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| Play Notes |
 Welcome to Playnotes Online - the research web resource of Court Theatre. Playnotes includes a distilled version of the rich investigative process involved in every Court production. They are, in essence, the "greatest hits" of our research into the context, history, critical thinking and development process that fuels our work.
About JoAnne Akalaitis, Director
Racine's Phèdre: Brief Sypnosis
Racine Bibliography
About the Myth of Theseus
Antiope and Hippolyte
PHÈDRE Glossary
Historical Quotations
Notes on Jansenism
Phèdre Text Development Exercise
Additional Phedre Resources
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About JoAnne Akalaitis, Director
From her work with the experimental theater group Mabou Mines to classic texts such as Life Is A Dream, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Trojan Women, and The Iphigenia Cycle, JoAnne Akalaitis has demonstrated a distinctive directorial voice and sharp sense of stage rhythm.
She is a truly versatile director, as at home with Motown—“I heard it through the grapevine”—as Art Music. She is equally at home using movement, text and music to create theater. She is also as comfortable creating original work as directing avant-garde writers and classic texts.
All of Ms. Akalaitis’ work at Court Theatre has featured distinctive directorial touches: including the introduction of the character of Kafka, the use of post-modern props like Diet Coke cans and Tylenol bottles, and a “riot grrlll” Iphegenia growling into a microphone. In Phedre, Akalaitis moves closer than with her other Court aesthetics to a clean modern aesthetic. It even uses the original French in the body of the piece, challenging the limits of translation. In other words, in moments of high passion, the original text emerges from the English.
Even though her work lately has mainly been on classic texts, Akalaitis began work as a creator of original work with the company Mabou Mines. Akalaitis’ resume is an incredible list of firsts for a female director. She also often works with female designers and assistant directors. She trail-blazed through the male dominated stages of most of America’s repertory theaters in the 1980s. Through definitive productions, she claimed plays dominated by male characters such as Henry IV Part 1 and 2. In addition to these breakthroughs, she has also “discovered” or championed some difficult classic playwrights, notably Genet and Büchner, in American theaters.
At Court Theatre, Akalaitis has directed four productions prior to Phedre: Mary Stuart, In The Penal Colony, The Iphigenia Cycle and Life’s a Dream. These productions have come about in a large part because JoAnne and Court Theatre were awarded a National Theatre Artist Residency Award from Theater Communications Group and Pew Charitable Trust.
- Celise Kalke
Quotes:
The challenge comes from what I want these plays to do to the audience who comes to see them. Theater should not be a duty, something that starts when the lights go down and stops when they come back up and you walk out feeling “that was nice.” I want it to start as soon as you arrive; it confronts you and drags you into its midst and infects you. It should stimulate us and provoke us and we go away fighting with each other about what it meant.
JoAnne Akalaitis, Court Theatre newsletter
From the start, I don’t want it (The Iphigenia Cycle) to be like a museum—unless it’s the Museum of Science and Industry where you get to put your hands all over it and be part of it.
JoAnne Akalaitis, Court Theatre newsletter
There is something very exciting about the humanity on stage, the pure exercise of composition, the thrill of arranging people. There is something in us that responds to a mass of people moving in an absolutely unified way. When I was 13 years old I remember seeing An American in Paris in Chicago. All my childhood I was obsessed with Hollywood musicals—I saw them over and over again.
JoAnne Akalaitis, Court Theatre newsletter
Akalaitis demonstrates her unique approach to directing in Women Stage Directors Speak:
For me, doing theatre is very much about the process. I love rehearsal. I love it because rehearsal is where you get lost. In rehearsal is where you fall into big black holes. You fall into that hole and you’re covered with mud and slime, and then you lift your nostrils up to try and breathe, and someone steps on your head, and then you have one finger that’s crawling out of the well and someone steps on your hand and it starts to bleed, and then you think you have a bit of a glimmer of an idea, and you fall down and have amnesia. It is very much about struggle, and not knowing, and opening the door and there’s another door, and opening that door and there’s a brick wall. It’s about getting lost, but if you are willing to get lost, you might find a way out. Then again, you might not; there’s no guarantee about any of this. It can all be a disaster, but it’s very interesting. I think it’s a life-enhancing activity. It’s a spiritual activity and it’s an activity that perhaps broadens communication. It deepens the understanding of what community is because certainly one of the most powerful aspects of theatre is that it is a communal event. You’re never lonely if you’re in the theatre. So the process is important to me.
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Racine's Phèdre: Brief Sypnosis
Act 1: Confession
Setting: Trozen, a Grecian stronghold near the sea. Childhood home of Hippolytus and Theseus.
Situation: Theseus, King of Athens, has been missing for six months. His wife, Phedre and his legitimate children are under the protection of Theseus’ son, Hippolytus. Hippolytus is the son of Theseus, King of Athens, and Antiope, a famous Amazon warrior.
Hippolytus famed throughout Greece for his aversion to women, confesses to his trusted friend, Theramenes his love for the Athenian princess, Aricia. She had six brothers, who were all killed by Theseus in order to consolidate his power in Athens. Hippolytus worries that his father will forbid the match, and also feels like he can’t move forward with courting Aricia until Theseus’ fate is known.
When Enone, Phedre’s trusted servant, comes out and says the ill Phedre wants to see the son, the men agree to leave. In her desire to preserve the dying Phedre, Enone extracts a confession from her mistress that the Goddess Venus’ foul curse of incestuous passion has been killing her. The scene is set when news of Phedre’s husband Theseus' death reaches their ears.
Act 2: Revelation
Hippolytus reveals his love to Aricia and his design to perhaps reign with her, winning in turn her reciprocation. Phedre, who on the other hand seeks Hippolytus in alliance to defend her son's claim to the throne against Aricia, (with Enone’s encouragement) reveals her love for him.
Meanwhile, rumors of Theseus still being alive persist.
Act 3: Misinterpretation
With the people of Athens choosing her son as King, Phedre hopes to win over Hippolytus, if not by love, then by the allure of the sceptre. Theseus, however is still alive (having escaped from the underworld where he was held captive) and is coldly welcomed home by both his wife and stepson. Phedre, believing that Hippolytus has already disclosed all by the look of Hippolytus' bold cold countenance, gives her blessing to Enone to tell Theseus whatever lie will preserve Phedre’s honor.
Act 4: Accusation
Enone accuses Hippolytus of attempting to rape Phedre and Theseus in his rage
banishes and curses him to the wrath of Neptune, God of the Sea. Hippolytus in vain defense confesses instead to loving Aricia and this news stops the jealous Phedre from divulging the truth to save Hippolytus from his father’s revenge. The Act closes with Phedre condemning Enone because Phedre is racked with guilt, shame and sense of sin.
Act 5: Dénouement
Theramenes reports that Hippolytus, after arranging for Aricia to meet him in exile, is attacked by a monster (half bull half dragon) sent by Neptune from the sea. Hippolytus kills the monster, but his terrified horses drag the young man to his death. Aricia arrived just in time to mourn her lover’s death. Enone extinguishes herself under the waves after suffering her mistress' denunciations of her doings. Phedre poisons herself and likewise dies but only after clearing the innocence of Hippolytus to Theseus. Theseus agrees to honor Hippolytus’s dying request and adopt Aricia as his heir.
Wayne A. Chapman, PhD,
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
adapted for Court Theatre by Celise Kalke
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Biography: From Encyclopedia Britannica
Jean-baptiste Racine (baptized Dec. 22, 1639, La Ferté-Milon, France—d. April 21, 1699, Paris), French dramatic poet and historiographer renowned for his mastery of French classical tragedy. His reputation rests on the plays he wrote between 1664 and 1677, notably Andromaque (1667), Britannicus (1669), Bérénice (1670), Bajazet (1672), and Phèdre (1677).
Life.
Racine was born into a provincial family of minor administrators. His mother died 13 months after he was born, and his father died two years later. His paternal grandparents took him in, and when his grandmother, Marie des Moulins, became a widow, she brought Racine, then age nine, with her to the convent of Port-Royal des Champs near Paris. Since a group of devout scholars and teachers had founded a school there, Racine had the opportunity—rare for an orphan of modest social origins—to study the classics of Latin and Greek literature with distinguished masters. The school was steeped in the Jansenism (a from of fatalistic Catholocism), which had recently been condemned by the church as heretical. Since the French monarchy suspected the Jansenists of being theologically and politically subversive, Racine's lifelong relationship with his former friends and teachers remained ambivalent, inasmuch as the ambitious artist sought admittance into the secular realm of court society.
Racine spent the years from 1649 to 1653 at Port-Royal, transferred to the College of Beauvais for almost two years, and then returned to Port-Royal in October 1655 to
perfect his studies in rhetoric. The school at Port-Royal was closed by the authorities in 1656, but Racine was allowed to stay on there. When he was 18 the Jansenists sponsored him to study law at the College of Harcourt in Paris. Racine had both the disposition and the talent to thrive in the cultural climate of Paris, where to conform and to please—in Racine's case, to please by his pen—were indispensable assets. One of the first manifestations of Racine's intentions was his composition of a sonnet in praise of Cardinal Mazarin, the prime minister of France, for successfully concluding a peace treaty with Spain (1659). This tribute reveals Racine's strategy of social conquest through literature.
There were three ways for a writer to survive in Racine's day: to attract a royal audience, to obtain an ecclesiastical benefice, or to compose for the theatre. The first was out of the question for the neophyte Racine, though he would eventually receive many gratuities in the course of his. In 1661 Racine tried, through his mother's family, to acquire an ecclesiastical benefice from the diocese of Uzès in Languedoc, though without success after residing there for almost two years. He then returned to Paris to try his hand as a dramatist, even if it meant estrangement from his Jansenist mentors, who disapproved of his involvement with the theatre. A reaction from them was not long in coming. In the same month that Racine's play Alexandre le grand (1665) received its premiere, his former teacher Pierre Nicole published a public letter accusing novelists or playwrights of having no more redeeming virtues than a public poisoner. Though Nicole avoided any direct reference to him, Racine believed that he was the object of Nicole's wrath and responded with a stinging open letter entitled Lettre à l'auteur des ‘Hérésies imaginaires'.
Racine's first play, Amasie, was never produced and has not survived. His career as a dramatist began with the production by Molière's troupe of his play La Thébaïde ou les frères ennemis (“The Thebaide or the Enemy Brothers”) at the Palais-Royal Theatre on June 20, 1664. Molière's troupe also produced Racine's next play, Alexandre le grand (Alexander the Great), which premiered at the Palais Royal on Dec. 4, 1665. This play
was so well received that Racine secretly negotiated with the Hôtel de Bourgogne—a rival troupe that was more skilled in performing tragedy—to present a “second premiere” of Alexandre on December 15. The break with Molière was irrevocable—Racine even seduced Molière's leading actress, Thérèse du Parc, into joining him personally and professionally—and from this point onward all of Racine's secular tragedies would be presented by the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne.
Of the three audiences that a dramatist had to win over to succeed in the theatre—the court, the general public, and the scholar critics—Racine doggedly pursued all three, though he had sharp clashes with the third group, who were mostly friends of his great rival, the older dramatist Pierre Corneille. Racine followed up his first masterpiece, Andromaque (1667), with the comedy Les Plaideurs (1668; The Litigants) before returning to tragedy with two plays set in imperial Rome, Britannicus (1669) and Bérénice (1670). He situated Bajazet (1672) in nearly contemporary Turkish history and depicted a famous enemy of Rome in Mithridate (1673) before returning to Greek mythology in Iphigénie en Aulide (1674; Iphigenia in Aulis) and the play that was his crowning achievement, Phèdre (1677). By this time Racine had achieved remarkable success both in the theatre and through it; his plays were ideally suited for dramatic expression and were also a useful vehicle for the social aspirations of their insecure and quietly driven author. Racine was the first French author to live principally on the income provided by his writings.
Within several months of the appearance of Phèdre, Racine married the pious and unintellectual Catherine de Romanet, with whom he would have two sons and five daughters. At about the same time, he retired from the commercial theatre and accepted the coveted post of royal historiographer with his friend Nicolas Boileau. Racine's withdrawal from the stage at the height of his prestige as a professional playwright probably sprang from a combination of factors. The preface he wrote for Phèdre leads one to believe that he was seeking a reconciliation with the Jansenists. He was, at the same time, leaving the socially disadvantageous situation of a playwright for the rarefied atmosphere of the court of King Louis XIV.
Having to quit the theatre to assume his new duties near the king, Racine could now afford to effect a rapprochement with the Jansenists. He may also have found it difficult to continue to respect the cardinal principle of classical art—unity. In Phèdre there is fragmentation at significant levels: cosmic, social, psychological, and physical. Since fragmentation is a subversive notion in classical art, perhaps Racine abandoned a genre to whose classical tenets he no longer subscribed.
As one of the royal historiographers, Racine chronicled Louis XIV's military campaigns in suitable prose. In 1679 he was accused by Catherine Monvoisin (called La Voisin, a famous procurer of poison for the French aristocracy who was burned at the stake) of having poisoned his mistress and star actress, the Marquise du Parc, but no formal charges were pressed and no consequences ensued. In 1672 he was elected to the French Academy, and he came to exert almost dictatorial powers over it. In 1674 he acquired the noble title of treasurer of France, and he eventually obtained the higher distinctions of ordinary gentleman of the king (1690) and secretary of the king (1696).
In response to requests from Louis XIV's consort Madame de Maintenon, Racine returned to the theatre to write two religious plays for the convent girls at Saint-Cyr: Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691). His other undertakings during his last years were to reedit, in 1687 and finally in 1697, the edition of his complete works that he had first published in 1676, and to compose, probably as his last work, the Abrégé de l'histoire de Port-Royal (“Short History of Port-Royal”). Racine died in 1699 from cancer of the liver. In a codicil to his will, he expressed his wish to be buried at Port-Royal. When Louis XIV had Port-Royal razed in 1710, Racine's remains were transferred to a tomb in the Parisian church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.
Works.
French classical tragedy pivots around two basic subjects: passion and politics. Since Racine's audience was naturally intrigued by plots that dealt with the succession to a throne, he doubled their pleasure in his first successful play, La Thébaïde, by creating two legitimate pretenders who are also identical twins. The play centres on the twin sons of Oedipus who slay one another in mortal combat, one defending, the other attacking, their native city of Thebes. The deep hatred between the two brothers sounds the notes of separation, disunion, and alienation that would characterize all Racinian tragedy. Though its structure is flawed and its characters lack inflection, La Thébaïde was already typically Racinian in several fundamental aspects. It focuses on a tight knot of characters caught in an episode near the end of a mythical or historical story. Much of the physical action is relegated to narrative reports so that the events on stage are condensed and all the more explosive by the time they reach their climax. The audience's attention is fixed on the interior conflicts of the characters, rather than on exterior events, and language is used for the subtly nuanced and dramatically memorable expression of emotions, not the recital of a plot.
Racine evidently conceived his next play, Alexandre, as his ticket to royal favor, since the audience was sure to see in the portrait of the Macedonian conqueror a reflection of the young King Louis XIV of France who, as the play suggests, could surpass Alexander by restraining his aggressive tendencies and becoming a morally superior hero who champions Roman Catholic virtues. Posterity has decreed the play a misguided attempt by Racine to pour his tragic vision into Corneille's heroic mold.
In Andromaque (1667) Racine replaced heroism with realism in a tragedy about the folly and blindness of unrequited love among a chain of four characters. The play is set in Epirus after the Trojan War. Pyrrhus vainly loves his captive, the Trojan widow Andromache, and is in turn loved by the Greek princess Hermione, who in her turn is loved by Orestes. In other words, A loves B who loves C, in typical Racinian emotional geometry. Power, intimidation, and emotional blackmail become the recourses by which these characters try to transmit the depths of their feelings to their beloved. The play was the first of Racine's major tragedies and enjoyed a public success comparable to Corneille's Le Cid 30 years before.
The three-act comedy Les Plaideurs (The Litigants) of 1668 offered Racine the challenge of a new genre and the opportunity to demonstrate his skill in Molière's privileged domain, as well as the occasion to display his expertise in Greek, of which he had better command than almost any nonprofessional classicist in France. The result, a brilliant satire of the French legal system, was an adaptation of Aristophanes' The Wasps that found much more favour at court than on the Parisian stage.
With Britannicus (1669) Racine posed a direct challenge to Corneille's specialty: tragedy with a Roman setting. Racine portrays the events leading up to the moment when the teenage emperor Nero cunningly and ruthlessly frees himself from the tutelage of his domineering mother, Agrippina, and has Britannicus, a legitimate pretender to the throne, poisoned in the course of a fatal banquet of fraternal reconciliation. Despite its failure when it premiered in 1669, Britannicus has remained one of Racine's most frequently produced dramas, especially in the 20th century.
Bérénice (1670) marks the decisive point in Racine's theatrical career, for with this play he found a felicitous combination of elements that he would use, without radical alteration, for the rest of his secular tragedies: a love interest, a relatively uncomplicated plot, striking rhetorical passages, and a highly poetic use of time. Bérénice is built around the unusual premise of three characters who are ultimately forced to live apart because of their virtuous sense of duty. In the play, Titus, who is to become the new Roman emperor, and his friend Antiochus are both in love with Berenice, the queen of Palestine. The play's “majestic sadness,” as Racine put it in his preface to the play, flows from the tragic necessity of separation for individuals who yearn for union with their beloved and who express their sorrow in some of the most haunting passages of Racine's entire oeuvre.
Racine followed the simplicity of Bérénice and its three main characters with a violent, relatively crowded production, Bajazet (1672). The play's themes of unrequited love and the struggle for power under the unrelenting pressure of time are recognizably Racinian, but its locale, the court of the Ottoman sultan in Constantinople, is the only contemporary setting used by Racine in any of his plays, and was sufficiently far removed in distance and in mores from 17th-century France to create an alluring exoticism for contemporary audiences. In the play, the main characters—the young prince Bajazet, his beloved Atalide, and the jealous sultana Roxane—are the mortal victims of the despotic cruelty of the absent sultan Amurat, whose reign is maintained by violence and secrecy.
In 1673 Racine presented Mithridate, which featured a return to tragedy with a Roman background. Mithradates VI, the king of Pontus, is the aging, jealous rival of his sons for the Greek princess Monime. The rivalry between the two brothers themselves for the love of their father's fiancée is another manifestation of the primordial tragic situation for Racine, that of warring brothers. Against the backdrop of this conflict, the play presents the demise of King Mithradates, who becomes conscious of his own eclipse as a heroic figure feared by Rome.
Despite a competing play mounted by his enemies on the same general subject, Racine's Iphigénie en Aulide (1674) was a resounding success that confirmed him as the unrivaled master of French theatre. It is an adaptation of a play by Euripides about the prospective sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father Agamemnon, but contains a happy ending in which Iphigenia is spared. Racine's deft insertion in Iphigénie of the future as an intrusive force determining the present creates a rehearsal of the Trojan War that culminates in a profound moral illumination revolving around the title character. The play's denouement, typical of Racine's practice, projects the imagination of the spectator beyond the present action to the future consequences of the acts portrayed on stage.
Phèdre (1677) is Racine's supreme accomplishment because of the rigor and simplicity of its organization, the emotional power of its language, and the profusion of its images and meanings. Racine presents Phedre as consumed by an incestuous passion for her stepson, Hippolytus. Receiving false information that her husband, King Theseus, is dead, Phedre declares her love to Hippolytus, who is horrified. Theseus returns and is falsely informed that Hippolytus has been the aggressor toward Phedre. Theseus invokes the aid of the god Neptune to destroy his son, after which Phedre kills herself out of guilt and sorrow. A structural pattern of cycles and circles in Phèdre reflects a conception of human existence as essentially changeless, recurrent, and therefore asphyxiatingly tragic. Phedre's own desire to flee the snares of passion repeatedly prompts her to contemplate a voluntary exile. References to ancient Greek mythological figures and to a wide range of geographical places lend a vast, cosmic dimension to the moral itinerary of Phedre as she suffers bitterly from her incestuous propensities and a sense of her own degradation. Phèdre constitutes a daring representation of the contagion of sin and its catastrophic results.
Esther (1689) is a biblical tragedy complete with musical choral interludes composed by Jean-Baptiste Moreau, who would serve in this same role for Racine's last play Athalie. The play shows how Esther, the wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes I), saves the Jews from a massacre plotted by the king's chief minister, Haman. With its three acts, its chorus, and its transcendent message that God and truth can be made manifest on stage, Esther breaks sharply with Racine's previous practice in tragedy. It is not one of his major works, despite the beauty of its choruses.
In Athalie (1691) Racine reverted to his customary approach. Within the one day that is always the temporal duration of his plays, a situation of human origin must be resolved by divine intervention so that the child Joas, the rightful king of Judah, will be saved from his murderous grandmother, Athalie. Athalie is a typical Racinian drama
except for the fact that fate is replaced in this instance by divine providence. The title character, Athalie, though evil, still remains admirable in her titanic struggle against this superior adversary. Of all the characters never seen on stage but who enrich Racine's texts, from Hector and Astyanax in Andromaque through Venus, Minos, Neptune, and Ariane in Phèdre, the God of the Old Testament in Athalie exerts the greatest impact on the course of dramatic events.
Assessment.
Racine has been hailed by posterity as the foremost practitioner of tragedy in French history and the uncontested master of French classicism. He became the virtuoso of the poetic metre used in 17th-century French tragedy, the alexandrine line, and paid unwavering attention to the properly theatrical aspects of his plays, from actors' diction and gestures to space and decor. Ultimately, Racine's reputation derives from his unforgettable characters who, much like their creator, betray an inferiority complex in their noble yet frustrated attempts to transcend their limitations. The Racinian view, then, is of a humanity consumed by feelings of incompleteness and by a compensatory drive for acceptance in a world of passionate self-interest. Racine's art has influenced French and foreign authors alike, among them Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, François Mauriac, Henrik Ibsen, Henry James, and Samuel Beckett.
Ronald W. Tobin
To cite this page:
"Racine, Jean" Encyclopædia Britannica
http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=63955
.
© 2002 Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.
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About the Myth of Theseus: Critical Views
Theseus is, although not the founder of Athens, the George Washington of the Athenian city state. As a youth, he rid the land of pirates and colorful brigands. As a young man, he gave himself up to be sacrificed in Crete to the Minataur, a monster half man half bull—who Theseus killed with the help of Ariadne, a Cretan princess. Theseus brought together the Greek princes to make the Athenian empire, along the way proving that through abduction and seduction there was no woman born who could resist his charm. After a famous love affair with an Amazon princess, Theseus spent his middle age with his wife, Phedre, their children, and his illegitimate son Hippolytus, ruling his kingdom when not engaged in Romantic adventures.
Celise Kalke, Court’s Classic Magazine
In (an early Euripides play), the archaic nature of Theseus’ character and his misbehavior are essential to the plot. His “wronging” of Phedre is the reason for her falling in love with Hippolytus, and thus he becomes responsible for the tragedy that results from her passion. The evils that follow are not just brought on by the gods, as they were in the later play; they are also a direct result of the natures of the main characters.
Henry J. Walker, Theseus and Athens
(Euripidies tragedies) are an examination of the difficult transition an archaic hero will have to go through before he can be accepted and internalized by the Athenian democracy.
Henry J. Walker, Theseus and Athens
Modern scholars are not sure when the (unification) of Attica occurred, though it obviously took place at some time in the prehistoric period. The Greeks themselves had no doubts; they were certain that Attica had been united during the reign of Theseus a generation before the Trojan War, and the Marmor Parium gives 1259/8 b.c. as the exact date.
Henry J. Walker, Theseus and Athens
Like the Centaurs, the Amazons are the sort of opponents the Greek heroes must defeat to prove their heroism: they are not Greek, they live on the margins of the civilized, Greek world—in this they may resemble Minos, the King of Crete and symbol of the Minoan civilization—and their customs are not those of Greeks. They are a non negligible threat and to conquer them is to reassert one’s own superior civilization.
Sophie Mills, Theseus, Tragedy and the Athenian Empire
The abduction of a non-Greek woman is evidently more acceptable than the others. Like the abduction of Helen which brought Theseus’ enemies into Attica, it naturally leads to an Amazon invasion, but this time the abductor successfully repels his enemies and Theseus marries the Amazon and has children by her. In most accounts, he married Phedre after the death of the Amazon, but Plutarch reports that in the Theied, he puts Antiope aside for Phedre: she is angry and summons her fellow Amazons to the wedding where Heracles saves Theseus and his guests from the marauding women. Both versions emphasize Theseus’ success in taming an untameable warrior woman: either her love for him causes the invasion or, when the Amazons come to bring her back, she fights on the Greeks’ side before settling down to motherhood. In this story, both aspects of Theseus play a part: he is a vigorous young man who is irresistible even to an Amazon, but also the successful incorporation of Antiope in a city to which she was originally hostile parallels the welcome offered by Athens to outsiders-even dangerous ones-in tragedy; it is often Theseus, in his role as ideal representative of the city, who welcomes such people.
Sophie Mills, Theseus, Tragedy and the Athenian Empire
Phedre has no demonstrable importance in Greek mythology beyond her role as Hippolytus’ seductive stepmother, and tradition is unanimous that Theseus was his father.
Sophie Mills, Theseus, Tragedy and the Athenian Empire
As the oldest enemy of Athens in myth, (Crete) can fittingly be portrayed as a place which represents what is foreign, different and antithetical to the virtues which were held to be pre-eminently Athenian. Its very geographical position, much further away from Athens than other tradition mythical enemies, may favour its acquisition, at least for Athenian audiences, of a kind of ‘pseudo-barbarian’ status. . . .The stories told of Crete in tragedy portray a very different world from that of the Thesean democracy. Crete is ancient, exotic and rather uncanny. The queen of Crete falls in love with a bull and gives birth to a monstrous creature. Minos is cruel and tyrannical not only in his treatment of the youths of Athens . . . .Concentration on the tyrannical behaviour of minos may also help to divert attention from any possible impropriety in Theseus’ treatment of the king’s daughter Ariadne, and it is surely no accident that the daughter of Minos who is especially well known—even notorious—in Athens is Phedre whose maternal inheritance caused so much harm to the house of Theseus, not the daughter who was wronged by Theseus.
Sophie Mills, Theseus, Tragedy and the Athenian Empire
Theseus (usually) is the champion of words against force, but has force at his command where necessary.
Sophie Mills, Theseus, Tragedy and the Athenian Empire
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Antiope and Hippolyte
Antiope. A Queen in some texts, in others, a Princess. Sister of Hippolyte, Penthesileia, and Melanippe. Her name is also confused with the first and the latter, and likewise those names are sometimes seen as synonymous with Antiope.
She may have actually been the daughter of Hippolyte, if not the daughter of Otrera, the mother of the founding Amazons; when Antiope is synonymous with Hippolyte and vice-versa, Otrera is seen as her mother or her sister. The main body of the story is that Theseus, who accompanied Hercules on his quest for Hippolyte's girdle, kidnapped Antiope after the battle for the girdle had ended and Hercules and company had escaped. Theseus and his chums stayed behind to complete this business of abduction, to return to Athens (his kingdom) with the prize: a tamed Amazon.
Other stories say she visited him on his ship and even willingly accompanied him back to Athens. Whatever may have been, the Amazons were angered, and led a massive expedition to Attica. They must have marched, because there is never any record of them having ships or possessing any sailing knowledge. It seems likely they would have had ships, for not only were they successful conquerors, they were as well a coastal population.
Apparently, Otrera launched the expedition to Athens, along with Hippolyte and Melanippe, and however long it took them to reach Attica was long enough for Antiope to love Theseus, marry him, and bear a son with him called Hippolytus (though the son could have been conceived while still at port in the Amazon home of Themiskyra, on the Black Sea).
The Amazons arrived and camped outside Athens for days, then attacked. The war was bloody, and sources variate it lasting between three months and three years. Molpadia broke into the royal court at last to seize Antiope, only to find Antiope fighting at Theseus' side, and killed her for betraying not only her people, but herself.
Alternately, Antiope found out her husband was marrying another woman (for political gain), and stormed his wedding reception in anger. There she attacked the guests before he killed her. Another version says Penthesileia accidentally killed Hippolyte here, if Hippolyte was the one Theseus kidnapped. It seems likely that it was Hippolyte that was kidnapped, hence her son's name. At battle's end, Otrera or Hippolyte called retreat, and she went to Megara and died from utter grief.
Antiope's tomb was shown in Athens for several hundred years, located near the temple of Gaea.
Hippolyte. The greatest, if not the most famous, Queen of the Amazons, who ruled the nation's capital of Themiskyra on the banks of the Thermodon River, on the south Black Sea coast. Although her name is the source of problems when it comes to figuring out exactly who she was and when she lived, the main account of her life is that she was the owner of the famous girdle that Hercules came searching for in his 9th labor.
The girdle was from her father, Ares, as symbol of her supremacy. When Hera, Queen of the Gods and enemy of Hercules, spread rumor that Hercules planned to kill the Amazons, they battled him; Hercules won, taking the girdle.
A curiosity arises in the several accounts of her name, as far as getting her mixed up with her sisters Glauce, Antiope, and Melanippe: Hippolyte may have been even a dynastic name, like that of Minos, who was thought to have been a single king who ruled Krete long before Athens was born. It was discovered that "Minos" was a title, such as "high king" or "honorable", that had belonged to a string of rulers at the "Palace of Minos" there.
Where the story diverges from the expected path at the end of the 9th labor battle, is where confusion begins. Antiope may have been given to King Theseus of Athens, who may have accompanied Hercules on his journey, as a prize. Antiope may also have been abducted at a separate time when Theseus either sailed back to the area, Antiope now Queen, or she may have stayed on with his ship after Hercules' departure, interested in taking an Amazon home with him as a trophy.
When he sailed home again, with Antiope/Hippolyte, the Amazons pursued him, and began a three month to three year sortie on Athens. Still another account says the Amazon war raged four years before Hippolyte offered peace to both sides. In that account, she is the wife of Theseus, and mother of their son Hippolytus.
Yet another story says Hippolyte led the Amazon march on Attica and the Peloponnese, where she was conquered, then fled to Megara where she died of grief and was buried in a massive stone tomb shaped like an Amazon shield. Apparently, according to many writers, this tomb was shown for several hundred years until for some reason it wasn't anymore.
But if Hippolyte really led the attack and later died in Megara, this would lend credence to the name "Hippolyte" being a title rather than a name, since Hippolyte was supposedly accidentally killed by her sister Penthesileia during a hunting trip near Themiskyra, at another time. Perhaps again, like the clan name Caesar, there was a woman with the name Hippolyte, and later ascendants to her rule took her name in her honor, as a title, as did all the rulers of Rome, after Caius Julius Caesar, take the name Caesar as theirs.
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Glossary
PHEDRE
By Jean-Baptiste Racine
Compiled by Celise Kalke
Trozen
The childhood home of Theseus, as well as the part of Theseus’ Athenian empire. Trozen is also where Hippolytus has grown up, and although not explicit in Racine, Hippolytus seems to govern there in some capacity. Theseus was the illegitimate son of the daughter of Troezen’s King, either with the Aethenian King Aegeus or Neptune, god of the sea. While Theseus adventured, he moved Phedre and her children from Athens to Troezen for their own protection.
Theseus
Please see extensive notes later in the actor packet. A Greek hero and King of Athens. Also a notorious adventurer and seducer of women. Theseus is known as a wrestler, and for using his intellect and leadership skills in his many battles against monsters. Theseus also became known for his patronage of those oppressed and enslaved, and established the first form of Athenian democracy.
Theseus’ departure and six month absence
In some versions of the Theseus myth, Theseus journeyed to the Underworld to help a friend steal off the wife of the God of Hell. In other versions, Theseus journeyed to a neighboring Kingdom to steal the King’s wife. In either case, for six months Theseus has been absent and has probably been imprisoned.
Athens
Cornerstone of Theseus’ Kingdom, and the most cultured and beautiful city in Ancient Greece. Theseus’ reign began the first great period of Athenian democratic process and culture.
Elis
A Greek city/kingdom near the site of the Ancient Olympic Games. Ancient Elis (province of Elis) lies in the northwestern Peloponnese and extends over a broad, fertile alluvial plain on the south shore of the Peneios.
Aegean
The sea surrounding Greece.
Phedre
The second daughter of the King of Crete, Minos, and his wife Pasiphae. Theseus abandoned and seduced Phedre’s sister Ariadne as part of one of his youthful adventures. Theseus probably married Phedre as a means of consolidating the Cretan (or Minoan) island empire and the Kingdom of Athens.
Minos and Pasiphae
The parents of Phedre and her sister Ariadne. Minos was the King of the Cretan island empire, which Theseus helped to bring down as part of his adventure killing the Minotaur (see notes in mythology section of the Actor Packet). Minos was the son of Zeus (who seduced Minos’ mother disguised as a bull) and Europa. He created a famous legal code. His success as a law giver was such that after his death he was made one of the three judges of the dead. During his rule Crete became a major power with an excellent education system, wide spread trade, impressive buildings, and flourishing arts. Pasiphae (while married to Minos) fell in love with a bull, and conceived the Minotaur (half man and half bull).
Phedre’s relationship to light and the sun
In myth, Phedre’s mother was a descendant of Helios, the sun God. Along with the curse of Venus (discussed later in this glossary), all of Pasiphae’s children possess a passionate sexual nature. Phedre’s relationship to the light and heat is an important device in Racine’s incorporation of mythological sources and also to his portrayal of Phedre herself.
Aricia is here. . . My father holds her hostage,
the last of all our family’s ancient enemies.
Although Aricia is a character devised by Racine, her family has mythological sources. Before Theseus could inherit the crown of Athens from Aegeus, he had to fight Aegeus’ brother Pallas and all his children. These cousins would have inherited the thrown of Athens, since Theseus grew up not knowing Aegeus was his father. In Racine’s Phedre, Aricia is the only daughter and last remaining child of Pallas. Through her father, she is a rival for the throne of Athens. This is why Theseus has forbidden her to marry or (more importantly) have children.
She never joined her six brothers
when they rebelled against your father.
In most Theseus myths, there were fifty brothers that opposed Theseus (and some of these fifty survived). But Racine makes the family smaller and Theseus more absolute. So all six brothers are dead.
Venus
The Roman name for Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.
Amazon
A tribe of warrior women from Northern Turkey. They renounced the company of men except to bear children. Hippolytus’ reputation for forest living and sexual abstinence relates to his mother, who was a famous Amazon warrior.
"...the Amazons, of the Doeantian plain were by no means gentle, well-conducted folk; they were brutal and aggressive, and their main concern in life was war. War, indeed, was in their blood, daughters of Ares as they were and of the Nymph Harmonia, who lay with the god in the depths of the Acmonian Wood and bore him girls who fell in love with fighting." - from "The Voyage of Argo" by Apollonius of Rhodes
Antiope
Hippolytus’ mother and an Amazon warrior princess. Theseus won her in battle, but she fell in love with him and lived with him in Athens. They never married, although Theseus acknowledged Hippolytus as his son. Antiope died fighting in a battle side by side with Theseus against her fellow Amazons.
Ariadne
Phedre’s sister and a princess of Crete, sometimes said to be a powerful priestess. Ariadne fell in love with Theseus while he was held hostage in Crete awaiting sacrifice to the Minotaur, and in the grip of this violent passion helped him kill her brother the Minotaur by giving him some string with which to navigate the maze of the labyrinth. Theseus took Ariadne with him from Crete, but abandoned her on the island of Naxos. Mythological sources differ on the reason for this—although most sources say that she eventually became the mortal bride of the God Dionysus and that Dionysus told Theseus to abandon Ariadne in a dream. In some versions of the myth, however, Ariadne hangs herself in despair and it seems that Racine is using the darker ending for the back story to his tragedy.
Theseus later married Phedre in order to unite the Cretan and Athenian Kingdoms.
The sun’s my ancestor
The sun-God Helios was an ancestor of Phedre’s mother, Pasiphae. Venus hated all the descendants of Helios, the sun, since Helios helped her husband, Vulcan, catch Venus enjoying a tryst with Ares, God of War. Venus cursed Helios’ human descendants with sexual deviance and destructive passion.
Die now,
you leave your boys in danger from Hippolytus,
that bastard of the Amazon’s.
Theseus never married Hippolytus’ mother, although (like Louis XIV with his illegitimate children) he acknowledged Hippolytus as his son. Theseus DID marry Phedre, so her children are the legitimate heirs to the Kingdom of Athens, which includes Trozen, Athens, and Crete. However, it’s clear that in Racine’s Athens, the legitimate heir is preferred but an illegitimate one will do. After all, Theseus himself was technically illegitimate.
It’s the curse, my mother’s curse, the revenge
of Venus and Eros on all our family!
See previous note on Venus’ hatred of Phedre’s family. Pasiphae became so enamoured with a beautiful bull that she built a wooden cow to crouch in while the bull impregnated her. She later (from this union) gave birth to a child half man and half bull.
Eros
Eros is another name for Cupid. He is Venus’ son, and while Venus is the Goddess of love, Eros is responsible for the physical longings of lust and desire.
. . . And on my sister Ariadne . . . .Where is she now, left to die on some salt-water rock. . .
See previous note. Either Phedre doesn’t know about Ariadne’s marriage to Dionysus or her suicide, or she has only learned the fate of her sister from Theseus (whose last sight of her was abandoned on the rocky shore of the island of Naxos).
It’s Theseus’ death that changes everything.
You will be mistress of yourself again!
and Greece will soon be yours!
Since Phedre’s children are too young to rule, Phedre would act as regent for her young son (becoming the most powerful person in Greece for a limited term).
The larger issues in all the scenes after the announcement of Theseus’ death are: A: will the Kingdom of Athens remain under one heir (Aricia, Hippolytus, OR Phedre’s son) or B: Will the kingdom be split in three with Aricia ruling Athens, Phedre’s son ruling Crete, and Hippolytus ruling Trozen.
I’m not like Phedre, who fell so easily
To Theseus’ easy charm.
Many mythological sources credit Phedre with aiding her sister, Ariadne, with the death of the Minotaur, and say that Phedre (like her sister) succumbed to Theseus’ charm. Racine doesn’t provide much back story, but there seems to be a presumption in the text that until Phedre’s passion for Hippolytus the Theseus/Phedre marriage was happy and successful (aside from Theseus’ many absences).
Hercules into oblivion
Hercules is another Greek hero only slightly older than Theseus, from Thebes. The two men fought together and shared adventures, and it may have been with Hercules that Theseus met Hippolytus’ mother.
There are many versions of Hercules’ ascension along these lines: When Hercules’ second wife, Deianira, was seized by the centaur Nessus, Hercules killed Nessus with arrows dipped in the poisonous blood of the Hydra. As he died, Nessus told Deianira that blood from his wound would restore Hercules’ love for her if ever it were to wane. Later, when Deianira sought to win back her husband’s love, she contrived to have him don a robe smeared with the blood. The robe stuck fast to Hercules’ skin, burning him unbearably. In agony, he built a huge pyre atop Mt. Oite and had it set afire. His mortal parts burned away, but the rest rose to heaven.
bloody strife has left the city torn
Theseus raged a bloody war with Aricia’s brothers to gain control over the Athenian kingdom, and there is a real fear that the same kind of war may break out between supporters of Hippolytus and supporters of Phedre’s son.
Neptune may protect him. He always has.
Until Theseus discovered his father was Aegeus, King of Athens, Theseus claimed Neptune for his parent. Or in some stories, Neptune WAS his father. In either case, Theseus was a great favorite of Neptune who protected him and granted his wishes.
No one goes twice to the underworld and back!
Theseus’ adventure in the underworld, getting trapped there after unsuccessfully trying to steal away the King’s wife and then being rescued by Hercules, has already happened. There are rumors, however, that the adventure-hungry Theseus has returned to Hell for a second time.
Crete
The island home of Phedre and her family. Before Theseus’ reign, the most powerful kingdom in the Aegean sea.
Minotaur
Phedre’s brother, a monster half man and half bull. See previous notes about Pasiphae.
The labyrinth
Within the royal palace of Knosses on Crete, a mazelike structure with the monstrous Minotaur at the center. It was impossible to navigate without help.
golden thread
Ariadne aided Theseus by giving him a golden thread to help him navigate his way through the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur. After killing the monster, Theseus let the golden thread guide his way back to Ariadne and safety.
The Athenians have voted
Although a King of Athens, Theseus is credited with having established the first Athenian democracy. So Phedre’s son is both the legitimate AND the elected heir to the Kingdom of Athens.
Beyond the gates of Trozen there’s a temple sacred to my ancestors
Although Aricia here is protecting her honor in a style more suited to a 17th century woman than a Greek woman, this temple is Racine interpreting the nature of Greek Gods. Hippolytus is bringing Aricia to a temple specific to a God of constancy. To break a vow in this temple would be to insult the specific God (unnamed by Racine). And in Greek theology, to insult a God is to bring down death and destruction.
The only contemporary parallel is, perhaps, to tell a lie after swearing on a bible.
Medea
A witch who killed her children in order to avenge her husband Jason’s abandoning her in order to remarry. Medea also poisoned Jason’s bride and her father. Aegeus, King of Athens, gave Medea sanctuary in Athens since Medea promised him help conceiving a son (Aegeus didn’t know about Theseus’ existence). When Theseus arrived in Athens, Medea tried unsuccessfully to have Aegeus kill his son.
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Historical Quotations
From Louis the XIV: Great Lives
17th century drama was bound by the three unities of time, place and action. There could be one action only in a play. It must occur in a single place, and it must do so in the space of twenty-four hours. . . . There was no time to watch the slow development of passion; there was only time to catch the moment in crisis. This must be done in the accepted verse-form, using only the accepted words. Bound by these rigorous and - to us - unnecessary rules, Corneille and Racine wrote their masterpieces.
In their main features, Racine’s tragedies follow those of Corneille; but they differ in certain important respects. They do not present the will triumphant over instinct and circumstance, they show it to be weak and vacillating (and here, perhaps, we may detect the Jansenist influence). Racine’s characters are more real and human than those of Corneille. His most striking characters are women, and it has been said that he inaugurated the literature of the passions of the heart. Corneille had pained men as they should be. Racine painted them as they were. Critics have rightly admired the ease with which Racine observes the rules of classical drama. We should perhaps admire even more the beauty of Racinian dialogue, its purity, its poetry, its attempt to rediscover the grandeur of the Greek poets.
In his preface to Phèdre (1677), Racine subscribed to the quid pro quo view of retribution.
- I have written no play in which virtue has been more celebrated than in this one. The smallest faults are here severely punished; the mere idea of a crime is looked upon with as much horror as the crime itself.
-
Of Phèdre herself, his greatest heroine, he says,
- I have taken the trouble to make her a little less hateful than she is in the ancient versions of this tragedy, in which she herself resolves to accuse Hippolytus. I judged that that calumny had about it something too base and black to be put into the mouth of a Princess . . . This depravity seemed to me more appropriate to the character of a nurse, whose inclinations might be supposed to be more servile . . .
-
For Aristotle, pity and fear made a counterpoint typical of Classicism, each tempering the other to create a balance. For Racine, pity and fear each must be tempered in itself. In the marginalia to his fragmentary translation of Aristotle's Poetics, Racine wrote that in arousing the passions of pity and fear, tragedy
removes from them whatever they have of the excessive and the vicious and brings them back to a moderated condition and conformable to reason.
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Notes on Jansenism (Racine’s version of Catholicism)
Since no motive for Venus is stated, and since Phedre is frequently seen as arbitrarily afflicted by all the supernature, one discerns in the background of the play that harsh version of Christianity called Jansenism, in which the human soul is too corrupt to seek salvation actively, and an inscrutable God damns or saves as it pleases Him.
Richard Wilbur, introduction to Phedre
Roman Catholicism, history of
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
The age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation
Developments in France
The Gallican problem
In many ways it was the relation of the church to individual political powers rather than the leadership of the popes that determined the course of church history. Not only the shrinking authority of the church as a consequence of the Reformation but also the expanding ambition of the state as a consequence of the growth of nationalism put ecclesiastical and secular governments on a collision course throughout Europe. France, “the first daughter of the church,” was the national state whose development during the 17th and 18th centuries most strikingly dramatized the collision, so much so that Gallicanism, as the nationalistic ecclesiastical movement was called in France, is still the label put on the efforts of any national church to achieve autonomy.
Usually the autonomy from Rome implied subjection to the French crown, particularly during the reign of Louis XIV, who sought to extend still further the so-called prerogatives of France when Rome resisted. A conclave of bishops and deputies met on March 19, 1682, in Paris and adopted the Four Gallican Articles, which had been drafted by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, a French bishop and historian. These asserted that: (1) In temporal matters rulers are independent of the authority of the church. (2) In spiritual matters the authority of the pope is subject to the authority of a general council, as had been declared at the Council of Constance. (3) The historic rights and usages of the French church cannot be countermanded even by Rome. (4) In matters of faith the judgment of the pope is not irreformable but must be ratified by a general council. The next move was up to the papacy: Innocent XI and Alexander VIII rejected Louis's candidates for bishoprics in France, and only in 1693, when Innocent XII was pope, was this all but schismatic conflict resolved. Gallicanism was in part an expression of the distinctive traditions of French Catholicism and in part a result of the personal power of Louis XIV, the Sun King. But it was also, and perhaps even more fundamentally, a systematic statement of the inevitable opposition between the papacy and a series of rulers from Henry VIII (1491–1547) of England to Joseph II (1741–90) of Austria, who, though remaining basically Catholic in their piety and belief, wanted no papal interference in their royal business but insisted on the right of royal interference in the business of the church.
Jansenism
The church in France was the scene of controversies other than these administrative and political ones. In 1640 there was published, posthumously, a book by the Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen, entitled Augustinus, which was a defense of the theology of Augustine against the dominant theological trends of the time within Roman Catholicism. Its special target was the teachings and practices associated with the Jesuits. Jansen and his followers claimed that the theologians of the Counter-Reformation in their opposition to Luther and Calvin had erred in the other direction in their definition of the doctrine of grace; i.e., emphasizing human responsibility at the expense of the divine initiative and thus relapsing into the Pelagian heresy, against which Augustine had fought in the early 5th century. Over against this emphasis, Jansenism asserted the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, including the teaching that man cannot keep the commandments of God without a special gift of grace and that the converting grace of God is irresistible. Consistent with this anthropology was the rigoristic view on moral issues taken by Jansenism in its condemnation of the tendency, which it claimed to discern in Jesuit ethics, to find loopholes for evading the uncompromising demands of the divine law. When it was espoused in the Lettres Provinciales (“Provincial Letters”) of Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher, this campaign against Jesuit theology became a cause célèbre. The papacy struck out against Jansenism in 1653, when Innocent X issued his bull Cum Occasione (“With Occasion”), and again in 1713, when Clement XI promulgated his constitution Unigenitus (“Only-Begotten”).
Theologically, Jansenism represented the lingering conviction, even of those who refused to follow the Reformers, that the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church was Augustinian in form but not in content; morally, it bespoke the ineluctable suspicion of many devout Roman Catholics that the serious call of the Gospel to a devout and holy life was being compromised in the moral theology and penitential practice of the church. Though Jansenism was condemned, it did not remain without effect, and in the 19th and 20th centuries it contributed to an evangelical reawakening not only in France but throughout the church.
Condemnation of Jansen's teachings.
In a bull of 1642, Pope Urban VIII forbade the reading of the Augustinus, which had been published without the authorization of the Holy See and was based on the doctrine of Baïus, already condemned. Five propositions in the Augustinus were condemned by Pope Innocent X in 1653, and by his successor, Alexander VII. The bishops of France were required to make all of the priests, monks, and nuns sign a formulary conforming to the pontifical decisions. But Duvergier de Hauranne, who had become the abbé of Saint-Cyran, had taught the doctrine of Jansen to the nuns of the abbey of Port-Royal. This convent became a focus of resistance against the Jesuits, who, having obtained the pontifical decisions in their favour, intended to impose them. From that time, a conflict began between the Jesuits and Antoine Arnauld, a disciple of “Monsieur de Saint-Cyran” (Duvergier de Hauranne) who called himself an Augustinian. The Jesuits, however, called him a Jansenist. According to them, the doctrine of Arnauld was that of Jansen and not of St. Augustine. Blaise Pascal wrote Les Provinciales (“Provincial Letters”) in 1656 and 1657 to defend Antoine Arnauld. The latter was condemned by the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne.
Although Louis XIV was determined to eliminate the Jansenists as a threat to the unity of his kingdom, there was a temporary peace after Clement IX became pope in 1667, and the conflict ceased to be a major concern when the papacy and the French Roman Catholic church clashed on Gallicanism. But after the controversy between the papacy and the monarchy was settled, Louis XIV obtained from Clement XI in 1705 the bull Vineam Domini, which renewed the earlier condemnations. In 1709 Louis XIV ordered the dispersal of the nuns of Port-Royal into diverse convents, and he had the abbey destroyed in 1710. He then obtained in 1713 the bull Unigenitus Dei Filius, which condemned 101 propositions of Quesnel. The promulgation of Unigenitus as French law in 1730 finally caused the decline in strength of the Jansenist party.
Aside from the Jesuits, the most important teaching congregations in France were the Bérullian Oratory, or Oratorians, and the Jansenists of Port-Royal. The former, founded in 1611 and soon to open a number of schools and seminaries for young nobles, was composed of priests—but priests more liberal and rationalist than was common for the times. They offered instruction not only in the humanities but also in history, mathematics, the natural sciences, and such genteel accomplishments as dancing and music and, though continuing to use Latin in instruction, promoted also the use of the vernacular French in the initial years of their curriculum. They tended indeed to be drawn to the ideas of Descartes, to a faith based on reason. When in 1764 the Jesuits were banned from France, their teaching positions were largely assumed by Oratorians.
More famous than the schools of the Oratorians, though enjoying a briefer career, were the Little Schools of Port-Royal. Their founder was Jean Duvergier de Haurame, better known as the abbot of Saint-Cyran, who was one of France's chief advocates of Jansenism, a movement opposed to Jesuitry and Scholasticism and favouring bold reforms of the church and a turn to a certain Pietism. About 1635 Saint-Cyran, with the help of some wealthy, influential Parisians, succeeded in gaining control of the convent of Port-Royal, near Versailles. There the Jansenist group began about 1637 to educate a few boys, and by 1646 it had established the Little Schools of Port-Royal in Paris itself. Their curriculum was similar to that of the Oratorians, though excluding dancing, and was celebrated for its excellence in French language and logic and in foreign languages. Influenced by Descartes's rationalistic philosophy, the Jansenists theorized that learning has a “natural” order and should begin with what is familiar to the child: thus, a phonetic system of teaching reading was used; all instruction was in French, not Latin; student compositions were directed toward topics drawing on one's own experiences or toward subjects in one's current reading. Involved in political struggles with the Jesuits, who were still influential at court, the Jansenists were fated to have all their schools closed down by 1660, but their theories and practices were widely adopted and became extremely influential.
In 17th-century Jansenist thought, man was seen as a guilt-ridden creature who desperately needed God's grace in order to realize his true and hidden self. This vision of man as fallen and of God as hidden had drawn the French bourgeoisie toward introspection and away from politics. It had made absolutism possible.
Louis XIV’s religious policy
Louis was also on his guard against religious dissent. Like most of his contemporaries, he believed that toleration had no virtue and that unity in the state was extremely difficult to maintain where two or more churches were tolerated. Consequently, especially after 1678, Louis intensified the persecution of article?idxref=465038Protestants; churches were destroyed, certain professions were put out of reach of the Huguenots, and Protestant children were taken away from their parents and brought up as Roman Catholics. The notorious practice of dragonnades, the billeting of soldiers on Protestant families with permission to behave as brutally as they wished, was introduced. Finally, in 1685 the Edict of Nantes was revoked in order that Louis could claim that he had succeeded where Emperor Leopold I had failed—that is, in extirpating Protestantism from his realm.
The revocation of the Edict of Nantes angered Protestant Europe at a time when Louis's European designs were beginning to meet serious resistance. The revocation deprived France of a number of gifted craftsmen, sailors, and soldiers. At least 600 officers, including Marshal Friedrich, Count von Schomberg, and Henri de Massue, Marquis de Ruvigny (later the Earl of Galway), joined William of Orange, the leader of the Grand Alliance against Louis. Research, however, has reversed the earlier view that the decay of French industry at the end of Louis's reign was the direct result of the expulsion of Huguenot mercantile talent.
The same zeal for uniformity made Louis attack the Jansenists. The theological position of the Jansenists is difficult to define; but Louis, who was no theologian, was content with the simple fact that these zealous Catholics had taken up an unorthodox position that threatened the unity of the state. The movement had begun over the perennial issue of grace and free will as it was propounded in the Augustinus of Bishop Cornelius Otto Jansen, published in 1640. In 1653 Pope Innocent X condemned five propositions from Jansen's doctrine, but the movement grew in strength with notable adherents, including Jean-François-Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz, and the great mathematician Blaise Pascal. In 1705 Pope Clement XI published the bull Vineam Domini , which further condemned the writings of Jansen; but the archbishop of Paris, Louis-Antoine Cardinal de Noailles, appeared ready to lead the Jansenist forces in opposition to the pope. Under the influence of his confessor, Père Michel Le Tellier, Louis decided to ask the pope for another formal condemnation of the creed. Finally, in 1713, the famous bull Unigenitus was promulgated, which, far from ending Jansenism, drove it in the following reign into a disruptive alliance with Gallicanism. Louis's real attitude in this situation is not entirely clear: certainly his policy was in keeping with his authoritarian insistence upon unity. He was suspicious of religious innovation, and his action was consistent with the increasingly orthodox and rigid mood of his last years. Yet, in seeking the pope's support in this matter, he was reversing years of bitter hostility toward Rome when, like many of his predecessors, including Francis I and Henry IV, he had leaned heavily upon the traditional Gallican doctrine.
According to that doctrine, the French king possessed the right of temporal and spiritual regale—that is, the right to nominate new bishops and to administer and draw the revenue from bishoprics while they remained vacant. In 1673 Louis extended this right to the whole of the French kingdom, which had been enlarged in the recent War of Devolution (see below), despite papal opposition. Eventually, in 1682, the Gallican Articles were published as a law of the French state, asserting that the king was in no way subject to the pope in temporal matters and could not be excommunicated and reaffirming the independence of the French church from Rome. The mutual animosity of king and pope only ended in 1693, when, following William of Orange's successful attempt to secure the English throne, Louis agreed to suspend the edict of 1682; but it was a suspension only, not a recantation. The tradition of Gallican independence remained.
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Phèdre Text Development Exercise
This exercise is about entering into the adaptation process for Court’s production of Phedre. Therefore, the exercise starts with Racine’s French text. But you don’t need to speak French to do the exercise—in fact you may be more creative if you don’t!
Act II, Scène iii
French text
HIPPOLYTE
569 Cependant vous sortez. Et je pars; et j'ignore
570 Si je n'offense point les charmes que j'adore!
571 J'ignore si ce coeur que je laisse en vos mains...
ARICIE
572 Partez prince, et suivez vos généreux desseins:
573 Rendez de mon pouvoir Athènes tributaire.
574 J'accepte tous les dons que vous me voulez faire.
575 Mais cet empire enfin si grand, si glorieux,
576 N'est pas de vos présents le plus cher à mes yeux.
Wilbur
HIPPOLYTUS
But now you’ll leave me! And I shall sail before
I learn my fate from her whom I adore,
And in whose hand I leave this heart of mine. . . .
ARICIA
Go, Prince; pursue your generous design.
Make Athens subject to my royal sway.
All of your gifts I gladly take this day,
But that great empire, glorious though it be,
In not the offering most dear to me.
Schmidt
HIPPOLYTUS
(beat) Before you leave. . . have I offended you?
The passion that I feel—
ARICIA
There is no need
for words. You offer me a kingdom, Prince. . .
I prefer your heart.
Your version
HIPPOLYTUS
ARICIA
Act II, Scene V
French text
HIPPOLYTE
609 Des droits de ses enfants une mère jalouse
610 Pardonne rarement au fils d'une autre épouse;
611 Madame, je le sais ; les soupçons importuns
612 Sont d'un second hymen les fruits les plus communs.
613 Tout autre aurait pour moi pris les mêmes ombrages.
614 Et j'en aurais peut-être essuyé plus d'outrages.
PHÈDRE
615 Ah! seigneur! que le ciel, j'ose ici l'attester,
616 De cette loi commune a voulu m'excepter !
617 Qu'un soin bien différent me trouble et me dévore!
WILBUR
HIPPOLYTUS
It’s common, Madam, that a mother spites
The stepson who might claim her children’s rights.
I know that in a second marriage-bed
Anxiety and mistrust are often bred.
Another woman would have wished me ill
As you have, and perhaps been harsher still.
PHÈDRE
Ah, Prince! By what a different care am I beset!
PAUL SCHMIDT VERSION
HIPPOLYTUS
I understand.
You worry for your son, you wonder now
where I fit in. Of course this happens;
a step-son is rarely his step-mother’s pride.
PHÈDRE
No, that isn’t it.
JoAnne Akalaitis adaptation no. 1
HIPPOLYTUS
I understand.
Theseus’ amorous adventures
created a dangerous situation.
I’m older than your son, and you’re jealous
of his rights. You mistrusted me with good
reason. Most women, in your position,
would have been more cruel.
PHÈDRE
No, that isn’t it.
JoAnne Akalaitis adaptation no. 2
HIPPOLYTUS
I think you hate me, and I don’t hate you.
Theseus has many sons, but Athens only one crown.
It’s only natural for you to want it for your son.
Most women, in your position,
Would have been more cruel.
PHÈDRE
No, that isn’t it.
Your version:
HIPPOLYTUS
PHEDRE
Act I, Scene III
OENONE
251 Oublions-les madame; et qu'à tout l'avenir
252 Un silence éternel cache ce souvenir.
Wilbur
Oenone
Dear Queen, forget it; to the end of time
Let silence shroud the memory of that crime.
Schmidt
Enone
Forget your mother. The less we say the better.
Akalaitis version 1
ENONE
Forget your creepy mother and her lust for the bull. The less we say the better.
Akalaitis version 2
ENONE
The curse of venus has run it’s course.
Surely your mother’s love for Neptune’s bull
and her son the minataur satisfied the Goddess’ rage.
The less we say now the better.
Your version:
Enone
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- Additional Phedre Resources
Web Links and resources:
-
- Racine’s text in French, in an easy to navigate format.
http://www.cla.sc.edu/fren/faculty/normanb/racine/phedre/phedre1.htm
The life and adventures of Theseus, including animated cartoons (does not include pictures)
http://www.mythweb.com/heroes/theseus/theseus10.html
For electronic versions of many of the materials in this Study Guide, please see Court’s Playnotes Online section of the web site for Phedre. These Playnotes Online will be posted by September 14, 2002.
http://www.courttheatre.org.
This excellent site out of the University of Arkansas contains a small film clip of a French production of Phedre.
http://waynesweb.ualr.edu/Scholars/Phaedra%20Plot.htm
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- Books:
Translations of the Play
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- Phedre, by Racine, translated by Paul Schmidt
This translation is not yet published. For information about obtaining a copy, contact Celise Kalke (Court resident dramaturg) at ckalke@midway.uchicago.edu.
Phedre, by Racine, translated by Ted Hughes
Phaedra, by Racine, translated by Richard Wilbur
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- Other plays dealing with the Phedre story
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- Hippolytus by Euripidies
Phaedra by Seneca
Phaedra’s Love by Sarah Kane
Hippolytus Temporizes by HD
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- About Racine
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- On Racine by Roland Barthes
Ancients Against Moderns by Joan DeJean
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- About/inspired Greek Mythology
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- The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault
These two books make up a page-turning fictionalization of the life of Theseus.
The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso, Tim Parks (Translator)
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