Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/223

RACINE 205 spondence ceases, and it is not renewed till after the close of his brief but brilliant career as a dramatist (Esther and Athalie excepted). This is the more to be regretted in that the most disputable events of Racine's life as well as the greater part of his literary work fall within this silent period. His strange behaviour .to Moliere, his virulent attack on his masters and friends of Port Royal, and the sudden change by which, after the failure of Phedre and for no clearly expressed cause, a man of pleasure and an active literary worker became a sober domestic character of almost ostentatiously religious habits, and abstained from almost all but official work, are unillumined by any words of his own. From this time forward the gossip of the period and the Life by his son Louis are the chief sources of information. Unfortunately Louis Racine, though a man of some ability and of unimpeached charac- ter, was only six years old when his father died, and had no direct knowledge. Still his account represents family papers and traditions and seems to have been carefully, as it is certainly in the main impartially, written. From other sources notably Boileau, Brossette, and Valincourt a good deal of pretty certainly authentic information is obtainable, and there exists a considerable body of corre- spondence between Boileau and the poet during the last ten years of Racine's life. The first but the least characteristic of the dramas by which Racine is known, La Thebaide, was finished by the end of 1663, and on Friday 20th June 1664 it was played by Moliere's company at the Palais Royal theatre. Some editors assert that Moliere himself acted in it, but the earliest account of the cast we have, and that is sixty years after date, omits his name, though those of Madeleine Bejard and Mademoiselle de Brie occur. There is a tradition, supported by very little evidence, that Moliere suggested the subject ; on the other hand, Louis Racine distinctly says that his father wrote most of the play at Uzes before he knew Moliere. Racine's own letters, which cover the period of composition, though not that of representation, give little help in deciding this not very important ques- tion, except that it appears from them that the play was designed for the rival theatre, and that "La Dehanchee," Racine's familiar name for Mademoiselle de Beauchateau, with whom he was intimate, was to play Antigone. The play itself is by far the weakest of Racine's works. He has borrowed much from Euripides and not a little from Rotrou ; and in his general style and plan he has as yet struck out no great variation from Corneille. We have very little intelligence about the reception of the piece. It was acted twelve times during the first month, which was for the period a very fair success, and was occasion- ally revived during the year following. This is apparently the date of the pleasant picture of the four friends which La Fontaine draws in his Psyche, Racine figuring as Acante, "qui aimait extremement les jarclins, les fleurs, les ombrages." Various stories, more or less mythical, also belong to this period ; the best authenticated of them contributes to the documents for Racine's unamiable temper. He had absolutely no reason to complain of Chapelain, who had helped him with criticism, obtained royal gifts for him, and, in a fashion, started him in the literary career, yet he helped in com- posing the lampoon of Chapelain decoi/e. The sin would not be unpardonable if it stood alone, but unluckily a much graver one followed. We have no definite details as to Racine's doings during the year 1664, but in February 1665 he read at the Hotel de Nevers before La Rochefoucauld, Madame de la Fayette, Madame de Sevigne, and other scarcely less redoubtable judges the greater part of his second acted play, Alexandra le Grand, or, as Pomponne (who tells the fact) calls it, Poms. This was a frequent kind of preliminary advertisement at the time, and it seems, as we find from the rhymed gazettes, to have been successful. It was anxiously expected by the public, and Moliere's company played it on 4th Decem- ber, Monsieur, his wife Henrietta of England, and many other distinguished persons being present. The gazetteer Subligny vouches for its success, and the still more certain testimony of the accounts of the theatre shows that the receipts were good and, what is more, steady. But a fort- night afterwards Alexandre was played, " de complot avec M. Racine," says La Grange, by the rival actors (who had four days before performed it in private) at the Hotel de Bourgogne. A vast amount of ink has been spilt on this question, but no one has produced any valid justification for Racine. That the piece failed at the Palais Royal is demonstrably false, and as this is stated in the earliest attempt to excuse Racine, and the only one made in his lifetime, it is pretty clear that his case was very weak. His son simply says that he was " me"content des acteurs," which indeed is self-evident. It is certain that Moliere and he ceased to be friends in consequence of this proceeding ; and that Moliere was in fault no one who has studied the character of the two men, no one even who considers the probabilities of the case, will easily believe. If, however, Alexandre was the occasion of showing the defects of Racine's character as a man, it raised him vastly in public estimation as a poet. He was now for the first time pro- posed as a serious rival to Corneille. There is a story, which a credible witness vouches for as Racine's own, that he read the piece to the author of the Cid and asked his verdict. Corneille praised the piece highly, but not as a drama, " II 1'assurait qu'il n'etait pas propre a la poe"sie dramatique." There is no reason for disbelieving this, for the character of Alexander could not fail to shock Corneille, and he was notorious for not mincing his words. Nor can it be denied that Racine might have been justly hurt, though with a man of more amiable temper the slight would hardly have caused the settled antagonism to Corneille which he displayed. The contrast between the two even at this early period was accurately apprehended and put by Saint Evremond in his masterly Dissertation sur V Alex- andre, but this was not published for a year or two. To this day it is the best criticism of the faults of Racine, though not, it may be, of the merits, which had not yet been fully seen. It may be added that in the preface of the printed play the poet showed the extreme sensitiveness to criticism which perhaps excuses, and which certainly often accompanies, a tendency to criticize others. These defects of character showed themselves still more fully in another matter. The Port Royalists, as has been said, detested the theatre, and in January 1666 Nicole, their chief write! 4 , spoke in one of his Lettres sur Visionnaires of dramatic poets as " empoisonneurs publics." There was absolutely no reason why Racine should fit this cap on his own head ; but he did so, and published immediately a letter to the author. It is very smartly written, and if Racine had con- tented himself with protesting against the absurd exaggera- tion of the decriers of the stage there would have been little harm done. But he filled the piece with personalities, telling an absurd story of Mere Angelique Arnauld's supposed intolerance, drawing a ridiculous picture of Le Maitre (a dead man and his own special teacher and friend), and sneering savagely at Nicole himself. The latter made no reply, but two lay adherents of Port Royal took up the quarrel with more zeal than discretion or ability. Racine wrote a second pamphlet as bitter and personal as the first, but less amusing, and was about to publish it when fortu- nately Boileau, who had been absent from Paris, returned and protested against the publication. It remained accord- ingly unprinted till after the author's death, as well as a