Robert Garnier

• Born: 1544?
• Birthplace: La Ferté-Bernard, France
• Died: September 20, 1590
• Place of death: Le Mans, France

Other Literary Forms

Robert Garnier’s reputation rests solely on his plays. His first published work, however, was a collection of love poems, Plaintes amoureuses de Robert Garnier (amorous laments), which appeared in 1565. A longer poem of royalist propaganda in praise of Charles IX followed: the “Hymne de la Monarchie.” Both works are no longer extant. There exist contemporary references to other poems by Garnier, yet only two detached pieces survive, an “Épître au Roi” (epistle to the king) in honor of Henri III and “Élégie sur la mort de Ronsard” (elegy on the death of Ronsard) in honor of the French Renaissance “prince of poets.”

Achievements

During his life and into the first part of the seventeenth century, Robert Garnier’s plays were staged and reedited more often than those of any other contemporary playwright. His influence extended not only to other dramatists but also to the genre of oratory prose so popular at the time. Contemporaneous treatises of rhetoric often cite Garnier as a model in their explanations of rhetorical figures.

French criticism has looked on Garnier as a precursor of the classical theater inaugurated in the 1630’s. At the end of the sixteenth century, most French dramatists and many English and Dutch writers imitated his dramatic techniques; there is even evidence that William Shakespeare drew from Garnier’s Antonius (translated into English in 1592) certain scenes for his Julius Caesar (c. 1599-1600). Garnier eschewed somewhat the seventeenth century classicists’ aim to please and instruct; yet his plays do attempt for the most part to impart a patriotic, moral, and religious lesson to his audience. Written during a period of civil war between Catholics and Protestants, his plays contain general meditations on the tragic events of the period. In several of his dedicatory prefaces, Garnier referred to the subjects of his tragedies as reflections of the “misfortunes of our time.” The subject of the Roman play Cornelia, for example, “concerns a great Republic torn apart by the ambitious discord of its citizens.” His political message is simple: The French must unite against the threat of foreign enemies if France is to survive.

Garnier’s work owes a large debt to the Roman playwright Seneca , who greatly influenced all French Renaissance tragedy. Deriving from principles inherited from the ancients, Garnier’s plays contain five acts, each concluding with a chorus (the sole exception is Bradamante). Usually, a limited number of characters engage in long monologues and spirited dialogues that are primarily didactic, destined to provide food for thought to audience and reader. Rendered largely through an aphoristic rhetorical style, this didacticism allows Garnier to focus on the power of the word—there is little true dramatic action in his work. His plays usually open with misfortune already a fact, which allows the playwright in the succeeding acts to deal with the various political, moral, and religious lessons drawn from this misfortune. Unlike seventeenth century classical theater, which is predicated on an evolving plot structure, in Garnier’s plays, the plot does not develop in the course of the representation. His work has traditionally been condemned as “irregular” by classically biased French critics. Such criticism is invalid because Garnier’s conception of tragedy was quite different from the theories prevalent in the seventeenth century. Today, Garnier’s plays stand as the ultimate expression of French Renaissance tragedy.

Biography

Born in the French village of La Ferté-Bernard, Robert Garnier attended law school from 1564 to 1566 at Toulouse, then considered the finest school of law in France. His literary career apparently began in Toulouse, for he won prizes in various poetry competitions (called jeux floraux) and composed a number of occasional poems (one in honor of Charles IX’s visit to Toulouse in 1565). In late 1566, Garnier moved to Paris. As a young lawyer, he continued his literary avocation: He became the friend and companion of such poets as Pierre de Ronsard and Jean-Antoine de Baif, and in 1568, he published his first tragedy, Porcie. Pursuing a successful career as a magistrate, Garnier left Paris in 1569 to settle in Le Mans, in his native province of Maine.

Very little is known of Garnier’s personal life. In 1575, he married a witty and intelligent woman, Françoise Hubert, with whom he had two daughters, baptized in 1579 and 1582. His life apparently ended in tragedy. In 1583, his servants attempted to poison his entire family in order to loot the household. The attempt failed, but Garnier’s wife, her health ruined, died from the effects of the poison in 1588. Contemporary observers state that the catastrophe contributed greatly to Garnier’s death in 1590.

Despite his renown during his life as France’s foremost tragic poet, Garnier led a quiet and relatively obscure life. He apparently made very little effort to curry the favor of the court. He was never rewarded for his literary talents with royal pensions or gifts.

Analysis

An examination of Robert Garnier’s œuvre discloses a marked progression: Of his first four plays, three (Porcie, Cornelia, and Antonius) treat the history of the collapse of the Roman Republic as recorded by Plutarch in his Bioi paralleloi (c. 105-115 c.e.; Parallel Lives, 1579).

Cornelia

Cornelia, published in 1574, is typical. Centering on Pompey the Great’s defeat in 48 b.c.e., the play presents Cornelia’s lamentations over the death of her husband two years earlier. Imitating very closely the Senecan model, Cornelia is structurally very similar to Porcie and to Antonius. The first act consists of a long monologue that serves as prologue: Ciceron sets the scene, moralizing on the continuing civil discord in Rome, which he interprets both as an inevitable turn of Fortune’s wheel and as Jupiter’s punishment for Rome’s overweening pride. A chorus summarizes Ciceron’s speech. In act 2, Cornelia and Ciceron engage in a long dialogue in which Cornelia laments the death of Pompey; ever the philosopher, Ciceron attempts to soothe Cornelia’s deepening despair. Composed of long speeches interspersed with stichomythic passages, this conversation concludes with the chorus’s meditation on the world as a scene of perpetual transformation and on the transitory nature of Caesar’s tyranny over Rome. Act 3 again focuses on Cornelia’s grief; in a dialogue with the chorus, she expresses her fear that her father and son may meet the same fate as Pompey. Ciceron follows with a commentary of Caesar’s present success and questions why fate has delivered the virtuous Romans over to a dictator. He foresees a day when the now-enslaved Romans will revolt against their master. After Ciceron’s exit, Philippes, a former servant of Pompey, brings to Cornelia an urn containing his master’s ashes. The prudent Philippes exhorts Cornelia to moderate her violent imprecations against a vengeful and watchful Caesar. She retorts that she has nothing to fear; she welcomes death as a means to end her torment. As in the other acts, the chorus concludes act 3 with reflections on that “inconstant Goddess,” all-powerful Fortune.

Whereas acts 2 and 3 consist solely of anti-Caesar sentiments, his appearance at the end of act 4 belies the hatred directed toward him. Act 4 encapsulates opposing political viewpoints. It opens with a debate between Cassie and Decime Brute in which the impetuous Cassie expresses his desire to assassinate the tyrannical Caesar, while Decime Brute, like Philippes in act 3, emphasizes Caesar’s admirable qualities and counsels moderation. Neither character convinces the other, yet Caesar’s future assassination appears more and more probable. The entrance of the chorus prevents Antoine and Caesar himself from seeing their political adversaries Cassie and Decime Brute. In conversation with Antoine, Caesar emerges as a proud yet compassionate and patriotic leader. Despite Antoine’s warnings, Caesar, trusting in Fortune, refuses to crush those who would kill him. The last act actualizes one of Cornelia’s fears: A messenger from Africa recounts the death of her father in an epic description (202 lines) of the battle of Thapsus. Cornelia ends the play as it opened: She grieves bitterly over Pompey, her father, and Rome.

As this summary indicates, Cornelia contains very little dramatic action. Aside from the news of the death of Cornelia’s father, nothing really “happens.” Although this catastrophe confirms her worst fears, the depth of Cornelia’s despair in preceding acts makes it difficult to accept further lamentations. The audience cannot sympathize with Cornelia as she grieves for two absent—and therefore unknown—characters. It is curious that the titular heroine is never mentioned by other, important characters in the play. In act 4, Cassie and Decime Brute, and Caesar and Marc Antoine argue diverse political viewpoints, yet they never refer to the anguished Cornelia, an obvious victim of the conflicts of which they speak. Garnier’s dramaturgy is clearly quite removed from the seventeenth century’s concept of linear plot and structural unity. The play appears to be largely didactic, as Garnier himself suggests in the preface. The example of civil discord in Rome and its effect on an individual reflects the tragedy of France’s civil war between Catholics and Protestants in the second half of the sixteenth century. Garnier does not, however, present the political antagonism in simplistic terms. The audience is led to expect a cruel and inhuman Caesar; however, the reasonable and forgiving Caesar who appears in act 4 affirms that human conflict cannot be reduced to black-and-white formulas. This notion constitutes the fundamental tragic sense of the play. Which side is ultimately right? Can savage brutality for any cause ever be justified?

Bradamante

The plays composed between Cornelia and the later Bradamante and Sédécie: Ou, Les Juives reveal a greater economy and tension than do the first plays. A more discernible sense of unity in the characters’ relationships and a heightened awareness of characterization and coherent dramatic structure mark the evolution of Garnier’s art. In Bradamante, Garnier moves decidedly away from his earlier work. Whereas the first six plays were drawn from Greek or Roman subjects, Garnier used a new source for French theater—Ludovico Ariosto’s immensely popular Orlando furioso (1516, 1521, 1532; English translation, 1591), the French translation of which first appeared in 1543. Garnier laid aside the genre of tragedy so common in the period and took up the relatively new genre of tragicomedy, in which grandiose characters engage in serious actions combined with incidents and characters belonging to comedy; the denouement is invariably happy. The success of Bradamante lasted well into the seventeenth century. Two seventeenth century dramatists (Gauthier de Costes La Calprenède in 1637, and Pierre Corneille’s brother Thomas, in 1656) wrote imitations of Garnier’s Bradamante bearing the same title.

The Romanesque plot focuses on Bradamante, the daughter of Aymon and Beatrix, who loves the heroic Roger, a converted Saracen, who loves her in return. Her parents, however, wish to marry her to Leon, prince of Greece, who has come to the court of Charlemagne to ask for her hand. Charlemagne, who would prefer to bestow her on the absent Roger as a reward for his valor against the infidels, has decreed that he who vanquishes Bradamante in single combat shall earn the right to marry her. This plan gives the advantage to Roger, reputed the most valiant knight in Europe, over the relatively weak (Bradamante calls him “effeminate”) Leon. Rather than engage in this combat himself, Leon has brought with him a proxy, a knight whom he had saved from prison and certain death. This knight, however, is Roger, whose gratitude to his deliverer prevents him from rejecting Leon’s request. The despairing Roger, disguised as Leon, conquers Bradamante, thus preventing both of them from marrying happily. In act 5, however, the arrival of Bulgarian ambassadors, who wish to offer the throne of Bulgaria to Roger as reward for his valor in their war against the Greeks, resolves the problem. Because of his newly acquired status of royalty, Bradamante’s parents no longer object to him as a son-in-law. Leon, who confesses that Roger, not he, had fought Bradamante, accepts the hand of Charlemagne’s daughter as consolation. Joy and harmony reign at the play’s close.

Providing a balance of tragic and comic scenes, the play presents a range of human types not to be seen in Garnier’s other works. Following the conventions of the tragicomic genre, the piece contains fewer monologues (Garnier makes ample use of confidants in Bradamante), has no choruses, and is devoid of the moralistic aphorisms so common in the tragedies. The admirable character of Charlemagne, whose wise and humane words and actions both open and close the play, as well as passages in praise of monarchy, have been interpreted as evidence of Garnier’s royalist and Catholic politics; however, the heavy didacticism of his earlier plays is absent in Bradamante.

Sédécie

Having moved away from Greek and Latin sources in Bradamante, Garnier in his last play, Sédécie: Ou, Les Juives, commonly referred to as Les Juives, drew his inspiration from II Kings 25, which recounts the tragedy of Zedekiah (Sédécie in the play). Considered by many critics to be Garnier’s masterpiece, Les Juives presents a story reminiscent of Greek tragedy: Sédécie, after his failed rebellion against Nabuchodonosor, must witness the slaughter of his children, after which his eyes are put out. The destruction of Jerusalem and the anguish and captivity of the Hebrews under the cruel and vengeful Nabuchodonosor, divine punishments for their unfaithfulness, furnish Garnier with an intrinsically tragic subject matter and with many opportunities for touching and pathetic effects.

As in Garnier’s other tragedies, the play opens with the monologue of the “Prophète,” who laments the past, present, and future sufferings of the Jews and asks God when his just wrath shall be appeased. The chorus, composed of Jewish women, then reflects on humankind’s fallen condition. Act 2 introduces the terrible king of Babylon, Nabuchodonosor, who in a dialogue with his general, Nabuzandan, refuses to show mercy; he intends to punish the rebellious Sédécie and his people. Amital, the mother of Sédécie, begs the queen to intercede with her husband and to plead for clemency. Nabuchodonosor apparently grants his wife’s request and declares that Sédécie will not die. The king then reveals his decision to Amital, who receives this news with joy and gratitude. The sadistic irony of Nabuchodonosor’s feigned forgiveness and his true intent—to kill Sédécie’s sons and then blind him—is clear when he says in act 3 that Sédécie will never see chains of servitude again, nor will his sons suffer a life of slavery. Act 4 represents the confrontation between Sédécie and his antagonist, who, not to be moved, discloses to Sédécie his refined vengeance. Nabuchodonosor has recourse to a cruel ruse to lay hands on Sédécie’s sons: Their mothers are told that he wishes to raise them as princes in his palace. Sensing that this is a lie, the mothers bid mournful and touching good-byes to the innocent victims. Act 5 consists for the most part of the prophet’s detailed account of the executions and Sédécie’s punishment. While Amital and the wives bemoan this fate, the blind Sédécie appears. The prophet invokes the will of God in all things, and announces the downfall of Babylon, the reconstruction of Jerusalem, and the coming of the Messiah. Despite Sédécie’s tragedy and despair, the play thus ends in triumph for those who serve God and defeat for those who shun Him.

Les Juives was the most popular and imitated play in the French sixteenth century. When this play is compared with earlier ones such as Cornelia, Garnier’s evolution as playwright is clear. Garnier had turned away from his period’s penchant for moralistic sentences in Bradamante, and the break is definite with Les Juives. Although the opening monologue is reminiscent of his earlier work, the rest of the play contains essential and memorable confrontational dialogues, such as the climactic clash between Nabuchodonosor and Sédécie in act 4, which penetrate and reveal fundamental human emotions. Although the flatness of characterization in Garnier’s earlier efforts makes the characters appear to be simply reciters of verse, in Les Juives he creates full-fleshed personalities. The most impressive is perhaps the proud and tyrannical Nabuchodonosor, whose determined, cruel, yet unerringly logical lust for vengeance suggests an unbalanced mind: He equates himself with God, the Old Testament Deity who will not tolerate any other gods. The basic drama of the play centers on his ultimate decision: Will he persevere in his ruthlessness, or will he temper his anger and yield to pity? Nabuchodonosor’s counterpart, Sédécie, retains a nobility, accepting without humility his punishment as expiation for his sins against God. Often compared to Jean Racine’s great biblical tragedies Esther (1689; English translation, 1715) and Athalie (1691; Athaliah, 1722), Les Juives has occasionally been presented on the French stage in modern times.

As with Garnier’s other works, critics have persisted in viewing Les Juives—in part at least—as a reflection of the author’s troubled and violent times. This notion sees the tribulations of Zion as representative of those of France; The sufferings of Sédécie, Amital, and Sédécie’s wives are those of Garnier’s own countrymen. The “political” interpretation of Garnier, although perhaps valid in some plays, has distorted to some extent a clearer picture of his work. A critical method that would focus on the text itself rather than on external historical circumstances is needed to rejuvenate Garnier criticism.

Bibliography

Holyoake, John. A Critical Study of the Tragedies of Robert Garnier. New York: P. Lang, 1987. Holyoake presents a critical examination and interpretation of the tragedies written by Garnier. Includes bibliography.

Jondorf, Gillian. Robert Garnier and the Themes of Political Tragedy in the Sixteenth Century, 1969. Jondorf examines the political and social views of Garnier, as expressed in his dramatic works. Contains bibliography.

Witherspoon, A. M. The Influence of Robert Garnier on Elizabethan Drama. 1924. Reprint. New York: Phaeton Press, 1968. Witherspoon looks at the influence that Garnier had on drama in Elizabethan England. Bibliography included.