Pierre du Ryer was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 dramatist.

He was born in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. His early comedies are loosely modelled on those of Alexandre Hardy

Alexandre Hardy

Alexandre Hardy was a French dramatist, one of the most prolific of all time. He claimed to have written some six hundred plays, but only thirty-four are extant....

, but after the production of the Cid (1636) he became an imitator of Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

; this was the period when he produced his masterpiece Scévole, probably in 1644 (the date generally given is 1646). Alcione (1638) was so popular that the abbé d'Aubignac

François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac

François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac was a French author who was born in Paris.His father practised at the Paris bar, and his mother was a daughter of the great surgeon Ambroise Paré...

 knew it by heart, and Queen Christina of Sweden

Christina of Sweden

Christina , later adopted the name Christina Alexandra, was Queen regnant of Swedes, Goths and Vandals, Grand Princess of Finland, and Duchess of Ingria, Estonia, Livonia and Karelia, from 1633 to 1654. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolph and his wife Maria Eleonora...

is said to have had it read to her three times in one day.

Du Ryer was a prolific dramatist. Among his other works were Saul (printed 1642), and a comedy, Les Vendanges de Suresnes (1635 or 1636). He died in Paris.