ABSTRACT
Pierre Corneille was born at Rouen on 6 June 1606 of a middle-class Norman family. He began his dramatic career with a comedy, Melite, written at Rouen and probably entrusted to Montdory when his troupe was performing in that the town. Montdory took it to Paris and produced it there in December 1629, following it with four other comedies by Corneille in the next four years or so. Corneille’s entertainment ends with a panegyric upon the theatre spoken by the magician. It is now an honourable and lucrative profession and the father can feel proud that his son has adopted it. Horace, produced early in 1640, opens the sequence of four Roman tragedies which definitely established Corneille as the leading dramatist of his age and have been regarded ever since as his greatest and most typical contribution to the drama.
