Jean Rotrou

Jean Rotrou (Dreux, 1609 – Dreux, 1650) was one of the most prolific playwrights of seventeenth-century France. Born into a family of magistrates in his native town, he wrote in French at a time when Spanish and English baroque theatre served as models for many Paris authors. Although he was a few years younger than Pierre Corneille, he began writing before him, and his name is now linked to the transition between baroque taste and the classicism that would eventually prevail.

He studied in Normandy and Paris. In 1632 he succeeded Alexandre Hardy as playwright for the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and in 1635 he joined a group of five poets charged with shaping Cardinal Richelieu's dramatic ideas. His public life left little trace beyond his plays, which were staged and published in quick succession. His first play, L'Hypocondriaque, appeared when he was eighteen, and he soon issued a collection of poems including elegies, epistles and religious verse. His comedies and tragicomedies of the 1630s drew on Spanish models, such as Lope de Vega's Sortija del olvido, and tried to bring Spanish-style romantic comedy to France in place of Seneca's tragedy and Terence's comedy. Some of these won him the favour of Richelieu and of Queen Anne of Austria.

Around 1636 and 1637 he sold plays in quantity to a Paris publisher. He spent long periods at Le Mans with his patron, the seigneur de Belin, an opponent of Corneille in the quarrel over Le Cid. Although he was once thought to have defended Corneille, the evidence suggests he stayed largely neutral. In 1639 he bought a magistrate's post in Dreux, and in 1640 he married Marguerite Camus and settled into the life of an official and family man.

In his last years he wrote what are regarded as his finest works: Le Véritable Saint Genest, about an actor who converts while playing a Christian martyr; Don Bertrand de Cabrère; Venceslas, adapted from a play by Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla and often considered his masterpiece; and Cosroès, set in the East and his most original piece. When plague reached Dreux in 1650 he stayed at his post, caught the disease and died within hours.

His large output, around thirty-five surviving plays, and his wavering between classical and baroque models have counted against his reputation. Yet his pathetic situations, clear verse and strong individual scenes have earned him a place close to Corneille and Racine. A street in Paris bears his name.