ABSTRACT
The French drama of the Renaissance followed the way of the Italians, breaking completely with the old popular tradition, and starting a fresh from classical models. It was a static and declamatory drama, appreciated by court circles, who compared it to the best that Greece and Rome had to show, and acted and enjoyed in the Universities, but almost entirely lacking in a sense of the theatre. Germany took only so much from the Renaissance as made for the Reformation, France, while offering a less fertile soil for theological revolution, accepted the new writing, and by the middle of the sixteenth century possessed a native group of writers more brilliant than any which Italy or any other country had known since the days of the do Ice stil nuovo. The Protestant faction had produced some theological drama, which bridged the gap between the mysteries and such later tragedies on religious themes as Corneille's Polyeucte.
