reds of plays. The exact number is variously stated at from
five to seven hundred. Forty-one exist in print. Although not destitute
of original power, Hardy was driven to the already copious theatre of
Spain for subjects and models. His plays being meant for acting and for
nothing else, the scholarly but tedious exercitations of the Pleiade
school were out of the question. Yet, while he introduced a great deal
of Spanish embroilment into his plots, and a great deal of Spanish
bombast into his speeches, Hardy still accepted the general outline of
the classical tragedy, and, though utterly careless of unity of place
and time, adhered for the most part to the perhaps more mischievous
unity of action. His best play, _Mariamne_, is powerfully written, is
arranged with considerable skill, and contains some fine lines and even
scenes; but, little as Hardy hampered himself with rules, it still has,
to an English reader, a certain thinness of interest. A contemporary of
Hardy's, Jean de Schelandre, made, in a play[234] which does not seem
ever to have been acted, a remarkable attempt at enfranchising French
tragedy with the full privileges rather of the English than of the
Spanish drama; but this play, _Tyr et Sidon_, had no imitators and no
influence, and the general model remained unaltered. But during the
first quarter of the century the theatre was exceedingly popular, and
the institution of strolling troops of actors spread its popularity all
over France. Nearly a hundred names of dramatic writers of this time are
preserved. Most of these, no doubt, were but retainers of the houses or
the troops, and did little but patch, adapt, and translate. But of the
immediate predecessors of Corneille, and his earlier contemporaries, at
least half-a-dozen are more or less known to fame, besides the really
great name of Rotrou. Mairet, Tristan, Du Ryer, Scudery, Claveret, and
D'Aubignac, were the chief of these. Mairet has been called the French
Marston, and the resemblance is not confined to the fact that both wrote
tragedies on the favourite subject of Sophonisba. The chief work of
Tristan, who was also a poet of some merit, was _Marianne_ (Mariamne),
very closely modelled on an Italian original, and much less vigorous,
though more polished than Hardy's play on the same subject. Du Ryer had
neither Mairet's vigour nor Tristan's tenderness, but he made more
progress than either of them had done in the direction of the completed
tragedy o