Phèdre

“Is it that you

No longer are that proud Hippolytus,

Relentless enemy of the laws of love,

And of a yoke to which your father bowed

So many times? Does Venus whom your pride

So long has slighted wish to justify

The amorous Theseus? While, like the rest of mortals,

You’re forced to cense her altars? Are you in love,

My lord?”

These lines, spoken by Hippolytus’s tutor Theramenes, serve a metaliterary function in highlighting Racine’s chief innovation on the classical myth of Hippolytus: Racine’s Hippolytus is “No longer […] that proud Hippolytus” of Euripides and Seneca, but a more complex figure who is now also wrestling with Forbidden Love and Desire. Hippolytus’s forbidden love for the mortal Aricia takes the place of Hippolytus’s devotion to Diana (Greek Artemis) in the original myth, imprisoning him under a “yoke” that is not present in earlier versions.

“There is no doubt:

You love, you burn; you perish from an illness

Which you conceal.”

Hippolytus, like the other lovelorn characters of Racine’s play, has a companion and confidante (Theramenes) who easily reads his feelings, just as Aricia has the sisterly Ismene and Phaedra has the devious Oenone. In all three corners of the play’s love triangle—Hippolytus, Aricia, and Phaedra—the symptoms of love are described in similar symbolic terms: as a burning, an illness, or captivity (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“PHAEDRA. Since Venus so ordains,

Last and most wretched of my tragic race,

I too shall perish.

OENONE. Are you then in love?

PHAEDRA. All of love’s frenzies I endure.

OENONE. For whom?

PHAEDRA. You’re going to hear the last extreme of horror.

I love… I shudder at the fatal name…

I love…

OENONE. Whom do you love?

PHAEDRA. You know the son

Of the Amazon—the prince I’ve harshly used.

OENONE. Hippolytus! Great Gods!

PHAEDRA. ’Tis you have named him,

Not I.

OENONE. O righteous heaven! The blood in my veins

Is turned to ice. O crime! O hapless race!

Disastrous voyage! O unlucky coast!

Why did we travel to your perilous shores?”

Phaedra’s exchange here with her nurse Oenone imitates the stichomythia of Greek drama, in which two characters alternate lines of dialogue, an example of the way Racine reworks his ancient models.