Iphigenia / Phaedra / Athaliah

by Jean Racine, John Cairncross (Translator), E.F. Watling

Depicts a princess' absolute submission to her father's will. This title shows a woman's struggle to overcome her overwhelming passion for her stepson - an obsession that brings destruction to a noble family. It portrays a ruthless pagan queen, who defies Jehovah in her desperate attempt to keep the throne of Jerusalem from its legitimate heir.

Strongly influenced by Classical drama, Jean Racine (1639-99) broke away from the grandiose theatricality of baroque drama to create works of intense psychological realism, with characters manipulated by cruel and vengeful gods. Iphigenia depicts a princess's absolute submission to her father's will, despite his determination to sacrifice her to gain divine favour before going to war. Described by Voltaire as 'the masterpiece of the human mind', Phaedra shows a woman's struggle to overcome her overwhelming passion for her stepson - an obsession that brings destruction to a noble family. And Athaliah portrays a ruthless pagan queen, who defies Jehovah in her desperate attempt to keep the throne of Jerusalem from its legitimate heir.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Classics, France, French Literature, Fiction, Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Classical Greek and Roman themes base noted tragedies, such as Britannicus (1669) and Phèdre (1677), of French playwright Jean Baptiste Racine.

Adherents of movement of Cornelis Jansen included Jean Baptiste Racine.


This dramatist ranks alongside Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin) and Pierre Corneille of the "big three" of 17th century and of the most important literary figures in the western tradition. Psychological insight, the prevailing passion of characters, and the nakedness of both plot and stage mark dramaturgy of Racine. Although primarily a tragedian, Racine wrote one comedy.

Orphaned by the age of four years when his mother died in 1641 and his father died in 1643, he came into the care of his grandparents. At the death of his grandfather in 1649, his grandmother, Marie des Moulins, went to live in the convent of Port-Royal and took her grandson Jean-Baptiste. He received a classical education at the Petites écoles de Port-Royal, a religious institution that greatly influenced other contemporary figures, including Blaise Pascal.

The French bishops and the pope condemned Jansenism, a heretical theology, but its followers ran Port-Royal. Interactions of Racine with the Jansenists in his years at this academy great influenced the rest of his life. At Port-Royal, he excelled in his studies of the classics, and the themes of Greek and Roman mythology played large roles in his works.

Jean Racine died from cancer of the liver. He requested burial in Port-Royal, but after Louis XIV razed this site in 1710, people moved his body to the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris.

*source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ra...

Reviews

[Dhanaraj Rajan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four and Half Stars.

There are three plays by the French Playwright, Jean Racine (1639 - 1699). The themes for the plays had been taken from Greek mythology (Iphigenia and Phaedra) and Old Testament (Athaliah).

I am not sure as to the mode in which the review can be written for these plays. All I can say is that the dramatic element is superbly manipulated by Racine. The suspense keeps building up in all of these plays and the action is immediate. The reader or the viewer then must be always on the end of his/her nerves. If that is the criterion for success of a play, Racine easily succeeds as a good playwright.

In Iphigenia, the reader/viewer is in constant worry about the fate of innocent Iphigenia (Will she be sacrificed to appease the gods of the land to favour Agamemnon, her own father?) In Phaedra, we are worried about the consequences of Phaedra's immoral desire for her stepson. In Athaliah, the situation is whether the small boy (the heir to David's throne) will escape the wrath of the pagan queen Athaliah? Such tense situations are manipulated in a splendid manner by the Racine. The dialogues (all in the form of poetry) add much to the forward movement of the play and play a significant role in intensifying the situation. By the way, the dialogues had been wonderfully translated in English by John Cairncross.

There are other minor/major themes in these plays: The Fate, The role of God's Grace, the Human angst as a result of inordinate desire, the Human emotion of love, etc.

An Aside: I am contemplating the possibility to stage Athaliah in my surroundings as and when the opportune time appears.

[francesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Iphigenia - 5 stars
Phaedra - 4 stars
Athaliah - 3 stars

[Jee Koh · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Glumdalclitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theatre of cruelty and conflicted bitches. Eriphile in Iphigenia is a fantastic role, real return of the repressed stuff, and of course Racine didn't know what to do with that discovery, except make her tragic and spiteful. But even so, she reveals a post-colonial awareness of how humanity is degraded by the conquering heroes of the west.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[el ✯ ࣪ ˖ · Rating 3 out of 5]

ataliah - 3 stars

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Lydia Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in preparation for my Third Year University Course on Tragedy. Again, I’m finding the vast majority of these plays to be beyond my frail intellect. They seem a little to lofty and abstract for me. That being said, I much preferred this one to many of the others, as I could easily follow the story, and appreciated being able to recognise the characters at first glance. Captured the unnerving and disturbing elements of Seneca’s eternal tragedy, injecting it with more contemporary questions and nuances concerning social morality. This play is particularly interesting when compared with the Ancient Greek original, as well as Sarah Kane’s comparable contemporary rewriting of this classic tragedy. I am excited to learn more about all of these texts from my tutors, and to consider their difference from the Classic and Shakespearean tragic dramas I have encountered and come to love. Perhaps soon I will be snow to say the same for contemporary plays.

[Ruthie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know I read this, because there are notes in the Iphigenia section. I think I read it to work out what the French were doing at a time when England had had Shakespeare, Marlowe etc. Sorry, France, but your stuff was very stilted buy comparison.
But this is a quotation from Racine that perhaps Goodreads reviewers should remember:

"One must be extremely cautious and very restrained in passing judgement on the works of these great men [Greek playwrights] for fear of condemning what we do not understand, as has happened to several people. And if we must incline to some form of excess, it is better to offend by admiring everything in their writings than to criticise a lot of things."

I'm doing a clear out and this is going to the charity shop (June 2025).

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is quite the collection of Racine's 'strong women' plays. The protagonists may not all be likable, but they are women of strength, which is quite surprising when one considers they were written in 17th Century France.

[Maria Tatham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of these three plays I've read and am reviewing Athaliah only. In Athaliah, Racine and the translator (Cairncross) use powerful, beautiful language in an intense dramatic way. It's brilliant and moving.

[m · Rating 4 out of 5]

This should be turned into a soap opera

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting plays on life, choices, and narrative.

[T.J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The wicked’s bliss like water flows away.

[Emily]

I think of these three plays Phaedra was my favorite by far.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

ایفی ژنی، یا "ایفی ژنیا"، یکی از دختران "آگاممنون"، پادشاه آتن است. اگرچه در اساطیر یونان چندان از او یاد نمی شود، اما اغلب تراژدی نویسان یک تراژدی به نام ایفی ژنی سروده اند. پیش از جنگ تروا، هنگامی که آگاممنون مورد قهر الهه "آرتمیس" قرار می گیرد، "کالخاس" پیش گو به او توصیه می کند برای فرونشاندن خشم الهه، دخترش ایفی ژنی را در معبد آرتمیس قربانی کند. آگاممنون ابتدا نمی پذیرد اما با فشار دیگران و از جمله برادرش "منلاس" که پادشاه اسپارت است ("هلن" همسر همین منلاس، بعدن توسط پاریس ربوده می شود و همین علت اصلی جنگ ده ساله ی یونانیان علیه تروا می شود) آگاممنون می پذیرد که ایفی ژنی را در معبد آرتمیس قربانی کند. اما آرتمیس بر آگاممنون رحم می آورد و به چند روایت، ماده غزالی یا ماده گاوی را برای قربانی، بجای ایفی ژنی می فرستد (داستان ابراهیم و قربانی کردن فرزندش اسماعیل در روایت اسلامی، یا اسحاق در روایت کتاب مقدس). آرتمیس، دختر جوان آگاممنون را به جزیره ی "کریمه" می برد و او را به پاسداری معبد خود می گمارد. ایفی ژنی تا سال های متمادی در معبد آرتمیس به عنوان کاهن خدمت می کند و... اغلب تراژدی های راسین از اساطیر یونانی گرفته شده، اگرچه این داستان ها پیش از راسین، توسط تراژدی نویسان یونانی و رمی، بارها بازنویسی شده اند.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the 1970 edition, published by Penguin Books, which includes an introduction to each play by the translator (John Cairncross) and Racine's preface to each play, all of which are informative and helpful. Iphigenia and Phaedra are based on Euripides' plays Iphigenia at Aulis and Hippolytus. The third play, Athaliah, is based on the Old Testament story of Athaliah, queen of Judah and follower of the pagan god Baal, and Jehoiada, high priest of the temple of Jerusalem (the high priest of Jehovah), who wants to restore the kingship of Judah to the House of David.

In Racine's plays, passion, circumstance, and the gods combine to send the main protagonists to their downfall. The one exception is the play Iphigenia, which is a tragicomedy because it has a "happy" ending.

Five stars for quality of writing and powerful storylines.

I admire these plays more than I like them.

[Ci · Rating 4 out of 5]

My interest in Racine is presently confined in his Greek tragedies hence I bypassed the third play Athaliah.

"Iphigenia" has contributed significantly to the understanding of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, with the former in glorious maternal courage and fury, the latter rather low in both paternal and kingly behaviors. Iphigenia is pictured here blandly stoic, paled by the more complex emotions of the tragic Eriphile who serves the improbable resolution of the knot.

"Phaedra" is a melodramatic passion tragedy. One of the best painted figure is the Oenone, the companionable nurse of the queen, who seems to be surprisingly pragmatic and realistic.

This translation by John Cairncross is simple and elegant. His introduction to each play is also very thorough and helpful.

[Lannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those stories I studied in college. You'd think I was a humanities major, but I was in college for renewable engineering.

I really liked this story. It's not even that great, really, but the academic fart-sniffery that surrounds this one is a pleasant perfume for me. I love the old Greek film of this. I love the strange modern version, The Killing of a Sacred Deer. It's just kinda cool.

(July 16th, 2024)

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read Phaedra, but this is the version I read from. I picked this up as a way of understanding Proust better, who references this play several times throughout 'In Search of Lost Time.' Little Marcel even goes to see it on two(?) occasions. It was illuminating, and well worth the read. The complications of sin and pre-emptive guilt are moving, even if disturbing.

[Neal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read "Phaedra" from this collection. In large part, it is a retelling of Euripides' play "Hippolytus" with French neoclassical strings attached.

[Steve Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

My interest was primarily with Phaedra as it plays a role in Proust's In Search of Lost Time, but all three plays were excellent.

[Lise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Especially "Phaedra" is a very strong play. A classic.