France afforded the pattern of those tragedies which continued in
fashion for twenty years after the Restoration, and which were called
Rhyming or Heroic Plays. In that country, however, contrary to the
general manners of the people, a sort of stately and precise ceremonial
early took possession of the theatre. The French dramatist was under the
necessity of considering less the situation of the persons of the drama,
than that of the performers who were to represent it before a monarch
and his court. It was not, therefore, sufficient for the author to
consider how human beings would naturally express themselves in the
predicament of the scene; he had the more embarrassing task of so
modifying their expressions of passion and feeling, that they might not
exceed the decorum necessary in the august presence of the _grand
monarque_. A more effectual mode of freezing the dialogue of the drama
could hardly have been devised, than by introducing into the theatre the
etiquette of the drawing-room. That etiquette also, during the reign of
Louis XIV., was of a kind peculiarly forced and unnatural The romances
of Calprenede and Scudery, those ponderous and unmerciful folios now
consigned to utter oblivion, were in that reign not only universally
read and admired, but supposed to furnish the most perfect models of
gallantry and heroism; although, in the words of an elegant female
author, these celebrated writings are justly described as containing
only "unnatural representations of the passions, false sentiments, false
precepts, false wit, false honour, and false modesty, with a strange
heap of improbable, unnatural incidents, mixed up with true history, and
fastened upon some of the great names of antiquity.
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