Phèdre
EN302: European Theatre
Racine’s life
1639: Born in La Ferté-Milon; orphaned at a young age and lives
with his grandparents
1649: Racine’s grandmother joins the Jansenist convent of PortRoyal-des-Champs upon the death of her husband. Racine
educated at Port-Royal 1655-8.
1659: Racine begins his literary career in Paris
1664: Writes La Thébaïde for Molière’s theatre
1665-77: Writes a string of successful tragedies for performance
both at court and at the Hôtel de Bourgogne
1677: Writes Phèdre (under the original title Phèdre et Hippolyte) and
then retires from the ‘profane theatre’. Marries Catherine de
Romanet, and is appointed historiographer to Louis XIV
1699: Dies and is buried (as stipulated in his will) at Port-Royal
Racine and the theatre
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‘Racine is one of those great dramatic poets (Byron was another)
who had no natural liking for the theatre. … He moved from
public drama to private performance and then to silence.’
(Steiner 1980: 76)
Nearly joined priesthood in 1661.
Estranged himself from his Jansenist relatives and teachers upon
entering the professional theatre.
Self-consciously literary (rather than theatrical).
Withdrew from the professional theatre altogether in 1677:
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Religious conversion? Racine would later claim (in 1698) that his aunt
rescued him from fifteen years of ‘distractions and miseries’, a period of
time which roughly corresponds with the length of his theatrical career.
Social aspirations? Racine was named historiographer to the king (and
remunerated very generously) in 1677.
Neo-classical tragedy
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Racine wrote almost exclusively within the genre of neo-classical
tragedy.
In his Preface to Phèdre, he described classical tragedy as ‘a
school in which virtue was taught not less well than in the
schools of the philosophers’:
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It would be greatly to be desired that modern writings were as sound and
full of useful precepts as the works of these poets. This might perhaps
provide a means of reconciling to tragedy a host of people famous for
their piety and their doctrine who have recently condemned it and who
would no doubt pass a more favourable judgement on it if writers were as
keen to edify their spectators as to amuse them, thereby complying with
the real purpose of tragedy.
Racine’s view of tragedy is founded upon reason, decorum and
moral utility.
Political context
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Foundation of the Académie française under Louis XIII in 1635:
imposition of orthodoxy in literature and the arts. Key authors
(including Pierre Corneille) worked under the direct supervision
of Cardinal Richelieu.
Louis XIV’s suppression of aristocratic dissent following the
Fronde:
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‘The vogue of sensibility and taste for lavish entertainment and spectacle
were congenial to an autocratic regime which sought to encourage the
creation of a culture of brilliance and prestige, and preferred to have the
nobility harmlessly occupied at court rather than plotting in their
domains.’ (James & Jorndorf 1994: 5)
French cultural superiority: Louis XIV styled himself as a
modern Alexander or Caesar, so Parisian cultural activity was to
be commensurate with that of classical Athens and Rome.
Neo-classical poetics
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Lodovico Castelvetro’s Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposta
(Aristotle’s Poetics Vernacularized and Expounded), 1570: about 20
times the length of Aristotle’s incomplete Poetics.
It was the main source for neo-classical ideas about the ‘three
unities’: time, place, and action (Aristotle, in fact, made no
mention of place at all).
Castelvetro argued that the unities were necessary components
of realism.
French neo-classical dramatic theory:
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The Abbé d’Aubignac’s La Pratique du théâtre (1657)
Corneille’s three Discours (1660)
Debates surrounding morality, verisimilitude, and reason.
Focus on establishing rules.
Previous versions of the play
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Euripides’ Hippolytus (429 BC)
 Story of Aphrodite (goddess of
love) vs. Artemis (goddess of
chastity and hunting)
 Hippolytus as protagonist who
has offended Aphrodite
 Phaedra is ashamed of her
feelings and determined to
resist them
 Phaedra’s nurse declares her
mistress’ feelings to Hippolytus
 Phaedra hangs herself halfway
through the play, leaving a
letter to incriminate Hippolytus
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Robert Garnier’s Hippolyte (1573) and later versions in the seventeenth century
(see Short 1998: 24)
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Seneca’s Phaedra (c. AD 50)
 More focused on mortal
passion than immortal conflict
 Phaedra is more wilfully lustful
and tries to seduce Hippolytus
 She reveals her love herself,
and also accuses Hippolytus
herself (Racine borrows the
plot element concerning
Hippolyus’ sword from this
play)
 Phaedra commits suicide after
hearing of Hippolytus’ death
Racine’s changes
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Invention of Aricia: Hippolytus was dedicated to
chastity in previous versions. Racine describes
Hippolytus’ love as his ‘one weakness’.
Expansion of the role of the nurse (named here as
Oenone):
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‘I felt that calumny was somewhat too low and foul to be put
in the mouth of a princess whose sentiments were otherwise
so noble and virtuous. This baseness seemed to me to be
more appropriate to a nurse, who could well have more slavelike inclinations, and who nevertheless launches this false
accusation only in order to save the life and honour of her
mistress.’ (Preface to Phèdre)
Tragic protagonists
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Racine’s Preface to Iphigénie:
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‘How could I possibly have sullied the stage with the
horrible murder of so virtuous and lovable a person
as Iphigenia had necessarily to be in this play?’
Racine replaced her with a figure who ‘deserves
to be punished, without being, however,
altogether unworthy of compassion’.
Phaedra as ‘coupable innocente’
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The ‘coupable innocent’: ‘characters who feel themselves guilty
when they are not, or whose responsibility for their actions is
open to question.’ (James & Jorndorf 1994: 13)
PHAEDRA. I know my baseness, and do not belong / To those bold
wretches who with brazen front / Can revel in their crimes unblushingly.
(p. 184)
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Racine considered Phaedra a character who possessed ‘all the
qualities required by Aristotle in a tragic hero’:
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For Phaedra is neither entirely guilty nor altogether innocent. She is
involved by her destiny, and by the anger of the gods, in an unlawful
passion at which she is the very first to be horrified. She makes every
effort to overcome it.
Her crime, he concludes, ‘is a punishment of the gods rather
than an urge flowing from her own will’ (Preface to Phèdre).
Compare with characterisations in Euripides and Seneca?
Passion and reason
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Phaedra’s mother and father symbolise two different drives: the
sexual (Pasiphaë’s passion for the Bull) and moral judgement
(Minos).
These conflicting drives are staged throughout the play:
PHAEDRA. …reason reigns no longer over me… I have lost my selfdominion. (p. 180-1)
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James and Jorndorf discuss the play’s ‘sense of hopeless anguish’:
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If the gods are to be taken as symbolic of forces at work within human
beings, then those forces must be seen as alien, as forces which possess
and obsess, not as part of an integrated personality. Phèdre herself is not
merely torn between passion and conscience, but harassed by them.
(1994: 88)
Passion and reason
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Steiner on Phaedra’s passionate words when she
learns she has a rival:
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The coming to Athens of the daughter of Minos has
opened the gates of reason on to an alien and
barbaric world. Now they are flung wide. By force of
incantation, the maddened queen brings into the
seventeenth-century playhouse presences begotten
of chaos and ancient night. … Every touch adds to
our awareness that the action has been invaded by
elemental and daemonic presences. (1980: 92)
Theological ideas
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Jocasta in Racine’s La Thébaïde: ‘This is the justice of the mighty
gods: / They lead us to the edge of the abyss; / They make us
sin, but do not pardon us.’
Phaedra as both driven and judged by forces beyond her control:
‘Heaven lit in my heart an ill-omened fire’ (p. 213)
Moral ambivalence over the gods’ justice: ‘Fear, my lord, fear lest
the unbending heavens / Hate you enough to grant you your
desire.’ (p. 207)
Depiction of a cruel, pre-Christian universe?
Cairncross argues that it was not necessary for Racine ‘to jettison
everything that he had learned at Port Royal in order to achieve
greatness in tragedy. On the contrary, the theory that man had
small chance of salvation if unaided by divine grace was
admirably suited to that art form’ (2004: 18).
Theological ideas
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Phaedra was described by the Jansenist theologian Arnauld as
‘one of the just to whom grace was not vouchsafed’ (Cairncross
2004: 23-4)
Readings of the play as Jansenist: humans as fundamentally
corrupt, and driven by forces beyond our control
However, James and Jorndorf argue that Jansenist interpretations
of the play raise difficulties:
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…the lines spoken by Oenone to Phèdre, which are cited in evidence:
‘Vous aimez. On ne peut vaincre sa destinee. / Par un charme fatal vous
futes entrainee’ (IV.vi.1297). [You are in love. We cannot change our
destiny. You were carried away by a fateful spell] express an unqualified
fatalism and magical beliefs which are totally un-Christian. (1994: 85-6)
Space in Phèdre
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Setting: liminal, a space of transition
Hippolytus is constantly trying to leave the stage (‘How
his whole being hankered to be gone’, p. 180)
Phaedra’s first entrance (she sits down)
Phaedra is unable to leave the space (p. 155; ‘Even now
I feel these very walls, these vaults, / Will soon give
tongue and, with accusing voice, / Await my husband
to reveal the truth.’ p. 184)
Theseus at the end: ‘Let me flee, far from you and from
these shores, / The bloody vision of my mangled son…
Would I were in another universe!’ (p. 213)
Space and material conditions
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Visibility problems – sightlines, lights – lend
themselves to verbal drama
Candles and shadows
Symbolism of light in the play:
Sun as unrelenting, omniscient witness
 Phaedra as both afraid of and longing for light (pp.
151, 154): ‘You hate the daylight you came forth to
see’ (p. 155)
 Light as unforgiving (p. 156)
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Time in Phèdre
Helios (Sun)
Aegeus
Hippolyta
Theseus
Hippolytus
Minos
Phaedra
Pasiphaë
Ariadne
Bull
Minotaur
Time in Phèdre
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Back story:
Ancestry
 Theseus and the Minotaur
 Theseus’ womanising past
 Phaedra seeing Hippolytus for the first time
 Theseus’ departure
 Phaedra’s pining
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Tension in time: awaiting revelations (p. 160)
Action in Phèdre
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Racine gave his approbation to ‘dramatic action’ which
is ‘sustained only by the interests, feelings, and passions
of the characters’ (Preface to Bérénice).
He described Phèdre as ‘probably the clearest and most
closely-knit play I have written’ (Preface to Phèdre)
Structure:
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Exposition
Slow teasing out of revelations
Peripeteia (Theseus’ return)
Phaedra, Hippolytus and Theseus share the stage just once
(pp. 186-7), halfway through the play
Speech acts
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Rose describes the play as a ‘tragedy of language’ (2001:
xxv)
Speech acts:
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Before the play starts: Neptune’s promise to Theseus;
Theseus’ decree regarding Aricia; Theseus’ and Phèdre’s
marriage vows.
During the play: confessions, news, declarations of love,
commands, persuasion, the false accusation, the curse.
The audience do not hear the play’s key speech act (the false
accusation).
Even the refusal to speak is an action (‘All I need is your
silence to succeed’, p. 186)
Speech in Phèdre
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Formal, contained style
Descriptions of elemental passions
Images of uncontrolled momentum
‘All that happens, happens inside language.’ (Steiner
1980: 96)
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‘Racine poured molten metal into his unbending forms. At
every moment, one expects the structure to yield under stress,
but it holds, and this expectation is itself conducive to
excitement.’ (Steiner 1980: 80)
References
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Cairncross, John (2004) ‘Jean Racine’ in Racine, Jean, Iphigenia,
Phaedra and Athaliah, London: Penguin Classics, pp. 11-27.
Howarth, William D. (1995) ‘French Renaissance and NeoClassical Theatre’ in John Russell Brown [ed.] The Oxford
Illustrated History of the Theatre, Oxford: OUP, pp. 220-51.
James, Edward & Jondorf, Gillian (1994) Landmarks of World
Literature: Racine: Phèdre, Cambridge: CUP.
Rose, Julie (2001) ‘Introduction’ to Jean Racine, Phedra, Drama
Classics, London: Nick Hern, pp. v-xxxiii
Short, J. P. (1998) Racine: Phèdre; critical guides to French texts,
London: Grant & Cutler.
Steiner, George (1980) The Death of Tragedy, Oxford: OUP.
Williford, Christa (2006) Playhouses of 17th-Century Paris,
http://people.brynmawr.edu/cwillifo/pscp/index.htm