1677 tragedy by Racine
Phedre
(
French:
[f?d?]
; originally
Phedre et Hippolyte
) is a French dramatic
tragedy
in five acts written in
alexandrine
verse by
Jean Racine
, first performed in 1677 at the
theatre of the Hotel de Bourgogne
in Paris.
Composition and premiere
[
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]
With
Phedre
, Racine chose once more a subject from
Greek mythology
, already treated by Greek and Roman tragic poets, notably by
Euripides
in
Hippolytus
and
Seneca
in
Phaedra
.
As a result of an intrigue by the
Duchess of Bouillon
and other friends of the aging
Pierre Corneille
, the play was not a success at its premiere on 1 January 1677 at the
Hotel de Bourgogne
, home of the
royal
troupe of actors in
Paris
. Indeed, a rival group staged a play by the now forgotten playwright
Nicolas Pradon
on an almost identical theme. After
Phedre
, Racine ceased writing plays on secular themes and devoted himself to the service of religion and the king until 1689, when he was commissioned to write
Esther
by
Madame de Maintenon
, the
morganatic
second wife of
Louis XIV
.
[1]
Characters
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]
Names of characters in French, with their equivalents in English:
- Thesee, or
Theseus
, King of Athens
- Phedre, or
Phaedra
, wife of Thesee, daughter of
Minos
and
Pasiphae
and sister of
Ariadne
- Hippolyte, or
Hippolytus
, son of Thesee and
Antiope
, Queen of the
Amazons
- Aricie, or
Aricia
, princess of the royal blood of Athens
- Œnone, or Oenone, nurse and confidante of Phedre
- Theramene, or Theramenes, tutor of Hippolyte
- Ismene, confidante of Aricie
- Panope, lady-in-waiting to Phedre
Synopsis
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]
The play is set at the royal court in
Troezen
, on the Peloponnesus coast in Southern Greece. In the absence of her royal husband Thesee, Phedre ends by declaring her love to Hippolyte, Thesee's son from a previous marriage.
Act 1
. Following Theseus's six-month absence, his son Hippolytus tells his tutor Theramenes of his intention to leave Troezen in search of his father.
When pressed by Theramenes, he reveals that the real motive is his forbidden love for Aricia, sole survivor of the royal house supplanted by Theseus and under a vow of chastity against her will. During her husband's absence, Phedre has become consumed by an illicit but overpowering passion for her stepson Hippolytus, which she has kept as a dark secret. Close to death and reeling about half-dementedly, under pressure from her old nurse Oenone she explains her state, on condition that she be permitted to die rather than face dishonour. The death of Theseus is announced with the news that his succession is in dispute. Oenone urges her mistress that, since her love for her stepson is now legitimate, she should form an alliance with him, if only for the future benefit of the infant son of her own flesh.
Act 2
. With fresh hope for her liberty, Aricia reveals to her maidservant Ismene her feelings towards Hippolytus, who promptly appears to declare his love for her. Their discourse is interrupted by Phedre, who distraughtly pleads for the rights of her infant son, explaining her coldness and personal despair. Suddenly entering a trance-like state overcome by emotion, she involuntarily confesses her hidden passions to her horrified dumb-struck stepson. Sensing rejection, she leaves in a wild frenzy, demanding Hippolytus' sword to end her torment. Theramenes brings news to Hippolytus that Theseus might still be alive.
Act 3
. In desperation Phedre sends word to Hippolytus inviting him to share the crown of Athens. However, Oenone brings her the devastating news that Theseus has returned in perfect health. To avert Phedre's deathwish and her possible betrayal by Hippolytus, Oenone urges that a story should be concocted around his abandoned sword. Seeing Hippolytus by Theseus' side, Phedre grants Oenone free rein. After his long period in captivity, Theseus is surprised by the cold reception from his wife and son, each anxious to conceal their passions: Phedre, consumed by guilt; and Hippolytus, anxious to distance himself from his stepmother's advances, but unable to tell his father of his love for Aricia.
Act 4
. Theseus has just been told by Oenone that Hippolytus has attempted to take Phedre by force. Overcome by rage, Theseus banishes Hippolytus and invokes the god
Neptune
, who has promised to grant any wish of Theseus, to avenge him by his son's death. Protesting his innocence, Hippolytus discloses his secret love for Aricia to his incredulous father and leaves in despair. Fearing that she might be guilty for Hippolytus' death, Phedre determines to reveal the truth to her husband, until she is told of Hippolytus' love for Aricia. Consumed by jealousy, she refuses to defend Hippolytus further, leaving his father's curse to run its course. When Oenone tries to make light of her mistress's illicit love, Phedre in a towering rage accuses her of being a poisonous scheming monster and banishes her from her
presence.
Act 5
. Hippolytus takes his leave of Aricia, promising to marry her in a temple outside Troezen. On witnessing the tenderness of their parting, Theseus begins to have doubts about his son's guilt. He decides to question Oenone, but it is too late: Oenone has thrown herself to the waves. Theramenes brings news of his son's death: Hippolytus' departing chariot has been interrupted by a terrifying horned monster rising from the waves; mortally wounded by Hippolytus, its death throes drive his horses into a wild frenzy; in their flight, the chariot is dashed against the rocks and their master dragged helplessly to his death. In the closing scene, Phedre, now calm, appears before Theseus to confess her guilt and to confirm Hippolytus's innocence. She finally succumbs to the effects of a self-administered draught of
Medean
poison, taken to rid the world of her impurity. As an act of atonement and in respect for his son's parting promise, Theseus pardons Aricia and adopts her as his daughter.
Phedre's ancestry and its curse
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The genealogy of Phedre gives a number of indications as to her character's destiny. Descended from
Helios
, god of the Sun, and
Pasiphae
, she nevertheless avoids being in the judgmental presence of the sun throughout the play. The simultaneous absence of a god-figure combined with the continual presence of one has been extensively explored in
Lucien Goldmann
's
Le Dieu cache
. This sense of patriarchal judgment is extended to Phedre's father,
Minos
, who is responsible for weighing the souls of the dead upon their arrival in
Hades
.
Phedre is right to fear judgment; she is driven to an incestual love for her stepson Hippolytus, much like the other women in her family, who tended to experience desires generally considered taboo. Her mother, Pasiphae was cursed by
Aphrodite
to fall in love and mate with a white bull, giving rise to the legendary
Minotaur
. Phedre meets
Theseus
, her future husband, when he arrives on the Minoan scene to kill the monstrous Minotaur; by doing so, he is killing her half-brother.
Reception
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Phedre
has been widely regarded as masterly, due to its tragic construction, deeply observed characters, richness of the verse, as well as the interpretation of the title role by
Marie Champmesle
.
[
opinion
]
Voltaire
called it "the masterpiece of the human mind."
[2]
[3]
Contrary to Euripides, Racine has Phedre die on stage at the end of the play; she thus has had time to learn of the death of Hippolyte. The character of Phedre is considered one of the most remarkable in Racine's tragic
oeuvre
. The instrument of others' suffering, she is also the victim of her own impulses, a figure that inspires both terror and pity.
Certain lines from the play, such as "
la fille de
Minos
et de
Pasiphae
" ("the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae"), have become classics in the French language; but despite the celebrated musicality of the alexandrine, Racine never wrote poetry just for the sake of beauty of sound. In the character of Phedre, he could combine the consuming desire inherited from her mother with the mortal fear of her father,
Minos
, judge of the dead in
Hades
. Despite its author's silence from 1677 to 1689, as time progressed
Phedre
became one of the most famous of his plays. It is now one of the most frequently staged tragedies from the seventeenth century.
In his work
Le Dieu cache
, the 20th century author
Lucien Goldmann
extrapolates social theories of the role of the divine in French consciousness from thematic elements in
Phedre
. Although
Phedre
is perhaps less often studied at high school level in France than
Britannicus
or
Andromaque
, it is still frequently performed, and the eponymous role has been played by actresses such as
Sarah Bernhardt
and
Isabelle Huppert
.
Adaptations
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Stage
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]
The French
baroque
composer
Jean-Philippe Rameau
's first
opera
Hippolyte et Aricie
(1733) was based on Racine's
Phedre
, as was
Simon Mayr
's 1820 opera
Fedra
.
The British poet laureate
Ted Hughes
produced a highly regarded
free verse
translation of
Phedre
. This version was staged shortly before his death with
Diana Rigg
playing the title role. Another English production of the Hughes translation premiered at the
Royal National Theatre
in June 2009, with a cast including
Helen Mirren
as Phedre,
Dominic Cooper
as Hippolytus, and
Margaret Tyzack
as Oenone. This production was digitally telecast live to cinemas around the world.
[4]
A new translation by
Timberlake Wertenbaker
premiered at the
Stratford Shakespeare Festival
in Autumn 2009.
[5]
The Polish composer
Krzysztof Penderecki
announced that he was working on an opera of Phedre for 2014.
[6]
Novels
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]
In the nineteenth century,
Emile Zola
loosely based
La Curee
, one of his books from the
Rougon-Macquart
series (an exploration of genealogical and environmental influences upon characters), on Racine's
Phedre
.
Marcel Proust
devotes 20 pages of
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
to his experience of the
Sarah Bernhardt
Phedre
at the
Opera-Comique
in Paris.
Translations
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]
Robert Lowell
's English translation
Phaedra
was published in 1961.
[
citation needed
]
Robert David MacDonald
's English translation, titled
Phedra
, was produced at
The Old Vic
in November 1984, designed and directed by
Philip Prowse
and with
Glenda Jackson
in the title role and
Robert Eddison
as Theramenes.
[7]
[8]
[9]
Phedre
was translated by Scottish poet
Edwin Morgan
(1920?2010) into
Scots
in 2000, and won the 2001
Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize
.
[
citation needed
]
Musical settings
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Francois Mensonguee (1806-1877), the French
Romantic
composer, set a section of the second act to music for choir and organ in 1829 as his first published work.
[10]
Selected editions
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]
- Racine, Jean (1995),
Phedre
, Folio Editions,
Editions Gallimard
,
ISBN
978-2-07-038763-2
- Racine, Jean (1963),
Iphigenia/Phaedra/Athaliah
,
Penguin Books
,
ISBN
0-14-044122-0
(English translation by J. Cairncross)
- Racine, Jean (1962),
Phedre
,
Dover Books
,
ISBN
0-486-41927-4
(English translation by
Wallace Fowlie
)
- Racine, Jean (2001),
Britannicus, Phaedra, Athaliah
,
Oxford University Press
,
ISBN
0-19-283827-X
(English translation by Charles Sisson)
- Racine, Jean (2001),
Phedre
,
Nick Hern Books
,
ISBN
978-1-85459-094-7
(English translation by Julie Rose)
- Racine, Jean (1987),
Phaedra : tragedy in five acts, 1677
, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
ISBN
015675780X
(translated into English verse by
Richard Wilbur
)
- Racine, Jean (2010),
Racine's Phedre
,
ISBN
978-1453629352
(translated into English verse by Harold Anthony Lloyd)
Notes
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External links
[
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]
French
Wikisource
has original text related to this article:
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