Phèdre

Racine
Sarah Bernhardt as Phaedra in Paris, 1893
(audio recording 1903)
PHAEDRA.
Affronting danger side by side with you,
I would myself have wished to lead the way,
And Phaedra, with you in the labyrinth,
Would have returned with you or met her doom.
Act 2, Scene 5, ll. 659-662
 Theseus

Phaedra Arici
a
Hippolytus
Oenone
 bienséance (propriety)
vraisemblance (verisimilitude)

“Phèdre et Hippolyte,” Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1802)

“How could I possibly have sullied the stage with the
horrible murder of so virtuous and lovable a person as
Iphigenia had necessarily to be in this play? And again,
how could I possibly have succeeded in bringing my
tragedy to an end with the help of a goddess and stage
machinery, and by a metamorphosis which might have
found some credence in Euripides’ days but which
would be too absurd and too incredible in ours?”

Racine, “Preface to Iphigenia,” in Jean Racine,

Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah, ed. John Cairncross
(Penguin UK, 2004), 50.
“If [the Greeks] show a woman passionately in love,
like Phaedra in the Hippolytus of Euripides, they
immediately warn us that this love is an effect of the
revenge of the gods, and not of the derangement of
those who feel it; and, generally speaking, it can be
said that they adduce nothing to authorize the
disorders of our hearts.”

Abbé de Villiers, qtd. in Philip John Yarrow, Racine

(Rowman and Littlefield, 1978), 70.
“The immaculate fortitude of a young man who is presented
as a model of virtue, who knows how he is expected to
behave and unquestionably strives and manages to comply, is
of slight intellectual or dramatic interest. The female
temptress is potentially a far more engrossing figure. Unless
she be a mindless nymphomaniac, she must be aware of the
contradiction between duty and her desire; she must realize
that, in initiating the transgressive process, she is courting
danger in a variety of ways: physical punishment, social
disapproval and/or (in a Christian context) eternal
damnation.”

Albert S. Gérard, The Phaedra Syndrome: Of Shame and

Guilt in Drama (Rodopi, 1993), 4.
PHAEDRA.
Aricia must perish, and the King
Be stirred to wrath against her odious race.
Act 4, Scene 6, ll. 1259-60
 Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love (1996),
image from Arcola Theatre Production (2011)
HIPPOLYTUS.
I can’t sin against a God I don’t believe in.
Sarah Kane, Phaedra’s Love
PHAEDRA.
Who knows how far repentance would have gone?
Perhaps I might even have accused myself?
Perhaps, had not my voice died in my throat,
The frightful truth would have escaped my lips.
Act 4, Scene 5, ll. 1199-1202
“To give Phèdre a monologue in which she
argued with herself would be the equivalent of
giving her a ticket of respectability.”

J. P. Short, Racine, Phèdre, Critical Guides to

French Texts 20 (London: Grant & Cutler, 1998),
33.
“[T]his baseness seemed to me to be more
appropriate to a nurse, who could well have more
slave-like inclinations, and who nevertheless
launches this false accusation only in order to save
the life and honour of her mistress. Phaedra
consents only because she is out of her mind…”

Racine, “Preface to Phaedra,” in Jean Racine,

Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah, ed. John Cairncross
(Penguin UK, 2004), 145.
OENONE.
Ah, Queen! Dismiss these unbecoming fears,
And of your error take a different view.
You are in love. We cannot change our fate.
By destined magic you were swept along.
Is that so strange or so miraculous?
Has love then triumphed only over you?
Frailty is human and but natural.
Mortal, you must a mortal’s lot endure.
Act 4, Scene 6, ll. 1295-1306
“[I]n no other play of mine is virtue given greater
prominence. The slightest transgressions are
severely punished. The very thought of crime is
regarded with as much horror as crime itself.”

Racine, “Preface to Phaedra,” 146.

“Eve After The Fall,” Rodin (1886)
“The Scarlet Letter,” Hugues Merle (1859), after Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel
(1850)
Shame, dir. Steve McQueen (2011)
Deep Gold, dir. Julian Rosefeldt (2013)
OENONE.
Live then, no longer tortured by reproach.
Your love becomes like any other love.
Theseus, in dying, has dissolved the bonds
Which made your love a crime to be abhorred.
Act 1, Scene 4, ll. 349-352
PHAEDRA.
I burn with love. Yet, even as I speak,
Do not imagine I feel innocent,
Nor think that my complacency has fed
The poison of the love that clouds my mind.
Act 2, Scene 5, ll. 673-676
HIPPOLYTUS.
O God! What will the King say then? How love
Has spread its baleful poison through the house!
Act 3, Scene 6, ll. 991-992
HIPPOLYTUS.
Whereas no monsters overcome by me
Have given me the right to err like him [Theseus].
Act 1, Scene 1, ll. 99-100
PHAEDRA.
This frightful monster must not now escape.
Here is my heart. Here must your blow strike home.
Impatient to atone for its offence,
I feel it strain to meet your mighty arm.
Strike. Or if it’s unworthy of your blow,
Or such a death too mild for my deserts,
Or if you deem my blood too vile to stain
Your hand, lend me, if not your arm, your sword,
Give me it!
Act 2, Scene 5, ll. 704-711
National Theatre Phaedra (2009)
PHAEDRA.
Even now I feel these very walls, these vaults,
Will soon give tongue and, with accusing voice,
Await my husband to reveal the truth.
Act 3, Scene 3, ll. 854-856
PHAEDRA.
My grandsire [Helios] is the lord of all the gods;
My forebears fill the sky, the universe.
Where can I hide? In dark infernal night?
Act 4, Scene 6, ll. 1275-77
“From every corner of heaven and earth, Phaedra sees all
the members of her immortal family who people the
universe contemplate and condemn her, and first and
foremost the most venerable of them all, the sungod…
On all sides, she is exposed naked to the thousand eyes
of her sacred ancestors…. She is forbidden even to
betake herself to death, the ultimate habitable region of
this world. The universe is now, in every region, nothing
but a place of expiation and torture for her.”

Thierry Maulnier, qtd. in Introduction, Jean Racine,

Iphigenia, Phaedra, Athaliah, ed. John Cairncross
(Penguin UK, 2004), 138.