Phèdre

Latin theatre is staged very rarely at the Comédie-Française. A long-ago adaptation of Seneca’s Agamemnon entered the Repertoire in the translation by Henri de Bornier in 1868. Then Denis Marleau staged the same play translated by Florence Dupont in 2011. As for Phèdre, Racine’s play, a masterpiece of classical tragedy – inspired by Seneca, but also by Euripides and the poetry of Ovid – reinvented the myth and outshone its predecessors.

Seneca’s theatre gives a perfect example of the appropriation of the great ancient myths in the modern period: themes and plots are borrowed and temperaments are recomposed to adapt them to contemporary dramaturgy according to the classical rules. Although Racine insists on the filiation with Euripides in his preface, he is also indebted to Seneca for the structure of his play and the omnipresence of the character of Phèdre. He skilfully combines the contradictory temperaments depicted by the Greek and Latin sources: the austere, chaste, dignified and passive Phaedra of Euripides, and the furious, lascivious and guilty Phaedra of Seneca. Racine’s plot differs from its ancient models for his use of a second amorous intrigue – centred on the character of Aricie.

The quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, in which Racine participated, questions precisely this model of imitating the authors of antiquity. Racine claimed Euripides as his main influence. He owed just as much to Seneca, however, the latter had a reputation as a second-rate poet at the time. Racine’s genius saw his play prevail over treatments of the same subject by its competitors. His Phèdre, which vied with Pradon’s version, written at the same time, was elevated to the rank of a national masterpiece and for a long time eclipsed that of Seneca.