Publisher's Synopsis
Le Cid, now commonly regarded as the most significant play in the history of French drama, proved an immense popular success. It sparked off a literary controversy, however, which was chiefly conducted by Corneille's rival dramatists, Mairet and Georges de Scudery, and which resulted in a bitter pamphlet war. Richelieu, whose motives are not entirely clear, instructed the then recently instituted Academie Francaise to make a judgment on the play: the resulting document (Les Sentiments de l'Academie francaise sur la tragi-comedie du Cid, 1637), drafted in the main by Jean Chapelain, a critic who advocated "regular" tragedy, was worded tactfully and admitted the play's beauties but criticized Le Cid as dramatically implausible and morally defective. Richelieu used the judgment of the Academie as an excuse for suppressing public performances of the play. Corneille, indeed, had not observed the dramatic unities in Le Cid. The play has nevertheless been generally regarded as the first flowering of French "classical" tragedy. For the best French drama of the "classical" period in the 17th century is properly characterized, not so much by rules-which are no more than a structural convention-as by emotional concentration on a moral dilemma and on a supreme moment of truth, when leading characters recognize the depth of their involvement in this dilemma. Le Cid, Horace, Cinna, and Polyeucte, which appeared in 1643, are together known as Corneille's "classical tetralogy" and together represent perhaps his finest body of work for the theatre."
