GARNIER, ROBERT (c. 1545-c. 1600), French tragic poet, was born at Ferte Bernard (Le Maine). He published his first work while still a law-student at Toulouse, where he won a prize in the jeux floraux. It was a collection of lyrical pieces, now lost, entitled Plaintes amoureuses de Robert Garnier After some practice at the Parisian bar, he became conseiller du roi in his native district, and later lieutenant-general criminel.
In his early plays Garnier was a close follower of the Senecan school. His pieces in this rhetorical manner are Porcie (published 1568, acted at the hotel de Bourgogne in 1S73), Cornelie and Hippolyte (both acted in 1573 and printed in 1S74). His next group of tragedies-Marc-Antoine (1578), La Troade (1579), Antigone (acted and printed 158o)-shows an advance on the theatre of Etienne Jodelle and Jacques Grevin, and on his own early plays, since the rhetoric is accompanied by some action.
In 1582 and 1583 he produced his two masterpieces Brada mante and Les Juives. In Bradamante, which alone of his plays has no chorus, he cut himself adrift from Senecan models, and sought his subject in Ariosto, the result being what came to be known later as a tragicomedy. The dramatic and romantic story becomes a real drama in Garnier's hands, though even there the lovers, Bradamante and Roger, never meet on the stage. The contest in the mind of Roger supplies a genuine dramatic interest. Les Juives has for its theme the story of the barbarous vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar on the Jewish king Zedekiah and his children. This tragedy, although almost entirely elegiac in conception, gains unity by the personality of the prophet. Faguet says that of all French tragedies of the i6th and centuries it is, with Athalie, the best constructed with regard to the requirements of the stage. Actual representation is continually in the mind of the author ; his drama is, in fact, visually conceived.
The best edition of his works is by Wendelin Foerster (Heilbronn, 4 vols., 188a-83). A detailed criticism of his works is to be found in Emile Faguet, La Tragedie francaise au X V siecle (1883, pp. 183-307).