`titrebThomas Corneille’s Stilicon : from Tale of Cruelty to Gallant Pleasure in Ingenuity`/titrebThomas Corneille’s gallant rewriting of the death of Stilicon, a general in the Roman army, using as sources the accounts by Orose and Zosime, operates at several levels. He first rewrites the subject, since he adapts his characters to the ideals of gallantry by conceiving a sentimental plot dominated by “respectful adoration”, as described by A. Génetiot, and by secrecy, through the use of a mysterious letter, the tragic version of all those minor gallant texts which aim at the display of wit. But Thomas Corneille’s major transformation is to harmonise the play’s construction and drama with the requirements of gallantry : all violent action is confined to the intervals in order not to “upset” the audience’s sense of decorum ; the play’s plot, which takes the shape of an enigma where the audience is from the start the accomplice of the conspirator, and where the issue is when and how the emperor, Honorius, will unmask the perpetrator, stimulates the audience’s shrewdness. Thus the spirit of gallantry blows more through the pleasures of sensibility and ingenuity it offers than through the action it represents.