Agésilas

12mo, (2) leaves, 88 pp., (1) leaf, (1) blank leaf. Ivory vellum, calligraphic title on spine. Contemporary binding. 147 x 84 mm.

Corneille, Pierre. Agésilas, Tragedy. In rhymed free verse. Rouen, and sold in Paris, Thomas Jolly, 1666.

First edition and first printing of Corneille’s Agésilas.

Tchemerzine, II, 575; Le Petit, 186; Rochebilière, 50; Picot, 85.

“There are copies of this edition dated 1667 and 1668.”

In 1666, Corneille, just turned sixty, staged a play which, by his own admission, “departs from the beaten track.” Indeed, it is a tragedy not only in which no one dies and whose denouement is quadruple happy, but also a cheerful, lively, and at times mischievous tragedy. The sense of novelty must have been all the greater for an audience whose ears were used to the regular cadences of Alexandrine verse, as this most atypical tragedy was written in free verse!

By bringing to the stage the story of Agesilas, King of Sparta, Corneille thought he could renew the success of his early tragedies through an innovation that must have seemed daring. He abandoned uniform Alexandrines and used only mixed free verse. “The manner in which I have treated it, he said in his note To the Reader, has no example among our French, nor in those precious remains of antiquity that have come down to us, and that is what made me choose it.” Unfortunately, the poet’s hopes were disappointed; the public took no liking to the novelty. “Innovation always runs counter to established habits and intellectual comfort; it is, by nature, unsettling and the public does not like to be unsettled” (Simone Dosmond).

Robinet, in his Lettre en vers Madame of March 6, 1666, nevertheless praised Agésilas.

The first performance must have taken place at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in February 1666.

“The public was thrown by this so little tragic tragedy, written not in Alexandrines but in alternating verse, where the political stakes have never been so closely linked with amorous intrigue. It was not until the twentieth century that this play was appreciated at its true worth: a remarkably constructed piece of research. It brings the delicacy of feeling to a height never attained before” (Dictionnaire des Œuvres).

A very beautiful copy preserved in its contemporary vellum binding.