Tragedy

3. Italy and France

Seneca’s influence was significant in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy and seventeenth-century France. In sixteenth-century, Torquato Tasso emerges as the major figure in the development of ‘true’ tragedy. Though animated by religious ideals, he tried to adhere to the classical prescriptions of Aristotle and Horace. French tragedy of this period consists of a great deal of declamation and little action and is widely regarded as an insignificant precursor to the neoclassical drama of Corneille and Racine, which also showed Senecan influence.

From the time of its first Latin translation in 1498, Aristotle’s Poetics had substantial influence on dramatic practice and theory. Inspired by Aristotle, Bernardino Daniello formulated the doctrine of fixed forms (1536) and Lodovico Castelvetro invented the three unities of time, place and action (1576): the action must take place during a single day, in a single place, and there should be only one main plot with no subplots. Castelvetro also argued that pleasure is tragedy’s proper end; if instruction were its end, it would be a utilitarian art. Other rules acquiring more limited acceptance were that the ending should be unhappy, the performance time should be the same as the time of the action, there should be five acts, and no death or violence should take place on stage. Culminating with Nicholas Boileau-DesprĖaux (L’Art poÎtique, 1674), French theorists entrenched the rules developed by sixteenth-century Italians as absolute and unchanging standards for the production and evaluation of tragedy, though exactly which rules and how absolute their status were intensely debated.

Corneille and Racine were rivals for the title of preeminent dramatist of their day. Racine is best known for his literary craft, but Corneille, whose most notable tragedy was Le Cid, also wrote essays (Discourses). Corneille argues that we should recognize that many tragedies are effective even though they do not obey the rules that were advanced in the name of Aristotle. However, it is still in his view the function of poets to please according to the rules of their art, and he takes their art to require more than the three unities: for example, the tragic hero must be noble, plays must be entirely in verse, there must be no more than three speaking characters on stage at once and no representations of violence on stage. General character types rather than individual psychology motivates the action of his plays. They were still declamatory in style, and extolled the virtues of reason or will in the face of the temptation to be ruled by passion. They thus exhibited a Cartesian rationalist spirit, giving theatrical expression to the Platonic praise of reason over pleasure and emotion.