Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille was born on 6 June 1606 in France, and as a young man he secured the patronage of Cardinal Richelieu, who was backing formal classical tragedy. Then came Le Cid, his best-known work — a play about a medieval Spanish warrior that the newly formed Académie française attacked for violating the dramatic unities. The quarrel with Richelieu followed, but Corneille didn't stop: he continued writing well-received tragedies for nearly forty years. By the time he died on 1 October 1684, he'd secured his place as one of the three great French dramatists of the 17th century, alongside Mol…