Robert Garnier

Born in La Ferté-Bernard around 1545 and dying in Le Mans in 1590, Robert Garnier studied law at Toulouse and won early notice for his poetry in the Académie des Jeux Floraux. He later worked in law and royal service, but his lasting reputation rests on his writing for the stage.

Garnier became one of the most important tragic dramatists of sixteenth-century France. His plays, shaped by classical models and especially associated with the high style of Renaissance tragedy, were long seen as the summit of French tragic drama before Corneille and Racine.

Works such as Les Juives and Bradamante show both sides of his achievement: powerful tragedies and an early French tragicomedy. His writing reflects the tensions of the French Wars of Religion, which helps give his theater its sense of moral weight and historical urgency.