JODELLE'S _Cleopatre_ (1552), performed with enthusiasm by amateurs, was therefore a false start; it was essentially literary, and not theatrical. Greek models were crudely imitated, with a lack of almost everything that gave life and charm to the Greek drama. Seneca was more accessible than Sophocles, and his faults were easy to imitate--his moralisings, his declamatory passages, his excess of emphasis. The so-called Aristotelian dramatic canons, formulated by Scaliger in his Poetic, were rigorously applied. Unity of place is preserved in _Cleopatre_; the time of the action is reduced to twelve hours; there are interminable monologues, choral moralities, a ghost (in Seneca's manner), a narration of the heroine's death; of action there is none, the stage stands still. If Jodelle's _Didon_ has some literary merit, it has little dramatic vitality. The oratorical energy of Grevin's _Jules Cesar_, the studies of history in _La Mort de Daire_ and _La Mort d'Alexandre_, by Jacques de La Taille, do not compensate their deficiency in the qualities required by the theatre. One tragedy alone, _La Sultane_, by Gabriel Bounin (1561), amid its violences and extravagances, shows a feeling for dramatic action and scenic effect. Could the mediaeval mystery and classical tragedy be reconciled? The Protestant Reformer Beze, in his _Sacrifice d'Abraham_, attempted something of the kind; his sacred drama is a mystery by its subject, a tragedy in the conduct of the action. Three tragedies on the life of David--one of them admirable in its rendering of the love of Michol, daughter of Saul--were published in 1556 by Loys Des-Masures: the stage arrangements are those of the mediaeval drama, but the unity of time is observed, and chorus and semi-chorus respond in alternate strains. No junction of dramatic systems essentially opposed proved in the end possible. When Jean de La Taille wrote on a biblical subject in his _Saul le Furieux_, a play remarkable for its impressive conception and development of the character of Saul, he composed it _selon l'art_, and in the manner of "the old tragic authors." He is uncompromising in his classical method; the mediaeval drama seemed inartificial to him in the large concessions granted by the spectators to the authors and actors; he would have what passes on the stage approximate, at least, to reality; the unities were accepted not merely on the supposed authority of Aristotle, but because they were an aid in attaining verisimilitude.