Born: Rouen, France, June 1606; elder brother of the writer Thomas Corneille. Education: Educated in Jesuit college, Rouen, 1615-22; studied law, 1622-24, licensed lawyer, 1624. Family: Married Marie de Lamperiere in 1641; seven children. Career: Member of the Rouen Parlement, 1629-50: held offices as King’s advocate in water and forests court and in Rouen port Admiralty court. Lived in Paris after 1662. Elected to the Academie frangaise, 1647. Died: 1 October 1684.
Publications
Collections
Oeuvres, edited by Charles Marty-Leaveaux. 12 vols., 1862-68.
Oeuvres completes, edited by A. Stegman. 1963.
Oeuvres completes, edited by Georges Couton. 3 vols., 1980-87.
Theatre complet, edited by Alain Niderst. 1984-.
Le Cid; Cinna; Polyeuct: Three Plays, translated by Noel Clark. 1993.
Three Masterpieces: The Liar, The Illusion, Le Cid, translated and adapted by Ranjit Bolt. 2000.
Plays
Melite; ou, Les Fausses Lettres (produced 1629-30). 1633; translated as Melite, 1776.
Clitandre; ou, L’Innocence delivree (produced 1630-31). 1632.
La Veuve; ou, Le Traitre trahi (produced 1631-32). 1634.
La Galerie du Palais; ou, L’Amie rivale (produced 1632-33). 1637; edited by Milorad R. Margitic, 1981.
La Suivante (produced c. 1633-34). 1637; edited by Milorad R. Margitic, 1978.
La Place Royale; ou, L’Amoureux extravagant (produced c. 1633-34). 1637.
Medee (produced c. 1634-35). 1639; edited by Andre de Leyssac, 1978.
La Comedie des Tuileries, with others (produced 1635). 1638.
L’Illusion comique (produced 1635-36). 1639; as The Theatrical Illusion, with The Cid and Cinna, 1975; as The Illusion, with The Liar, 1989; as The Comedy of Illusion, translated with introduction by Lynette R. Muir, 2000.
Le Cid (produced 1637). 1637; revised version, 1682; translated as The Cid, 1637; several subsequent translations.
L’Aveugle de Smyrne, with Rotrou and others (produced 1637). 1638.
Horace (produced 1640). 1641; translated as Horatius, 1656; as Horace, in The Chief Plays of Corneille, 1952; translated by Albert Bernell, 1962; also translated by Alan Brownjohn, 1996.
Cinna; ou, La Clemence d’Auguste (produced 1642). 1643; as Cinna’s Conspiracy, 1713; also translated as Cinna.
Polyeucte, Martyr (produced 1642-43). 1643; translated as Polyeuctes, 1655; as Polyeucte, in The Chief Plays of Corneille, 1952; as Polyeuctus, with The Liar and Nicomedes, 1980.
La Mort de Pompee (produced 1643-44). 1644; as Pompey the Great, 1664; as La Mort de Pompee, translated by Lacey Lockert, in Moot Plays of Corneille, 1959.
Le Menteur (produced 1643-44). 1644; as The Mistaken Beauty; or, The Liar, 1685; as The Lying Lover, 1717; as The Liar, with Polyeuctus and Nicolmenedes, 1980.
Oeuvres (plays). 1644; and later editions.
La Suite du Menteur (produced 1644-45). 1645.
Rodogune, Princesse des Parthes (produced 1644-45). 1645; translated as Rodogune, 1765.
Theodore, vierge et martyre (produced 1645-46). 1646 or 1647.
Heraclius, Empereur d’Orient (produced 1646-47). 1647; as Heraclius, Emperor of the East, 1664.
Andromede (produced 1650). 1650.
Don Sanche d’Aragon (produced 1649-50). 1650; as The Conflict, in Plays and Poems, 1798; as Don Sanche d’Aragon, translated by Lacey Lockert, in Moot Plays of Corneille, 1959.
Nicomede (produced 1651). 1651; translated as Nicomede, 1671.
Pertharite, Roi des Lombards (produced 1651-52). 1653.
Oedipe (produced 1659). 1659.
La Conquete de la toison d’or (produced 1660). 1661.
Sertorius (produced 1662). 1662; as Sertorius, translated by Lacey Lockert, in Moot Play’s of Corneille, 1959.
Sophonisbe (produced 1663). 1663.
Othon (produced 1664). 1665; as Othon, translated by Lacey Lockert, in Moot Plays of Corneille, 1959.
Agesilas (produced 1666). 1666.
Attila, Roi des Huns (produced 1667). 1667; as Attila, translated by Lacey Lockert, in Moot Plays of Corneille, 1959.
Tite et Berenice (produced 1670). 1671.
Psyche, with Moliere and Quinault, music by Lully (produced 1671). 1671.
Pulcherie (produced 1672). 1673.
Surena, General des Parthes (produced 1674). 1675; translated as Surenas, 1969.
Other
Oeuvres diverses. 1738.
Writings on the Theatre, edited by H.T. Barnwell. 1965.
Translator, Limitation de Jesus-Christ, by Thomas a Kempis. 1651-56.
Translator, Louanges de la Sainte Vierge, by St. Bonaventure. 1665.
Translator, L’Office de la Sainte Vierge, by St. Bonaventure. 1670.
Critical Studies:
The Classical Moment: Studies of Corneille, Moliere, and Racine by Martin Turnell, 1947; Corneille: His Heroes and Their Worlds by Robert J. Nelson, 1963, and Corneille and Racine: Parallels and Contrasts edited by Nelson, 1966; Corneille by P.J. Yarrow, 1963; The Cornelian Hero by Albert West, 1963: The Criticism of Cornelian Tragedy by Herbert Fogel, 1967; Corneille by Claude K. Abraham, 1972; Corneille and Racine: Problems of Tragic Form by Gordon Pocock, 1973; Corneille: Horace by R.C. Knight, 1981; The Tragic Drama of Corneille and Racine: An Old Parallel Revisited by H.T. Barnwell, 1982; The Comedies of Corneille by G.J. Mallinson, 1984; The Liar and the Lieutenant in the Plays of Pierre Corneille by I.D. McFarlane, 1984; Corneille, Classicism and the Ruses of Symmetry by Mitchell Greenberg, 1986; If There Are No More Heroes, There Are Heroines: A Feminist Critique of Corneille’s Heroines 1637-1644 by Josephine A. Schmidt, 1987; Le Cid: Corneille by W.D. Howarth, 1988; The Poetic Style of Corneille’s Tragedies: An Aesthetic Interpretation by Sharon Harwood Gordon, 1989; Dissonant Harmonies: Drama and Ideology in Five Neglected Plays of Pierre Corneille by Susan Read Baker, 1990; Corneillian Theater: The Metadramatic Dimension by M.J. Muratore, 1990; Corneille’s Tragedies: The Role of the Unexpected by R.C. Knight, 1991; Pierre Corneille: The Poetics and Political Drama under Louis XII by David Clarke, 1992; In the Grip of Minos: Confessional Discourse in Dante, Corneille, and Racine by Matthew Senior, 1994; La Gloire: The Roman Empire of Corneille and Racine by Louis Auchincloss, 1996; The Tragedy of Origins: Pierre Corneille and Historical Perspective by John D. Lyons, 1996; Corneille: Cinna by C.J. Gossip, 1998;Pierre Corneille Revisted by Claire L. Carlin, 1998.
Pierre Corneille is the earliest of the great French Classical playwrights. ”Cornelian” has become an adjective to describe qualities of grandeur, heroism, and the subordination of passion to duty which are apparent in many of his plays.
His production was in fact very various. He showed a constant desire to astound—by extreme gestures and situations, by complication, surprise, verbal display, variety. As a poet, his great gift is for emphatic and weighty eloquence, admirably suited to his ”Cornelian” moments. But his range is wide—tenderness, lyricism, irony, with a talent (not only in his comedies) for realistic dialogue and repartee. His changes of tone and delight in verbal ingenuity have often led to complaints of bathos and bad taste, but can be seen as indications of his breadth and daring. He shows a fascination with human behaviour in bizarre and confused situations, and especially with the complexity of moral decisions, sometimes reflecting contemporary events and controversies. This fascination is most memorably focused on the hero’s struggle to fulfil the demands of his ”gloire” (literally ”honour” or ”reputation,” but in Corneille’s best work a subtle concept involving self-realization at a high moral level). There is also a sense of the complexity of life in a more obvious way. Even in his loftiest plays there is an awareness of the self-seeking, even comical, elements which accompany and oppose or corrupt the heroic impulse. In many of his works, this shades into irony and a disabused realism.
Corneille’s early plays are mainly comedies on the intrigues of young lovers. They are best read in the original versions, before Corneille toned them down. Free in form, with a mixture of realism and fantasy, they show a Baroque concern with illusion and the falsity of appearances, especially in the play-within-a-play-within-a-play of L’Illusion comique (The Theatrical Illusion). Despite their often frank realism and comedy, deeper themes emerge: real or assumed madness and real grief at a supposed death (Melite); misery caused by a young man’s rejection of love in order to preserve his freedom (La Place Roy ale); the bitterness of a woman at her social status (La Suivante). Clitandre, though labelled a tragedy, is a romantic comedy. Medee signals Corneille’s approach to tragedy. It sets the selfish triviality of Jason and the Court against the lonely figure of Medea, who asserts her identity by a terrible revenge.
Le Cid (The Cid) shows the crisis in the hero’s life when he has to kill the father of his beloved Chimene in order to fulfil his heroic destiny, and she, to match his integrity, has to seek his death. Although Corneille blurs the ending, the poignancy and dramatic boldness of the situations, together with the lyricism and energy of the verse, make this his most accessible play. Horace, the first play within the strict unities (though Corneille, as often, has difficulty in unifying his action), shows the hero isolating himself in his destiny, which leads him both to save his country and to murder his sister. Corneille resolves the crisis ambiguously, showing the hero both glorious and flawed. Cinna is perhaps his most unified achievement. In a shifting drama of love and political intrigue, it focuses on the effort of the Emperor Augustus to transcend his past and convert by forgiveness those who have conspired against him. Polyeucte (Polyeuctus) deals with a clash between Christianity and Paganism in the Roman Empire, and shows how the heroic Polyeucte, in seeking martyrdom, brings to Christianity not only his passionate wife but also his cynical father-in-law. Powerful in structure, characterization, and verse, it is often regarded as his masterpiece though some have found the ending unconvincing.
Corneille’s later plays only achieve this level intermittently. Until the failure of Pertharite, he produced a series of very varied plays— tragedies, plays with music and spectacular effects, and comedies hero’iques (plays with noble characters, but less serious than tragedies). The best are the comedy Le Menteur (The Liar) and the tragedy Nicomede (Nicomede), a play of complex ironies showing the hero triumphing (largely through the efforts of others) over the hostility of Rome and the intrigues of his stepmother, who dominates his realistic and weak father. Rodogune and Heraclius (Heraclius), both tragedies, are more typical, in their schematic characterization, exciting plots, and melodramatic verve.
The plays after Corneille’s return to the theatre in 1659 are uneven, but in some ways his most interesting. The heroic mode of his masterpieces and the melodrama of his middle plays give way to a subtle blend of political and psychological intrigue, with flashes of both grandeur and comedy. The finest are Sertorius, dramatizing the clash of personal and political ambitions in the civil wars of the Roman Republic, and Surena (Surenas), his last play. Surenas, with its atmosphere of ambiguity and menace, has an emotional and tragic resonance rare in Corneille.
As well as various prefatory pieces, Corneille wrote the substantial critical Discourses and critiques (Examens) of individual plays prefixed to each volume of his 1660 Works. Although not very illuminating on individual plays, they show his difficulties with the contemporary critical concern for verisimilitude and moral utility in poetry. He stresses pleasure as the aim of drama, and historical truth as an aid to credibility.
Apart from some lively personal pieces, his non-dramatic poetry is of little interest.
