Princesses and Queens: A Reappraisal of Royal Women in

Princesses and Queens: A Reappraisal of Royal Women in
Corneille and Du Ryer
by
James F. Gaines
Beginning with Médée, Pierre Corneille’s theater offers an ample panoply of queens and princesses to the student of early modern drama. To consider only the first segment of his career, we
encounter the Infante in Le Cid; Livie in Cinna; Cléopâtre in La
Mort de Pompée; a different Cléopâtre and the eponymous princess of Rodogune; Pulchérie in Heraclius;, Isabelle, Léonor, and
Elvire in Dom Sanche d’Aragon; Laodice in Nicomède; and
Rodelinde and Edvige in Pertharite, as well as the central characters of Théodore, vierge et martyre and Andromède. The retrospect of literary history has encouraged scholars to view these
women in contrast to those of Racine, but one does well to remember that all of these plays were finished before Racine ever set pen
to paper. They belong to Corneille’s first period of dramaturgical
production, when he was in competition with dramatists such as
Scudéry, Mairet, Tristan, Rotrou, and, for the primary focus of this
study, Pierre Du Ryer.1 This was the golden age of heroic tragedy,
of protagonists in glorious and often successful combat with their
fates. The complex image of the female monarch that emerges
from this period belongs not only to Corneille, but to the entire
theatre that developed and sustained the debate on women’s political significance and psychological imperatives in the early modern
period. A philosophical, as well as personal and dramaturgical,
rival of Corneille, Du Ryer plays a key role in this process.2 I propose to examine certain of his female tragic leads in comparison to
Corneille’s in order to distinguish Du Ryer’s contribution to the
figure of the royal woman.
The problem of the princess and her choice among meritorious
suitors derives from the fact that, as Ernst Kantorowicz showed for
kings, she has two bodies: an official one subject to the exigencies
of rank and to state marriages, and a human one that must contend
with the more universal tribulations of emotional love. How can
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these two bodies be reconciled? In the case of Le Cid, which sets
an important precedent for Corneille’s theater, they cannot. Therefore he divides his princess in two, with the royal body personified
by the Infante and the human one by Chimène. The Infante has
fallen in love with Rodrigue before the beginning of the play and
has already learned to deal with his inferior status as her royal role
dictates she must, by overpowering her own desires and renouncing emotional love. 3 In fact, she explains to her lady-in-waiting
that it is she who has engineered the burgeoning passion between
Rodrigue and Chimène as a way of deflecting desire.
Il est digne de moi, mais il est à Chimène;
Le don que j’en ai fait me nuit.
Entre eux la mort d’un père a si peu mis de haine,
Que le devoir du sang à regret le poursuit:
Ainsi n’espérons aucun fruit
De son crime, ni de ma peine,
Puisque pour me punir le destin a permis
Que l’amour dure même entre deux ennemis.
(Le Cid, V, ii, 1589–1596)
Although the troubles that subsequently erupt between the lovers establish the Infante as a rival of Chimène, she can never be a
complete, active rival, since it is she who has engendered
Chimène’s love by proxy, so as to give rein vicariously (the only
legitimate way) to her own human inclination.4 Chimène, for her
part, lives in a state of aggravated passivity and victimization,
since her own emotional engagement has actually been thrust upon
her. This process, begun by the Infante, is irreversible, as the princess herself shows at the end of the play, where she points out that
even though Rodrigue has now become worthy of her, it would be
totally illogical and inherently unworthy for her to take back what
she has already given away, the prospect of Rodrigue’s love. This
division between the two royal female bodies will persist late into
Corneille’s career, where only in plays such as Sertorius and
Suréna will he be able to begin to reconcile the fission. 5
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221
But let us look at two of Du Ryer’s plays that are contemporaries of Le Cid, Cléomédon, published in 1635, and Alcionée, produced in 1637, probably within months of Le Cid’s premier. The
female lead in the former, named Celanire, finds herself in a situation that prefigures that of the Infante: she has privately developed
an inclination for an inferior named Cléomédon. Starting far lower
than Rodrigue, as a slave, Cléomédon has already risen faster, for
by the beginning of the action he has saved the king’s life from an
attacking lion, experienced emancipation and ennoblement, and
taken command of the armies of the kingdom. By the second act,
Celanire finds herself in a position to accept Cléomédon’s love legitimately, since he has by then saved the entire country from invasion. Unlike the Infante, then, who until the final act must
acknowledge Rodrigue’s inferiority, Celanire can vocalize her
lover’s meritorious and therefore equal status. “Si la condition
rend mon amour blamable, / La gloire de ses faits le peut rendre
louable,” she points out (II, 1). And whereas Chimène must hide
her approval from Rodrigue except in the most elliptical terms,
Celanire can assure Cléomédon of his acceptance: “Donne un nouveau laurier à ton courage extrême, / Et pour mieux t’animer, souviens-toi que je t’aime” (II, 2). In fact, when the cautious general
temporizes over his status, it is she who reiterates her aveu, going
so far as to place personal valor explicitly above dynastic concerns;
“Bien qu’on sorte d’un dieu, bien qu’on sorte d’un roi, / Qui vante
ses aieux ne vante rien de soi” (II, 2).
This happy situation does not last, for Cléomédon is soon beset
with princely rivals from abroad and scheming envieux from
within the palace, as Celanire’s father retracts his nuptial promise
to the military savior and opts for a marriage of alliance, sacrificing his daughter to former foes in words that reek of bourgeois
values. As her lover slides off into rebellion and madness, it is up
to Celanire to incarnate the conscience of the play, reminding
Cléomédon of his inherent greatness and excoriating her father for
his baseness. In fact, she becomes an outstanding critic of royalty’s failure to fulfill its own definition, in stark contrast to Corneille’s Infante, the overt justifier of divine right monarchy. There
can be no question that Corneille knew this play and was deliber-
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ately responding to it, for even Rodrigue’s famous, shocking confrontation with Chimène has a precursor in Du Ryer’s third act,
where an increasingly desperate Cléomédon forces his sword into
Celanire’s hands and asks her to end his life. In a sense, Du Ryer’s
transformation of Celanire from a passive royal token into an advocate of moral criticism prompted Corneille to saw the figure of
the princess in half, dealing with the two bodies separately in the
Infante and Chimène.
If Celanire is as cool-headed as the Infante, Du Ryer’s next
princess, Lydie, is much more cold-hearted than Chimène. Once
again the audience is presented with the story of a king who has
broken a marriage promise to a virtuous inferior, Alcionée, who
had openly courted the princess. As Cléomédon had done before
him, Alcionée reacted in desperation. However, where his predecessor had verged toward madness and suicide, Alcionée successfully exteriorized his frustration by accepting command of an
invading army and forcing the beleaguered king into honoring his
original pledge. Lydie’s reaction is also far different from
Celanire’s for while feigning obedient complaisance and recognition of Alcionée’s flamme, she has secretly festered with resentment at the rebel and planned revenge against him. She tells her
confidante that Alcionée’s rebellion has tarnished him in her eyes,
and later, to her father, professes humiliation at the thought of marrying a mere commoner, “d’une naissance/ Où l’on n’est destiné
que pour l’obéissance” (II, 1). She claims that her distaste for this
“âme si basse et si noire” proceeds primarily from her concerns for
the lineage. Her father, who has tried to warn Alcionée of the temerity of his inclination, leaves the final decision to Lydie, effectively making his daughter a queen. In their interview, Alcionée
acknowledges this new status of hers (“Il vous donne un pouvoir
que vous rend souveraine” III, 5), but is astounded when she asserts her power (“Craignez, craignez enfin un pouvoir absolu!”)
and rejects him.
It is only after this confrontation that Lydie reveals she still
harbors traces of tenderness for her former suitor, which she has
had to stifle in her preoccupation with her dynastic gloire. But un-
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like Chimène struggling between love and duty, Lydie had to
command herself as queen to condemn her lover, thus ironically
becoming her own rival. As queen, the princess’s two bodies may
become more incompatible than ever, a dilemma Corneille explored further in Rodogune. Yet here again, the royal woman’s
body splits into the passive but positive Rodogune and the maleficent Cléopâtre. As her own rival for power, Cléopâtre has one son
killed and comes within centimeters of poisoning the other, all to
triumph over the incarnation of the amorous body represented by
the Parthian princess.
But where does Du Ryer’s image of the self-controlled young
woman originate? If we go back in time just a bit to his tragicomedy of Alcimédon, published in 1635, we find that the figure first
emerges not in the context of a tragic, royal princess, but in a more
bourgeois setting. The female lead, Daphné, already incorporates
many of the qualities Du Ryer will pursue in Celanire and Lydie.
When Daphné’s companion Nérine urges the princess to show
some sympathy for her suitor Scamandre, she replies:
Termine ce discours que j’entends chaque jour!
Tu perds contre un Rocher les flèches de l’amour.
Appelle-moi cruelle! Appelle-moi sauvage!
J’endurerai ces noms plutôt que son servage;
Souffre enfin que mon cœur, hors de captivité,
Ne reçoive des lois que de ma volonté. (I,1)
When the confidante, following the tradition of Ronsard, presents a carpe diem argument to counter this call for liberty and
power, Daphné points out that the fading nature of beauty contains
an even more powerful reason for women to be cautious about
love, since love itself physically destroys beauty more than a
chaste life would.
Si la beauté du corps est un bien si leger
Penses-tu que l’amour l’empêche de changer?
Au contraire, l’amour la détruit devant l’âge,
Les soins qu’il met au cœur ternissent le visage,
Et lorsque de ses traits un esprit est atteint,
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Son feu sèche les lys et les roses du teint;
Ainsi je fuis l’amour, cette source de larmes,
Pour garder plus longtemps le peu que j’ai de charmes.
This speech obviously alludes not just to the emotional scars of
love, but to the physical damage it threatens to the female body
through the rigors of pregnancy and childbirth, and the difficulties
of postpartem recovery. Thus, Daphné considers emotional commitments as “de belles prisons.” Health, beauty, and liberty are set
on one side of the paradigm; wear, care, and servitude on the other.
In contrast to the image of love promulgated by male poets of the
Pléiade such as Ronsard, where love offers a hedge against the erosion of human happiness by time, a hedge that takes the form of
consolation through poetic immortality, Daphné evokes the more
realistic and feministic presentation of love formed by female Renaissance poets such as Louise Labé and Pernette Du Guillet. This
parallel becomes even stronger when Daphné reveals that despite
her resolution, she has already become a victim of passion, falling
in love at the tender age of 12 with an older boy named Alcimédon
whom she was forced to leave. Shocked by the unwanted advances of a lubricious noble, her father found himself forced to
pretend that his daughter had died and to send her overseas for her
protection under a new identity.
Thus, the spectator finds that Daphné’s hostile attitude toward
love springs not just from prudish philosophical inclinations or
selfish desires to preserve her girlish figure, but from well-established patterns of suffering that began at a very early age. No
wonder the surprised Nérine exclaims, “Je faisais des leçons à qui
m’en pourrait faire!” Switching from an e to a stoical profile, the
confidante urges her to give up the memory of Alcimédon and to
“faire un acte de courage” in giving up her “premier servage.” But
Daphné responds that she is incapable of such a Cornelian step, for
she has no more heart to give to the new suitors who have appeared on her island of refuge. So when Scamandre and his sidekick Philante approach to woo Daphné, she gives them short shrift,
causing Philante to call her, “O fille de Rocher!” This impression
of hostility is so strong that although Nérine tries to encourage the
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men by pointing out that Daphné is bound to change just because
she is a girl, Scamandre remains skeptical:
L’inhumaine qu’elle est, insensible au reproche,
De même que le cœur, a l’oreille de roche…
Pourrait-elle changer, si c’est une statue
Que nous voyons dans Chypre en fille revêtue? (I, 2-3)
The cool, self-possessed princess thus steps out of tragicomedy
and a middle-class moralistic position into the world of Du Ryer’s
tragedy. In a later tragicomedy in prose, Bérénice, published in
1645, Du Ryer returns to this ethos in order to fuse it to some degree with the concerns of royalty. It is important to point out that
this Bérénice has nothing to do with the Palestinian queen and
paramour of Titus who figures much later in the rival tragedies by
Corneille and Racine. Instead, this young lady and her sister
Amasie, though descended from the bloodline of the ancient kings
of Sicily, have followed their deposed father into exile in Crete,
where both have stirred the interest of local suitors of very different status. Appropriately, Bérénice begins the opening discussion
of marriage prospects with a typically Stoical pronouncement on
love; “Quand nous confessons notre amour, nous confessons notre
aveuglement” (I, 1). She then goes on to teasingly ask her sister
what she would think if she were loved by a prince? Or perhaps by
a king? Amasie underlines the conflict between the two bodies of
the princess by pointing out that the decrepit old king of Crete
could not satisfy the earthly body, “Je vous avoue que d’un prince
comme celui-là je n’aimerais que la couronne!” But Bérénice discloses that she has in fact developed an amorous relationship with
that old king’s son, Tarsis the Conqueror, a relationship she has
successfully dissimulated; “J’ai séparé de la flamme l’éclat et la
lumière.”
On the other hand, Amasie admits that her lover Tirinte, is far
inferior to her in the social order, “Vous aimez un plus grand que
vous, et j’en aime un moindre que moi… nous sommes toutes deux
gênées par l’inégalité de notre amour.” Evidently, Du Ryer has
responded to the division of the princess in Le Cid, adding his own
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intense concern with the capacity of personal merit to level the
monarchical playing field. Amasie expresses her confidence in
just this principle when comparing her situation with her sister’s :
“L’objet de votre amour est si haut que vous ne le pouvez
atteindre, et la personne que j’aime n’est point si basse que sa vertu
ne l’élève et ne l’approche de notre rang… je crois qu’un homme
est grand dès qu’il mérite de l’être, et dès qu’il mérite d’être grand,
il mérite aussi d’être aimé… on ne peut dire raisonnablement
qu’un homme vertueux soit moindre qu’un autre.” Even for Du
Ryer, these words are boldly egalitarian and democratic, and Bérénice borrows a page from the Infante’s textbook when she tells her
sister that she should not consider such hypogamy: “Il n’appartient
qu’aux dieux et aux rois de s’abaisser en leurs amours.”
Notwithstanding this promising beginning, Du Ryer is no more
able to work out a thoroughly philosophical synthesis that was
Corneille in Rodogune. A tragicomic imbroglio soon asserts itself,
as the old King of Crete announces that he is smitten with Bérénice
and wants to wed her, using Amasie as a pis-aller to console his
son Tarsis. This peripeteia leads to a second conversation between
the sisters, where Bérénice turns against the idea of royal marriage
in the interest of her love for Tarsis, while Amasie pretends to like
the idea of wearing a crown just to goad her sibling a bit. When
they admit the discussion is just a game, the spectator realizes that
the problem of the two bodies has not been solved or even seriously confronted. It is left to Tarsis to propose a solution, for he
generously offers to sacrifice his royal body by eloping into obscurity with Bérénice: “Votre cœur est mon empire, votre cœur est ma
couronne, et si je suis toujours aimé, je serai toujours heureux” (III,
4). Bérénice can only prove herself worthy of such devotion by
tendering an aveu of her own, but then surpassing it by offering a
sacrifice of her own: “ Vous serez donc toujours heureux, puisque
vous serez toujours aimé; mais voulez-vous que l’on publie que la
misérable Bérénice arame le fils contre le père?… Faites dessus
vous un effort pour me délivrer de ce reproche.” Amasie and Tirinte mirror this battle of générosité, and it seems that the only outcome for the dilemma is that everyone will give everyone else up.
But of course a startling scène de reconnaissance has long been
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227
brewing, and the girls’ father Criton eventually reveals that Bérénice and Tarsis had been switched in the cradle, that she is actually
the princess of Crete and he the newly-restored prince of Sicily,
thanks to a timely revolution back home. The Cretan monarch’s
superannuated lust was thus really le cri du sang and he can avoid
even the hint of incest by marrying Bérénice off to Tarsis, leaving
Amasie free to join Tirinte.
Such last-minute coincidences are right at home in tragicomedy, but what of the tragic problem of the two bodies of the princess? If anything, Bérénice offers evidence of the effectiveness of
Corneille’s Infante as a philosophical, as well as dramaturgical
model. As unsatisfying as her role was to seventeenth-century
critics and still is to twenty-first century directors, her ability to
isolate the royal body and to attach to it a code of self-renunciation
seems to prevail. Even Corneille’s rival Du Ryer implicitly admits
this by borrowing elements of the Infante in one of his later plays.
A closer look at Rodogune reveals the deep conflict of the divided princess. The character Rodogune realizes that as long as
Queen Cléopâtre blocks her way to the throne, her path is fraught
with fear:
La fortune me traite avec trop de respect,
Et le trône et l’hymen, tout me devient suspect.
L’hymen semble à mes yeux cacher quelque supplice,
Le trône sous mes pas creuser un précipice,
Je vois de nouveaux fers après les miens brisés,
Et je prends tous ces biens pour des maux déguisés:
En un mot, je crains tout de l’esprit de la Reine
…dans l’état où j’entre, à te [à Laodice] parler sans feinte,
Elle [Cléopâtre] a lieu de me craindre, et je crains cette
crainte.
(Rodogune, I, v, 305-316)
In this terrified climate, good and bad, freedom and servitude, marriage and suffering are confused. In effect, she cannot really be a
princess because there is no possibility of being a queen. For
Cléopâtre, who is already invested with royal power, albeit through
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usurpation and secret regicide, the division of the royal body is
equally apparent and even more plainly fatal, since Rodogune’s
access to the throne would entail her downfall. On logical terms,
this is so because it would no longer be easy to cover up her role in
Nicanor’s death. But the queen’s furor is based on a deeper psychic equation, according to which Rodogune incarnates a hatred
that seeks to bring Cléopâtre to trial in a spiritual sense.
Je hais, je règne encor: laissons d’illustres marques
En quittant, s’il le faut, ce haut rang des monarques,
Faisons-en avec gloire un départ éclatant,
Et rendons-le funeste à celle qui l’attend.
C’est encor, c’est encor cette même ennemie
Qui cherchait ses honneurs dedans mon infamie,
Dont la haine à son tour croit me faire la loi,
Et régner par mon ordre et sur vous et sur moi.
Tu m’estimes bien lâche, imprudente rivale,
Si tu crois que mon cœur jusque-là se ravale.
(Rodogune, II, I, 409–420)
This symbolic rivalry seems to drive the queen into a further
fragmentation of the self in her rather bizarre reference to “sur
vous et sur moi.” If one analyzes the tirade, the “vous” must refer
to the figure of Hatred she apostrophizes. But this missing figure,
mentioned many lines before, is just as ghostly as the spirits of dissimulation, “vains fantômes d’état,” that she had dispelled with her
opening words. Cléopâtre’s speech has all the earmarks of schizophrenia. Is the “vous” not also another side of herself, perhaps the
vulnerable side she cannot admit?
It is significant that Rodogune will return to Cléopâtre’s
characterization of her as a “lâche.” Lacheté, after all, seems to
sum up for Corneille the entire dilemma of female passivity:
Quoi? Je pourrais descendre à ce lâche artifice,
D’aller de mes amants mendier le service,
Et sous l’indigne appas d’un coup d’œil affété.
J’irai jusque dans leur cœur chercher ma sûreté!
Celles de ma naissance ont horreur des bassesses.
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229
Leur sang tout généreux hait ces molles adresses.
Quel que soit le secours qu’ils me puissent offrir,
Je croirai faire assez de le daigner souffrir:
Je verrai leur amour, j’éprouverai sa force,
Sans flatter leurs désirs, sans leur jeter d’amorce,
Et s’il est assez fort pour me servir d’appui,
Je le ferai régner, mais en régnant sur lui.
(Rodogune, III, iii, 843–854)
She can only find a way out of this dilemma by turning her passiveness into passive-aggressiveness. Instead of surrendering herself to either Seleucus or Antiochus as a protector, she will make
them earn her by slaying Cléopâtre, since only by eliminating the
usurper can one of them truly merit the throne. By actually reigning over the king in this sense, she also absolves herself of any
baseness involved with seeking the princes’ help. As she herself
but it, she will obey the man qho will become king by killing
Cléopâtre: “J’obéis à mon roi, puisqu’un de vous doit l’être” (Rodogune, III, iv, 1012).
Thus, her word becomes even more powerful than the decisive
word the queen wielded in naming which of the boys was the
elder, and hence the rightful heir to the throne. She fully realizes
the power of this approving word. Later, when Antiochus approaches her to tell her of his brother’s impending departure, she
withholds exposing her feelings until the prince follows through on
his duty toward his dead father.
It is certainly true that Corneille’s use of the confidante
Laonice to deliver some two hundred eighty lines of exposition in
this play stretches the limits of dramatic effectiveness, turning Rodogune into what critics have called a “personnage épisodique.”
Yet Rodogune’s part, though not much longer than Laonice’s,
manages to express the key factors in the princess’s position as
Corneille constructs it. Her personification of the emotive, secular
body of the royal woman corresponds, after all, to an increasingly
passive stance. Once she has passed on her revenge imperative to
her chosen fiancé, she has little to be concerned about apart from
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his welfare. She does not even have to spur him toward realizing
what he has promised to do, for Cléopâtre ultimately falls victim to
her own violent schemes without need of an avenger. As queen
and political body, Cléopâtre espouses the preservation of her own
power at the expense of any other possible emotional motive. She
does not give in to even a hint of masculine hegemony without a
fight, and a bloody one at that. Thus, Corneille’s attitude toward
male power, so apparent in Horace, for example, becomes far
more ambiguous at this point in his career. Without going so far as
to show a successful queenly exercise of authority, he at least
presents a play where the determination of who holds power lies
squarely in female hands.
One can also say that both Corneille and Du Ryer deal with the
impossibility of being a queen or even a princess, though in different ways. Corneille has Rodogune withdraw under the veil of
submission to a masculine monarchy and Du Ryer abandons the
princess’s tragic status for a tragicomic one. One cannot avoid the
impression that Du Ryer’s princesses have set precedents in the
decisive function of female monarchy that influence the evolution
of Corneille’s drama.
University of Mary Washington
NOTES
1
Marc Escola has recently made a case for examining Du Ryer
himself outside the context of Racine in “Simplicité d’Alcionée:
Notes sur une notion difficile,” See also Eveline Dutertre.
“L’Influence de Scudéry sur Corneille.”
2
There has been a recent rediscovery of Du Ryer in France,
including Jean Rohou’s edition of Dynamis, M. Miller’s edition of
Saül, André Blanc’s edition of Esther and Thémistocle and an
entire issue of Littératures classsiques (edited by Dominique
Moncond’huy) devoted to him in 2001. Charles Mazouer has also
studied six of Du Ryer’s tragedies in “Pierre Du Ryer,
contemporain de Corneille.” Mazouer highlights the interaction of
the two dramatists, but this study pushes the onset of that
JAMES F. GAINES
231
interaction further back than Mazouer’s, and stands more in favor
of a dialogue than of an imitation of Corneille by Du Ryer.
3
….j’épandrai mon sang / Avant que je m’abaisse à démentir
mon rang. / Je te répondrais [à Léonor] bien que dans les belles
âmes / Le seul mérite a droit de produire des flammes; / Et si ma
passion cherchait à s’excuser, / Mille exemples fameux pourraient
l’autoriser; / Mais je n’en veux point suivre où ma gloire s’engage;
/ La surprise des sens n’abat point mon courage; / Et je me dis
toujours qu’étant fille du roi, / Tout autre qu’un monarque est
indigne de moi. / Quand je vis que mon cœur ne se pouvait
défendre, / Moi-même je donnai ce que je n’osais prendre. / Je mis,
au lieu de moi, Chimène en ses liens, / Et j’allumai leurs feux pour
éteindre les miens. (Le Cid, I, ii, 91–104)
4
Je me vaincrai pourtant, non de peur d’aucun blâme, / Mais pour
ne troubler pas une si belle flamme; / Et quand pour m’obliger on
l’aurait couronné, / Je ne veux point reprendre un bien que j’ai
donné. (Le Cid, V, iii, 1637–1644)
5
For a different reading of this relationship, see Alice Rathé, La
Reine se marie and Georges Forestier, Essai de génétique
théâtrale.
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Works Cited
Corneille, Pierre. Œuvres complètes. Ed. André Stegmann. New
York: Macmillan, 1963.
Du Ryer, Pierre. Alcimédon. Paris: A. Sommaville, 1635.
______. Bérénice. Paris: A. Sommaville and G. Courbé, 1645.
______. Dynamis. Ed. Jean Rohou. Exeter, UK:
______. Esther and Thémistocle Ed. André Blanc. Paris: 2001.
_____. Saül Ed. M. Miller. Toulouse, 1996
Dutertre, Eveline. “L’Influence de Scudéry sur Corneille.” PFSCL
28, n. 55 (2001), 327–343.
Escola, Marc. “Simplicité d’Alcionée: Notes sur une notion
difficile.” Littératures classiques 42 (2001), 197–219
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