Jean Racine

Lore & Background

Jean Racine, born on 22 December 1639 in La Ferté-Milon in northern France, lost both parents by age four and was raised by his grandparents. When his grandfather died in 1649, his grandmother moved to the Port-Royal convent and brought him along. There, at the Petites écoles de Port-Royal, he received a classical education steeped in the Jansenist theology that would later shape his life. He was meant to study law in Paris but instead pursued poetry, earning praise from critic Nicolas Boileau, who became a close friend.

His first play, Amasie, never made it to the stage. On 20 June 1664, Molière’s troupe produced Racine’s tragedy La Thébaïde ou les frères ennemis at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. The next year, Molière staged Racine’s Alexandre le Grand, but after strong public reaction, Racine secretly arranged for a rival company, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, to perform it just eleven days later.

Molière never forgave this betrayal, and Racine deepened the rift by seducing Molière’s leading actress, Thérèse du Parc, who became his professional and personal companion. From then on, the Hôtel de Bourgogne staged all his secular plays. He broke with Port-Royal and wrote Andromaque in 1667. His rivals included Pierre Corneille and his brother Thomas.

A claque helped make Jacques Pradon’s version of Phèdre a success in 1677, which contributed to Racine’s decision to stop writing plays, though some, like historian Warren Lewis, attribute his retirement to a troubled conscience. A 1679 court scandal also played a role. Around that time, he married the devout Catherine de Romanet, revived his Jansenist faith, and had two sons and five daughters.

He became a royal historiographer for Louis XIV alongside Boileau, was elected to the Académie française in 1672, later held titles including treasurer of France and ordinary gentleman of the king, and finally secretary of the king in 1696. Louis XIV provided for his family after his death. Racine returned to theatre only at the request of Madame de Maintenon, writing Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691), both based on Old Testament stories for school performances. He died of liver cancer in 1699, asked to be buried at Port-Royal, and after Louis XIV destroyed the site in 1710, his remains were moved to Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

Reader's Guide

Racine's plays displayed his mastery of the dodecasyllabic (12 syllable) French alexandrine. His writing is renowned for its elegance, purity, speed, and fury, and for what American poet Robert Lowell described as a 'diamond-edge', and the 'glory of its hard, electric rage'. Racine's dramaturgy is marked by his psychological insight, the prevailing passion of his characters, and the nakedness of both plot and stage. The quality of Racine's poetry is perhaps his greatest contribution to French literature.

His use of the alexandrine poetic line is considered exceptionally skilful. Racine restricts his vocabulary to 2500 words. The classical unities are strictly observed. The number of characters, all of them royal, is kept down to the barest minimum.

Action on stage is all but eliminated. Tragedy shows how men fall from prosperity to disaster. The higher the position from which the hero falls, the greater is the tragedy.

Except for the confidants, Racine describes the fate of kings, queens, princes and princesses, liberated from the constricting pressures of everyday life and able to speak and act without inhibition. Greek tragedy, from which Racine borrowed so plentifully, tended to assume that humanity was under the control of gods indifferent to its sufferings and aspirations. Racine is often said to have been deeply influenced by the Jansenist sense of fatalism. However, the link between Racine's tragedy and Jansenism has been disputed on multiple grounds; for example, Racine himself denied any connection to Jansenism.

Did You Know?

• His first staged tragedy was La Thébaïde ou les frères ennemis, produced by Molière's troupe on 20 June 1664.
• He was the first French author to live almost entirely on the money he earned from his writings.