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Feb. 25th, 2009 02:46 amWe're putting on Hippolytus in Greek, as I may have mentioned once, and I just bought a copy of Racine's Phèdre, because I love it to bits and realized that I don't own it. So of course I'm thinking about both of them a lot. It's really a shame that the Racine is based on Hippolytus; it would be much fairer to it if I could read it alone and not as an adaptation of the Euripides. It's not that I like it less, only that I keep comparing it, and weighing the interpretation of the characters.
And it's sort of on this basis that I've decided Phèdre's weaker. The addition of Aricie isn't just "lame" because she has no character at all (which she doesn't); it would weaken the play even if she were the most dynamic character imaginable. It changes a conflict of ideologies, of Hippolytus' inflexibility against Aphrodite's power, represented by Phaedra, to a choice between two women.
That is to say, there is no possibility that Hippolytus will agree to the nurse's request that he take Phaedra as a lover. He hates women and loves his chastity. By creating a Hippolyte who loves a woman, Racine makes the opposition not between two life-paths, but the more normal, and thus if not less interesting, less extreme, choice between one woman and another. There are, of course, moral differences between choosing Aricie and Phèdre - Phèdre is still Hippolyte's step-mother and the wife of his father - but it's not the choice between absolute purity and sexual activity that Hippolytus is forced to make.
Both plays, of course, are products of their time. Hippolytus, like much of Greek drama and epic, warns against the dangers of inflexibility and stubbornness. (Of course, because if Euripides wasn't an atheist, he certainly didn't like the gods, Hippolytus is also about the impossibility of pleasing a goddess who would destroy a man simply for not choosing to follow her path. Even then, Hippolytus' crime isn't only not engaging in sexual activity, it's really the long speech about the evils of women. Without that attitude, he would be acceptable; but in that speech he shows that he doesn't just choose to abstain from Aphrodite's realm, he scorns it and hates it, which is always a bad move.)
In any case, products of their time. Euripides treats subjects that Greeks were accustomed to see in the theater; Racine writes the story that a 17th century French audience wants to see - a love story, couched in the specific and formulaic language of the French Classical theater. Racine could not have written a play with no love story; it was, like someone saying "hélas" at least three times, a requirement of the form.
For me the conflict between who Hippolytus is - a man who chose chastity and Artemis - and who Aphrodite, goddess of all that he hates, wants him to be is much more interesting than a love triangle. But they're not really comparable and perhaps shouldn't be; and yet I can't help it.
And it's sort of on this basis that I've decided Phèdre's weaker. The addition of Aricie isn't just "lame" because she has no character at all (which she doesn't); it would weaken the play even if she were the most dynamic character imaginable. It changes a conflict of ideologies, of Hippolytus' inflexibility against Aphrodite's power, represented by Phaedra, to a choice between two women.
That is to say, there is no possibility that Hippolytus will agree to the nurse's request that he take Phaedra as a lover. He hates women and loves his chastity. By creating a Hippolyte who loves a woman, Racine makes the opposition not between two life-paths, but the more normal, and thus if not less interesting, less extreme, choice between one woman and another. There are, of course, moral differences between choosing Aricie and Phèdre - Phèdre is still Hippolyte's step-mother and the wife of his father - but it's not the choice between absolute purity and sexual activity that Hippolytus is forced to make.
Both plays, of course, are products of their time. Hippolytus, like much of Greek drama and epic, warns against the dangers of inflexibility and stubbornness. (Of course, because if Euripides wasn't an atheist, he certainly didn't like the gods, Hippolytus is also about the impossibility of pleasing a goddess who would destroy a man simply for not choosing to follow her path. Even then, Hippolytus' crime isn't only not engaging in sexual activity, it's really the long speech about the evils of women. Without that attitude, he would be acceptable; but in that speech he shows that he doesn't just choose to abstain from Aphrodite's realm, he scorns it and hates it, which is always a bad move.)
In any case, products of their time. Euripides treats subjects that Greeks were accustomed to see in the theater; Racine writes the story that a 17th century French audience wants to see - a love story, couched in the specific and formulaic language of the French Classical theater. Racine could not have written a play with no love story; it was, like someone saying "hélas" at least three times, a requirement of the form.
For me the conflict between who Hippolytus is - a man who chose chastity and Artemis - and who Aphrodite, goddess of all that he hates, wants him to be is much more interesting than a love triangle. But they're not really comparable and perhaps shouldn't be; and yet I can't help it.
