Étienne Jodelle

Who was Étienne Jodelle?

Étienne Jodelle, seigneur de Limodin, French dramatist and poet, was born in Paris of a noble family.

He attached himself to the poetic circle of the Pléiade and proceeded to apply the principles of the reformers to dramatic composition. Jodelle aimed at creating a classical drama that should be in every respect different from the moralities and soties that then occupied the French stage, his first play, Cléopatre captive, was represented before the court at Reims in 1552. Jodelle himself took the title role, and the cast included his friends Remy Belleau and Jean de la Peruse, in honour of the play's success the friends organized a little etc. at Arcueil when a goat garlanded with flowers was led in procession and presented to the author—a ceremony exaggerated by the enemies of the Ronsardists into a renewal of the pagan rites of the worship of Bacchus.

Jodelle wrote two other plays. Eugène, a comedy satirizing the superior clergy, had less success than it deserved. Its preface poured scorn on Jodelle's predecessors in comedy, but in reality his own methods are not so very different from theirs. Didon se sacrifiant, a tragedy which follows Virgil's narrative, appears never to have been represented. Jodelle died in poverty in July 1573. His works were collected the year after his death by Charles de la Mothe. They include a quantity of miscellaneous verse dating chiefly from Jodelle's youth. The intrinsic value of his tragedies is small. Cléopatre is lyric rather than dramatic. Throughout the five acts of the piece nothing actually happens. The death of Antony is announced by his ghost in the first act; the story of Cleopatra's suicide is related, but not represented, in the fifth. Each act is terminated by a chorus which moralizes on such subjects as the inconstancy of fortune and the judgments of heaven on human pride. But the play was the starting-point of French classical tragedy, and was soon followed by the Médée of Jean de la Peruse and the Aman of André de Rivaudeau. Jodelle was a rapid worker, but idle and fond of dissipation. His friend Ronsard said that his published poems gave no adequate idea of his powers.