.
These personages are completed by Maitre Jean, the abbe's chaplain and
general factotum, a creditor of Guillaume's, some servants of the
soldier Florimond, etc. The plot is very simple, consisting of hardly
anything but the return of Florimond from the wars, and his wrath at
discovering Alix's relations not merely with Guillaume but with Eugene.
He is finally made happy with Helene. Alix takes the wise resolution to
be less prodigal of her affections, and the play ends. Some detached
passages, especially the opening scene, in which the lazy, dissolute
life of wealthy churchmen is very pointedly satirised, are amusing
enough, and the characters of the chaplain and the husband are not far
from _la vraie comedie_. The tragedies are indirectly of more
importance, but intrinsically much duller reading. Instead, however, of
cleaving, as _Eugene_ does, closely to the lines of the existing drama,
the innovation in them is of the boldest kind. The octosyllabic verse,
hitherto sacred to drama, is exchanged in _Cleopatre_ for a mixture of
the decasyllabic and the Alexandrine, some scenes being written in the
one, others in the other. Nor is the tentative character of the work
only thus indicated; for the rhymes follow different systems in the
different scenes. In _Didon_, however, Jodelle settled down to the
unbroken Alexandrine with alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes,
which has remained the standard vehicle of French tragedy ever since.
His general scheme follows that of Seneca closely, and his choruses are
written in stanzas of short verses regularly arranged. The matter of
both plays is taken with tolerable exactness, in the one case from
Plutarch, in the other from Virgil; but a somewhat full analytic
description of the first French tragedy must be given. _Didon_ is
something of an advance in versification, as has been pointed out, but
in other respects it is perhaps inferior to _Cleopatre_.

The piece begins with a prologue to the king, and then the first act
opens with a long soliloquy from the ghost of Antony. Long speeches, it
should be said, are the bane of this early French tragedy, and for
nearly a century the evil increased instead of diminishing. Cleopatra,
Charmium, and Eras then appear, for the play follows Plutarch strictly
enough. The queen expresses her despair, and announces her intention to
die. The first act is concluded by a long chorus of Alexandrian women,
who bewail the shortness of life in six