The Complete Plays of Jean Racine. Jean Racine

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      Racine was so aware of the startlingly precocious self-possession of this boy that he spends a whole page of his preface justifying it, citing the Greek text of Chronicles, which “has authorized me to make this prince nine or ten years old,” and arguing that the rigorous and early training he would have received in the temple could plausibly have produced such an extraordinarily astute child. (Racine even has recourse to the dryly droll admission that “it was not... the same with the children of the Jews as with most of ours.”) In addition, he takes occasion, practiced courtier that he was, to adduce a “precedent” closer to home: “a prince of eight and a half years, who is today her [France’s] dearest delight, an illustrious example of what a child with natural gifts, enhanced by an excellent education, can accomplish” — the child in question being the Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV’s grandson.

      vi

      The third confrontation, which occurs in Act V, is framed by an elaborate stage spectacle. It is rather remarkable that such a spectacle, the most elaborate climactic scene in any of Racine’s plays (in most of which the denouement is revealed in narratives of varying length, those in The Fratricides, Britannicus, Iphigenia, and Phaedra being quite extended), should have been planned for a girls’ seminary, with limited stage resources. Perhaps, then, it is less remarkable that Athaliah, unlike Esther, which had boasted elaborate sets and costumes at its premiere, was, in fact, first produced without costumes or scenery. (Its first fully staged performance was given by the Comédie-Française on March 3, 1716 — shorn, however, of its choral odes and, thus, of its music.) On the other hand, we should also bear in mind that Racine chose to present these events on the stage in Athaliah because they could be so presented: while there are drawn swords and opposed combatants, there is no actual armed conflict, no bloodshed, nor is anyone killed. Athaliah’s death occurs offstage and is reported almost as perfunctorily as Mathan’s, hers being allotted merely a whole line (V.fin.sc.1), his, only a half line (V.vi.24). Still, the very fact that the only staged representation of armed antagonists in Racine’s oeuvre should occur in a “sacred drama” is striking and significant, suggesting that the true nature of this drama, as passionate and violent as any of Racine’s plays, is less spiritual than sanguinary. (Here, even the religious rituals, as Zachariah describes them, bear the trace of blood: “The priests, with blood from this fresh immolation, / Aspersed the altar and the congregation” [II. ii.14–15]; and, later in Act II, after Athaliah leaves the temple, Jehoiada expresses his intention of pouring some “pure blood” — presumably his preferred cleansing agent — over the floor to “wash clean the very stones that bear her tread” [II.viii.11–12].) The chorus duly express their astonishment at this intrusion of worldly violence into the temple: