Whatever causes may be held to be responsible, the fact remains that the dramatic is the weakest part of the work of the poets of the Pléiade. Here they made little effort to assimilate and reproduce in genuine French form. They repeated the shape slavishly. In tragedy they did not try at all to go beyond the model given them by Buchanan in the Latin plays written for his pupils at Bordeaux, which again were taken from Seneca. In comedy there was less slavery, and less break with the mediæval literature. But the poets did comparatively little in comedy; and the liveliest comic writer of the later sixteenth century in France, Larivey, who was of Italian descent, did not achieve more than to give bold adaptations of Italian originals. [SN: _Jodelle._] The title of father of modern French dramatic literature, tragic and comic, belongs to Estienne Jodelle, Seigneur de Lymodin. He was born at Paris in 1532. Jodelle was a copious miscellaneous writer; but only two tragedies, one comedy, and some poetry written in his youth, survive.[97] His _Cléopâtre Captive_, and the comedy _Eugène_, were performed before King Henry II. in 1552 by Jodelle himself and his friends. The king was so pleased that he gave the dramatist five hundred crowns, a handsome sum of money at the time. In the pardonable joy of their hearts, Jodelle and his friends celebrated their success by a supper at Arcueil, which became the excuse for a scandal. Being full of a classic zeal, not always according to knowledge, the poets impounded a goat, crowned it, and chanted some nonsense verses, largely composed of Greek words, the work of Baïf. The New Learning had always been open to the reproach of paganism, and the Reformers accused the party of having performed a heathen sacrifice. The Confrérie de la Passion, glad of an excuse to bring rivals into trouble, joined in the cry. Jodelle’s second tragedy, _Didon se sacrifiant_, was written later, and apparently never played. In 1558 he fell into disgrace through the failure of a mask on the Argonauts, provided for the reception of Henry II. at the Hôtel de Ville. It is said that the stage carpenter mistook the word _rochers_ for _clochers_, and provided bell-towers instead of rocks in the properties. Jodelle never recovered favour; but this accident is not accountable for the misfortunes of his later years. There is evidence that “much bad living kill’d Teste Noire at last,” for Jodelle, unlike his brother poets, who seem to have been orderly people, was of the character of our own Bohemian forerunners of Shakespeare. He died worn out, and in great distress, in 1573. [SN: _The Senecan plays._]