Phaedra

by Jean Racine from 1677

About

Racine's Phèdre (1677) is generally considered the supreme achievement of French classical tragedy: the queen Phaedra, consumed by an incestuous passion for her stepson Hippolytus, confesses it falsely, triggering a chain of disasters that destroys everyone touched by it. Racine wrote it as his last secular play before turning definitively to religious drama; the role of Phèdre is the most demanding in the French classical repertoire and has been a benchmark performance for every major French actress since Sarah Bernhardt. The alexandrine verse is among the most beautifully constructed in French literature; translation inevitably loses some of it, but the dramatic architecture survives intact.

Translated from the original French.

Tragedy Verse Drama Baroque Passionate Intense Darken

Phaedra

Characters: 1
Words: 13.5k
Acts: 5
Duration: ~1 hr 41 min

Characters

#CharacterPlayerLines

1

Reader

—

314

30 sections

13.5k words

#TitleWords

Act I

1

Act I Scene I

1.1k8:23

2

Act I Scene II

870:39

3

Act I Scene III

1.4k10:14

4

Act I Scene IV

1691:16

5

Act I Scene V

2491:52

Act II

6

Act II Scene I

7725:47

7

Act II Scene II

7885:55

8

Act II Scene III

1451:05

9

Act II Scene IV

400:18

10

Act II Scene V

1.1k8:17

11

Act II Scene VI

1871:24

Act III

12

Act III Scene I

6544:54

13

Act III Scene II

910:41

14

Act III Scene III

7055:17

15

Act III Scene IV

720:32

16

Act III Scene V

5384:02

17

Act III Scene VI

1080:49

Act IV

18

Act IV Scene I

2772:05

19

Act IV Scene II

9697:16

20

Act IV Scene III

790:36

21

Act IV Scene IV

2331:45

22

Act IV Scene V

1681:16

23

Act IV Scene VI

9326:59

Act V

24

Act V Scene I

6484:52

25

Act V Scene II

320:14

26

Act V Scene III

3032:16

27

Act V Scene IV

780:35

28

Act V Scene V

2201:39

29

Act V Scene VI

8636:28

30

Act V Scene VII

4933:42

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