilted, and his style generally simple and flowing. In Laure Persécutée (1638), the feelings of a lover who has cast off his mistress yet cannot forget her, are described in a manner worthy of Dekker when most natural and felicitous; and in L'Heureux Naufrage (1633) are some touches that recall Shakespeare. Floronde, a princess disguised as a boy, attends Cléandre, who for her love has been banished. She is questioned regarding herself by Céphalie, who also loves Cléandre, and replies almost in the words of Julia to Silvia in the Two Gentlemen of Verona—

"Pour vous la peindre mieux, vous savez qu'à la cour        On représente en vers des histoires d'amour;         La jeunesse nous porte à ces jeux de théâtre         Et sur tous autrefois j'en étais idolâtre:         Mon visage en ce temps et plus jeune et plus frais,         Sous les habits de fille avait quelques attraits;