LA MORT DE MITRIDATE - University of Liverpool

La Mort de Mitridate
relationship. Conjugal ideals have not been forgotten. Pharnace lectures Bérénice
on her duty and wifely behaviour, and she responds saying: ‘Je sçay ce que je dois
à la foy conjugale’ (III.3.837). For Bérénice, however, the marriage contract,
although indissoluble, cannot override moral principles. Love is impossible for
Bérénice without esteem. And how can she respect Pharnace? Looking down from
the ramparts, she addresses him: ‘Pour moy ne voyant plus cette vertu que j’ayme,
/ Je doute si Pharnace est encore le mesme’ (III.3.809-10). And it is not externals,
whether worldly goods or even crowns, which are going to win Bérénice back. So
highly principled is she that years of married love can seemingly be swept aside
without a second thought in categorical statements like: ‘Quand il perd son
honneur sa femme l’abandonne’ (I.3.249), defending such sentiments by saying:
‘Et fondant mon amour sur la seule raison, / Je ne le puis aimer apres sa trahison
(I.3.251). Such statements firmly place Bérénice in the world of amour héroïque
associated with Corneille. Nevertheless, Octave Nadal has shown that the
‘Cornelian’ vocabulary of volonté, raison, vertu, mérite, honneur and gloire was
generally in use in tragedy even before 1630. 123 With Bérénice, La Calprenède
was capable of creating in his first play a character for whom honour was as
inseparable a part of love as it would be for Chimène two years later. Corneille
and La Calprenède represent two writers working within the framework of a
tradition which goes back through the pastoral to L’Astrée. 124
Of all of the characters, Bérénice fares best with the critics. Médan, for
example, commented: ‘Parmi tous les personnages de cette tragédie, elle souffre
vraiment ; son âme est pleine de cette agitation qui crée la vie’ (p. 58). In her big
scene with Pharnace, La Calprenède puts her through the emotional wringer. She
is cold, indignant and ruthless. Refusing to be called wife or to call Pharnace
husband, she confronts him accusatorily, brushing aside formalities, dismissing
his excuses, and harshly pointing out the true situation by cataloguing his crimes
(III.3.821-26). Her central appeal, however, evokes the memory of their past love,
and as the enumerations accumulate climaxing in Bérénice in tears, on her knees
to Pharnace, we realize the depth of her love. She may claim that it is founded on
‘la seule raison’ (I.3.251), but its roots stretch down to something far more
profound. On first seeing her, Mitridate made reference to how great her love for
Pharnace had been (I.3.223-25), and she herself confesses to Nise: ‘Il est vray,
cest ingrat est indigne du jour, / J’ay pour luy toutesfois encore un peu d’amour’
(II.2.407-08). Nadal points out that the idea of contradictions in love was ‘une
découverte psychologique précieuse, commune d’ailleurs à toute l’époque Louis
XIII’ (p. 164).
123 Le Sentiment de l’amour dans l’œuvre de Pierre Corneille (Paris: Gallimard, 1948),
pp. 88-94.
124 Truchet too finds ‘accents “cornéliens”’ in other dramatists of the 1630s but posits that
what distinguishes Corneille from his rivals is ‘sa délicatesse, sa discrétion, son sens
des nuances’, adding: ‘Il y a plus de raideur chez ses rivaux’ (Théâtre classique,
p. 136).
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