Le Cid

Le Cid is a five-act tragicomic play by Pierre Corneille, first performed in 1636 at the Théâtre du Marais in Paris. The plot is based on the Spanish play Las mocedadas del Cid by Guillén de Castro, which itself is based on the legend of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar (1043-1099), a Castilian knight and Spanish national hero whose title “El Cid” is derived from the Arabic word for lord, sayyid. Corneille (1606-1684) is considered one of the greatest French playwrights of the 17th century, often called the Golden Age of French literature. Corneille’s work was patronized by the influential Cardinal Richelieu, though the two parted ways after quarreling over Corneille’s innovations upon the standard conventions of plays at the time.

Le Cid itself was a controversial success. It was groundbreaking theater for its day as a tragedy that dared to have a happy ending, was without clear-cut heroes or villains, and resisted the classical unities of time, place, and action prescribed by Aristotelian dramatic theory. The play sparked a debate—known as La querelle du Cid—about the essential aesthetics of drama. Corneille showed that tragedies could have a variety of different endings and need not end in a heavy-handed moral or adhere to the classical rules of playwriting.