Jean Racine in the Apotheosis of Homer

Phèdre is a 1677 play by Jean Racine, based on both the play Hippolytus by Euripides, and a later Roman play, Phaedra by Seneca the Younger. Due to its negative reception in the popular press, Racine abandoned writing for the public theater after this play (although later in his career he did write additional works on a royal commission). However, Phèdre is now generally considered his finest work.

Phèdre was Racine's last secular tragedy before a long silence of twelve years, during which time he devoted himself to the service of King Louis XIV and to religion.

Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In Phèdre, Racine again chose a subject already treated by Greek and Roman tragic poets. In the absence of her husband, King Thésée, Phèdre falls in love with Hippolyte, son of Thésée of a preceding marriage.

Act 1. Hippolyte, son of Thésée and of an Amazon, announces to his confidant his intention to leave the city of Trézène to flee his love for Aricie, the only living descendant of an enemy clan of Thésée. Phèdre, wife of Thésée, is dragging herself around the palace wanting to die, and is pleaded with by Oenone, her confidante, to try and live. Phèdre confides to Oenone the passion that she feels for her stepson Hippolyte. The death of Thésée is announced.

Act 2. Aricie confides in her confidante, Ismène, that she is in love with Hippolyte; he then arrives and unveils his own similar feelings. Phèdre comes to see Hippolyte in order to uphold the right of her son to succeed Thésée as ruler; she then, under the influence of Oenone to do so, declares her love to Hippolyte.

Act 3. Thésée, who is not dead, comes back to Trézène and is astonished to receive so cold a welcome: Hippolyte wants to flee his mother-in-law, Phèdre is destroyed by the guilt she feels at having revealed her love to both Oenone and Hippolyte.

Act 4. Oenone, who fears that Hippolyte will denounce Phèdre for her admission of love, declares to Thésée that Hippolyte attempted to seduce Phèdre. Thésée banishes Hippolyte and asks the god Neptune (who owes Thésée a favor) to kill his son. Phèdre wants to convince Thésée that he is mistaken until she learns that Hippolyte is in love with Aricie. Furious to have a rival, she renounces him and leaves him to his father's wrath.

Act 5. Hippolyte leaves after having promised Aricie that he will marry her outside the city. Thésée begins to have doubts about the guilt of his son, but it is too late; Théramène soon reports to the king that Hippolyte is dead. Phèdre, after having banished Oenone for her advice and manipulation, confesses to Thésée that Hippolyte was innocent. Having taken poison before this, she collapses. To make up for his judgment, Thésée, following the last words of his dying son, forgives and decides to adopt Aricie.

Style

Every aspect of Phèdre has been celebrated: the tragic construction, the depth of the personages and the wealth of the versification. In contrast to Euripides in Hippolytus, Racine puts off Phèdre's death until the end of the play. In this way, she has time to learn of Hippolyte’s death. Phèdre, at once guilty of causing misfortune and being victim to it, is regarded as the most remarkable among Racine's tragic heroes and heroines.

Phèdre's ancestry and its curse

The genealogy of Phèdre gives a lot of indications as to her character's destiny. Descended from Helios (the Sun god) and Pasiphaë, 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 caché. This sense of patriarchal judgment is extended to Phèdre's father, Minos, who is responsible for weighing the souls of the dead upon their arrival in Hades. Phèdre is right to fear judgment; she is driven to an incestual love for her stepson Hippolyte, much like the women of her family, who tend to experience desires generally considered taboo. Her mother was cursed by Venus to fall in love and copulate with a bull, giving rise to the legendary man/bull hybrid the Minotaur. Phèdre meets Theseus, her future husband, when he arrives on the Minoan scene to kill her monstruous half-brother.

Influence

Certain lines from Phèdre have become classics. The musicality of the alexandrine verse "la fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë" was celebrated so much that it became the object of mocking imitations.

Phèdre's influence was far-reaching. During Racine's own life, Phèdre was the title of another play on the same subject by Jacques Pradon. In the nineteenth century, Émile Zola loosely based La Curée, one of his books from the Rougon-MacQuart series (an exploration of genealogical and environmental influences upon characters) on Racine's Phèdre. In his work Le Dieu caché, Lucien Goldmann extrapolates social theories of the role of the divine in French consciousness from thematic elements in Phèdre.

Although Phèdre is perhaps less often studied at high school level than Britannicus or Andromaque, it is still performed today.

The late British poet laureate Ted Hughes produced a highly regarded free verse translation of Phèdre in 2000. This version was produced shortly before his death with Diana Rigg playing the title role.

Characters

Both the French and English transcriptions:

• Phèdre, or Phaedra
  
• Œnone, or Oenone (nursemaid and advisor to Phèdre)
  
• Hippolyte, or Hippolytus (stepson of Phaedra)
  
• Theramène, or Theramenes (advisor to Hippolyte)
  
• Thésée, or Theseus (the King of Athens)
  
• Aricie, or Aricia (a princess punished by Theseus, also the lover of Hippolytus)
  

Greek Mythology

See also : Greek Mythology. Paintings, Drawings