SOURCE: "The Comic Illusion," in Pierre Corneille, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972, pp. 32-47.

In the excerpt below from his book-length study of Corneille and his plays, Abraham surveys the dramatist's early comedies, from Mélite to L'Illusion comique.

"Such disorder, such irregularity!" Racine may or may not have thought of the very first plays of Corneille but there is no doubt that comedy in the late 1620's was of the lowest order, and Corneille was quite right in boasting, as he did in the Examen of Mélite which he penned decades later, that this play was really the first to be written for honnestes gens (gentlemen and ladies) and that, if it at times seemed to violate rules and unities, that was because they had not yet been established.

These early plays are a strange mixture of influences and independence. The influence of Hardy, one of Corneille's most...