in 1549,
by his friends of the College de Coqueret. It was only by amateurs,
and before a limited scholarly group of spectators, that the new
classical tragedies could be presented. Gradually both tragedy and
comedy came to be written solely with a view to publication in print.
The mediaeval drama still held the stage.

JODELLE'S _Cleopatre_ (1552), performed with enthusiasm by amateurs,
was therefore a false start; it was essentially literary, and not
theatrical. Greek models were crudely imitated, with a lack of almost
everything that gave life and charm to the Greek drama. Seneca was
more accessible than Sophocles, and his faults were easy to
imitate--his moralisings, his declamatory passages, his excess of
emphasis. The so-called Aristotelian dramatic canons, formulated by
Scaliger in his Poetic, were rigorously applied. Unity of place is
preserved in _Cleopatre_; the time of the action is reduced to twelve
hours; there are interminable monologues, choral moralities, a ghost
(in Seneca's manner), a narration of the heroine's death; of action
there is none, the stage stands still. If Jodelle's _Didon_ has some
literary merit, it has little dramatic vitality. The oratorical
energy of Grevin's _Jules Cesar_, the studies of history in _La Mort
de Daire_ and _La Mort d'Alexandre_, by Jacques de La Taille, do not
compensate their deficiency in the qualities required by the theatre.
One tragedy alone, _La Sultane_, by Gabriel Bounin (1561), amid its
violences and extravagances, shows a feeling for dramatic action and
scenic effect.

Could the mediaeval mystery and classical tragedy be reconciled? The
Protestant Reformer Beze, in his _Sacrifice d'Abraham_, attempted
something of the kind; his sacred drama is a mystery by its subject,
a tragedy in the conduct of the action. Three tragedies on the life
of David--one of them admirable in its rendering of the love of Michol,
daughter of Saul--were published in 1556 by Loys Des-Masures: the
stage arrangements are those of the mediaeval drama, but the unity
of time is observed, and chorus and semi-chorus respond in alternate
strains. No junction of dramatic systems essentially opposed proved
in the end possible. When Jean de La Taille wrote on a biblical subject
in his _Saul le Furieux_, a play remarkable for its impressive
conception and development of the character of Saul, he composed it
_selon l'art_, and in the manner of "the old tragic authors." He is
uncompromising in h