SOURCE: Harrison, Helen L. “Payer or Récompenser: Royal Gratitude in Le Cid.” French Review 72, no. 2 (December 1998): 238-49.

In the following essay, Harrison addresses the issue of royal gratitude as portrayed in The Cid.

When the Académie Française delivered its judgment on Le Cid, Don Fernand's support for the marriage of Rodrigue and Chimène met with condemnation. The Academicians ruled that a marriage between a woman and her father's killer would have been immoral. At the same time, the Académie criticized the Castillean king as an abusive tyrant who lightly gave away property—namely Chimène herself—which did not belong to him (Académie 388-89). By questioning the appropriateness of the king's gift to Rodrigue, the Académie directs our attention to the problem of royal gratitude.

For a seventeenth-century audience, a king who has received extraordinary services from a subject is in...