nd witty author, to whom Moliere owes much,
thus connects two of the most important and successful growths of the
modern comic drama.

The close conjunction between the history of a living dramatic
literature and that of the theatre can least of all be ignored in the
case of France, where the actor's art has gone through so ample an
evolution, and where the theatre has so long and continuously formed an
important part of the national life. By the middle of the 16th century
not only had theatrical representations, now quite emancipated from
clerical control, here and there already become matters of speculation
and business, but the acting profession was beginning to organize itself
as such; strolling companies of actors had become a more or less
frequent experience; and the attitude of the church and of civic
respectability were once more coming to be systematically hostile to the
stage and its representatives.

French tragedy and comedy in the 17th century before Corneille.

Before, however, either tragedy or comedy in France entered into the
period of their history when genius was to illuminate both of them with
creations of undying merit, and before the theatre had associated itself
enduringly with the artistic and literary divisions of court and society
and the people at large, the country had passed through a new phase of
the national life. When the troubles and terrors of the great civil and
religious wars of the 16th century were over at last, they were found to
have produced a reaction towards culture and refinement which spread
from certain spheres of society whose influence was for a time
prevailing. The seal had been set upon the results of the Renaissance by
Malherbe, the father of French style. The masses meanwhile continued to
solace or distract their weariness and their sufferings with the help of
the accredited ministers of that half-cynical gaiety which has always
lighted up the darkest hours of French popular life. In the troublous
days preceding Richelieu's definitive accession to power (1624), the
_tabarinades_--a kind of street dialogue recalling the earliest days of
the popular drama--had made the Pont-Neuf the favourite theatre of the
Parisian populace. Meanwhile the influence of Spain, which Henry IV. had
overcome in politics, had throughout his reign and afterwards been
predominant in other spheres, and not the least in that of literature.
The _stilo culto_, of which Gongora was the native