Words of the “Wise Captain”: Pierre Corneille, Le Cid, and Fidelity

Abstract

in the first couplet declaimed by Don Gomès, Count of Gormas, in act 1, scene 1 of Le Cid, Pierre Corneille advanced a fundamental theme of the tragicomedy, and indeed of his entire oeuvre: fidelity. The Count assesses the qualities of his daughter Chimène’s suitors, Don Rodrigue and Don Sanche, and confirms their three most important attributes: “Tous deux formés d’un sang noble, vaillant, fidèle” (Both of them formed of blood that is noble, valiant, faithful; 1.1.12). As the rhyme word fidèle rang out through the Théâtre du Marais in early 1637, audiences were brought to reflect upon the place of fidelity in the play and in their historical moment. Questions of fidelity were weighty and pressing in the wake of 1636, the disastrous “année de Corbie” (year of Corbie). During that year, the second of France’s official engagement in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), King Louis XIII was faced with both foreign wars and domestic turmoil. Spanish forces invaded deep into French territory, and military heroes of the royal family, such as Gaston d’Orléans and the comte de Soissons, had turned against the monarch and his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu. Gaston and Soissons, the king’s brother and cousin, hatched a plot to assassinate Richelieu at Amiens in October 1636 while the French were fending