Racine: 1639–1699

RACINE: 1639-1699 A. F. B. CLARK EVERYONE knows the story of the English school-boy who, on a tour of Italy with his tutor, showed a disconcerting apathy before the great historical monuments, until it was announced that the next day they would visit the tomb of Virgil. To the tutor's surprise and joy the boy's eyes shone with enthusiasm. But the tutorial joy was dashed when, on arrival at the tomb, the boy spat upon it with gusto, exclaiming, "I've waited a long time to get even with that fellow." I am afraid that a visit of school-bays-possibly even French ones-to the tomb of Racine might result in mass expectorations. If there is one great figure in literature whom professorial ineptitude has succeeded in transforming into a monument of ennui, it is Racine. I recall the impression I acquired of the French dramatist in my student-days (and which I was long in throwing off)-the image of a curious, pedantic man who had contrived an ingenious sort of dramatic "space-time continuum" whose main beauty was that it obeyed a great number of "rules"-decorum, verisimilitude, liaison des scenes, absence of physical action, and, above all-oh, joy!-"the three unities." These latter constituted the very soul of this singular abstraction, though, if you looked carefully, you might perceive, enmeshed in its mechanism, a number of puppets representing "types" gesturing verbosely at each other. In other words, rules, rhetoric, convention; no spontaneity, no variety, no realism, no life. Perhaps the responsibility for this fantastic English view of French tragedy is to be traced back to Neander's triumphant cry in Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy: ({Now what, I beseech you, is more easy than to write a regular French play, or more difficult than to write an irregular English one, like those of Fletcher or of Shakespeare?" You see-already you have French tragedy presented as a mere mechanism, which, as it were, writes itself, while English drama is always an individual creation without precedents or guid~ng rules. More important still is the introduction of the Shakespeare-parallel. When Racine's name is mentioned. henceforth , the critical parrots have only to scream ttShakespeare" and 38 RACINE: 1639-1699 A. F. B. CLARK EVERYONE knows the story of the English school-boy who, on a tour of Italy with his tutor, showed a disconcerting apathy before the great historical monuments, until it was announced that the next day they would visit the tomb of Virgil. To the tutor's surprise and joy the boy's eyes shone with enthusiasm. But the tutorial joy was dashed when, on arrival at the tomb, the boy spat upon it with gusto, exclaiming, "I've waited a long time to get even with that fellow." I am afraid that a visit of school-bays-possibly even French ones-to the tomb of Racine might result in mass expectorations. If there is one great figure in literature whom professorial ineptitude has succeeded in transforming into a monument of ennui, it is Racine. I recall the impression I acquired of the French dramatist in my student-days (and which I was long in throwing off)-the image of a curious, pedantic man who had contrived an ingenious sort of dramatic "space-time continuum" whose main beauty was that it obeyed a great number of "rules"-decorum, verisimilitude, liaison des scenes, absence of physical action, and, above all-oh, joy!-"the three unities." These latter constituted the very soul of this singular abstraction, though, if you looked carefully, you might perceive, enmeshed in its mechanism, a number of puppets representing "types" gesturing verbosely at each other. In other words, rules, rhetoric, convention; no spontaneity, no variety, no realism, no life. Perhaps the responsibility for this fantastic English view of French tragedy is to be traced back to Neander's triumphant cry in Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy: ({Now what, I beseech you, is more easy than to write a regular French play, or more difficult than to write an irregular English one, like those of Fletcher or of Shakespeare?" You see-already you have French tragedy...