Phèdre

Jean Racine (December 22, 1639 - April 21, 1699) was one of the most important dramatists of 17th-century France, alongside Molière and Corneille. Racine was known primarily as a tragedian. His works were deeply influenced by the tradition of Greek and Roman drama, exploring classical themes such as the passions, character, and fate and often reworking the plots of plays by classical tragedians such as Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca.

Racine’s early works, La Thébaïde (1664) and Alexandre le Grand (1665), already showcased what would become his trademark style, though critics attacked these tragedies for their potentially negative influence on audiences. Racine continued refining his style with plays such as Andromaque (1667), based on Euripides’s Andromache, which would become one of his most popular plays. Phèdre, first performed in 1677 as Phèdre et Hippolyte (Phaedra and Hippolytus), would also eventually be hailed as a masterpiece and a prototypical example of Racine’s style, though the tragedy flopped at its first performance. Though Racine stopped writing secular plays for many years after the failure of his Phèdre, he did eventually return to the stage, producing a comedy for young people, Esther, in 1689, and his celebrated Athalie in 1691.