Racine, Jean (1639-1699)

Andromaque. Tragédie

      Racine, Jean (1639-1699). Andromaque. Tragédie. Paris: Théodore Girard, 1668. Five act tragedy in alexandrine verse. First performed on 17 November 1667 before the court of Louis XIV in the Louvre in the private chambers of the Queen, Marie Thérèse, by the royal company of actors, called "les Grands Comédiens", with Thérèse Du Parc in the title role. The company gave the first public performance two days later in the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. First edition first issue (Tchmerzine IX, p 338 issue "A" based on Picot) with angels and flowers ornament on titlepage matching that in Tchemerzine; on bottom of leaf a3r vous ne pos -; on bottom of leaf a4r Mais, MADAME; p.71 is numbered 67. 12mo. 18th century red morocco gilt, highly gilt rules with repeated chestnut, shuttlecock and butterfly device; spine with repeated chestnut device within frames. Spine slightly darkened but a very charming binding. Text with some slight soiling and light pencil marks. Leaf of title, verso blank; 6p A madame signed Racine; 3p Virgile av troisies; 1p acteurs; 95p text; 2p priv dated 28 Dec 1668. Collation á6, A-D12, ornaments in text; errors in paging: 73-74 omitted in numbering. After the defeat and sack of Troy, Hector's widow Andromache and her son Astyanax have been given as slaves to Pyrrus king of Apirus. The tragedy centers around Andromache's attempts to remain faithful to the memory of Hector and, at the same time, save the life of her son Astyanax, who is the last of the Trojan royal line. In Racine's play, three other and distinct and conflicting interests are brought forth: Andromache is loved by Pyrrhus, Pyrrhus by Hermione, and Hermione by Orestes who has come to murder Astyanax. The multiple character conflicts in this play show the different world view in Racine's age when compared to Virgil's time when he wrote the Aeneid: In Racine's play, Andromache is able to save her son while preserving her purity and love for the memory of Hector. In Book III of the Aeneid, which Racine credits as the source of his play, Andromache's son Astyanax has been killed by the Greeks" (Aeneid 650-653 Fitzgerald translation Vintage, 1990). Lancaster notes other differences between the Greek world view in Euripides' play of the same name. Racine modernized the manners of all the characters, but "he had, in short, preserved the intense emotions of the ancients... He thus brought out the tragic conflict between social usage and fierce emotion and gave the first example of a new type of tragedy, in which a veil of decorum that had not existed in the time of Euripides is lifted at the proper moment to make us feel more keenly the horror that lies behind it." In sum, Racine was primarily a French classical dramatist who continued the work of Corneille, Rotrou, Tristan and others but, to distinguish himself from them, he appealed to the Greeks in somewhat the same way that German critics were subsequently to do in order to free their dramatists from imitation of Racine... He became the most Hellenic of the French classical dramatists" (Lancaster). The play was immediately successful, although it brought forth criticism. Adrien-Thomas Perdou de Subligny's dramatic satire, Folle Querrell. La Critique d'Andromaque argues Racine's conclusion was badly written and contained errors that Corneille would not have made. It was produced by Molière in 1668, but only helped to make Racine's play better known than it might have otherwise been, since Racine responded to the spoof with Les Plaideurs. Subligny's criticism did little to halt the rise of Racine's reputation. Andromaque was mentioned as a leading tragedy in Poisson's Poète Basque and in Bousault's Satire des Satires. Andromaque went through a second edition, Paris: Loyson in 1673, with changes and a new preface. In the 1668 edition Andromache speaks to Hermione after the murder of Pyrrhus. These verses were removed for the 1673 edition because Racine feared they might be understood as indicating the Andromache grew to love Pyrrhus. Racine, who wrote only 12 tragedies from 1664-1690/9, was only twenty seven when he wrote Andromaque. It is now considered to be the equal of Corneille's Le Cid and has been acted at the Comédie Française alone 959 times between 1680 and 1920. Of Racine's plays, only Phèdre was staged more times at that theatre. OCLC locations: CGU, MH, Morgan in the U.S. References: Guibert p. 30; Tchemerzine-Scheler V, 338; Lhermitte 498 "C'est avec Andromaque que naît véritablement la tragédie racinienne. Qu'elle constitue, par-delà Alexandre, un retour au mythe, est la moindre de ses caractéristiques" (Laffont-Bompiani); Bates. Alfred (ed.) The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 7. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. pp. 205-212.; Lancaster, Henry Carrington. A History of French Dramatic Literature in the Seventeenth Century. Vols. II, IV. (1940-42).