s. He was born at Paris in 1532, and was thus barely
twenty years old when, in 1552, he founded at once modern French tragedy
with his _Cleopatre_, and modern French comedy with his _Eugene_. The
representation was a great success, and obtained for the author from the
King, Henri II., besides many compliments, the sum of five hundred
crowns. The success of the plays also brought about an incident famous
in French literary history of the anecdotic kind. The seven determined
to celebrate the occasion by a country excursion, and on the way to
Arcueil they unluckily met a flock of goats. Deeply imbued as they all
were with classical fancies, it was almost inevitable that the idea of a
Dionysiac festival should strike them, and a goat was caught, crowned
with flowers and solemnly paraded, Ronsard himself officiating as the
god. This harmless freak was represented by the zealots of the time as
an impious pagan orgie, in which the goat had been actually sacrificed
to a false god, and the reputation of the brotherhood sank almost
equally with Catholics and Protestants. Six years after, Jodelle
produced his second tragedy, _Didon_, also with great success. But he
was not a fortunate person. The miscarriage of a pageant of which he had
the direction alienated the favour of the court from him, and he was too
proud or too careless to solicit its grace. He was a loose and reckless
liver, and receives from Pierre de l'Estoile a character which very
probably is unduly harsh. However this may be, he died at the age of
forty, indigent and ruined in constitution. His literary activity was
great, but only a small part of his work survives, and his three plays
are the only important portion of this.

The comedy has some impression of classical study, though very much less
than the two tragedies. It is, unlike the indigenous farce, divided
regularly into acts and scenes; it is much longer than the native
comedy, and some of the characters show, though faintly and at a
distance, some traces of a reading of Terence. But it retains the
octosyllabic metre, and its general scheme, despite a somewhat greater
involution of plot and multiplicity of characters, is that of a farce.
Eugene, the hero, a rich and luxurious churchman, is in love with Alix,
whom, to save appearances, he has married to a wittol of the name of
Guillaume. Alix, however, has several other lovers, among whom is
Florimond a soldier, the rejected suitor of Helene, Eugene's sister