Racine 23 



omed the profound moral significance of the great Attic trage- 

 dians. Perhaps he was misled by his very devotion to Euri- 

 pides, who is generally disdainful, if not oblivious, of the import 

 of the material out of which ^schylus and Sophocles made so 

 much. With Euripides, for example, Racine can see no sense in 

 such a theme as the sacrifice of Iphigenia. " How shocking," he 

 exclaims, " if I had stained the stage with the murder of a per- 

 son so amiable and virtuous ! "^^ — a sentiment that corresponds 

 perfectly with the opinion of Euripides' heroine, 



fialverai. 5'8s eijxeTai 

 Oaveiv. Ka/ccDs ^rjv Kpeiaaov ij /caXws davetvj'' 



But even on those rare occasions when Euripides turns out to be 

 a capable guide, Racine is not always equal to following him, as 

 is conspicuously the case with Hippolytus. 



In all Euripides' extant work, however, Hippolytus is excep- 

 tional in being conceived most nearly in the moral sense of his 

 great predecessor, "'the mellow glory of the Attic stage." To be 

 sure, Racine owes a little something in this case to Seneca also; 

 but his debt to the latter is merely that of one craftsman to an- 

 other, and touches the ordonnance rather than the inspiration of 

 the drama, which derives from Euripides direct. A comparison, 

 therefore, of Phedre and Hippolytus should be a fair test of the 

 particulars in which Racine was insensible, as I have affirmed, 

 to the deeper significance of the original classics. How thor- 

 oughly he — and not he alone but others before him — misunder- 

 stood the tragic logic of his original, he confesses naively in his 

 preface : 



" As regards Hippolytus," he says, " I had noticed among the 

 ancients that Euripides was reproached with having represented 

 him as a philosopher exempt from every imperfection — a cir- 

 cumstance which made the death of this young prince a subject 

 of indignation rather than of pity. I have thought it necessary 

 to give him some infirmity which would make him slightly cul- 

 pable toward his father without impairing the magnanimity with 



26 Iphigenie, Preface. 



^"^ Iphigenia in Aulis, 1251-1252. 



195 



