Pierre Corneille was the greatest French dramatist of the seventeenth century — a renegade who defied the rules of neoclassicism to write plays of genuine spiritual power. Polyeucte (1643) is his masterwork: a drama of faith, martyrdom, and grace that has outlasted every critic who dismissed it.

The play follows Pauline, daughter of a Roman Governor, and her husband Polyeucte — an Armenian nobleman newly converted to the Christian faith. In a fervent act of devotion, Polyeucte desecrates the Roman Temple and tears down the statues of the gods. The law demands repentance or death. Polyeucte refuses. What follows is a collision of faith, empire, love, and law — culminating in a visitation of grace upon the land of Armenia.

A production of Polyeucte was mounted in November 2008 at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina — directed by Scot Lahaie, with sets by Prof. Christopher Keene and costumes by Erin Mann. The translation used was a new English translation by Ute S. Lahaie and Scot Lahaie, published by Clay Tablet Creative in 2020.