rama that he found prevailing when he began to write. With whatever
amount of genuine religious scruple affecting his conscience,--on that
point we need not judge the poet,--Corneille used, before putting them
on the stage, to take his plays to the "Church,"--that is, to the
priestly hierarchy who constituted the "Church,"--that they might be
authoritatively judged as to their possible influence on the cause of
Christian truth.

In the "Polyeuctes," the motive is religion. Polyeuctes is an historic
or traditional saint of the Roman-Catholic church. His conversion from
paganism is the theme of the play. Polyeuctes has a friend Nearchus who
is already a Christian convert, and who labors earnestly to make
Polyeuctes a proselyte to the faith. Polyeuctes has previously married a
noble Roman lady, daughter of Felix, governor of Armenia, in which
province the action of the story occurs. (The persecuting Emperor Decius
is on the throne of the Roman world.) Paulina is the daughter's name.
Paulina married Polyeuctes against her own choice, for she loved Roman
Severus better. Her father had put his will upon her, and Paulina had
filially obeyed in marrying Polyeuctes. Such are the relations of the
different persons of the drama. It will be seen that there is ample room
for the play of elevated and tragic passions. Paulina, in fact, is the
lofty, the impossible, ideal of wifely and daughterly truth and
devotion. Pagan though she is, she is pathetically constant, both to the
husband that was forced upon her, and to the father that did the
forcing; while still she loves, and cannot but love, the man whom, in
spite of her love for him, she, with an act like prolonged suicide,
stoically separates from her torn and bleeding heart.

But Severus on his part emulates the nobleness of the woman whom he
vainly loves. Learning the true state of the case, he rises to the
height of his opportunity for magnanimous behavior, and bids the married
pair be happy in a long life together.

A change in the situation occurs, a change due to the changed mood of
the father, Felix. Felix learns that Severus is high in imperial favor,
and he wishes now that Severus, instead of Polyeuctes, were his
son-in-law. A decree of the emperor makes it possible that this
preferable alternative may yet be realized. For the emperor has decreed
that Christians must be persecuted to the death, and Polyeuctes has been
baptized a Christian--though of this Felix will not h