A careful examination of Racine's life and let ters reveals a puzzling duality, a serious soul and a mobile mind. He was not merely religious; he was credulous and superstitious. He was more than loyal to the King: he was his toy. He was vain, irritable, timid, easily influenced by those he loved or feared. He was gentle and lovable, but the kind of moral goodness that he had was wholly consistent with moral weakness. His mind was keen, supple. strong, with good power of psychic analysis. remarkable delicacy of sentiment, and an exquisite though narrow sense of literary art. The best of him is in his work, a rare combination of wit and feeling. energy and poise. imagination and self-restraint, eloquence and repose.
The production of Andromaque makes Novem ber 17, 1667, one of the great dates in the history of the French stage. It marked a new concep tion of the tragedian's art, For Corneille'- heroic tragedy is at that moment contrasted with Racine's tragedy of love. Corneille stands for the triumph of will, Racine for the inevitableness of destiny and of passion. This conditions his dramatic form. Since lie deals with the universals of hu man nature, he chooses a conventional environ ment, whatever least distracts attention and least binds the development and play of passion. With comedy it is different. He puts the scene of Les plaideurs in the Paris of his day.
The dominance of passion over Will is accepted more readily in women than in men, and Racine's great characters are nearly all women. This is preeminently true of Ph-Cdre, .4ndromaque, and iphigenie, his three most popular tragedies. It is true, too, though in a different way. of Athalie and Esther.
Racine's plays are simple. Each is a problem which the dramatist solves in a way often more consistent with logic than with psychology. Thus the dramatic element is enhanced, for Racine touches only such features in his characters as shall make them stand out clearly and do noth ing to hinder the development of his plot. Every person behaves with the utmost decorum; not one of them says anything inelegant or unrefined; there are no visible bloody deeds, no roughness even, and no jesting nor comedy. Herein Ra cine's men and women constitute an ideal or rather an unreal society; perhaps it were better to say a society from which such features as did not fit Racine's :esthetic theories are absent. Again. Racine took all his tragic themes from ancient history or legend, but his tragedies are nevertheless of the seventeenth century. French men in French apparel are called Nero and Achil les. 1phigenie is French to the core. Indeed. little remains of the old heroes and heroines, villains, and saints, save their names and the thread of historic tradition. Racine's tragedies
teem with anachronisms. but these anachronisms are precisely what quickens the Raeinian charac ters and makes them national or racial. They are not restorations, but vivid adaptations.
Racine's tragedies and his Plaideurs are writ ten wholly in Alexandrine verse. In Athalic and Esther other measures are employed in the choruses. His vocabulary is limited. There are very few allusions to visible nature, to hills, rivers. plants, animals, etc. The whole interest, in a word. is centred in man, and mostly in the aristocracy. The mob, the lowly folk, even middle class people are conspicuously absent. Racine is therefore the poet of the high-born. He has never appealed to the French nation as a whole, but rather to the most cultivated and fastidious classes, who find in him a precise and poetic interpretation of the loftier, more general sides of life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Of many editions of Racine Bibliography. Of many editions of Racine the best is Mesnard's (7 vols., Paris, 1865-73). That by Girodet (3 vols., ib., 1301-05) is remark able for its typography. That of Anatole France is also noteworthy (5 vols., ib., 1874). The first edition is dated 1675-76; the last revision by Racine, 1697. There is an English translation (metrical) by Boswell, in Bohn's Library (Lon don, 1889-91). Andromaque was adapted as The Distressed Mother by Ambrose Philips in 1712. Phedre was acted in London in English iu 1707. For Racine's life we have Memoires, ed ited by his son Louis (Lausanne, 1747). Con sult the popular biographies by Larroumet in Lcs Brands ecrirains fruncais (Paris. 1898) ; Deschanel . (Paris, 1884) ; Monceaux ( (Paris, 1S92): also Stendbal. Racine et Shakespeare (ib., 1SS2) ; Blaze de Bury, Racine and the French Classical Drama (London. 1S45) ; Sainte Beuve, Port-Royal, vol. vi. (4th ed., Paris, 1S78) ; Roy, Racine; sa rie intime (ib., 1871), Stapfer, Racine et rictor Hugo (ib.. 1887) ; Robert, La por'tique de Racine (ib., 1890) Deltour, Les cnneini.$) de Racine (ib., 1S92); De Grouchy, Documents inedits relatifs a Jean Racine (ib., 1892) ; Delfour. La Bible dynes Racine (ib., 1893). Brunetiere, Etudes critiques dc la litterature francaise, vol. i. (Paris, 18801: id., Histoire et litterature, vol. ii. lib.. 18841: id.. Les c'poques du thevitre francais lib., 1392) ; and Lemaitre, Impressions de theOre, vols. i.. H.. iv. (Paris. 1838 et seq), contain useful criticism of Racine's dramatic art. The English series of Foreign Classics has a study by Trollope, Corneille and Racine (Edinburgh, 1331).