Le Cid

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1636

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Summary

Act Summaries & Analyses

Act I

Act II

Act III

Act IV

Act V

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Moral Obligations of Honor

The characters in Le Cid are bound by objective moral laws and obligations to justice and duty. They live by a strict code of honor, defined by social expectations of valor, ability and accomplishment, social rank, and righteous action according to the moral norms of their time. Honor is a supreme value for these characters, more important than life itself; as the Count says, “men may reduce me to live without happiness, but they cannot compel me to live without honor” (13). When Rodrigo gains distinction on the battlefield, he is adding to his honor.

For example, the Infanta considers marrying Rodrigo, a nobleman, unworthy of her honor as a princess. When Diego receives the honor of becoming tutor to the prince, the Count insults him, which he takes as an offense against his personal honor and implication that he is undeserving of the appointment. In the moral code of Le Cid, an insult to one’s honor must be avenged. Honor is also a value that is transferrable via kinship; when Diego is insulted, Rodrigo is obliged to avenge his honor, and Rodrigo’s valor on the battlefield brings honor to his family by contrast. After killing the Count in the duel, Chimène feels duty-bound to avenge her father by punishing Rodrigo. Thus, the characters in Le Cid are chiefly preoccupied in protecting their own honor or the honor of their friends and kin.

Yet at one point, the King offers an alternative view by saying that “the Count will not part with his glory by obeying me” (19). The King here voices the possibility that honor is not an inflexible principle. Similarly, at the end of the play Rodrigo bests Sancho in the duel but does not deem it necessary to kill him to preserve his honor. In the last line of the play, the King hopes that Rodrigo will overcome his “scrupulous feeling of honor” (48), thus breaking the vicious cycle that has affected all the play’s characters.

Through the King, Corneille also contrasts the chivalric traditions of knighthood, which are bound by honor, and the laws and power of kingly rule. In Act IV Chimène appeals to the “ancient custom” of having two knights fight a duel to solve the play’s dilemma. The King objects to this custom because it is destructive: It “weakens a kingdom of its best warriors” and “often crushes the innocent and shields the guilty” (38). The practice of noblemen settling their differences by dueling, as seen earlier with the Count and Diego, contrasts with the more cool-headed, orderly sense of justice embodied by the King and his council, even if duels are an accepted means of proving or maintaining honor. Military matters and affairs of state operate by different rules; as the King tells Sancho, “You speak as a soldier—I must act as a King” (19).

The King sees the Count and Diego’s feud, and the obsession with honor which enables it, as a threat to his power: “to impugn my choice is to challenge me, and to make an attempt upon the supreme power” (19). The triumph of mercy in Rodrigo and Sancho’s duel, and the King’s delivery of the final words of the play, suggest that his orderly and compassionate vision of justice will prevail in the future, and that notions of honor will become secondary to logical reasoning.

Love Versus Duty

The conflict between love and duty permeates the play, affecting most of the major characters. The Infanta loves Rodrigo yet feels that her duty as a princess demands that she marry someone of higher rank. Leonora reminds her that marrying Rodrigo is not socially acceptable: “What would the King say?—what would Castile say?” (6).

Rodrigo feels the conflict between love and duty when the Count insults his father’s honor and his father enjoins him to take revenge. Rodrigo is torn between his duty to his father and his love for Chimène. He knows that fighting the Count will endanger his relationship with Chimène, but his conscience will not permit him to leave his father unavenged. Later, Rodrigo fulfills his duty to the King and his country by leading an army to fight the Moors. Rodrigo hopes that this will impress Chimène enough to win back her love; thus, he hopes that the conflict between love and duty will be solved.

Chimène’s sense of duty to her father compels her to avenge his death by having Rodrigo killed, even though she loves him. Later, after Rodrigo becomes a great warrior, the Infanta tells Chimène to stop prosecuting him: If Rodrigo died, the country would lose its best warrior and might fall into the hands of its enemies. In other words, Chimène’s sense of duty to her father must give way to a larger concern for the country’s welfare. In all these instances, personal issues intertwine with political ones. The relationship of Rodrigo and Chimène casts a wider net, affecting the security of the country in the face of the Moorish threat.

At the end of the play, the audience is led to wonder which force is stronger, love or duty. In doing his duty on the battlefield and in his duel with Sancho, has Rodrigo atoned for killing the Count? Does the “perfect love” of Rodrigo and Chimène make up for the misdeed? The play does not answer these questions definitively but proposes that, with time, the two opposing forces might be brought to reconciliation through less violent means.

Sacrifice as Moral Good

Closely related to the law of honor is the idea that offenses must be atoned for, which the play often frames in terms of revenge. Crime or personal insults must be met with punishment or an expiatory death. Thus, in Chimène’s view, Rodrigo must be punished with the death penalty for killing her father; nothing less will suffice to make up for the crime, and the possibility of Rodrigo going unpunished is inadmissible. Rodrigo too subscribes to this idea, as shown in his offering Chimène the opportunity to kill him in penitence for killing the Count. The concepts of forgiveness and mercy do not figure into the scheme of the play, except at the end: Rodrigo decides to spare Sancho’s life after beating him in their duel and is himself absolved of wrongdoing on account of his own personal accomplishments, thus contradicting the need for sacrificial atonement.

At times, sacrifice in the play is also presented as altruism, rather than exclusively connected to atonement. This is seen in Rodrigo’s going to war on behalf of his country. Rodrigo knows he might die in battle, yet defending the honor and safety of Castile is more important to him than his own life or his personal dilemma with Chimène. In addition, Rodrigo willingly offers to sacrifice his own life for the sake of Chimène’s honor, in Act III, Scene 4. Corneille presents self-sacrifice as a noble endeavor, important both to the much-critiqued notion of honor and to Corneille’s logically grounded notion of the King’s political power.