Agésilas

Agésilas is a Play of Pierre Corneille inspired by the ancient Greece. It was represented with the theater of the Hôtel of Burgundy in April 1666.

Characters

• Agésilas, king of Sparte
• Lysander, famous captain of Sparte
• Cotys, king of Paphlagonie
• Spitridate, large Persan lord
• Mandane, sister of Spitridate
• Elpinice, girl of Lysander
• Aglatide, girl of Lysander
• Xénoclès, lieutenant of Agésilas
• Cléon, Greek, native speaker of Halicarnasse.

Synopsis

Lysander has promised his/her Elpinice daughters and Aglatide respectively with Cotys and Spitridate, but so that the marriage is done it must obtain the agreement of Agésilas.

Cotys and Spitridate realize quickly that these marriage their are not appropriate. Indeed, Spitridate fell in love with Elpinice which also likes it, and Cotys east was caught love for Mandane, the sister of Spitridate, and its love is shared. Cotys agrees to leave its promised in Spitridate if this last gives him his/her sister in exchange, but Spitridate fears froisser Lysander.

On its side, Agésilas is in love with Mandane and learns that Lysander plots against him. It thus decides to prohibit the unions of the girls of the captain Spartan. It cannot be solved to marry Mandane because Sparte would not accept it, and does not make a point either of making him marry Cotys: it fears indeed that a union between the families of Cotys and Spitridate, then between those of Spitridate and Lysander, creates only enemies to him.

Aglatide, as for it, knows that Spitridate loves his/her sister and that Cotys does not want a its hand. She prefers to hide her feelings and to post a certain unconcern, but she hopes all the same that Agésilas likes it. Indeed, a few years before it had offered its love to him and promised that it would marry it.

Agésilas finally decides to confuse Lysander and to show him that he knows his plans very. Not being able to be solved to bring the opprobrium on the man who made it go up on the throne, it makes it convene and speaks to him into private, accompanied only by its lieutenant Xénoclès. Lysander acknowledges its crimes and is said ready to undergo its punishment, but request leniency to his/her daughters and their engaged couples who are not with the current of nothing.

Agésilas prefers to save Lysander and grant the marriages of Elpinice with Spitridate, and Mandane with Cotys. To honor the promise made with the years before and to prevent that Lysander does not take again one day its plots, he marries Aglatide.

Various comments

• Agésilas is, with Psyché , the only part of Crow to use alternated rhymes (of type ABAB) throughout the part and with being written in free verse (it interferes indifferently the worms 8 and 12 feet).
• Rather little appreciated, this part taken again forever from its exit in 1666. Boileau of known as in a criticism: