BY JEAN RACINE EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION, REMARKS AND NOTES BY F. M. WARREN STREET PROfessor of MODERN LANGUAGES IN YALE UNIVERSITY Οὐ πολλὰ NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1674.280.459 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY PAUL H. KELSEY Copyright, 1903, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. INTRODUCTION I. LIFE OF RACINE. JEAN RACINE was born at La Ferté-Milon (department of Aisne, northeast of Paris) on December 21, 1639. His parents died before he was four years old and he was cared for by his grandparents. In 1649 he was sent to the college at Beauvais, and in 1655 to the Jansenist school at Port-Royal, to which some of his relatives had already retired. Port-Royal exercised a decisive influence, both intellectual and moral, on Racine's character. Its maxims of right living and its pure devotion sank into his soul, while under its instructors he seems to have gained that love for Greek literature which shaped his later work. He also began to write at Port-Royal, composing in Latin as well as French. In 1658 he went to Harcourt college at Paris to finish his studies, and soon fell in with acquaintances of like aims with himself, among them La Fontaine. This environment stimulated his poetic fancy. In 1660 he welcomed Louis XIV's marriage with an ode (la Nymphe de la Seine), which won favorable comment from Chapelain, the literary arbiter of the day. He also began a tragedy, Amasie (lost), and planned a comedy. But literature was not the profession to which his pious family had looked forward for him. To separate him from his gay companions and to turn him away from profane letters, his uncle Sconin, vicar general at Uzès in the south of France, invited him to his charge with the intention of having him admitted to orders and endowing him with a church living. Racine, however, had no desire for the vocation. He corresponded from Uzès with his friends, and continued the composition of light verse. There were also many claimants for the livings the bishop of Uzès controlled, so that after some two years' residence in Languedoc he returned to Paris and his former associations. It was in 1663 that Racine began his serious work as an author. An Ode sur la convalescence du Roi in that year was rewarded by a grant of money, which the poet acknowledged in a second ode, la Renommée aux Muses. But a more important task was the preparation of his tragedy, la Thébaïde, which Molière's company performed on June 20, 1664. Here Racine combined his knowledge of the Greek and Latin drama, Euripides and Seneca, with a half conscious imitation of French writers, Corneille who affected his style, Rotrou who had brought out a tragedy on the same subject. While working on la Thébaïde, Racine had met Molière and Boileau, and had formed with the latter a lifelong friendship which was to be of great benefit to himself. The play was a success and encouraged Racine to further efforts. On December 4, 1665, he gave Alexandre to the public by means of the same troupe. The material for Alexandre had been suggested by the historian, Quintus Curtius. Its model was Corneille still. Though generally considered too gallant and romanesque for tragedy, Alexandre was a greater success than la Thébaïde, and as Racine was dissatisfied with Molière's production and had it also staged by the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, who made a specialty of tragedy, it occupied for a time both the theaters of Paris. The result, on the one hand, was an estrangement with Molière and, on the other, a separation from his old friends of PortRoyal, who were utterly opposed, through their religious convictions, to the theater and those who wrote for it. His former instructors, who had toiled so faithfully to develop his genius, could not hide their grief at his apostasy. Personal remonstrances, which wounded the young dramatist's sensitive spirit, were not lacking. Finally, some writings of Nicole were taken by him as a public attack on himself, and in answer to these he directed a sarcastic and unjust letter against the Port-Royalists, which made the alienation complete. In the midst of this quarrel Andromaque was being written. It is the first in date of French psychological tragedies, in which love is the absorbing theme, and its production in 1667 aroused unusual enthusiasm. Its success established its author's position, in the face of the criticisms of the older school, which held to Corneille. It was followed by Racine's only comedy, les Plaideurs (1668), suggested by a lawsuit over a church living, modelled on a plot of Aristophanes and fashioned with La Fontaine and Boileau's help. He continued the series of tragedies in 1669 with Britannicus, and in 1670 with Bérénice, the subject of which was also taken from the annals of Rome, the story of the separation of Titus from the Jewish prinBut Bajazet (1672), the account of a queen's vengeance on a rival and a faithless lover, is a Turkish subject and modern in time. In Mithridate (1673), we find the Oriental despot, Rome's arch enemy, disputing a woman's heart with his own son. Iphigénie (1674), where a mother's love, forgetful of all but the object of its own passion, is contrasted with a daughter's affection and cess. |