3 - The posterity of Phèdre

Summary

Racine's Phèdre was the object of a conspiracy to bring about its failure. He had his enemies among the admirers of Corneille and those who championed the Moderns against the Ancients, or classicising writers. Cornelians and Moderns were often the same people. Moreover, Racine's rapid rise to fame was too striking for him not to make a number of enemies among other writers and their protectors. He had already had, with Iphigénie (1674), the experience of rival authors planning to put on a play on the same subject as his own in the hope of outdoing it, and he had had no hesitation in taking measures to have the performance of the rival play deferred. Similarly, the dramatist Jacques (also known as Nicolas) Pradon, an admirer of Corneille, was put up to composing a play entitled Phèdre et Hippolyte (modern edition by O. Classe, Exeter, 1987) in competition with Racine's. Pradon had a grievance against Racine, believing that Racine had been instrumental in getting his own play Tamerlan (1675) taken off when running very successfully. Legend has it that boxes were bought up for the performances of Racine's and Pradon's plays on the subject of Phèdre and Hippolyte, so that the one play should be performed to empty seats and the other to a large audience. It appears that this was not so, but Pradon's play, which, like other French plays on the same theme, shrinks from making Phedre the wife of Thésée, seems to have been sufficiently successful for a while to cause Racine some anxiety.