Jean de Rotrou
Jean Rotrou (19 August or 20 August
1609 - June 1650) was a French poet and
tragedian.
"La sœur", Paris, T. Quinet (1647)Rotrou
was born at Dreux in Normandy. He
studied at Dreux and at Paris, and,
though three years younger than Pierre
Corneille, began writing before him. In
1632 he became playwright to the actors
of the Hôtel de Bourgogne. (This hall is
the setting for the first act of
Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, and
Rotrou's name is mentioned - as is
Corneille's) With few exceptions, the
only events recorded of Rotrou's life
are the successive appearances of his
plays and his enrolment in 1635 in the
band of five poets who had the duty of
turning Richelieu's dramatic ideas into
shape.
Rotrou's own first piece,
L'Hypocondriaque (first produced in
1631), dedicated to the Comte de
Soissons, seigneur of Dreux, appeared
when he was only eighteen. In the same
year he published a collection of Œuvres
poetiques, including elegies, epistles
and religious verse. His second piece,
La Bague de l'oubli (1635), an
adaptation in part from the Sortija del
Olvido of Félix Lope de Vega, was much
more characteristic. It is the first of
several plays in which Rotrou
endeavoured to naturalize in France the
romantic comedy which had flourished in
Spain and England instead of the
classical tragedy of Seneca and the
classical comedy of Terence.
Corneille had leanings in the same
direction. Rotrou's brilliant but hasty
and unequal work showed the marks of a
stronger adhesion to the Spanish model.
In 1634, when he printed Cleagénor et
Doristée (acted 1630), he said he was
already the author of thirty plays; but
this probably includes adaptations.
Diane (acted 1630; pr. 1633), Les
Occasions perdues (acted 1631; printed
1635), which won for him the favour of
Richelieu, and L'Heureuse Constance
(acted 1631; pr. 1635), which was
praised by Anne of Austria, succeeded
each other rapidly, and were all in the
Spanish manner.
In 1631 Rotrou imitated Plautus in
Les Mentyhmes, and in 1634 Seneca in his
Hercube mourant. Comedies and tragi-comedies
followed. Documents exist showing the
sale of four pieces to Antoine de
Sommarille for 750 binres tournois in
1636, and in the next year he sold ten
to the same bookseller. He spent much
time at Le Mans with his patron, de
Belin, who was one of the opponents of
Corneille in the quarrel over Le Cid. It
has been generally assumed, partly
because of a forged letter long accepted
as Corneille's, that Rotrou was his
generous defender in this matter. He
appears to have been no more than
neutral, but is credited with an attempt
at reconciliation between the parties in
a pamphlet printed in 1637, L'Inconnu et
veritable amy de messieurs de Scudéry et
Corneille.
De Belin died in 1637, and in 1639
Rotrou bought the post of lieutenant
particulier au baüliage at Dreux. In the
next year he married Marguerite Camus,
and settled down as a model magistrate
and père de famille. Among his pieces
written before his marriage were a
translation of the Amphitryon of
Plautus, under the title of Les Deux
Sosies (1636), Antigone (1638), and
Laure Persecutie (acted 1637; pr. 1639),
in the opposite style to these classical
pieces.
In 1646 Rotrou produced the first of
his four masterpieces, Le Veritable
Saint Genest (acted 1646; pr. 1648), a
story of Christian martyrdom containing
some amusing byplay, one noble speech
and a good deal of dignified action.
Rotrou uses with considerable success
the device of a play within a play to
assert a Christian perspective on the
theatrum mundi theme. The Roman actor
Genest becomes a real convert while
playing the part of a Christian martyr.
Incidentally (Act i. Sc. v.) Rotrou pays
a noble tribute to the genius of
Corneille. Don Bertrand de Cabrère
(1647) is a tragi-comedy of merit;
Venceslas (1647; pr. 1648) is considered
in France his masterpiece, and has had
several modern revivals; Cosroès (1649)
has an Oriental setting, and is claimed
as the only absolutely original piece of
Rotrou.
These masterpieces follow foreign
models, and Rotrou's genius is shown in
the skill with which he simplifies the
plot and strengthens the situations.
Saint Genest followed Lope de Vega's Lo
fingido verdadero; Venceslas followed
the No ay ser padre siendo rey of
Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla. In this
play Ladislas and his brother both love
the princess Cassandra; Ladislas makes
his way into her house and in the
darkness kills a man whom he thinks to
be the duke of Courland, but who is
really his brother Alexandre, the
favoured lover. In the early morning he
meets the king and is confronted by the
duke of Courland. The outline of this
incident is in the Spanish play, but
there the spectators are aware of the
ghastly mistake at the time of the
murder. Rotrou shows his dramatic skill
by concealing the real facts from the
audience until they are revealed to the
horror-struck Ladislas himself.
In 1650 the plague broke out at Dreux.
Rotrou remained at his post, although
urgently desired to save himself by
going to Paris; caught the disease, and
died in a few hours. He was buried at
Dreux on 28 June 1650. Rotrou's great
fertility (he left thirty-five collected
plays besides others lost, strayed or
uncollected), and perhaps the
uncertainty of dramatic plan shown by
his hesitation almost to the last
between the classical and the romantic
style have injured his work. He has no
thoroughly good play, hardly one
thoroughly good act. But his situations
are often pathetic and noble, and as a
tragic poet properly so called he is at
his best almost the equal of Corneille
and of Jean Racine. His single lines and
single phrases have a brilliancy and
force not to be found in French drama
between Corneille and Victor Hugo.
