The French dramatist Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699), admired as a portrayer of man's subtle psychology and overwhelming passions, was the author of 11 tragedies and a comedy. His work is the greatest expression of French classicism.

Jean Racine was born in La Ferté-Milon and baptized there on Dec. 22, 1639. Both of his parents died within a few years, and the young Racine went to live with his paternal grandparents. There he was cared for by his grandmother and by his aunt, both of whom lived in close contact with the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal-des-Champs near Paris. Racine was educated in the schools of Port-Royal, receiving what was perhaps the best education available in his times. Sent on to the Jansenist-influenced school in Beauvais, Racine learned ancient Greek in addition to his other studies, before completing his education at Port-Royal and in Paris.

First Dramas

At some time before 1660 Racine entered the service of the Duke of Luynes in Paris, working as an assistant to a cousin who was the duke's steward. In his spare time Racine interested himself in poetry, made the acquaintance of Jean de La Fontaine, the poet and fabulist, and wrote an official poem, La Nymphe de la Seine (1660). He also wrote two tragedies, both refused by the theatrical troupes of the day and now lost. Apparently discouraged, Racine spent perhaps a year in Uzés preparing to enter the priesthood, but in 1663 he returned to Paris and to literature.

Racine was approached by the great comic writer and actor Molière, whose troupe wished to commission a tragedy, La Thébaide, to compete with one being put on by a rival troupe. Racine agreed to write such a tragedy according to Molière's instructions, and the play was first performed in 1664. Although it was indifferently received, Molière requested another play from Racine. Racine's Alexandre (1665) was his first success in the theater.

French Theatrical Situation

During this period the French theater was influenced profoundly by the famous neo-Aristotelian precepts for good literature. Playwrights observed with ever greater severity the famous "three unities" of time, place, and action, and the principles of verisimilitude and theatrical bienséance (seemliness). Without renouncing the influence of Pierre Corneille, they nevertheless tended more and more to set their plays within a single stage decor, using fewer and fewer personages, simplifying their plots, and concentrating them in shorter texts. Contemporary playwrights thus presented less and less dramatic action, interesting themselves rather in the passions of their personages - and transforming the regular or "ruleconscious" theater of the 1630s and 1640s into the disciplined and passion-oriented classicist theater of the following decades. While Racine's Thébaide and Alexandre show both Corneillian and later classical tendencies, Racine expressed more purely classicist literary ideals in his third tragedy, Andromaque.

Andromaque and La Du Parc

Between the first performances of Alexandre and the first performances of Andromaque in 1667, Racine's way of life changed considerably. Apparently dissatisfied with Molière's production of his Alexandre, he secretly rehearsed the play with the actors of another troupe, who played Alexandre in competition with Molière in December 1665. The resulting theatrical scandal gave Racine the reputation of a devious and unscrupulous young man. As if to confirm this evil reputation, an ungrateful Racine also published a pamphlet against Jansenism, attacking his former teachers of Port-Royal. One year later Racine took as his mistress a notorious actress, Thérèse du Parc. It was apparently for "La Du Parc" that Racine wrote Andromaque, in which she played the title role.

The action of Andromaque takes place some years after the conclusion of the Trojan War. The play begins with the arrival of Oreste, the son of the Greek king Agamemnon, at the court of Pyrrhus, son of the Greek hero Achilles. Ostensibly, Oreste has come as the ambassador of all the Greeks to ask for the execution of Astyanax, son of the Trojan hero Hector, whom Pyrrhus is holding prisoner. In reality, however, Oreste has come to see Hermione, daughter of Helen of Troy, with whom he is in love. Hermione, however, is in love with Pyrrhus and indeed is engaged to marry him. Pyrrhus, however, is in love not with Hermione but with Andromaque, the disconsolate widow of Hector and the mother of Astyanax.

The rest of the tragedy turns less upon the action than upon the psychological interaction of these four personages, each of whom passionately and jealously loves someone who passionately loves someone else. When Andromaque rebuffs Pyrrhus, he threatens to carry out the Greeks' request and kill Astyanax. When Pyrrhus breaks off his engagement to Hermione and prepares to marry Andromaque, Hermione persuades Oreste to kill him. But when the unfortunate Oreste and his followers succeed in doing so, she repudiates him. Oreste goes mad and Hermione commits suicide, leaving Andromaque and Astyanax to initiate another round, some day, in the Trojan War against the Greeks.

Personal Characteristics

During the following years Racine retained his reputation for deviousness, ambition, and ingratitude. Through his mistress, La Du Parc, he came to know something of the shady side of court life. He may finally have secretly married La Du Parc, and after her death in mysterious circumstances in 1668 he was accused of poisoning her. Racine subsequently was compromised with the dead La Du Parc and others in the infamous "poison affair, " and he may narrowly have escaped arrest. In any case, he took as his next mistress another actress, La Champmeslé. But during this period he also consolidated his reputation as the greatest playwright of his times, writing one comedy, Les Plaideurs (1668), and numerous tragedies for the Parisian stage.

Britannicus and Bérénice

In his succeeding tragedies Racine continued to explore passionate love and passionate jealousy. In Britannicus (1669) Racine shows the young Roman emperor Néron (Nero) torn between the wise counsel of his teacher Burrhus and the influence of his domineering mother, Agrippine. Jealously in love with Junie, who loves the young prince Britannicus, Néron finally poisons the latter, revealing himself as the tyrant so well remembered in Roman history. In Bérénice (1670) the Roman Senate demands that the emperor Titus renounce his plans to marry Bérénice, a ruler of a foreign state and thus politically suspect. The play proceeds with no action other than successive confrontations between the various personages. With the action essentially reduced to nothing, the play relies exclusively on the beauty of Racine's verse and his analysis of the passions of his personages. Although Racine's numerous enemies attempted to conspire against the play and although the elderly Corneille wrote a Tite et Bérénice to compete with it, Racine's play was a remarkable success, followed by Bajazet (1672), Mithridate (1673), Iphigénie (1674), and Phèdre (1677).

Racine's Masterpiece, Phèdre

When it became known that Racine was preparing a play on the subject of Phèdre, the Duchess of Bouillon and other friends of the aging Corneille apparently attempted to hurt Racine's play by commissioning another playwright, Nicolas Pradon, to write one on the same subject. Apparently based on a stolen copy of Racine's text, Pradon's Phèdre et Hippolyte opened in Paris only 2 days after Racine's play. The two works were the occasion of a bitter literary quarrel in which insulting sonnets and other writings were exchanged, but Racine's play eventually triumphed over its rival.

In Racine's Phèdre, Hippolyte, son of the absent King Thésée, states his intention of leaving his palace of Trézène in order to search for his father. Although at first it appears he is ashamed of his love for Aricie, sister of some of his father's enemies, it soon becomes clear that he really wishes to avoid his stepmother, Phèdre. Phèdre is in love with Hippolyte and, in a memorable scene, declares her love for him. He at first pretends not to understand but finally can only flee her presence. When Thésée returns unexpectedly, Phèdre allows her nurse, Oenone, to accuse Hippolyte of making advances. In a rage Thésée asks the god Neptune to kill Hippolyte as he flees Trézène, hoping to marry Aricie and escape with her. Thésée learns his error too late to prevent the death of Hippolyte. Phèdre and Oenone commit suicide, leaving Thésée alone to pardon Aricie.

In Phèdre, as in Racine's other tragedies, critics have admired first the very refined, pure poetry of Racine's verse and second Racine's very incisive, though pessimistic, view of human psychology. A contemporary critic, Jean de La Bruyère, remarked that although tragedies on love and duty and heroic gloire had presented "man as he should be, " Racine presented man as he really was. Man, as Racine presents him, often displays a sense of personal insecurity and self-doubt not unlike modern psychological "complexes." The Racinian character's self-doubt leads him - like Racine himself, as described by his enemies - to fight desperately and destructively to gain his ends, with inevitably tragic results. Some modern critics have ascribed this view, rather than to any Racinian observation of human nature, to the influence of Jansenism and its somber view of human helplessness before God. In any case, Racine has long been admired as one of the most perfect of French writers - that is, in another modern view, as the French writer who most successfully matches his poetic images to his psychology, his psychology to his plot, and his plot to the structure and neo-Aristotelian view of the tragedy, giving his plays a kind of total inner coherence unequaled in France's grand siècle.

Later Life

Yet in spite of Racine's genius - and almost as if he had written his sublime tragedies only to gain a place in society - he stopped writing tragedies after Phèdre. Six months after the premiere of Phèdre, Racine married. In October of the same year, 1677, he accepted a post as King Louis XIV's historiographer. At the same time, he announced his return to the Jansenist faith of his childhood. During the following years Racine lived comfortably and raised a family of seven children. As director of the French Academy, he eulogized his former bitter rival, Corneille, and published a new edition of his own works, from which he had removed remarks offensive to his enemies.

Although Racine apparently intended definitively to retire from the theater, he was persuaded by Louis XIV's morganatic wife Madame de Maintenon to write two more plays, of a slightly different character than his previous works. These were Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691) - tragedies written on specifically Christian themes and without any love interest, intended to be presented by the young ladies of Saint-Cyr, a girls' establishment protected by Madame de Maintenon. More and more a respectable citizen and favorite of the King in his later years, Racine died in Paris on April 21, 1699.

Further Reading

The best biography of Racine in English is Geoffrey Brereton, Jean Racine: A Critical Biography (1951). A penetrating analysis of Racine's dramaturgy, with an emphasis on structure and language, is Roland Barthes, On Racine (1963; trans. 1964). Other recent works in English on Racine are John C. Lapp, Aspects of Racinian Tragedy (1955), and Bernard Weinberg, The Art of Jean Racine (1963). A unique collection of critical essays is in Robert James Nelson, ed., Corneille and Racine: Parallels and Contrasts (1966), which includes essays from the 17th century to the present and constitutes a kind of history of literary criticism on the subject. More general studies are John Lough, An Introduction to Seventeenth Century France (1954), and Will G. Moore, French Classical Literature (1961).

For more information on Jean-Baptiste Racine, visit Britannica.com.

Racine, Jean (1639-99). French tragic playwright. Early in his career he achieved a reputation which has never been eclipsed, even if he has not been as popular a writer as Molière. Criticized in Stendhal's Racine et Shakespeare as a representative of stultifying classicism, he has continued to be acted, read, praised, and interpreted. It is a time-honoured tradition to compare his plays with those of Pierre Corneille— La Bruyère said that Corneille depicts people as they should be, but that Racine depicts them as they are. In the 20th c. his works have often been a battleground for rival critical tendencies, the most famous episode being the dispute between Barthes and the scholar Raymond Picard over the former's provocative Sur Racine [see Literary History, 2].

Racine was born in a middle-class family in La Ferté-Milon (Aisne). Orphaned while still a small child, he was brought up by his grandparents, then sent to the Jansenist school at Port-Royal des Champs. Although in 1666 he was to break with his mentors, writing a vitriolic attack on Nicole, who had accused playwrights of being public poisoners, he was later reconciled with them. He completed his education in Paris, and left school with a knowledge of Greek literature that was unusual in his day. Having spent over a year in Uzès in the vain pursuit of an ecclesiastical living, he embarked in 1663 on a literary career in Paris. La Fontaine was among his friends, soon to be joined by Molière and Boileau. His first compositions, written to obtain a royal pension, were flattering odes on the marriage of Louis XIV and the like. It was in the theatre, however, that he made his name.

He began in 1664 with La Thébaïde (Les Frères ennemis), a violent and somewhat bombastic play about the fatal rivalry of Oedipus' two sons. This was followed in 1665 by the very different Alexandre le grand. Heroic and optimistic rather than blackly tragic, this play gives a flattering image of Louis XIV under the guise of the conqueror of the world. It was put on, like La Thébaïde, by Molière's company, but after a few days Racine transferred it to the rival Hôtel de Bourgogne, who performed all his subsequent secular tragedies. These now followed in a steady succession— Andromaque (1667), Britannicus (1669), Bérénice (1671), Bajazet (1672), Mithridate (1673), Iphigénie (1674), and Phèdre (1677). There is also a comedy, Les Plaideurs (1668), a satire on the legal profession which is remarkable for its linguistic virtuosity.

Racine's life during these years is little known. He lived a good deal with actors and actresses, and by some accounts led a fairly disreputable existence. At the same time he established himself socially and financially. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1672, Colbert's protection brought him a lucrative sinecure, and he continued to receive a royal pension. His theatrical success involved him in quarrels and polemics, notably with the ageing Corneille and with the party of the modernes [see Querelle]. Against Perrault and his allies he joined forces with Boileau in defence of antiquity (together they were known mockingly as ‘Messieurs du Sublime’).

In 1677 he and Boileau were made historiographers royal, a post that carried a handsome salary. In the same year he married, was reconciled with the Jansenists, and turned away from the theatre; it is unclear whether this ‘retirement’ was the result of an inner crisis or simply the next step in his career as a courtier. Certainly this career flourished, as he served the king with his pen. With Boileau he wrote a small amount of eloquent official history, he continued to attend the Academy and was made a member of the Académie des Inscriptions, he wrote texts for court entertainments, and was admitted to the king's inner circle. In particular, in order to please Madame de Maintenon, he wrote two biblical plays to be performed by the girls at the school of Saint-Cyr, Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691). He was ennobled and made a gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du roi and secrétaire ordinaire du roi. Shortly before his death, however, he lost some of this favour because of his courageous defence of Port-Royal, whose history he wrote in the Abrégé de l'histoire de Port-Royal (composed 1698).

Racine wrote a few impressive religious poems, but his reputation rests essentially on his tragedies. These are more varied than is suggested by those who talk of ‘Racinian tragedy’ or the ‘Racinian hero’. They are all very effective as theatre, this being due above all to their language and plot construction. The language has been described as simple (Racine uses a very small vocabulary), as elegant, and as poetic; it is all of these at times, but not to the exclusion of other qualities, for it is above all dramatic, giving memorable expression to the subtle and often extreme passions of the protagonists. The plots conform to the precepts of classicism (unity of time, place, and action), but they stand out from those of contemporary dramatists by their tense concentration on a single knot of conflict, in which a small number of characters, often interrelated, pursue their goals of love and power. These protagonists—Greek, Roman, biblical, or Turkish—are all of exalted rank, but only rarely do they live up to the standard their position demands. They range from the feeble yet demonic Néron in Britannicus to the strong and saintly Esther, but most often they exemplify a human nature divided against itself, weak, impulsive, cruel, self-seeking, yet aware of its degeneration from an unattainable ideal. Their existence is in striking contrast to the golden image of royalty which Racine had to paint as official historian; it seems like an illustration of Pascal's vision of ‘la misère de l'homme sans Dieu’, and this has led many commentators to insist—perhaps excessively—on Racine's Jansenism.

Whether Jansenist-inspired or not, what distinguishes his writing in the end is the tragic vision of fate it conveys. There are optimistic elements in all his plays, but these are set against the usually stronger forces of destruction. Driven on by their futile hope as apparently free agents, yet condemned by their own nature or by some higher force to failure and ruin, these magnificent and lamentable men and women act out on their confined stage a splendid ceremonial of defeat. Racine often proclaimed his debt to the Greek tragedians; in France he is their only successor.

— Peter France

Bibliography

• O. de Mourgues, Racine, or the Triumph of Relevance (1967)
• R. C. Knight (ed.) Racine: Modern Judgements (1969)
• A. Niderst, Les Tragédies de Racine, diversité et unité (1975)

(zhäN räsēn') , 1639–99, French dramatist. Racine is the prime exemplar of French classicism. The nobility of his Alexandrine verse, the simplicity of his diction, the psychological realism of his characters, and the skill of his dramatic construction contribute to the continued popularity of his plays. Educated at Port-Royal, he broke with his Jansenist masters over his love for the theater. His first dramatic attempts, La Thébaïde (1664) and Alexandre le Grand (1665), were imitations of Corneille. With Andromaque (1667), a tragedy after Euripides, Racine supplanted Corneille as France's leading tragic dramatist. Corneille's friends, including Racine's former friend Molière, tried to ruin the young playwright, but the backing of Louis XIV and later of Boileau saved him. Racine's next play, Les Plaideurs (1668), wittily satirizes the law courts. His subsequent plays are milestones in French literature—Britannicus (1669); Bérénice (1670); Bajazet (1672); Mithridate (1673); Iphigénie en Aulide (1674); Phèdre (1677). After a concerted attack on Phèdre, Racine, in a revulsion against his irregular life, gave up the theater. In the same year he married and was appointed official historiographer by Louis XIV. Mme de Maintenon persuaded him to write Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691) for performance at Saint-Cyr. These differ from the earlier plays in their biblical subjects and use of a chorus and in the length of Esther, which has three acts instead of five. There are many English translations of Racine, among them those of John Masefield, Lacy Lockert, Kenneth Muir, and Robert Lowell.

Bibliography

See biography by G. Brereton (rev. ed. 1974); studies by R. Barthes (tr. 1964), P. France (1966), M. Turnell (1972), P. J. Yarrow (1978), and L. Goldman (1981).

Racine, Jean (1639–1699), French playwright and author. Racine was born in La Ferté-Milon, northeast of Paris. His parents died when he was very young, and he was therefore raised mostly by his maternal grandmother, Marie Desmoulins. As his mother's family had close connections with the Jansenists of Port-Royal, Racine came under their influence from an early age, and their rigorous Augustinian theology would be central to his work. After beginning his education at the Collège de Beauvais, he studied at the Petites Écoles de Port-Royal, where he absorbed both Jansenist doctrine and a solid classical education, becoming a particularly fine scholar of Greek. From 1658 Racine began to lead a more worldly life, rejecting his austere upbringing in favor of writing poetry and party-hopping with his cousin Nicolas Vitart, the writer of fables Jean de La Fontaine (also a distant relation), and other figures on the Parisian literary scene. His family sent him (1661–1663) to Uzès in an effort to make a churchman of him, but his letters from this time show us how little this sort of life appealed to him. By 1663 he was back in Paris, where he met Molière and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, and (despite criticism from his family) began to write for the theater.

Racine's first play to be produced was La Thébaïde (The Thebiad), which had its premiere on 20 June 1664, inspiring both popular and critical acclaim. This was followed by Alexandre le grand (1665), in whose preface Racine somewhat ungratefully repudiated his teachers at Port-Royal. The first few performances were given by Molière's theater company; then, however, Racine took both the play and its leading lady, Thérèse du Parc, away from Molière, and arranged for further performances to be given by the rival troupe of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, a move that Racine thought (correctly) would augment both his fame and his boxoffice receipts. Such machinations made Racine few friends, and indeed he seems to have been, at least in his professional life, a difficult man: vain, humorless, quick to take offense, and ungenerous toward fellow artists, even if his scathing attacks on his enemies were sometimes justified.

There followed Racine's first real masterpiece, Andromaque (1667, written for Du Parc); his only comedy, Les plaideurs (1668; The litigants); Britannicus (1669); Bérénice (1670); Bajazet (1672); and Louis XIV's personal favorite, Mithridate (1673, the year in which Racine was elected to the Académie Française). Du Parc having died in 1668, by 1670 Racine had joined the crowd of lovers of another leading actress, Marie de Champmeslé, for whom he wrote the title roles of Bérénice and his two last plays on classical subjects, Iphigénie en Aulide (1674) and Phèdre (1677). After Phèdre he suddenly abandoned the theater, probably less because of any spiritual crisis than because Louis XIV made him (with Boileau, one of the few friends Racine had managed to keep) his official historiographer. He married Catherine de Romanet, a distant relation by marriage, and settled down to a life as a respectable courtier and the devoted father of seven children. For the next twelve years Racine busied himself with his official duties, only returning to the theater in 1689 at the request of Louis's wife Madame de Maintenon, for whose girls' school at Saint-Cyr he wrote Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691). In 1695 he produced his Cantiques spirituels (Spiritual songs), and thereafter entered semi-retirement, interpreted by some as the result of falling from Louis's favor. After writing the Abrégéde l'histoire de Port-Royal (Summary of the history of Port-Royal), which was not published until 1767, Racine died on 21 April 1699.

Racine's theater uses extreme economy of means to generate an intensity of tragic feeling rivaled only by his classical Greek models and by Shakespeare. The unusually small vocabulary of the plays (just under 3,000 words) and his strict adherence to the three unities (codified by his rival Pierre Corneille) give his tragedies the sharpest possible focus. He is a poetic craftsman of the first order, and the austere, oblique elegance of his verse serves to heighten, through ironic contrast, the horror of his characters' torments. His themes and plots, too, while more varied than commonly supposed, are rigorously organized, and their inexorable unfolding shows how well he has absorbed both the theatrical technique and the tragic outlook of the Greeks; but the ruthlessness of his tragedy often surpasses even that of Sophocles or Euripides. This is because Racine adds to the tragic equation a harsh pessimism, derived from Jansenist theology, according to which humans are not merely liable to error, but doomed to self-destructive transgression. In the absence of redemptive grace, even the greatest and noblest souls are driven by their own passions—incestuous lust, hunger for power, murderous vengefulness, sadistic cruelty—to crimes that destroy victim and perpetrator alike. Racine displays an almost clinical fascination with this process, especially as embodied in his tormented female protagonists. Of the sufferings of an Iphigénie or a Phèdre, perhaps none is more exquisite than their terrible lucidity, their claustrophobic awareness of a fate they can do nothing to avoid. The psychological complexity Racine gives to these roles has made them coveted by generations of actresses.

In the immaculate music of his verse, Racine expresses passions of a perverse, even blasphemous ferocity; the result is powerful theater that has continued to fascinate audiences and scholars alike from the seventeenth century to the present. Save for a period of disfavor in the nineteenth century, when the Romantics preferred Shakespeare, Racine's work has remained the benchmark for tragic theater, in France and elsewhere. He claimed to be writing for the sophisticated few, but his immense success belies his intention. The literature on Racine is enormous and still growing; historicists, Marxists, psychoanalytic critics, poststructuralists, and the philosophically or theologically inclined all find that Racine has as much to say as ever.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Racine, Jean. Andromache, Britannicus, Bérénice. Translated by John Cairncross. Baltimore, 1967.

——. Five Plays. Translated by Kenneth Muir. New York, 1960.

——. Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah. Translated by John Cairncross. Baltimore, 1963.

——. Oeuvres complètes. Edited by Raymond Picard. 2 vols. Paris, 1950–1966.

——. Oeuvres complètes. Edited by Georges Forestier. Paris, 1999–.

Secondary Sources

Barthes, Roland. On Racine. Translated by Richard Howard. New York, 1964.

Bénichou, Paul. Morales du Grand Siècle. Paris, 1948.

Goldmann, Lucien. The Hidden God: A Study of Tragic Vision in the Pensées of Pascal and the Tragedies of Racine. Translated by Philip Thody. London, 1964.

Jasinki, René. Vers le vrai Racine. Paris, 1958.

Picard, Raymond. La carrière de Jean Racine. Paris, 1961.

Pommier, Jean. Aspects de Racine, suivi de l'histoire littéraire d'un couple tragique. Paris, 1954.

Rohou, Jacques. Avez-vous lu Racine? Mise au point polémique. Paris, 2000.

Viala, Alain. Racine, la stratégie du caméléon. Paris, 1990.

—DAVID M. POSNER

Quotes:

"Without money honor is merely a disease."

"My only hope lies in my despair."

"Now my innocence begins to weigh me down."

"It's no longer a warmth hidden in my veins: it's Venus entire and whole fastening on her prey."

"A single word often betrays a great design."

"Small crimes always precedes great ones."

See more famous quotes by Jean Racine

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