Excerpt from Pierre Du Ryer: Dramatist The second quarter of the seventeenth century is of vital importance in the history of the French drama. It was then that the form of classic tragedy peculiar to France was created, that the comedy won value by substituting the portrayal of manners for the representation of farcical and romantic adventures, and that the tragi-comedy was at the height of its popularity. Some persons have believed that this period could be sufficiently understood by the consideration of Corneille's theater alone. Others, perceiving the superficiality of this view, have turned to minor writers of the time, and carried on investigations that led to excellent studies of Hardy, Rotrou, Tristan, and Mairet. But Du Ryer, though as important as these, has been neglected. Twelve of his pieces illustrate various forms of the tragi-comedy, from the play of romantic adventure to the classical tragi-comedy with its careful treatment of a few persons in a few situations. His one comedy is an early representation of local conditions and surroundings. His six tragedies, the most valuable and successful of his pieces, were second only to the works of Corneille in establishing the French classic type of tragedy. When studied as a whole, his theater shows a constant progress away from the loose and sensational methods of his predecessors to a simple, united, and profound conception of dramatic art, a process which shows the development of both Du Ryer and his audience through the twenty-five years of his activity as a playwright. Francois Colletet's life of Du Ryer is lost. Pellisson, Sorel, the freres Parfaict, Jal, and others have given him little space. Fournier united many of the facts stated by these writers with a number of his own opinions in the introduction to his reprint of Du Ryer's Vendanges de Suresne. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."