French Flashcards
Jean Baptiste Racine
1639-1699
The first French playwright to make a living off of his plays. Known as a French Neo-Classicist because he borrowed liberally from classical (Greek) stories and mythology.
Andromache
Jean Baptiste Racine
Named after a play, Andromache, by Euripides. passage from the third book of Virgil’s the Aeneid, but he made much changes. Andromache is the widow of Hector. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, has brought her captive from Troy. Another great woman character is Hermione, who has come to the court of Epirus to marry Pyrrhus. In one of the great scenes of the play, the desperate Hermione says to the king, who loves the unresponsive Andromaque: “I loved you faithless; had you been faithful, how Much more could I have loved you? Even now, Hearing you speak the calm, cold words which kill My hopes, it may be that I love you still.”
Phedre
Jean Baptiste Racine
partly based on Euripides’ Hippolytys. Phaedra loves her stepson, Hippolytys, and confesses her love to him when she wrongly assumes that her husband Theseus, the heroic King of Athens, is death. “Shall Theseus’ widow dare to love his son? No, such a monster is too vile to spare. Here is my heart. Your blade must pierce me there.” Theseus returns home and hears from his wife’s nurse that Hippolytus has attempted to seduce Phaeda. Hippolytus wants to seek his own heroism, telling his father: “Let me at long last show my courage.” He loves the princess Aricia and protects her step-mother’s honor. Theseus curses his son who is killed by Neptune’s power. Phaedra confesses all and poisons herself - “Death dims my eyes, which soiled what they could see, Restoring to the light its purity.”
Iphegenia
Jean Baptiste Racine
Britannicus
Jean Baptiste Racine
Moliere
Pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. French actor and playwright, the greatest of all writers of French comedy. Molière’s masterpieces are those plays in which, attacking hypocrisy and vice, he created characters that have become immortal types, such as the hypochondriac Argan, Tartuffe, the hypocrite, Harpagon, the miser, and Alceste, the misanthrope.
Tartuffe, or the Impostor
Moliere
Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature,” wrote Molière in the play. Tartuffe has been taken to the home of credulous Orgon. He believes with his mother Pernelle, that Tartuffe’s pious example will be good for the other members of the family. Orgon determines that his daughter Mariane, who loves a young man named Valère, shall marry Tartuffe. Orgon’s wife Elmire begs Tartuffe to refuse Mariane’s hand, and he attempts to seduce her. Orgon rejects the truth about his guest and signs over his entire property to him. Elmire devises a way to expose the hypocrite Tartuffe to Orgon, whose eyes are opened a little too late. Tartuffe turns the family out of the house, and tries to have his former host arrested. But by the order of the King, the arresting officer apprehends Tartuffe instead, and the impostor is hauled off to prison.
