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awest505's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
zmb's review against another edition
5.0
Iphigenia: An amazing play with a terrible ending. Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ulysses are spectacularly realized here, and this play reminded me so very much of Euripides' Trojan Women, my favorite classical Greek drama. Agamemnon's weakness and conflict is highlighted spectacularly in his interactions with Ulysses, Achilles, Clytemnestra, and Iphigenia herself. Unfortunately, the deux ex machina ending is bad, if kind of inevitable because Achilles and Agamemnon can't actually be in a civil war before the Trojan War.
Phaedra: This reminded me more of Sophocles, maybe even Aeschylus. Everything happens at exactly the right time for the maximum amount of tragedy; it's so well constructed that it's a bit overconstructed. Phaedra is an interesting character, but her supporting cast - Theseus, Hippolytus, Aricia - are weaker and less interesting. I thought this was the weakest play of the three despite its general acclaim.
Athaliah: Another excellent play. Athaliah herself dominates the play despite not really showing up very much and being, like Phaedra, past her prime, so to speak. But Jehoida and Mattan are both excellent characters in their own right, amazingly Machiavellian high priests who hate each other. Unfortunately for Mattan, Athaliah, in her newfound weakness, doesn't listen to his advice but instead the advice of the one good man in the play, Abner, and so Jehoida triumphs. But despite being the high priest of Yahweh it's hard to say that good has won and Racine knows it, and gets some nice foreshadowing of the next "godly" reign thrown in for good measure.
Phaedra: This reminded me more of Sophocles, maybe even Aeschylus. Everything happens at exactly the right time for the maximum amount of tragedy; it's so well constructed that it's a bit overconstructed. Phaedra is an interesting character, but her supporting cast - Theseus, Hippolytus, Aricia - are weaker and less interesting. I thought this was the weakest play of the three despite its general acclaim.
Athaliah: Another excellent play. Athaliah herself dominates the play despite not really showing up very much and being, like Phaedra, past her prime, so to speak. But Jehoida and Mattan are both excellent characters in their own right, amazingly Machiavellian high priests who hate each other. Unfortunately for Mattan, Athaliah, in her newfound weakness, doesn't listen to his advice but instead the advice of the one good man in the play, Abner, and so Jehoida triumphs. But despite being the high priest of Yahweh it's hard to say that good has won and Racine knows it, and gets some nice foreshadowing of the next "godly" reign thrown in for good measure.
peskimo's review
challenging
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
smcleish's review
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in March and April 1999.
Iphigenia
One of the best known stories in Greek mythology is that of Iphigenia. She was the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; when he was leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War. the fleet was stranded at Aulis by contrary winds, and an oracle told them that the wind would only change if Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter.
The story of Iphigenia has a distinguished history in drama. As well as inspiring Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis, her death forms the motivation for Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon on his return from Troy, which led in turn to her own murder at the hands of their son Orestes - between them, the subjects of famous, surviving, plays by Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles.
There are in fact several versions of the myth; a common one has the goddess Artemis substituting a hind for Iphigenia at the last moment, snatching her away to become a priestess (as in Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris). Racine chooses a more obscure version of the myth, in which Iphigenia is saved when the oracle is discovered to refer to another Iphigenia.
His reason for doing this is to make the process of divine retribution clearer. Iphigenia has done nothing to deserve death, so she should not die. He rejected the story of the hind, probably because of his early background as a Jansenist. The Jansenists were a strict group of Catholics; among their beliefs was the idea that it should require the eye of faith to perceive a miracle; to those lacking such an eye, it should appear to be a natural event. (The idea is that the purpose of a miracle is to bolster faith, so that to those with no faith they are meaningless. This is the opposite of the modern charismatic Christian viewpoint, for example, that miracles are a sign intended to convince non-believers.) He was, however, unable to remove or rationalise the miracle that the wind changed on the death of the girl, as the oracle had foretold.
The blandness of Iphigenia as a character is the main weakness in the play. She is really the tool of the others - her parents, her fiancé Achilles, the seer Calchas. It is perhaps ironic that Racine's reason for choosing this particular version of the myth - the inoffensiveness of Iphigenia - should make it so hard to create in her a living character.
Phaedra
Phaedra was Racine's last play before his return to the Catholic church (he wrote another pair of plays, on Biblical stories, much later in his life despite his involvement with the Jansenists, who strongly condemned the stage). His story here is based on Greek myth, the source of several of his plays, and (like Iphigenia) covers the same ground as a play by Euripides, in this case Hippolytus. Theseus, King of Athens, has been married twice, first to the Amazon Hippolyta, mother by him of a son Hippolytus, and then to Phaedra, daughter of Minos King of Crete and Pasiphaë. Pasiphaë was a daughter of the sun god Helios and mother of the monstrous Minotaur through her unnatural passion for a bull.
Phaedra believes she has a hereditary tendency toward unnatural love, through the hatred of the goddess Venus for her mother (Racine uses Venus rather than the Greek Aphrodite). This is confirmed in her mind when she begins to experience an incestuous and adulterous passion for her stepson. When she approaches him and is rejected, her maid accuses him before his father of having a passion for her, and this brings about his death.
The character of Phaedra is Racine's main interest in the story. She feels unable to help herself, but is horrified by her desire for Hippolytus - in fact, she is almost driven mad by the guilt she feels. The speeches in which she expresses this are a major part of what made writers like Proust admire Racine; there are several points in Remembrance of Things Past in which Proust's narrator goes to the theatre to see famous actresses perform these scenes out of context.
While the psychological study of Phaedra is interesting and very poetically expressed, her character rather overbalances the play. Hippolytus in particular suffers, being given few lines that are more than conventional.
Phaedra epitomises a Jansenist believe that grace, the forgiveness of sins, could not be earned or bought, but was apportioned by God to some and not to others as he saw fit: this is a fairly severe form of predestination. Phaedra is a study of the sinful soul denied grace by God. Since the setting of the story forces God to be represented by the Greek pagan gods, rather than the God of the Roman Catholic Church, there is a slight problem in doing this. The Greeks never assigned absolute moral purity to any of their gods, and this makes Phaedra's situation less tragic than that of a similarly placed Catholic would be.
Athaliah
Racine's last play is one of the two Biblical dramas he wrote after a long hiatus. It is based on the story from Kings of Athaliah and her grandson Joash, rulers of the kingdom of Judah. Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel of Israel who had married into the Davidic royal house of Judah. When Ahab's family was destroyed when Jehu became King of Israel, her son, visiting Israel, was killed. Athaliah took her revenge on the house of David, killing her grandchildren and taking the throne of Judah for herself.
But one grandson, a baby, survived, and was brought up in secret in the Temple, the centre of Judaism. (Athaliah followed her parents' worship of Baal, and imposed him on Judah.) Eventually Athaliah, tormented by dreams in which a young boy killed her, went to the temple where she saw the boy from her dreams assisting in the ritual. The boy is of course her grandson, though he does not know his own origins.
Athaliah's surprising - and threatening - appearance at the Temple leads the priesthood to set off a rebellion, with ends with the death of Athaliah and Joash becoming king. The play ends there, and it is only through hints that Racine reminds us of the ironical conclusion to the whole affair. As Joash got older, he followed his grandmother's example and abandoned the faith of Yahweh for that of Baal.
With the particular plot of this play - one beloved of fantasy authors, many of whom I suspect have never read the book of Kings - it should, according to the conventions of the time, be entitled Joash. However, it concentrates strongly on the psychology of Athaliah, and so Racine is justified in the title he chose.
The obvious play with which to compare Athaliah is of course Phaedra, the last of Racine's plays to have a story from a non-Biblical source. The main focus of both plays is a tormented female character and her psychology as it develops through the play. In Athaliah, there is more written for the other characters, so Racine's analysis of her is briefer, and the language he uses not so poetic. (That of course may be partly the translation.)
One interesting aspect of the play is the portrayal of the priests. The priest of Baal is a cynical man who does not believe in the god he follows; he is a priest for primarily political rather than religious reasons. In fact, he has a strong belief in Yahweh, and is a renegade from the Jewish priesthood. (Almost all of the characters, including Athaliah herself, believe in the power of Yahweh, whatever their public stance.) The priests of Yahweh are zealots, bigots with an extreme and distasteful creed, using the opportunities provided by the comparative toleration of Athaliah's reign (they allowed to continue to worship, for example) to plot the destruction of Baal's worshippers. Any means available to them that will accomplish this are seized upon, even if they involve morally dubious deceptions. Since the characters of the specific priests involved are not made explicit in the Biblical account, the way that they are portrayed is largely Racine's own choice. It is a fascinating one for him to have made, particularly given the extremism of his own brand of Catholicism.
Iphigenia
One of the best known stories in Greek mythology is that of Iphigenia. She was the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; when he was leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War. the fleet was stranded at Aulis by contrary winds, and an oracle told them that the wind would only change if Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter.
The story of Iphigenia has a distinguished history in drama. As well as inspiring Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis, her death forms the motivation for Clytemnestra's murder of Agamemnon on his return from Troy, which led in turn to her own murder at the hands of their son Orestes - between them, the subjects of famous, surviving, plays by Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles.
There are in fact several versions of the myth; a common one has the goddess Artemis substituting a hind for Iphigenia at the last moment, snatching her away to become a priestess (as in Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris). Racine chooses a more obscure version of the myth, in which Iphigenia is saved when the oracle is discovered to refer to another Iphigenia.
His reason for doing this is to make the process of divine retribution clearer. Iphigenia has done nothing to deserve death, so she should not die. He rejected the story of the hind, probably because of his early background as a Jansenist. The Jansenists were a strict group of Catholics; among their beliefs was the idea that it should require the eye of faith to perceive a miracle; to those lacking such an eye, it should appear to be a natural event. (The idea is that the purpose of a miracle is to bolster faith, so that to those with no faith they are meaningless. This is the opposite of the modern charismatic Christian viewpoint, for example, that miracles are a sign intended to convince non-believers.) He was, however, unable to remove or rationalise the miracle that the wind changed on the death of the girl, as the oracle had foretold.
The blandness of Iphigenia as a character is the main weakness in the play. She is really the tool of the others - her parents, her fiancé Achilles, the seer Calchas. It is perhaps ironic that Racine's reason for choosing this particular version of the myth - the inoffensiveness of Iphigenia - should make it so hard to create in her a living character.
Phaedra
Phaedra was Racine's last play before his return to the Catholic church (he wrote another pair of plays, on Biblical stories, much later in his life despite his involvement with the Jansenists, who strongly condemned the stage). His story here is based on Greek myth, the source of several of his plays, and (like Iphigenia) covers the same ground as a play by Euripides, in this case Hippolytus. Theseus, King of Athens, has been married twice, first to the Amazon Hippolyta, mother by him of a son Hippolytus, and then to Phaedra, daughter of Minos King of Crete and Pasiphaë. Pasiphaë was a daughter of the sun god Helios and mother of the monstrous Minotaur through her unnatural passion for a bull.
Phaedra believes she has a hereditary tendency toward unnatural love, through the hatred of the goddess Venus for her mother (Racine uses Venus rather than the Greek Aphrodite). This is confirmed in her mind when she begins to experience an incestuous and adulterous passion for her stepson. When she approaches him and is rejected, her maid accuses him before his father of having a passion for her, and this brings about his death.
The character of Phaedra is Racine's main interest in the story. She feels unable to help herself, but is horrified by her desire for Hippolytus - in fact, she is almost driven mad by the guilt she feels. The speeches in which she expresses this are a major part of what made writers like Proust admire Racine; there are several points in Remembrance of Things Past in which Proust's narrator goes to the theatre to see famous actresses perform these scenes out of context.
While the psychological study of Phaedra is interesting and very poetically expressed, her character rather overbalances the play. Hippolytus in particular suffers, being given few lines that are more than conventional.
Phaedra epitomises a Jansenist believe that grace, the forgiveness of sins, could not be earned or bought, but was apportioned by God to some and not to others as he saw fit: this is a fairly severe form of predestination. Phaedra is a study of the sinful soul denied grace by God. Since the setting of the story forces God to be represented by the Greek pagan gods, rather than the God of the Roman Catholic Church, there is a slight problem in doing this. The Greeks never assigned absolute moral purity to any of their gods, and this makes Phaedra's situation less tragic than that of a similarly placed Catholic would be.
Athaliah
Racine's last play is one of the two Biblical dramas he wrote after a long hiatus. It is based on the story from Kings of Athaliah and her grandson Joash, rulers of the kingdom of Judah. Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel of Israel who had married into the Davidic royal house of Judah. When Ahab's family was destroyed when Jehu became King of Israel, her son, visiting Israel, was killed. Athaliah took her revenge on the house of David, killing her grandchildren and taking the throne of Judah for herself.
But one grandson, a baby, survived, and was brought up in secret in the Temple, the centre of Judaism. (Athaliah followed her parents' worship of Baal, and imposed him on Judah.) Eventually Athaliah, tormented by dreams in which a young boy killed her, went to the temple where she saw the boy from her dreams assisting in the ritual. The boy is of course her grandson, though he does not know his own origins.
Athaliah's surprising - and threatening - appearance at the Temple leads the priesthood to set off a rebellion, with ends with the death of Athaliah and Joash becoming king. The play ends there, and it is only through hints that Racine reminds us of the ironical conclusion to the whole affair. As Joash got older, he followed his grandmother's example and abandoned the faith of Yahweh for that of Baal.
With the particular plot of this play - one beloved of fantasy authors, many of whom I suspect have never read the book of Kings - it should, according to the conventions of the time, be entitled Joash. However, it concentrates strongly on the psychology of Athaliah, and so Racine is justified in the title he chose.
The obvious play with which to compare Athaliah is of course Phaedra, the last of Racine's plays to have a story from a non-Biblical source. The main focus of both plays is a tormented female character and her psychology as it develops through the play. In Athaliah, there is more written for the other characters, so Racine's analysis of her is briefer, and the language he uses not so poetic. (That of course may be partly the translation.)
One interesting aspect of the play is the portrayal of the priests. The priest of Baal is a cynical man who does not believe in the god he follows; he is a priest for primarily political rather than religious reasons. In fact, he has a strong belief in Yahweh, and is a renegade from the Jewish priesthood. (Almost all of the characters, including Athaliah herself, believe in the power of Yahweh, whatever their public stance.) The priests of Yahweh are zealots, bigots with an extreme and distasteful creed, using the opportunities provided by the comparative toleration of Athaliah's reign (they allowed to continue to worship, for example) to plot the destruction of Baal's worshippers. Any means available to them that will accomplish this are seized upon, even if they involve morally dubious deceptions. Since the characters of the specific priests involved are not made explicit in the Biblical account, the way that they are portrayed is largely Racine's own choice. It is a fascinating one for him to have made, particularly given the extremism of his own brand of Catholicism.
jeeleongkoh's review
4.0
For no reason given by the play, Venus tortures Phaedra, wife to Theseus King of Athens, with a passion for her stepson Hippolytus. She struggles valiantly against the passion, and only confesses her love to him when she received news of Theseus' death. She is rebuffed by the prince, and then learns that the king is not dead but is returning home. Wild with guilt and fear, she allows her nurse Oenone to lie to Theseus that Hippolytus hit on her, and inner torture becomes also external tragedy.
The construction of the play is brilliant, as the coils of the plot strangle any hope of escape. A series of confessions in the first movement, the action reverses itself when characters try to take back what has been said. Phaedra, a descendant of the sun-god, has nowhere on earth to hide from the eyes of judgment. Even in Hades, she will have to face her father, Minos, who judges the dead.
The poetry, as conveyed through John Cairncross' translation, is dramatic and moving. The figure of the monster, first seen as proof of Theseus' heroism, recurs throughout the play wearing different faces, and speaking with intensifying alarm, until it appears finally as the devastating gift of Neptune. The horses that ate out of Hippolytus' hand kill him in the end.
The French hexameter is rendered in iambic pentameter, giving such beautiful lines to Phaedra:
Since Venus wills it, of this unblest line
I perish, I, the last and the wretchedest.
and, after a long recitation of all the ways she tried to dismiss Hippolytus from her mind,
Venus in all her might is on her prey.
I have a fitting horror for my crime;
I hate this passion and I loathe my life
.
She has not done anything yet, but already feels criminal. Love is turned into hate, and life into death.
The construction of the play is brilliant, as the coils of the plot strangle any hope of escape. A series of confessions in the first movement, the action reverses itself when characters try to take back what has been said. Phaedra, a descendant of the sun-god, has nowhere on earth to hide from the eyes of judgment. Even in Hades, she will have to face her father, Minos, who judges the dead.
The poetry, as conveyed through John Cairncross' translation, is dramatic and moving. The figure of the monster, first seen as proof of Theseus' heroism, recurs throughout the play wearing different faces, and speaking with intensifying alarm, until it appears finally as the devastating gift of Neptune. The horses that ate out of Hippolytus' hand kill him in the end.
The French hexameter is rendered in iambic pentameter, giving such beautiful lines to Phaedra:
Since Venus wills it, of this unblest line
I perish, I, the last and the wretchedest.
and, after a long recitation of all the ways she tried to dismiss Hippolytus from her mind,
Venus in all her might is on her prey.
I have a fitting horror for my crime;
I hate this passion and I loathe my life
.
She has not done anything yet, but already feels criminal. Love is turned into hate, and life into death.
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