Pierre Corneille, who had moved from his native Rouen to Paris in 1629, had soon become one of the leading playwrights of the French stage.

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

Corneille describes his variety of comedy as une peinture de la conversation des honnêtes gens ("a painting of the conversation of the gentry").

His first true tragedy was Médée, produced in 1635.

Corneille had been selected in 1634 to write verses for Cardinal Richelieu’s visit to Rouen.

The Cardinal, taking notice of Corneille, had selected him to be among Les Cinq Auteurs (“The Five Poets”; also translated as “the society of the five authors”).

Also included in this collective were Guillaume Colletet, Boisrobert, Jean Rotrou, and Claude de Lestoile, selected to realize Richelieu's vision of a new kind of drama that emphasized virtue.

Richelieu would present ideas, which the writers would express in dramatic form.

However, the Cardinal's demands were too restrictive for Corneille, who attempted to innovate outside the boundaries defined by Richelieu.

This had led to contention between playwright and employer.

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

In the years directly following this break with Richelieu, Corneille had produced what is considered his finest play, Le Cid, based on the 1621 play Mocedades del Cid by Guillem de Castro.

Both plays are based on the legend of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (nicknamed El Cid Campeador), a military figure in the Spanish Reconquista. The original 1637 edition of the play was subtitled a tragicomedy, acknowledging that it intentionally defies the classical tragedy/comedy distinction.

Le Cid, though its has been an enormous popular success, is the subject of a heated polemic over the norms of dramatic practice, known as the Querelle du Cid or The Quarrel of Le Cid.

Richelieu's Académie Française acknowledges the play's success, but determines that it is defective, in part because it does not respect the classical unities of time, place, and action (Unity of Time stipulates that all the action in a play must take place within a twenty-four hour timeframe; Unity of Place, that there must be only one setting for the action; and Unity of Action, that the plot must be centered around a single conflict or problem).

The newly formed Académie is a body that asserts state control over cultural activity.

Although it usually deals with efforts to standardize the French language, Richelieu himself had ordered an analysis of Le Cid.

Accusations of immorality are leveled at the play in the form of a famous pamphlet campaign.

These attacks are founded on the classical theory that the theater is a site of moral instruction.

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 had harshly criticized the play in his Observations sur le Cid (1637).

The controversy grows too much for Corneille, who decides to return to Rouen.