PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 Racine and Quinault: two “originaux” B UFORD N ORMAN U NIVERSITY OF S OUTH C AROLINA It is fitting that what is likely to be my last article appear in a journal founded by Wolfgang Leiner. He was the first dix-septiémiste I met, other than my professors, and his dedication, his erudition, and his generosity have been a model for me “pendant un demi-siècle”. * * * When writing about Quinault there is, as William Brooks has so aptly put it, “the problem of Racine”. Brooks is speaking of criticisms by Boileau and others of Quinault’s spoken theatre, but the same problem exists concerning the tragédie en musique and the tragédie racinienne. Since we have what Étienne Gros calls “l’habitude de juger tout le théâtre du XVII e siècle d’après Racine et à travers lui” (368), how can we evaluate Quinault’s works objectively while situating them in the context of a theatrical scene dominated by Racine? One way is to insist on similarities in their careers and in their works, in particular Racine’s mature tragedies and Quinault’s libretti. Comparisons between Quinault and Racine have of course been common since the seventeenth century; they were, after all, two of the most successful playwrights of the period after Corneille and Molière. For example, at the time when Quinault was writing his first libretti, Chappuzeau includes Racine and Quinault among the “Auteurs qui soutiennent présentement le Théâtre” (98). There is frequently a clear preference for Racine among writers who criticized Quinault for overly complex plots, for taking liberties with historical sources, for catering to the taste of the galant - and often feminine - public, and especially for according too much emphasis to love. Most of these criticisms concern Quinault’s spoken theatre. Many, such as those of Boileau, were hardly objective, and the success of many of Quinault’s plays is an indication that his contemporaries did not always share them. Later, other criticisms are in the context of the Quarrel of Ancients and Buford Norman PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 104 Moderns. After all, Racine was a champion of the Ancients, and Quinault’s second libretto, Alceste (1674) can be seen as the opening salvo in the Quarrel. As Charles Perrault wrote that year in his Critique d’Alceste, many people seemed determined not to like certain works, depending on where they stood in the Quarrel: “sans savoir assurément pourquoi et seulement pour ne se pas départir du dessein formé qu’ils avaient de trouver tout mauvais” 1 . My point here is not to challenge these criticisms, these differences, nor to deny Racine’s greatness. It is rather, first, to point out how difficult it is to compare authors who wrote at different times and in different genres, and then to discuss a few examples of how their contemporaries saw them as similar and of how their works often treat similar subjects. * * * A brief sketch of their careers will be useful here. Quinault (1635-1688), four years older than Racine (1639-1699) and quite precocious, was already well known in theatrical circles by the end of the 1650s, while Racine was still a student and before he left for Uzès. He returned to Paris in 1663 and had his first play, La Thébaïde, performed in 1664. His second play, Alexandre le Grand, was performed in 1665, and as we shall see, some observers found similarities between it and one of Quinault’s greatest successes, the tragedy Astrate, premiered the same year (or very late in 1664). Quinault would write five tragédies en musique from 1673 to 1677, while Racine was creating some of his greatest tragedies. In 1677, both began a fairly long period of time before their next works for the stage, two years for Quinault (he had written at least one work almost every year since 1653) and twelve for Racine. By this time, both were members of two prestigious academies and held important posts, Quinault as Auditeur dans la Chambre des comptes and Racine as royal historiographer. Quinault retired from the theatre after Armide in 1686 and died two years later. Racine would return to the stage in 1689 with Esther and Athalie, including choruses set to music. One can see that, although they were contemporaries, Racine and Quinault rarely wrote plays of the same type at the same time. If one compares their spoken plays, there are only two by Quinault at the time of Racine’s first successes, Pausanias (1668) and Bellérophon (1671, two months after Bérénice). The former obviously has as plot similar to that of Andromaque¸ since it was commissioned to appeal to the public that had applauded Racine’s play. The plot of Bellérophon, curiously, contains numerous 1 P. xi. See Norman, Quinault 95-96, 100-02, and Viala 157. More information about this and about many of the topics discussed here can be found at www.quinault.info. Racine and Quinault : two “originaux” PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 105 parallels with that of Racine’s last spoken play, Phèdre, to which I will return in the context of Quinault’s most “Racinian” libretto, Atys. Racine also wrote words to be set to music. I will consider L’Idylle sur la paix (1685) below, but it is important to point out here that it was only after Quinault’s death that the great tragic playwright wrote words to be sung on stage. Furthermore, he wrote only choruses, rather than dialogue to be set in recitative as in the Quinault-Lully operas. During Racine’s “silence” between 1677 and 1689, Quinault wrote some of his best libretti, concluding with Armide, which features a fascinating, powerful woman driven to desperation by her passion for a man she should not love. By the time Quinault’s career as a librettist was complete, critics tended less to compare their plays directly than to consider them as masters of their respective fields - Racine the great tragic playwright, Quinault the inventor and perfecter of texts for the tragédie en musique. For example, Vigneul- Marville wrote in 1699: “Messieurs de Corneille & Racine sont originaux pour le Poème Tragique. Molière pour le comique. Quinault pour les Opéras ou la Poésie qui se chante” (255). Already at the time of Quinault’s death, Regnard felt that he had to make a choice between the two: Que d’autres, plus hardis, dans ces nobles travaux, S’efforcent d’imiter Racine et Despréaux: Mais moi, je n’irai point, trop altéré de gloire, Honorer le triomphe acquis à leur victoire; Content de t’admirer dans un vol glorieux, Je te suivrai, QUINAULT, et du cœur et des yeux 2 . It is hard to say if the fact that both men excelled as authors of tragedies (the typical title page of a Quinault libretto begins with the title followed by the word “tragédie” or, more often beginning with Thésée in 1675, “tragédie en musique”) makes comparisons more simple or more difficult. For Boileau, only “un Homme sans aucun goût” thinks that “nos Opéras sont les modèles du Genre sublime” (“Discours sur l’ode” 227-228). On the other hand, Voltaire, who found Boileau unfair, wrote to Mme du Deffand “Je le [Quinault] regarde comme le second de nos poètes pour l’élégance, pour la naïveté, la vérité et la précision” (259, 26 Nov. 1775); I assume the first poet is Racine. These tragédies en musique are of course in a form very different from that of the spoken tragedies of Racine. They include an encomiastic prologue, something completely absent from Racine’s tragedies. They are much shorter, even though they include danced divertissements in each act, something else 2 “Épître à Monsieur Quinault”. According to Calame in his edition of Regnard’s comedies (21), this epistle was written in 1686-1687. Buford Norman PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 106 missing from Racinian tragedies. There are lines from three to twelve syllables in length, with more octosyllables than Alexandrines. They avoid stylistic complexities (such as inversions) that would make the words difficult to understand when sung, and they use mostly sounds that are easy to sing and pleasant to hear - one can imagine the horror of Lully or of his singers when confronted with a line such as “Et l’avare Achéron ne lâche point sa proie”! * * * Before looking at comparable elements in several Quinault libretti and Racine works, I would like to mention briefly several ways in which the paths of the two men crossed. I know of no sources describing in any detail an encounter between Quinault and Racine, but they must have met frequently. It is hard to imagine that they did not interact with each other at theatrical performances, in Paris or at court. For example, on January 26, 1676, Quinault, Charpentier, Benserade, Rose, Furetière, and Racine occupied the six seats reserved for members of the Académie Française at performances at Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Pellisson et d’Olivet 21). They were both members of prestigious academies. Racine was elected to the Académie Française in 1672, two years after Quinault, who had not yet begun his career as librettist. He was one of the most assiduous members, present at about 80% of the meetings from 1674 to 1677, whereas Racine attended only about 10%. They probably did not meet much more than once per month at the Académie during those years, except perhaps when Racine was director, such as during the last quarter of 1678 3 . This included a special session October 31, when the abbé Colbert, son of the minister, was received and, following Racine’s compliment, Quinault read two poems 4 . Racine was named to the Petite Académie (Académie des Médailles et des Inscriptions) in November 1683, nine years after Quinault. It is quite possible that he participated in discussions of Quinault’s subjects for his last three libretti, since this was one of the tasks of the Académie. Amadis was almost finished by the end of 1683, but Racine may have contributed to Quinault’s decision to continue with subjects taken from Ariosto and from Tasso rather than from classical mythology, his own specialty. They must have also worked together on descriptions for medals between 1685 and Quinault’s death in 1688 (Jacquiot xvi, xviii, xxxviii). We know that Racine was involved in this work in 1694-1696, when the Académie 3 The Registres are incomplete for this period. 4 Mercure galant, November 1678, p. 176. See also Registres 195. Racine and Quinault : two “originaux” PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 107 approved descriptions for several medals written earlier by Quinault: Les Placets, Le Passage du Rhin, and Les Conquêtes du Roy en Hollande 5 . The two men were in contact near the end of Quinault’s life, when Boileau wrote to Racine that he and the librettist were presently on good terms, in spite of the satirist’s harsh criticisms of Quinault’s plays in the 1660s: “Dites bien à Mr Quinault que je lui suis infiniment obligé de son souvenir […]. Vous pouvez l’assurer que je le compte présentement au rang de mes meilleurs Amis et de ceux dont j’estime le plus le cœur et l’esprit” (19 août 1687). Racine responded five days later “Je ferai tantôt à M. Quinault celles [honnêtetés] que vous me mandez de lui faire” 6 . A financial arrangement in 1696 suggests that there had been contact between Quinault’s family and that of Racine for some time. On February 13 of that year, Racine and his wife Catherine de Romanet established a rente of 750 livres for Quinault’s widow, Louise Goujon, in exchange for 15,000 livres. The full amount was repaid on February 3, 1698, which suggests that the Racine family had been temporarily short of cash 7 . If Racine and his wife turned to Quinault’s widow for this loan, the two families must have been on good terms. * * * The important thing is not so much where they might have met, but that they lived in a rather restricted social and artistic world and produced works that are more comparable than the stereotypical contrast between the tragic playwright and the tendre librettist suggests. Before examining some of these works, it will be useful to look at some examples of how they reacted to various literary trends and of how their contemporaries saw them in a similar light. The success of Racine’s Andromaque in 1667 prompted the Hôtel de Bourgogne to commission Quinault to write a tragedy in a similar vein, while Racine was working on Britannicus and the comedy Les Plaideurs. Pausanias premiered in November 1668, shortly after Racine’s comedy. Both plays feature a conquering hero willing to break his vows with a princess from his native country (Sparta in this case) in order to marry his captive. The princess decides to have vengeance, but the later acts of the plays are rather different, 5 Registre Journal, 14 December 1694, 30 August 1695, 7 February 1696. Picard suggests that Racine was one of the names of academicians working on medals that were forgotten by Mabillon in his letter of 29 August 1684 (Nouveau Corpus Racinainum 160). Other possibilities include Boileau and Quinault. Boileau 745. Racine, Oeuvres II, 492. Paris, Archives Nationales, Minutier Central, ET/ LXXV/ 413. For a summary, see Jurgens et Fleury 375. Buford Norman PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 108 and the last features a scene of confusion in the dark that results in the death of both the hero and his captive. One can see that, although Racine and Quinault took different approaches, they were obviously considered as comparable authors of tragedies 8 . This exercise in taking Racine’s basic dramatic situation and adapting it for a galant public is of course five years before Quinault’s first tragédie en musique, Cadmus et Hermione. Before then, Quinault worked with Lully, Molière, and Pierre Corneille on the tragédie-ballet Psyché in 1671. Racine did not participate, but it is possible that he was invited to propose a subject. According to Lagrange-Chancel, Louis XIV consulted Molière, Quinault, and Racine, “que parmi les plus grands génies de son siécle il regardait comme les plus capables de contribuer, par leurs talents, à la magnificence de ses plaisirs” (63) 9 . Georges Forestier, in his biography of Racine, points out that no contemporary source confirms this account and suggests that Lagrange- Chancel may have confused the 1671 Psyché with Racine and Boileau’s later project for an opera, La Chute de Phaéton. Be that as it may, Lagrange- Chancel’s text is an indication of the esteem in which Quinault and Racine were held. The date of the projected Chute de Phaéton by Racine and Boileau is not clear. Many historians place the project, and Racine’s inability to write a libretto, in 1677-1678, after Quinault was replaced by Thomas Corneille for the libretto of Psyché in 1678 and for that of Bellérophon in 1679. (Note that Psyché was adapted from the Molière-Quinault-Corneille tragedy-ballet of 1671 and that Quinault had written a spoken tragedy Bellérophon the same year.) The reasons for this replacement are equally unclear, but we know that Lully considered other collaborators at this time, as he had in 1674. I have argued elsewhere that this date is more likely for Racine and Boileau’s efforts to create a libretto (Quinault 126-27), but once again, the main point is that Louis XIV and Lully considered Racine a likely candidate. Quinault and Racine were also considered for the task of devising inscriptions for the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles. Racine, with Boileau and Rainssant, revised Charpentier’s French texts in 1685 (Milovanovic). In April 1686, Quinault decided to end his career as librettist, a choice confirmed by 8 For Brooks, “it must have seemed an ingenious idea [for the Hôtel de Bourgogne] to re-create the opening situation of Andromaque, trusting in his gallant heroes and sighing heroines to attract the paying public” (Philippe Quinault, dramatist 327). His analysis provides important details about the timing of Pausanias and about how Quinault and Racine influenced each other (325-28). 9 Preface to Orphée. See also Delmas, Mythe et Mythologie 141-42, and Vanuxem, “Racine, les machines et les fêtes” 305. The same account appears in Clément et La Porte, Anecdotes dramatiques 443. Racine and Quinault : two “originaux” PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 109 two sources from April 1686, both of which add that he was to “faire une description des peintures de la Galerie des Glaces” 10 . He was certainly qualified for this kind of work, after his years designing medals in the Petite Académie, but I know of no record of this work, and it is possible that Quinault was already too ill to perform it. As a result of this decision by Quinault not to write any more libretti, Lully, needed a poet for an opera to be performed later in 1686 at Anet, the residence of the duc de Vendôme. Racine was a natural candidate, but according to the Parfaict brothers, he excused himself and suggested Campistron, who indeed wrote the libretto 11 . Forestier points out that one cannot be sure that this offer was made, but the Parfaicts’ account is one more indication that the contemporaries of Racine and Quinault, or at least well-informed historians of the theatre a few decades later, thought they had similar talents. Another indication of how Quinault and Racine were viewed by their contemporaries is the pensions they received from Louis XIV. Quinault was included in Chapelain’s 1662 list of gens de lettres who would be worthy of a pension, but not Racine. However, both men received a pension in 1663, 800 livres for Quinault and 600 for Racine. They would both receive 800 livres in 1666-1667, then Racine began to receive several hundred livres more. They both received 1500 in 1675-1678, but Racine began to receive 2000 in 1679, whereas Quinault continued to receive 1500 12 . The reasons for these pensions vary. In the early 1670s, for both men it is most frequently something similar to “en considération des belles pièces qu’il donne au public”. After that, for Quinault it is most often “en considération de son application aux belles-lettres”, as for Racine in 1677-1678. Before that, however, for Racine it is often “pour ses beaux ouvrages de théâtre”, then “en considération des ouvrages de poësie qu’il compose et donne au public” and, after 1680, “en considération des ouvrages qu’il compose et donne au public”. It seems that the administration was not sure how to describe the work of a librettist, but that it followed Racine’s career from playwright to historiographer 13 . A special payment in 1683 is a more specific indication that Quinault’s and Racine’s contemporaries thought of them as working in similar fields. Quinault received “20.000 livres pour récompense de ses services, & Mess. 10 Dangeau 319. Mémoires inédits 64-65. 11 P. 230. A marginal note reads: “Note de M. Grandval le père” (Grandval, Nicolas Racot de, dit Grandval le père). Vanuxem (“Racine, les machines et les fêtes” 313- 14) points out that the Parfaict were probably following Niceron’s account in his Mémoires, p. 163. See also Forestier 658-59. 12 Clément, passim. Quinault also received payments from Lully and from Louis XIV. 13 On Racine’s “stratégie du caméléon", see Viala. Buford Norman PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 110 Racine & de Préaux en ont eu 10.000 chacun pour un petit Opéra qu’ils ont fait en trois jours, & qui a eté un des divertissements de la Cour pendant le Carnaval” 14 . It is interesting that, in this case, it is Racine, not Quinault, who is responsible for a libretto. As Forestier suggests (617), it is not as if Racine was about to become a librettist, and this work written in three days could not be “La Chute de Phaéton”. Still, it is clear that Racine, like Quinault, was working “pour le divertissement de sa majesté”. A final example would occur two years later, when Quinault and Racine both wrote a text set to music by Lully, in celebration of the Treaty of Ratisbonne: Racine’s Idylle sur la Paix in July for a fête organized by Colbert’s son Seignelay, Quinault’s Le Temple de la Paix in November for the court at Fontainebleau and later at the Académie Royale de Musique 15 . Both are pastorals, different in form and in content from the opera libretto of the period, but Quinault’s is considerably more dramatic. Racine’s contains no characters other than allegorical ones, and it is as if he “affecte de marcher sur le terrain de l’opéra tout en s’en démarquant” (Laurenti 25). Sourche’s comment is indicative of contemporary reactions and of the differences between the two poets that I outline here: L’Idylle entière ne m’a point contenté. Racine s’y pique de termes forts, et de rimes riches, au lieu de viser à une douceur coulante dont le Musicien a besoin, et à même temps qu’on y sent un goût naturel, un goût grec que je révère, on sent que Racine a manqué à égayer ce goût-là, à y répandre un air riant, et sur tout un air galant, que demande notre Poésie chantante. De la galanterie, il n’y en a pas un pauvre mot [...]. (269) Le Temple de la Paix premiered four months before Armide, Quinault’s last work for the stage. He died two years after the first performances, one year before Racine returned to the stage with Esther (1689) and Athalie (1691). It is hard to imagine that Madame de Maintenon would have wanted to work with Quinault, even if he were alive, but the fact that Racine wrote choruses to be set to music is one more indication that their careers were not as far apart as many people think. Another example of how Quinault’s and Racine’s contemporaries thought of them in similar terms is found in Bossuet’s Maximes et réflexions sur la comédie. For the Bishop of Meaux, Quinault’s “fausses tendresses” are no worse than Racine’s “passions agréables”: 14 Nouvelles extraordinaires, 16 mars 1683, p. [3], “De Paris le 9 mars”. See also Correspondances politiques 48. In Quinault’s case, the payment could be for the madrigal “L’Opéra difficile”. 15 It is not clear why Lully chose Racine; see my edition of Le Temple de la Paix, p. 16- 21. Racine and Quinault : two “originaux” PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 111 Songez encore, si vous jugez digne du nom de Chrétien et de Prêtre, de trouver honnête la corruption réduite en maximes dans les Opéras de Quinault, avec toutes les fausses tendresses, et toutes ces trompeuses invitations à jouir du beau temps de la jeunesse, qui retentissent partout dans ses Poésies. Pour moi, je l’ai vu cent fois déplorer ces égarements […]. Mais il n’est pas nécessaire de donner le secours du chant et de la musique à des inclinations déjà trop puissantes par elles-mêmes ; et si vous dites que la seule représentation des passions agréables dans les tragédies d’un Corneille et d’un Racine, n’est pas dangereuse à la pudeur, vous démentez ce dernier, qui, occupé de sujets plus dignes de lui, renonce à sa Bérénice 16 . Bossuet is of course careful to point out that, late in their lives, both poets regretted their earlier works. This is impossible to verify, since it was commonplace at the time to renounce what could be seen as one’s earlier failings. * * * Exactly what were these tendresses, these passions for which Quinault and Racine were known, that they were called upon to portray in various genres? Are they very different? Are the subjects and themes of their works very different? To attempt to answer these questions, we must look not at when they might have met, or what their contemporaries thought of them, but at their works. I have chosen several plays and libretti by Quinault that contain remarkable similarities to plays by Racine written at about the same time. I pointed out above that Racine’s second play, Alexandre le Grand, was premiered in the same year as one of Quinault’s greatest successes, Astrate. It is obvious that a young, aspiring playwright would have in mind the works of a writer who had had great success since 1653, aiming both to please the same public and to distance himself from his rival. For Racine’s friend Boileau, the distance was clear; he puts these words in the mouth of his compagnard ridicule: Je ne sais pas pourquoi l’on vante l’Alexandre: Ce n’est qu’un glorieux qui ne dit rien de tendre: Les Héros chez Quinault parlent bien autrement, Et jusqu’à je vous hais, tout s’y dit tendrement. (Satire III) However, a rival playwright, Pradon (1632-1698), insisted on the similarities: […] jamais Quinault n’a tant répandu de sucre & de miel dans ses opéras, que le grand Racine en a mis dans son Alexandre, nous faisant du plus grand Héros de l’Antiquité, un ferluquet amoureux […]. Peut-être méme qu’il n’y a 16 P. 173-75. A very similar text is found in Bossuet’s 1694 letter to Père Caffaro, p. 123-124. See also Forestier 758-60. Buford Norman PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 112 rien qui soit plus dans le genre de la vraie Tragédie que l’est Astrate. Je ne sais si l’Anneau Royal est plus mauvais que l’Épée de Phèdre […] 17 . The truth is somewhere in between; as Forestier wrote, Alexandre is a “heureux composé de Corneille et de Quinault” (232). Racine’s contemporaries referred to the “tendre Racine,” and his Alexandre is a conqueror as concerned with the power of those “aimables tyrans,” the “beaux yeux” of Cléofile, as with military power and political tyrants (III.4.893-901). Could one be more galant (and less what we think of as Racinian) than Alexandre near the end of the play, “Souffrez que jusqu’au bout achevant ma carrière, / J’apporte à vos beaux yeux ma Vertu tout entière” (V.3.1517-18) 18 ? The two plays are in some ways very different - Astrate is more romanesque, for example, with the tablettes that reveal the hero’s true identity - but it is clear that, at this point in his career, Racine has much in common with Quinault (Cornic, Sweetser). We have already seen that the troupe of the Hôtel de Bourgogne thought that they had enough in common to commission Quinault to write Pausanias in 1668 to play off of the success of Racine’s Andromaque the previous year. I will not go into more detail about these two plays, preferring to concentrate on pairs of plays in which one could say that the similarities were not imposed on one writer by exterior circumstances. After Pausanias, comparisons involve Quinault’s libretti rather than his spoken tragedies. Racine would certainly have observed closely Quinault’s collaboration with Lully’s Académie Royale de Musique, thinking perhaps that a tragédie en musique such as Cadmus et Hermione, with its evil giant, monsters, secondary - even comic - characters, and lovers who have only one major scene together (II.4) would not constitute a serious threat. He obviously changed his mind after seeing Quinault’s Alceste in 1674, based on a famous classical model 19 . He devoted the second half of the preface to his Iphigénie to a criticism of Charles Perrault’s Critique d’Alceste, of the “dégôut” shown by the “Modernes” toward Euripides. Quinault is not mentioned, and most of Racine’s scorn is for Perrault’s misreading of the famous scene between 17 Le Triomphe de Pradon 84. See also Picard, Nouveau Corpus Racinainum 166 and Carrière 116. 18 Gros says that at the end of the seventeenth century, “on mettait encore Racine sur le même plan que Quinault et […] on lui reprochait, comme à Quinault, d’avoir affadi à l’excès les héros antiques” (444). See also Pelous 128, 404 and the reference to the “tendre Racine” in Picard, Carrière 230 (concerning Bérénice). 19 According to his son Louis and to Lagrange-Chancel (preface to Alceste, 1735), Racine wrote at least part of a tragedy based on the Alceste myth (Oeuvres, ed. Mesnard I, 96). Vanuxem suggests, with little justification, that Quinault stole the subject from Racine (“Sur Racine” 79-80). Racine and Quinault : two “originaux” PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 113 Admète and Alceste because of a faulty translation, but Racine, like some other “poètes qui composent pour le Théâtre” (80), clearly did not like this new sort of tragedy. Or rather, as Perrault said, they had decided from the beginning not to like it. Even though Racine does not mention Quinault, the first half of his preface is devoted to the precise questions at the heart of these comparisons: the handling of the plot and the expression of the passions. It was certainly common in prefaces to mention sources, and Quinault had done this in his to Astrate, citing several ancient historians who mention the reign of Astrartus. Racine takes great pains to justify the introduction of Ériphile, the “autre Iphigénie” who will be sacrificed instead of the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. He thus rejects the version of the myth in which this Iphigeneia is killed and that in which she is replaced in extremis by a doe provided miraculously by Diana. He justifies his decision in the latter case by what is obviously a criticism of the tragédie en musique and its use of the supernatural and of stage machinery: Et quelle apparence encore de dénouer ma tragédie par le secours d’une déesse et d’une machine, et par une métamorphose qui pouvait trouver quelque créance du temps d’Euripide, mais qui serait trop absurde et trop incroyable parmi nous? In what seems almost an afterthought, he mentions that Euphorion de Chalcide - so little known that he has to point out that Virgil and Quintilian thought highly of him - wrote of Achilles’ conquest of Lesbos “et qu’il y avait même trouvé une princesse qui s’était éprise d’amour pour lui”. The account of Euphorion given by Parthenius (Racine’s source) says only that Pisidice, daughter of the king of Lesbos, fell in love with him and offered to turn over the city to him if he would marry her, which he did not do. As Mesnard says at the end of his note quoting Parthenius, “Cette histoire diffère plus de celle d’Ériphile que ne pourrait le donner à croire l’allusion qu’y fait Racine” (III, 142). Jean Rohou is more blunt, refering to the sacrifce of Ériphile and her love for Achilles as “pures inventions de notre dramaturge” (1025). This is the only justification for what is after all a major addition to the Euripides version of the myth, the love between a great hero and a young princess “prêts à confirmer leur auguste alliance” (V.6.1790). This “happy end”, with the great warrior who says to Iphigénie “mon bonheur ne dépend que de vous” (III.4.851) and the princess who later (after several misunderstandings that are not unworthy of the younger Quinault) tells him “il me semblait qu’une flamme si belle / M’élevait au-dessus du sort d’une mortelle” (III.6.1041), is obviously designed to please the same public who enjoyed the Buford Norman PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 114 marriage of Cadmus and Hermione and the reunion of Admète and Alceste at the end of Quinault’s first two libretti 20 . Similarly, the choice of a play with a sacrifice at the heart of the plot seems clearly influenced by the sacrifice of Alceste. Racine had first planned to write a play about Iphigeneia in Tauris, for which he completed an outline, but as he began writing in late 1673 and early 1674, it was probably the success of Alceste in January 1674 that caused him to choose the version of the myth that involved a sacrifice. I am hardly the first to suggest this influence 21 , but it is important to insist on what one could call Racine’s mauvaise foi, not only in trying to justify a love interest that is completely absent from the Euripides play, but also in rejecting the version of the myth in which Iphigeneia is replaced by a doe because it would be “trop absurde et trop incroyable parmi nous” before saying three paragraphs later that “le bon sens et la raison étaient les mêmes dans tous les siècles”. The second of these two quotations deals with the passions, as opposed to “l’économie et la fable d’Euripide”, as Racine put it in the Preface (699). The distinction is important, as the author of the Remarques sur les Iphigénies points out (794) and as critics have often repeated, but it is as if Racine is trying to claim that the spectators at the Opéra accepted things that the audiences of his plays did not, when we know that many people attended and enjoyed both. The main scene that Racine mentions as having brought tears to the eyes of his audiences is that of the adieux of Admète to Alceste. There is no precise equivalent of this dialogue in Quinault’s libretto, but the penultimate scene of act II presents their grief, when they think Admète is about to die of his wounds, in simple but touching words, with “Alceste vous pleurez” and “Admète vous mourez” repeated several times. I doubt that there were any fewer tears during this scene than during the scenes - Racine does not say which - that brought tears to ancient Greek and to modern Parisian audiences. In short, Racine wanted to have his cake and eat it too, in presenting himself as the defender of ancient tragedy against the moderns while adapting Euripides to work in a galant, loving hero but preserving, in the exchanges between Achilles and Agamemnon, for example, “le bouillant Achille” of antiquity. It seems safe to say that we would not have had Iphigénie without Alceste. 20 “[…] un siècle […] qui ne peut plus souffrir des héros s’ils ne sont pas pleins de tendresse” (Remarques sur les Iphigénies 808). It is interesting, if perhaps a coincidence, that the only occurrence of “une flamme si belle” in Racine’s tragedies occurs in Iphigénie, a year after it occurred in Cadmus et Hermione (IV.1.580). 21 Rohou 1018-24. Racine and Quinault : two “originaux” PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 115 It is also quite possible that we would not have had Phèdre without Atys. Just as Racine was pondering Racine’s successes in the early 1670s, Quinault was aware that his first libretti were criticized not only for the presence of comic scenes, but also for the numerous secondary roles, for excessive use of the supernatural, and for the absence of truly tragic (in the sense of ancient tragedy) characters, situations, and dialogues. His next libretto, Thésée (1675) still contains some secondary characters who are sometimes somewhat comic, but it also features a major role for Médée. Whereas in his first two operas Hermione and Alceste had very few lines, especially in the final acts (Hermione none, Alceste four alone), the famous sorceress has three monologues and several important scenes with Égée, Thésée, and Eglé. Her magic powers overwhelm the other characters, and it only the intervention of Minerva that saves the Athenians from what they see as “Une mort inévitable” (V.6.1117), paving the way for praise of “Un roi digne de l’être” and for “une espèce de fête galante” (V.8.1129, V.9), mainstays of the Académie Royale de Musique. Médée is the first of several remarkable Quinault heroines, culminating in the title role of his last and, for almost all critics, greatest libretto, Armide, to which I will return shortly. For his next libretto, he chose a rather obscure mythological character, Atys, whose death at the hands of a jealous goddess is featured briefly in Ovid’s Fastae. It is as if he did not want to invite comparison with well-known Greek and Roman plays, but still come close to classical tragedy and, in so doing, create his most Racinian libretto. Comic and secondary characters are eliminated, and the tragic situation is one from which there is no escape. The magical powers of the goddess Cybèle enable her to warn Atys in a dream and to cause the death of her rival, but there is no happy end, no hero who overcomes obstacles with divine help. In fact, there is no hero similar to Theseus or Pyrrhus, but rather a young man who is thought to have no interest in love but who declares what he mistakenly thought was unrequited love in a touching scene, only to learn that a goddess is in love with him and is so jealous that she will cause his death when she learns that he loves another woman. As Jacques Truchet put it, “L’amour, en cette tragédie en musique, apparaît, en fait, aussi cruel qu’il apparaîtra, l’année suivante, dans Phèdre” (Théâtre 1050). Atys is not the only Quinault work with a plot similar to that of Phèdre. Bellérophon, his last spoken play, contains numerous parallels with Racine’s last secular tragedy. Both men said goodbye to the spoken theatre with the story of a fiancée/ queen, in love with her fiancé’s/ husband’s friend/ son, who becomes jealous when she learns that he is in love with another woman and invents a story to cause her fiancé/ husband to banish the young man, who is Buford Norman PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 116 attacked by a monster. At the end, the finacée/ queen exculpates the friend/ son and commits suicide. Phèdre was Racine’s first play since Iphigénie, thirty months previously. This was the longest interval between plays in his career, and it would be his last spoken play. “Voici encore une tragédie dont le sujet est pris d’Euripide”, he wrote at the beginning of the preface. As in the case of Iphigénie, he took pains to remain faithful to his sources, Euripides and Seneca, pleased that his Phèdre was as successful in modern times as in ancient. He nonetheless introduced a love interest through the character of Aricie, who is present in neither source, as if this was something that his modern public demanded but was not deemed necessary by his models. The success of the tragédie en musique must have been in his mind as he chose the subject of his masterpiece, adapted his sources, and then ended his career in the spoken theatre. Was he frustrated, or confident that he had shown the Modernes how it should be done? Quinault could hardly be the only cause of the “silence de Racine” 22 , but it is quite possible that the author of Phèdre no longer wished to write for a public that insisted on tendresse and galanterie, that enjoyed dance, lavish sets and machinery, and was content with the graceful and elegant, yet relatively simple, poetry of Quinault. The latter would write six more libretti after 1677, using a wide variety of sources and of plots, in the last three of which a woman is clearly in charge. He ended his career with Armide, featuring a character whom - and I say this with enormous admiration for Racine - one can compare favorably to Phèdre. One of several ways to approach this comparison is through the concept of gloire. Just as Alexandre says, near the end of Racine’s second play, “J’apporte à vos beaux yeux ma Vertu tout entière”, Renaud says to Armide, “Je fais ma gloire de vous plaire” (V.1.622). This is, however, under the spell of Armide’s enchantment, and the Christian knight, who had said in the first act “La seule gloire a pour moi des appas”, will soon escape from the spell and return to the army. For Armide, love is less important than glory (“il faudra que ce soit la Gloire / Qui livre mon coeur à l'Amour”; I.2.101-02), yet she too gives in to love and transports Renaud to a remote place where she can hide her shame. There is no literal enchantment in Racine’s play, but Phèdre is nevertheless under the power of Venus, “tout entière à sa proie attachée”. Like Armide and Renaud, glory and reputation are all-important for her: after learning that Thésée has returned, she says “Mourons […]. Je ne crains que le nom que je laisse après moi” (III.3.860), and just before the avowal to 22 Pommier. See also Gros 730-41; Picard, Carrière 256-57, 302-03; Forestier 535-53. Racine and Quinault : two “originaux” PFSCL, LI, 100 DOI 10.24053/ PFSCL-2024-0007 117 Hippolyte, she asks him, “Prince? Aurais-je perdu tout le soin de ma gloire? ” (II.5.666). There are obvious differences between the two plays, yet this conflict between glory and love, between vertu and passion, is at the heart of both. For a variety of reasons, each character is “ni tout à fait coupable ni tout à fait innocent”, and both playwrights have created remarkable women who suffer at the hands of love. Is it any wonder that at the end of each play, the heroine has a similar desire to keep her regrettable actions secret? Armide’s last lines are “Partons, et s’il se peut, que mon amour funeste / Demeure enseveli dans ces lieux pour jamais”, and Thésée reacts to Phèdre’s confession with “D'une action si noire / Que ne peut avec elle expirer la mémoire! ” (V.7.1645-46). Phèdre’s final words, though they express a more definite desire for death (Armide decides to seek vengeance at the end), are remarkably similar to what Armide had said at the beginning of the last scene: Armide: Il me laisse mourante, il veut que je périsse. / À regret je revois la clarté qui me luit. Phèdre: Et la mort, à mes yeux dérobant la clarté, / Rend au jour qu'ils souillaient toute sa pureté. In his final work, it is as if Quinault, like Racine in his last profane tragedy, wanted to show his contemporaries how powerful and how moving a play could be if love is portrayed in a rather negative light, after having frequently moved their audiences with the plights of young lovers. It is true that Renaud sounds very much like a galant lover while he is under Armide’s spell (“Puisje rien voir que vos appas? ”; V.1.596), and that Hippolyte and Aricie “suivaient sans remords leur penchant amoureux” (IV.6.1239) before his violent death, but the impression that lasts with the spectator is an Aristotelian one of fear and pity, of a kind of admiration 23 for these two women in spite of their faults. One could apply Lecerf’s comment about Armide to Phèdre: the spectator “s’en retourne chez lui pénetré malgré qu’il en ait, rêveur, chagrin du mécontentement d’Armide” (16). * * * My title refers to the quotation from Vigneul-Marville, for whom both Racine and Quinault are originaux, in the sense of excellent, outstanding, having set a standard that no one could match (Furetière). He, as we do, placed them in different categories, yet I hope to have shown that, living in the same world and writing for the same public, their works have much in common. 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