RACINE, rn'sOnf, JEAN ( 1639-99). The great est of French tragic poets, born December 21, 1639, at La Perte-Milon. He received his pri mary education in Beauvais, at a school affiliated with the Jansenists, of Port-Royal then he passed at fifteen to the more immediate direction of the Port-Royalist teachers at l'Ecole des Granges, where he was taught by the noted Greek scholar Lancelot, and the Latinist Nicole, who was a distinguished moralist, and others skilled in the pedagogy of their time. They left indelible marks, not alone on Racine's mind, but on his character, for the great fact that dominates his whole life is his relation, intellectual and moral, to those solitaries of Port-Royal in whom persisted the Puritan element in the French Church. Sometimes an obedient, some times a revolting disciple, he was never indiffer ent to these influences of his youth. He died in their fold, and his grave bore the inscription, `Poet, Recluse of Port-Royal.' At l'Ecole des Granges and later at the Col lege d'Harcourt Racine `read and annotated all the ancient classics.' He learned by heart long passages from Greek romances and declaimed to astonished friends the choruses of Sophoeles, who, with Euripides, remained his dramatic model. Ile acquired also a puritanie tenacity of mind, and uncompromising uprightness and a reasoned devotion. Yet he had brilliant social gifts, and on his graduation (1658) worldly attractions so prevailed on him that his kindred took alarm, They sent him into a kind of exile at Uzes in Languedoc, where he hoped for a benefice from his uncle, Vicar-General of the diocese. His faults, from a Jansenist point of view, appear to have been intimacy with La Fontaine, Chapelain, other men of letters, and some actors and actresses, and the directing of his talent to dramatic composi tion and to poems for the Court, especially La nymphe de 4a Seine on the marriage of Louis XIV.
Fifteen months in Languedoe brought Racine no benefice, but he completed his literary educa tion. He read diligently the Greek, Latin, and Italian poets and historians, and the Church Fathers. He returned to Paris (1662) an aecom plished .scholar, dominated by social and poetic ambition. He was presented to the King, became a fashionable poet, and the intimate of Chapelle, Furetiere, SloHere, and, above all, of Boileau, who formed in the successful poet a new and fruitful theory of dramatic art. In 1664 he ob tained a pension and he was a frequent recipient through life of 'gratifications' from the Court. His earliest play, La Thebaide, on the strife of Eteocles and Polynices, was acted by Moliere's company in 1664. His second play, Alexandre le Grand, was first performed December 4, 1665, by the comedians of the Palais Royal. Decem
ber ISth they were astonished to find out that it was being given by a rival company at the Hotel de Bourgogne. How this came about is unknown, but it ended in a complete breach be tween Aloliere and Racine, the latter of W110111 seems to have been in the wrong, and who pres ently showed himself as an unfriendly rival to Corneille, and as an unseemly satirist of his old teachers, the Port-Royalists, in a reply to Nicole's Lettres risionnaires on the evils of the stage. He wrote also a second reply which Boileau saved him from printing, telling him that it might be a credit to his wit, but was surely none to his heart. Ile later repented deeply this most dis creditable incident in his life. But his irritation at the attitude of his kinsfolk at Port-Royal made his thought more tragically sombre, and while the poet in him was wrestling with the Puritan he wrote Andromave (1667), the first of his seven great plays.
Of Racine's life from 1667 to 1677 we know very little. He lived in close intimacy with at least one actress and produced his only comedy, Les plaideurs (1668), and the tragedies Milan vicus (1669), B6rinice (1670), Bajazet (1672), Mithridatc (1673). 1phigenie (1674), and Phedre (1677). This last was opposed by a cabal who supported a rival and worthless Phedre by Pra don. Nettled at this or because of a moral dis satisfaction with the result of his theory of dra matic art, Racine withdrew from the stage, made his peace with Port-Royal, and married a worthy woman with more money than culture, and more good nature than either. Racine's domestic life was happy. He had seven children and a suffi cient income from sinecure offices and from the post of royal historiographer, which he shared with Boileau. This involved the duty of accom panying the King to his various 'sieges.' but what Racine wrote was accidentally burned. In 1685 he pronounced in the Academy, of which he had been a member since 1673. a fine eulogy on Cor neille, and in 16S9 made a kind of return to the btage with Esther. written to be acted by the girls at Madame de Maintenon's school at Saint Cyr. It was a biblical dramatic poem and very successful. At/medic, a similar and greater piece (1691), was much less successful. Neither was publicly produced in Racine's lifetime. In his last years he grew ever more devout, wrote four Cantiques spirituels and an Histoire abregee de Port-Royal. For this or some other reason he lost Court favor. Tradition says it was for pre paring a memoir on the miseries of the people. In March, 1698, he sought to clear himself of complicity in the Jansenist 'heresy' in a long letter to Madame de 3laintenon.