Rotrou was unwavering throughout his life in expressions of admiration for his great rival. Of the two plays just mentioned, _Venceslas_ is the more regular, the better adapted to the canons of the French stage, and the more even in its excellence. _Saint Genest_ is perhaps the more interesting. The central idea is remarkable. Genest, an actor, performs before Diocletian a part in which he represents a Christian martyr. He is miraculously converted during the study of the piece, and at its performance, after astonishing the audience by the fervour and vividness with which he plays his part, boldly speaks in his own person, and, avowing his conversion, is led off to prison and martyrdom. Many of the speeches in this play are admirable poetry, and the plot is far from ill-managed. The play within a play, of which _Hamlet_ and the _Taming of the Shrew_ are English examples, was, at this transition period, a favourite stage incident in France. Corneille's _Illusion_ is the most complicated example of it, but _Saint Genest_ is by far the most interesting and the best managed. [Sidenote: Corneille.] There is every reason to believe that though, as has been said, Rotrou's best pieces were influenced by Corneille, the greater poet owed something at the beginning of his career to the example of his friend. Pierre Corneille[237] was born at Rouen in 1606. His father, of the same name, was an official of rank in the legal hierarchy; his mother was named Marthe le Pesant. He was educated in the Jesuits' school, went to the bar, and obtained certain small legal preferments which he afterwards sold. He practised, but 'sans gout et sans succes,' says Fontenelle, his nephew and biographer. His first comedy, _Melite_, is said to have been suggested by a personal experience. It succeeded at Rouen, and the author took it to Paris. His next attempt was a tragedy or a tragi-comedy, _Clitandre_, of a really marvellous extravagance. It was followed by several other pieces, in all of which there is remarkable talent, though the author had not yet found his way. He found it at last in _Medee_, where the famous reply of the heroine 'Que vous reste-t-il?' 'Moi,' struck at once the note which no one but Corneille himself and Victor Hugo has ever struck since, and which no one had ever struck before. Corneille, as has been said above, was one of Richelieu's five poets, but he was indocile to the Cardinal's caprices; and either this indocility or jealousy set Richelieu against _Le Cid_. This great and famous play was suggested by, rather than copied from, the Spanish of Guillem de Castro. It excited an extraordinary turmoil among men of letters, but the public never went wrong about it from the first. Boileau's phrase-- Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue,