only by the chorus, is
justly open to that charge of monotony and absence of action, which is
the great drawback of this class of drama. Subsequently, however, a real
interest is created in the question whether the conqueror will or will
not give up his sanguinary purposes in consequence of the remonstrances
of his general, Nebuzaradan, and the entreaties of Zedekiah's mother and
his own Queen. The stiffness of the dialogue, which is remarkable in
most of the tragedies of the period, is here a good deal softened. The
speeches are still sometimes too long--Garnier was indeed a great
offender in this way, and in his _Hippolyte_ has inflicted an unbroken
monologue of nearly two hundred lines on the hapless spectators. But
very frequently the dialogue is fairly kept up, and sufficiently varied
by the avoidance of the practice of concluding the speeches uniformly at
the end of lines.

[Sidenote: Defects of the Pleiade Tragedy.]

On the whole, however, despite the literary excellence of at least some
of the work composing it, it is impossible to give high rank as drama to
the model of Jodelle. Although the unities were not by any means
followed with the strictness which prevailed afterwards, the caution of
Horace about awkward transactions on the stage was rigidly observed,
and, with the usual illegitimate inference, carried out so as almost to
exclude all action whatever. The personages were generally few, the acts
divided into but a scene or two at most, the set _tirades_ mercilessly
long, and the whole thing, as it would appear to a modern spectator,
dull and spiritless.

[Sidenote: Pleiade Comedy.]

[Sidenote: Larivey.]

The dramatists of the Pleiade school, though they chiefly cultivated
tragedy, did not by any means neglect comedy, their leader, Jodelle,
having, as has been shown, set them the example in both kinds. Their
comedy was, however, for some time a somewhat indeterminate kind of
composition, and did not for the most part show much sign of the
extraordinary excellence which French comedy was to attain in the next
century. They seem to have hesitated between three models, the
indigenous farce, the Italian comedy, which was a graft on the Latin,
and the Latin comedy of Plautus and Terence itself. Yet _Eugene_, as has
been said, is a great deal better as a play than either _Didon_ or
_Cleopatre_. Its manner was closely imitated in the already-mentioned
comedies of Grevin. The _Reconnue_ of Belleau is a work