by Jean Racine
This is apparently Racine's last play before he gave up the theatre scene to return to a religious life within the Jansenist sect. For those who don't know what a Jansenist is (and that would probably include most of us) then picture a god who is mean, nasty, and smacks you over the head with a base...
When is one guilty of something, when one commits the reprehensible deed, and only one knows it, or when it is made known to others?Phèdre thinks that the latter case is a great deal worse, worse even than death:je meurs pour ne point faire un aveu si funesteje n’en mourrai plus, j’en mourrai plus c...
There's an old Communist-era joke, quoted in the movie The Lives of Others, about the Party Leader's conversation with the Sun. (The punchline is "Fuck off, I'm in the West now"). In Racine's play, Phèdre also has a conversation with the Sun. When I looked at the footnote, I discovered that they wer...
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