Jean Mairet
Jean Mairet (* January 4, 1604 in Besançon, † January 31, 1686 ) was a French author.
He is the author of about ten tragi-comedies and tragedies, and was the most important Parisian dramatist of the period 1625-1640, ie. Before the rise of Pierre Corneille, the oldest playwright among French classics
Mairet was actually to study from the Franche -Comté come ( then part of the Spanish crown) to Paris, but moved rapidly on playwriting. At about 20 he got a first piece of a theater declined, in 1626 he made his breakthrough with the pastoral tragicomedy La Sylvie, a piece by Honoré d' Urfés novel L' Astrée. 1631 he argued in the preface to his tragedy Silvanire for compliance with the three units within the meaning of the recently published treatise by Jean Chapelain and thus contributed significantly to the spread of the new doctrine in which he had completely ignored in La Sylvie.
His biggest success was 1634 based on an Italian original tragedy La Sophonisbe, in the center of a defeated by the Romans Numidian queen stands who would rather commit suicide than be led in a triumphal procession through Rome and asked to see on display. The piece was played often until well into the 18th century. But above all it was the first successful French tragedy after Chapelains rules. At the latest La Sophonisbe was also the pairs rhyming, usually male and female Alexandrine couplets alternating with caesura after the sixth syllable for compulsory linguistic form of tragedy and tragicomedy.
1637 Mairet wrote several pamphlets against Corneille, who did not respected the three unities in his very successful tragicomedy Le Cid and was reprimanded for it by other writers as well as the new Académie française. Corneille replied, inter alia, with a Avertissement au Besançonnois Mairet, in whose title he clearly alluded to the fact that his opponent was almost like a foreign enemy, because France led straight ( 1636-44 ) war in the Franche -Comté to Spain. The two authors ended the dispute only on the order of Cardinal Richelieu ministers, and Mairet had to be presumed main target an ad to impede the rise of Corneille, the final climb to the new Paris Star dramatists after 1640. His own career, he decided in 1643 with the tragicomedy La Sidonie.
However, he remained in Paris, where he was appointed in 1648 to a kind of ambassador for his home province, which has been increasingly recognized after the Peace of Westphalia of France. In 1653 he was expelled for alleged king hostile speeches during the Fronde Rebellion ( 1648-53 ) of Cardinal Mazarin minister from Paris, but was allowed to return soon. As 1668, the Franche- Comté region of Louis XIV was occupied by the military and thus the ambassadorship Mairet fell away, this man went back to his home town, after they had been German free imperial city from 1307 to 1664, 1679 was definitely part of France.