Pierre Corneille Quotes
I agree to, or rather aspire to, my doom.
Corneille, Pierre. Cinna. 1641, Act I, Scene 2.
The ambassador was spending the day with President Theodore Roosevelt. They played two sets of tennis, jogged around the White House lawn, and then did some gymnastics with the large medicine ball. The President had asked him what he would like to do next:
Charles was a young man who ruled under the thumb of his mother, Catherine de Medici. She and the leading Catholic political figures had decided to have the army massacre the Huguenots—Protestants—of France. Charles knew the massacre was to begin that night and tried to save his friend Rochefoucault, a Protestant, who was a member of the King’s court. He suggested several times that Rochefoucault not go home that evening but stay at the Louvre. The unsuspecting Rochefoucault felt that he had to get home to his wife and left explaining that to the King. Hence the King’s remark. Rochefoucault and his family were murdered that night. In the end, 50,000 Protestants were massacred in what has come to be known as the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Many of the palace servants were Protestants and were cut to ribbons throughout the palace. The King from a palace window shot a rifle at Protestants trying to swim the River Seine to escape, while his page kept reloading for him.
Corneille was born in Rouen, Normandy, France, to Marthe Le Pesant and Pierre Corneille, a distinguished lawyer. His younger brother, Thomas Corneille, also became a noted playwright. He was given a rigorous Jesuit education at the Collège de Bourbon (Lycée Pierre-Corneille since 1873) where acting on the stage was part of the training. At 18 he began to study law but his practical legal endeavours were largely unsuccessful. Corneille's father secured two magisterial posts for him with the Rouen department of Forests and Rivers. During his time with the department, he wrote his first play. It is unknown exactly when he wrote it, but the play, the comedy Mélite, surfaced when Corneille brought it to a group of traveling actors in 1629. The actors approved of the work and made it part of their repertoire. The play was a success in Paris and Corneille began writing plays on a regular basis. He moved to Paris in the same year and soon became one of the leading playwrights of the French stage. His early comedies, starting with Mélite, depart from the French farce tradition by reflecting the elevated language and manners of fashionable Parisian society. Corneille describes his variety of comedy as "une peinture de la conversation des honnêtes gens" ("a painting of the conversation of the gentry"). His first true tragedy is Médée, produced in 1635.
