Alexandre Hardy
born 1572?, Paris, France
died 1632?
playwright, the first Frenchman known
to have made his living as a dramatist,
who claimed authorship of some 600
plays.
Hardy was a hired poet for troupes of
actors both in the provinces and in
Paris. His works were widely admired in
court circles, where he wrote for royal
companies. The actors who bought his
plays rarely allowed him to publish
them, and fewer than 50 survived.
Shortly after Hardy’s death his plays
ceased to be produced. Nearly all the
succeeding dramatists, among them Pierre
Corneille and Jean Racine, the two
masters of the classical French tragedy,
affected contempt for his work, but they
profited from his dramatic technique.
Hardy’s work violated many of the
later strictures of the French Academy
governing the writing of plays,
especially in neglecting the unities of
time and place. He cut down or
eliminated the role of the chorus and
depicted violence on stage. His plots
were faster paced than those of the
tragedies modeled on ancient Greek and
Roman works. Action was linked with the
psychology of the characters: the
protagonists acted rather than
declaimed, developed as human beings,
and sometimes experienced inner
conflict. His pastorals improved on
earlier ones through their fast-moving
plots and naturalness. Many plays were
demanded of him, and his style was
unpolished.
Unlike other 17th-century
playwrights, Hardy took few stories from
the Greek and Latin dramatists or the
Bible. He drew instead upon such writers
as Ovid, Cervantes, and Boccaccio.
Despite his lack of major achievements,
his influence on the development of the
French theatre was considerable.
