ABSTRACT
The great age of France was passing in military defeat, in senseless luxury, and in a new preciosity, divorced from the Roman dream of greatness which had inspired the preciosity of Richelieu's generation. When, some time before the middle of the seventeenth century, the lead in the Arts passed from Spain to France, the virtues of balance, order, proportion, and the unities, derived by Renaissance critics from their reading of the classics, became, in theory, universally obligatory. French drama, in general, even in Racine's day, was beginning to decay, and as in Spain, the musical spectacle was drawing the bigger audiences. For while English drama is concerned with character displayed in action, and that of Spain moved towards the formalism of music, the French theatre of Corneille, Racine and many lesser tragedians was essentially a drama of motive, an internal drama in which a character's reflections upon the action carried more weight than the action itself.
