It is a commonplace of literary history to say that in the middle of the seventeenth century the main focus of tragedy is on an investigation of human passions: and it is often assumed that this is the same thing as saying that the emphasis is on individual psychology. Manuals of literature (prepared for French schoolchildren, and often used by British undergraduates) offer a crystallisation of this view, for example: 'Le théâtre de Racine doit son intense vérité psychologique à la peinture de l'AMOUR-PASSION... Mais divers traits de leur psychologie condamnent les héros raciniens à ajouter encore à leurs souffrances' (Lagarde, 1985,291, 299). Whether or not this is a satisfactory way of reading Racine, the absence of characterisation of this kind, perceived as somehow 'solid' or 'real', is a reproach often levelled at humanist tragedy. Even sympathetic critics like Raymond Lebègue, who did so much to establish sixteenth-century theatre as worthy of our attention, could not resist scrutinising humanist tragedy hopefully, and with great goodwill, looking for a touch of psychology here, an almost 'solid' character there.

Few plays, however, can be salvaged in this way; there are other, more positive ways of approaching the absence of detailed psychological verisimilitude in humanist tragedy, and that offered by the rhetoric-critics is only one possibility.