Racine Premieres Phedre

1677

At the Hotel de Bourgogne in Paris, Jean Racine unveiled his devastating retelling of Euripides' Hippolytus. Phedre, consumed by illicit desire for her stepson, spoke twelve-syllable alexandrines so perfectly measured they sounded like heartbeats. It was Racine's last secular tragedy, and French classical drama had reached its absolute summit, a peak of formal perfection that no subsequent playwright has quite matched.