Jean Racine (c. December 1639 – 21 April 1699), baptised Jean-Baptiste Racine, was a French playwright and one of the great French playwrights of the 17th century, alongside Molière and Corneille. He was primarily a tragedian and strove scrupulously to adhere to the three dramatic unities (a tragedy must be based on one principal action, in a single place, within a day at most). He also wrote one comedy, The Litigants, and a muted tragedy, Esther, to be performed for children.
He was born at La Ferté-Milon, about forty miles northeast of Paris, to a family well-established in the town, where his father and grandfather held minor official appointments, and was baptised on 22 December 1639. Orphaned at a very young age, his mother dying when he was two years old and his father when he was four, Racine was taken into the custody of his grandparents, Jean Racine the eldest and Marie Des Moulins. The family were devout Jansenists (adherents of a heretical theological movement in Catholicism. Jansenism taught that mankind is incapable of moral goodness. Their wills, being corrupted by original sin, could neither accept nor reject God's grace. Those given the grace will be saved, while everyone else is among the damned), and had a daughter, Agnes, who was a nun and later abbess of Port-Royal Abbey, the stronghold of Jansenism. When Jean Racine the eldest died in 1649, Marie Des Moulin retired to Port-Royal and Jean was sent to the Collége de Beauvais (not to be confused with the Collége de Beauvais at Paris) and to Port-Royal, to which the Collége de Beauvais was intimately connected, in 1655. There, he acquired an exceptional knowledge of Greek and Latin literature, both classical and Christian.
Before he was twenty, Racine had already begun interacting with poets and theatre people in Paris and became acquainted with, among others, Jean de La Fontaine and Molière. After a short period of time living with his uncle the Pere Sconin, vicar-general of Uzès in Languedoc, he returned to Paris and resumed his literary and theatrical acquaintance. In 1664 and 1665, he wrote The Theban Brothers and Alexander the Great and saw them produced by Molière's company. Racine eventually took Alexander the Great to another company and broke with Molière, and thereafter he would be associated with the French poet and critic Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, or Boileau. He would write a series of major plays, including Andromache (1667), Britannicus (1669), and Phaedra (1676). During this time, Racine had achieved great success as a dramatist.
In 1677, Racine eventually abandoned the theatre. There followed a gap of twelve years, in which he married a Catherine de Romanet, revived his devotion to Jansenism, and was appointed historiographer to King Louis XIV. He then produced two last plays: Esther (1689), a muted tragedy to be performed to the young; and Athaliah (1690), both of which are on subjects from the Old Testament and had the patronage of Madame de Maintenon, the second wife of Louix XIV.
Jean Racine died on 21 April 1699 from liver cancer. He was initially buried in Port-Royal, but after Louix XIV razed the site in 1710, his remains were moved to the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont church in Paris.
Dramatic Works:
- The Theban Brothers (1664)
- Alexander the Great (1665)
- Andromache (1667)
- The Litigants (1668)
- Britannicus (1669)
- Bérénice (1670)
- Bajazet (1672)
- Mithridates (1673)
- Iphigenia (1674)
- Phaedra (1677)
- Esther (1689)
- Athaliah (1691)
