Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/225

Rh RACINE 207 " Marion pleure, Marion crie, Marion veut qu'on la marie " is said to have annoyed Racine very much, and it has a most malicious appropriateness. Bajazet, which was first played on 4th January 1672 (for Racine punctually pro- duced his piece a year), is perhaps better. As a play, technically speaking, it has great merit, but the reproach commonly brought against its author was urged specially and with great force against this by Corneille. It is im- possible to imagine anything less Oriental than the atmo- sphere of Bajazet the whole thing is not only French but ephemerally French French of the day and hour ; and its ingenious scenario and admirable style scarcely save it. This charge is equally applicable with the same reservations to Mitkridate, which appears to have been produced on 13th January 1673, the day after the author's reception at the Academy. It was extremely popular and, as far as style and perfection in a disputable kind go, Racine could hardly have lodged a more triumphant diploma piece. His next attempt, Iphigenie, was a long step back- wards and upwards in the direction of Andromaque. It is not that the characters are eminently Greek, but that Greek tragedy gave Racine examples which prevented him from flying in the face of the propriety of character as he had done in Berenice, Bajazet, and Mithridate, and that he here called in, as in Andromaque, other passions to the aid of the mere sighing and crying which form the sole appeal of these three tragedies. Achilles is a rather pitiful per- sonage, and the grand story of the sacrifice is softened very tamely to suit French tastes ; but the parental agonies of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon are truly drawn, and the whole play is full of pathos. It succeeded brilliantly and deservedly, but, oddly enough, the date of its appear- ance is very uncertain. It was assuredly acted at court in the late summer of 1674, but it does not seem to have been given to the public till the early spring of 1675, the usual time at which Racine produced his work. The last and finest of the series of tragedies proper was the most unlucky. Phedre was represented for the first time on New- Year's Day 1677 at the Hotel de Bourgogne. Within a week the opposition company or "troupe du roi" launched an opposition Phedre by Pradon. This singular competition, which had momentous results for Racine, and in which he to some extent paid the penalty of the lex talionis for his own rivalry with Corneille, had long been foreseen. It has been hinted that Racine had from the first been bitterly opposed by a clique, whom his great success irritated, while his personal character did nothing to conciliate them. His enemies at this time had the powerful support of the duchess of Bouillon, one of Mazarin's nieces, a woman of considerable talents and imperious temper, to- gether with her brother the duke of Nevers and divers other personages of high position. These persons of quality, guided, it is said, by Madame Deshoulieres, a poetess of merit whom Boileau unjustly depreciated, selected Pradon, a dramatist of little talent but of much facility, to compose a Phedre in competition with that which it was known that Racine had been elaborating with unusual care. Pradon, perhaps assisted, was equal to the occasion, and it is said that the partisans on both sides did not neglect means for correcting fortune. On her side the duchess of Bouillon is accused of having bought up the front places in both theatres for the first six nights ; on his part Racine is said to have repeated an old trick of his and prevailed on the best actresses of the company that played Pradon's piece to refuse the title part. There is even some ground for believing that Racine endeavoured to prevent the op- position play from being played at all, and that an express order from the kin^ had to be obtained for it. It was of no value, but the measures of the cabal had been so well taken that the finest tragedy of the French classical school was all but driven from the stage, while Pradon's was a positive success. A war of sonnets and epigrams followed, during which it is said that the duke of Nevers menaced Racine and Boileau with the same treatment which Dryden and Voltaire actually received, and was only deterred by the protection which Conde extended to them. The unjust cabal against his piece and the various annoyances to which it gave rise no doubt made a deep impression on Racine. But in the absence of accurate contemporary information it is impossible to decide exactly how much influence they had on the subsequent change in his life. For thirteen years he had been constantly em- ployed on a series of brilliant dramas. He now broke off his dramatic work entirely and in the remaining twenty years of his life wrote but two more plays, and those under special circumstances and of quite a different kind. He had been during his early manhood a libertine in morals and religion ; he now married, became irreproachably domestic, and almost ostentatiously devout. No authentic account of this change exists ; for that of Louis Racine, which attributes the whole to a sudden religious impulse, is manifestly little more than the theory of a son pious in both senses of the word. Probably all the motives which friends and foes have attributed weariness of dissipated life, jealousy of his numerous rivals in Mademoiselle de Champmesle's favour, pique at Pradon's success, fear of los- ing still further the position of greatest tragic poet which after Corneille's Surena was indisputably his, religious sen- timent, and so forth entered more or less into his action. At any rate what is certain is that he reconciled himself with Arnauld and Port Royal generally, and on 1st June married Catherine de Romanet and definitely settled down to a quiet domestic life, alternated with the duties of a courtier. For his repentance was by no means a repentance in sackcloth and ashes. The drama was not then very profitable to dramatists, but Louis Racine tells us that his father had been able to furnish a house, collect a library of some value, and save 6000 livres. His wife had money, and he had possessed for some time (it is not certain how long) the honourable and valuable post of treasurer of France at Moulins. His annual "gratification" had been increased from 800 to 1500 livres, then to 2000, and in the October of the year of his marriage he and Boileau were made historiographers-royal with a salary of 2000 crowns. Besides all this he had, though a layman, one or two benefices. It would have been pleasanter if Louis Racine had not told us that his father regarded His Majesty's choice as "an act of the grace of God to detach him entirely from poetry." Even after allowing for Louis Racine's religiosity and the conventional language of all times, there is a flavour of hypocrisy about this which is disagreeable, and has shocked even Racine's most uncom- promising admirers. For the historiographer of Louis XIV. was simply his chief flatterer. Before going further it may be observed that very little came of this historio- graphy. The joint incumbents of the office made some campaigns with the king, sketched plans of histories, and left a certain number of materials and memoirs ; but they executed no substantive work. Racine, whether this be set down to his credit or not, was certainly a fortunate and apparently an adroit courtier. His very relapse into Jansenism coincided with his rise at court, where Jansen- ism was in no favour, and the fact that he had been in the good graces of Madame de Montespan did not deprive him of those of Madame de Maintenon. Neither in Esther did he hesitate to reflect upon his former patroness. But a reported sneer of the king, who was sharp-eyed enough, "Cavoie avec Racine se croit bel esprit; Racine avec Cavoie