As a young man, he earned the valuable patronage of Cardinal Richelieu, who was trying to promote classical tragedy along formal lines, but later quarrelled with him, especially over his best-known play, Le Cid, about a medieval Spanish warrior, which was denounced by the newly formed Académie française for breaching the unities.

He was given a rigorous Jesuit education at the Collège de Bourbon (Lycée Pierre-Corneille since 1873),[3] where acting on the stage was part of the training.

It is unknown exactly when he wrote it, but the play, the comedy Mélite, surfaced when Corneille brought it to a group of traveling actors in 1629.

His early comedies, starting with Mélite, depart from the French farce tradition by reflecting the elevated language and manners of fashionable Parisian society.

The Cardinal took notice of Corneille and selected him to be among Les Cinq Auteurs ("The Five Poets"; also translated as "the society of the five authors").

After his initial contract ended, Corneille left Les Cinq Auteurs and returned to Rouen.

Both plays were based on the legend of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (nicknamed "El Cid Campeador"), a military figure in Medieval Spain.

The Académie's recommendations concerning the play are articulated in Jean Chapelain's Sentiments de l'Académie française sur la tragi-comédie du Cid (1638).

Even the prominent writer Georges de Scudéry harshly criticized the play in his Observations sur le Cid (1637).

Scudéry, a close friend of Mairet at the time, did not stoop to Corneille's level of "distastefulness", but instead continued to pillory Le Cid and its violations.

He remained publicly silent for some time; privately, however, he was said to be "troubled and obsessed by the issues, making numerous revisions to the play."

The Querelle du Cid caused Corneille to pay closer attention to classical dramatic rules.

In 1652, the play Pertharite met with poor critical reviews and a disheartened Corneille decided to quit the theatre.

He began to focus on an influential verse translation of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, which he completed in 1656.

In the next year, Corneille published Trois discours sur le poème dramatique (Three Discourses on Dramatic Poetry), which were, in part, defenses of his style.

They included La Toison d'or [fr] (The Golden Fleece, 1660), Sertorius (1662), Othon (1664), Agésilas (1666), and Attila (1667).

[6] Voltaire's proposal to the Académie described Corneille as doing for the French language what Homer had done for Greek: showing the world that it could be a medium for great art.

[4] Voltaire was driven to defend classic French literature in the face of increasingly popular foreign influences such as William Shakespeare.

By the second edition, published ten years later, Voltaire had come to a more negative assessment of Corneille and a stronger view on the need for objective criticism.

[8] In Episode 31 of the 1989 video lecture series, “The Western Tradition”, UCLA Professor Eugen Weber offers further commentary on Mssr.

Because a gentleman who got into a fight could not admit that he was wrong, but if you started by stipulating that his motives were honorable, he would at least stop to consider your argument, which is what Corneille achieved by raising the debate to a higher plane.