I'm producing a scholarly edition of Kenneth Burke's essays on
Shakespeare. Part of this process involves tracking down every
reference he makes to other works. I've pinpointed nearly all of them,
but one related to the French 17th century dramatist Pierre Corneille
continues to elude me. I've been in contact with perhaps a dozen
Corneille scholars, none of whom recognize the reference. I recently
spent some time at the Burke estate in New Jersey but was unable to
find an edition of Corneille there, to my regret. Friends have scanned
for me numerous introductions to editions of ?Cinna,? and I?ve tried
searching JSTOR, EEBO, Amazon, Google Print, etc. without any luck.

This edition would have to have been first published BEFORE 1951,
since that's the date of Burke?s essay (on "Othello" -- full
bibliographical details below) in which the quotation first appeared.
From the context of what Burke cites (given below), it sounds as if he
were paraphrasing a FRENCH editor's introduction to Corneille's play
"Cinna" (or [an important alternative that I?ve been considering,
given some indications in Burke?s draft of the essay] perhaps
Corneille's "First Discourse" [?Premier Discours?] on drama), and
translating it himself into English (Burke translated Gide and other
authors from the French, so this would not have been difficult for him
to do).

Here is Burke's passage, from the 1951 "Hudson Review" essay on "Othello":

? References to the Corneillian structure might also assist us here.
One Corneille editor[WHO?] who sums up the structure of the five acts
could be translated freely thus: [the following is what needs to be
located precisely:]
The first act makes clear the location of the action, the relations
among the heroic figures (their situation), their interests, their
characteristic ways, their intentions.
The second gets the plot under way (_commence l?intrigue_).
In the third, it reaches its full complication (literally, ?it ties itself?).
The fourth prepares the untying (_dénouement_).
And in the fifth act this resolution is completed.[SOURCE?]

Burke later cites this editor again (I am presuming the same one,
since it is still discussing Corneille, although it could possibly be
from a different volume):

? Thus, one editor quotes Louis Racine, in his Mémoires: ??Note well
that expression,? my father said with enthusiasm to my brother. ?One
says aspire to rise (aspirer à monter); but you must know the human
heart as well as Corneille did, to be able to say of an ambitious man
that he aspires to descend.??

As I've spent countless hours on searching for this already, with many
false leads, I must require that a satisfactory answer give me the
EXACT edition (including editor, publisher, year, page number, and
full citation) where the first AND second quotations appear -- close
approximations will not be helpful. I suspect the second might be
easier to find outside of the first, but I need BOTH.


Here is the bibliographical information for Burke's essay in which
these two quotations appear:


First published as "Othello: An Essay to Illustrate a Method," The
Hudson Review 4 (Summer 1951): 165?203.

Reprinted:
Hyman, Stanley Edgar, ed. Perspectives by Incongruity. Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1964. 152-95.

Erzgraber, Willi, ed. Moderne Englische und Amerikanische
Literaturkritik. Darmstady, Germany: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1970. 294-332.

Snyder, Susan, ed. Othello: Critical Essays. New York: Garland, 1988.

Excerpted:

?Diabolism in the Play.? Harold Bloom, William Shakespeare?s Othello.
New York: Chelsea House, 1996. 44?46.

Pechter, Edward, ed. Othello: A Norton Critical Edition. New York: Norton, 2004.