lax of construction. While the Renaissance French dramatists made considerable progress in the direction of a compact form, it was left to the seventeenth century authors to carry this condensation to its highest perfection. Intense and sympathetic study of the Latin and Greek classics gradually trained the taste and reason of the French classical writers to adopt and cultivate compression. The greatest masters of this compressed form during this period were Corneille and Racine. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many of the elements of this narrow form were eliminated, the most marked looseness of structure of the Elizabethan variety being exhibited by the romanticists of 1830. This epic haphazard structure, resembling that of the novel or prose romance, again gave way to the more dramatic well-made play of Scribe, with its striving after intensity rather than variety, simplicity rather than complexity. The interminably long recitals and descriptions of the Renaissance dramatists, limited by the seventeenth century writers to the narration of the important situations of climax and catastrophe, were in the later nineteenth century almost totally expunged. The seventeenth century feeling for style and cult of technical excellence were expressed by George Sand when she said that "Art is only form." The appreciation of compressed form, passionately cultivated by Chénier and Chateaubriand, revived in Gautier's theory of "Art for art's sake," was fastidiously and laboriously cultivated by Flaubert.

An important determinant of dramatic form is the unities the compressed form requiring the narrow unities of action, place and time. The rigid adherence to the unities prevents the scattering of interests, and if it does not "clip the wings of genius" it at least "cages the eagle." Such a standardization of the rules tends to uniformity and condensation, considerably curtailing the medieval and romantic freedom of the stage. By restricting the drama to one important action, one place, and one day, the unities inevitably led, soon after the appearance of Corneille's Le Cid, to the adoption of the method of compression.

The form and style of the classical French drama were further influenced by the tone of the composition. Compression was

secured by the rule which forbade the mingling of tragic and comic, the grotesque and sublime in the same production. The types of the drama, just as the classes of society, were rigorously separated. According to this conventional rule of the separation of the comic and tragic in the same play, tragedy was to be all tragedy and comedy all comedy. By making a sharp distinction between different forms of the drama and by scrupulously observing the principle of the separation of the genres, harmony or unity of tone was obtained. The classicists definitely determined the bounds of each form and would not suffer them to be transgressed. The seriousness of tragedy was not allowed to be relieved by comic elements, nor was the intensity of tragic situations permitted to be relaxed by humorous scenes. This unity of tone was strictly observed by Racine, but Corneille sometimes skillfully blended light and serious elements in the same play. The environment in which classical characters move is also exceedingly narrow and vague. To the classical dramatists, background, or setting, has little significance. They do not seek pictorial and spectacular effects, but rather strive to create a vague, intangible atmosphere suitable to the representation of a psychological action. Their scenes are laid in open daylight and in a region of ideal splendor. There is no intrusion of moonlit landscape, dim twilight, and dusky dawns. They care not for those picturesque stage settings which satisfy the senses and indicate accurately and visibly material environment. There is indeed little effort made to harmonize character and setting, action and enveloping action, and to introduce details of external nature and historical fact in order to provide minute local color. There is no Balzacian attempt to produce provincial topography, or Hugoesque endeavor to make clear, by lengthy and frequent exposition, the geographical, historical, religious, and social conditions of a whole era. Scenic pomp is not created by the introduction or suggestion of supernatural elements, marvellous or unfamiliar scenes, mysterious glimpses of splendid ruins by moonlight, representation of grotesque and abnormal phases of human life or external nature, and by views of sylvan solitudes, distant prospects, and glowing sunsets. If these things are ever presented,

they are pictured only in a conventional way, revealing their ancient classical origin. Indeed, variety of atmosphere and complexity of human life, represented for their own sake, are reserved for the romanticists.

The plot of the classical French drama is simpler than that of the modern romantic drama, but more complex than the ancient classical plot. The plots of Corneille and Racine hold a position intermediate between the simplicity of Eschylus and Alfieri and the intricacy of Shakespeare and Hugo. The interest of the French classical plot lies rather in its intensity than in its complication. There is a disposition to emphasize only one supreme moment, or crisis, the action moving on unswervingly and impressively towards one grand climax, and then descending with directness and concentration to its inevitable catastrophe, more or less clearly foreseen from the first. On the whole, however, unlike the Greek and the earlier French drama, which foretells the dénouement from the beginning, the French classical drama prefers uncertainty and curiosity as to the outcome. By this means compression and economy, both of attention and of interest, are secured. This limiting of the story to one great crisis presents the exhibition of the whole of a life history or era, discourages the development of character, and excludes a multiplicity of minor actions, irrelevant episodes, sub-plots, and parallel actions. As a result of this compression the dramatist avoids the leisurely movement of the epic and divests his action of everything that is irrelevant, digressive, or merely accessory. There is thus less opportunity for subsidiary plots, complicated machinery, and secondary characters that might detract from the main situation. The attention is so fastened upon the essential situation that there is little room for the introduction of external nature, the ugly and grotesque, the supernatural and mysterious, the ornamentation of imagery, long descriptive tirades, lyrical and explanatory parabases, scenic and spectacular elements, archæological and historical comment, minute details, and other non-dramatic elements that might obscure the general impression. So compacted is the presentation. of the culminating point that the entire drama seems hardly more than the dénouement or final act of a romantic or Shake

spearean play. The French classical drama is also narrow in its choice of subjects and materials. It makes slender use of the raw material at its disposal. The plots are taken largely from the sacred legends of antiquity, whether classical or Hebrew, which "long tradition had invested with a romantic charm.' These charming subjects are divested of their grotesque and monstrous elements and converted by the "fine frenzy" of the poet into simple, consistent, and natural plots. At the same time they are delightfully tinged with and suggestive of that region of ideal splendor from which they sprang. Though they no longer contain such incongruous and monstrous prodigies as the birth of Helen from a swan's egg or of Medusa's ringlets changed into hissing serpents, yet they preserve their ideal beauty and significance. It is, for example, a daughter of the blood of Helen and not a hind that is substiuted for Iphigenia on the sacrificial altar. No deus ex machina comes to cut the dramatic knot in "Phèdre," nor is there any divine intervention in the classical plots of Corneille. To the French classical dramatist freewill was preferable to a fatalistic ancestral curse or to an irresistible hereditary guilt. In a word, the ancient legends become less supernatural and more earthly, less suggestive of the acts of gods and more representative of the deeds of human beings.

The narrowness of the classical field of action can better be appreciated perhaps by noting the subjects that are almost wholly rejected by the seventeenth century dramatist. The natural refinement and pagan training of the French courtiers made repugnant to them the crude legends and Christian literature of the Middle Ages, including their own literary and historical past. The supernatural and the miraculous, morbidness of mind, grotesque manners and customs, alchemy and astrology, asceticism, and renunciation, deformed eccentrics, fantastical giants and dwarfs, ugly demons and horrible witches, did not appeal to the refined sensibilities of the cultivated men and women of the court and drawing-room. Contemporary national subjects were also eschewed, national French characters not appearing upon the stage until the time of Voltaire. Contemporary foreign history and literature were scarcely drawn upon.

Little attention was paid to the realism of contemporary life. The precise knowledge of the natural sciences and the exact details of domestic life employed by more modern dramatists, with their exhaustive note-taking and photographic transcriptions of life, were unknown to the seventeenth century seekers after the ideal. They knew nothing of the glorification of the lowly, the dissecting of the body, and the representation of the homely and the trivial. They had not heard Rousseau's cry of "back to nature." Natural scenery apparently had no charm for them except in a conventional way. The sights and noises of the street, the sounds and odors of the field, the depths of forest solitudes, the murmuring of brooks and soughing of winds, picturesque scenes on mountain heights and sandy seashores, the mysteries of twilight and moonlight, the cheerful or melancholy contemplation of beautiful landscapes, seldom afforded delight to their senses. In their imagery and thought they largely eliminated external nature, regarding mankind as the proper study of man. Even in the social and political field their observation and utilization of the materials at hand are consistently exclusive and narrow, presenting only a limited view of the vast and complex machinery of life.

Compression is seen, finally, in the selection and treatment of the characters in a classical French drama. These were limited in number and range. They were drawn from the nobility, who were courtiers and men of culture. Men of other classes were rigidly excluded from the leading rôles of tragedy. They were types, revealing only one or two prominent characteristics, and exhibiting only one great event or crisis of their lives. They represented only the aristocratic, monarchical side of life, and interested only a narrow social sphere. Audiences, being composed of men of high rank, were polished and refined. They insisted on perfect decorum, rigid observance of draconic rules, the use of dignified language, and the banishment from the stage of everything that would offend their sense of propriety. The classical personages are consistent and logical entities, displaying only essential and universal qualities. The complete development of their character is not represented, they being practically the same at the end of the drama as they were at the be