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PHÈDRE.
"I will act Phèdre! They tell me I am too young, that I am too thin, and a thousand other absurdities. I answer, it is Racine's finest rôle: I am determined to act it!" Rachel spoke these words to Alfred de Musset on the 29th May 1839. On the 24th January 1843 the young actress appeared in this her greatest part. It was those three years that matured Rachel's powers. She would not have acted Phèdre so effectively in 1839 as in 1843. The scene with Hipolyte in the fourth act was the outcry of her own quivering and betrayed heart.
A theatrical critic tells us that "tragic intensity is nothing more than the perfection of art," and to prove it he says that he remembers being behind the scenes in a theatre when Rachel was thrilling an audience before the curtain. When she came off she was perfectly cool and collected. "I asked her whether she really had felt what she had been portraying. Her reply was to parody the scene."
No doubt sometimes, when the flash of inspiration is absent, the greatest actor supplies its place with
