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Sarah Hoogenraad

Dr. Kolb

History of Drama I

3 December 2018

Phèdre

Phèdre, by Jean Racine, also known as Phaedra, is a French five-act tragedy written in

the late 1600s. Phèdre is based off of Hippolytos, by Euridipes, and Eric Bently, the editor of

The Misanthrope and Other French Classics, considers it a “miraculous translation and

adaptation,” and believes it to “alter” and in his opinion, “surpasses (Euripides’s) wonderful

original.

In Act 1 Scene 3, Phaedra is lamenting to her nurse about how miserable her life is. Her

nurse tells her, thus informing the audience, of how crazy Phaedra has been acting, citing that

she goes outside but says the sun will kill her, and other unnecessary things she has done. At one

point, Phaedra says “I feel the heaven’s royal radiance cool and fail, as if it feared my terrible

shame has destroyed its right to shine on men. I’ll never look upon the sun again.”

The first thing is to consider what Phaedra is shameful for. What is driving her to all of

this? It is eventually revealed that Phaedra is in love with her stepson, Hippolytus. There is no

blood relation, so this is technically not an incestuous love, so no problem there. She is, however,

married to his father, Theseus, and therefore she cannot be with Hippolytus. She feels extreme

guilt for being in love with another man, even though Theseus is away. It can also be assumed,

however, that some of that guilt probably has to do with the fact that her love is none other than
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her husband’s son, who her husband would probably trust her to be around. This only makes

their connection tabooer, and more shameful for Phaedra.

The significance of Phaedra’s line is most easily depicted in the following line from her

nurse, Oenone. Oenone says, “Renunciation on renunciation! Now you slander the source of

your creation.” Oenone says that the way Phaedra is currently acting is just like how she has

been acting, and just another renunciation. This time, however, she is slandering the heavens,

which means that Phaedra believes that not even God can help her. Or that God could help her,

but he refuses to because He is so ashamed of her “terrible shame” that he does not even feel his

right to shine the sun on the Earth.

The end of Phaedra’s line, “I’ll never look upon the sun again,” can mean one of two

things. First, it could mean the more obvious option, that she refuses to go outside ever again,

because she is so distraught by her internal conflict, and as Oenone mentioned before, Phaedra

has at one point claimed that the sunlight will kill her. It could also mean, however, that Phaedra

has killed the sun. As she mentioned before, she thinks the heavens will stop shining down on

man because of her, and so it is possible that in this line she is mourning the loss of the sun, and

the fact that she will never see it again.

Phaedra’s extreme guilt is justifiable, and the way that she speaks of it is very dramatic.

While her husband’s eventual “death,” or fake death if you keep reading, should be a bad thing,

though, it’s almost good in Phaedra’s eyes, because she no longer has to live with this immense

burden on her shoulders. It only makes the way she speaks of the burden more significant

because the more weight she has on her, the more she can release later.