SOURCE: Hawcroft, Michael. “Corneille's Clitandre and the Theatrical Illusion.” French Studies 47, no. 2 (April 1993): 142-55.

In the following essay, Hawcroft asserts that it is possible to view Clitandre as “an attempt to engage metaphorically with the theoretical debates around 1630, dominated as they were by the twenty-four hour rule and the concept of theatrical illusion.”

The tragicomedy Clitandre is Corneille's second play, first performed in the theatrical season 1630-31, and first published in 1632.¹ It is far from being one of Corneille's best-remembered plays. Modern critics can be scathing about it. Lancaster complains that ‘the plot is amateurish and the interest is not centered in any one person or couple’ and he thinks it is ‘inferior in construction to most of the tragicomedies of the day’.² Geoffrey Brereton writes about ‘its feeble and chaotic structure’ and is unhappy that ‘one does not know who the principal characters are or with whom...