The Complete Plays of Jean Racine. Jean Racine
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he wants? In Nero’s case, how better to establish, to indisputably demonstrate, that omnipotence than by obtaining that which is most inaccessible (Junia) and by destroying that which is most inviolable (Britannicus)?
Let us first examine this latter aspect of Nero’s strategy in an attempt to answer the question reiterated at the top of this section. When Nero, speaking of Britannicus, says, “As long as he lives, I half live, at best” (IV.iii.13), the significance of his avowal is not that Britannicus threatens his life or prevents him from living fully, that while Britannicus lives he leads a stunted, deprived existence — he is emperor, after all (indeed, as Junia reminds him, “All that you see conduces to your pleasure; / The enchanted days glide by in even measure” [II.iii.125–26]). Its true import is that by the very act of killing Britannicus, Nero announces that as emperor he is released once and for all from any constraints, moral or pragmatic, thus realizing the full potential (in both senses: possibility and potency) of that role, that is, someone free to flout every received dictate of society and morality, to live — and rule — in obedience to his will alone. Speaking of free, one might argue that the less real the threat Britannicus poses, the less justification for his removal that a concern for Nero’s safety can provide, the more his murder must be considered as an acte gratuit on Nero’s part (like Raskolnikov’s), meant to prove a point, the act itself being the end, not the means to an end. And for that purpose Nero has chosen his victim with supreme cunning: the murder of Britannicus — young, innocent, defenseless, boyishly endearing, the son of the emperor Claudius, formerly affianced to Junia (in Racine’s version), in love with and loved by her, and, lastly, sheltered under Agrippina’s wing — must appear from every point of view as egregiously horrific, inexcusable, and unforgivable. And that is not to consider the manner of his murder. And by manner, I do not mean the actual convulsive workings of Locusta’s poison, however frightful, but rather, the “staging” (certainly, le mot juste) of the murder.
Consider the events that bring Act III to a tumultuous conclusion. First, Nero discovers Britannicus and Junia in what he could justifiably claim was a compromisingly intimate situation; then, the hostility between the stepbrothers escalating, their confrontation ends with a heated stichomythic exchange, Britannicus’s final contributions to which Nero might well construe as an act of lèse-majesté; indeed, as a provisional discipline, Nero orders his guards to place Britannicus and Junia (separately) under house arrest. In short, Nero finds himself in the advantageous position of having at his disposal several plausible pretexts for punishing Britannicus — and not by a gentle reprimand. But just when he would appear to have the upper (whip) hand, Nero deliberately divests himself of all pretexts for murdering Britannicus. His reason for doing so may be deduced from a suggestive remark Racine makes about Nero in his second preface: “What we have here is a monster being born, but who dares not declare himself, and who seeks pretexts for his wicked actions.” It follows, then, that if Nero has reached the point where he not only does not seek pretexts for his wicked actions, but goes out of his way, by his ostentatious reconciliation with Britannicus, to invalidate them, we can assume he does so in order to “declare himself.” (Forestier [1422–23] suggests that, “in defining... the characteristics traditionally attributed to youth, [Racine, in his first preface] would have it understood that there is in these ‘qualities’ much that would push his hero to make a tragic error.” But Britannicus makes no “tragic error,” not even by being himself.)
Another aspect to consider, which will further clarify Nero’s motives, is that, had Nero’s true purpose been to rid himself of Britannicus for pressing political or personal motives, and not merely to advertise his assumption of unconditional power, he surely could and would have chosen a more discreet way of doing so, one that would have cast no suspicion on himself. Here, on the contrary, Nero has staged Britannicus’s murder with the clear intention of being caught virtually in flagrante delicto. For none of the guests believe for a moment — nor does Nero expect them to — that he had no hand in Britannicus’s death, any more than they could have been expected to believe, in the immediate wake of Britannicus’s violent death throes, that these were merely the mild and momentary manifestations of a long-standing but not life-threatening complaint, as Nero casually explains to the appalled onlookers. (Indeed, Nero would undoubtedly have been frightfully disappointed if his “audience” had failed to appreciate, for example, his artful touch of having placed the virulent concoction in a “loving cup” meant to signalize his reconciliation with Britannicus. One can easily imagine Nero saying to himself, minutes before Britannicus’s demise, “I can’t wait to see the expression on their faces!”) Such calculatedly ingenuous deportment on Nero’s part is meant to proclaim, with utmost insolence, not his innocence, but his impunity.
XIV
Turning our attention now to the other half of Nero’s campaign, his attempt to possess himself of Junia, we must first of all recognize the complexity of the character that Racine has created in Junia and the multiple purposes she serves in the drama. (Racine was to create, with equally amazing ingenuity, another such multipurpose character in Iphigenia’s Eriphyle, unconstrained as he was, in that case, by considerations of faithfulness to his source play, Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, since Eriphyle does not appear in it — or anywhere else for that matter — and, in the present case, by considerations of historical accuracy, since the historical Junia Calvina, whose name Racine used for a character otherwise wholly of his own invention, “is all but unknown to us,” as he informs us in his first preface. Like Junia in Britannicus, Eriphyle plays a crucial thematic role in Iphigenia: as the envious outsider, the sullen loner, she malevolently and calculatedly corrodes the “family values” at the heart of the play. Plotwise, she is involved in a love triangle [Iphigenia, Achilles, and herself], and she plays a key role as well in Racine’s artful “surprise” denouement of the play.) Junia, among her other functions, serves, of course, as the “love interest” for the title character. (Some would argue that, like Antigone, Atalide, Monima, Iphigenia, and Aricia, Junia forms [with Britannicus and Nero] part of a love triangle — in Monima’s case it is more like a “tetrangle” — but later in this Discussion I will contend against that view.)
I have already demonstrated the pivotal role Junia plays as an equipotent adversary to Nero, the progress and resolution of their agon constituting the main theme of the play. Whereas he has no virtues, indeed, no admirable qualities at all (unless one considers his highly developed acting ability as one), she is virtue personified, having no qualities that are not admirable. (She is certainly Racine’s most noble character; compared with her, for example, even two of Racine’s most sympathetic characters, Berenice and Titus — both of them liable, at times, to be selfish, petty, and querulous — can seem almost ignoble.) And as I suggested in my excursus about Wagner’s Ring cycle, Junia’s ultimate defeat at Nero’s hands, the obliteration of the goodness, kindness, honesty, courage, and selflessness that she represents by the depravity, cruelty, cunning, mendacity, and selfishness that Nero represents, is what weighs so heavily and with such dire foreboding at the end of the play.
I must say I find untenable the views of those critics (several of whom are cited by Campbell [128–132]) who maintain that the outcome of the play in any way represents “the triumph of Junie” (as Volker Schröder [277] would have it), or, to quote the ecstatic view of Anne Ubersfeld (in “Racine auteur tragique,” cited by Campbell [133]), that “nowhere will you hear more clearly the pure song of the love that triumphs over violence and death, the love that is the very basis of resistance to the tyrant.” Even Campbell himself (132) asserts that Albina’s last lines “clearly show an isolated figure [i.e., Nero] with madness and suicide on the road ahead. It is hard to visualize this ending as the triumph of evil.” Au contraire: I would say that it is hard not to. Even if one were to concede that Nero is reduced to despair at the end of the play (and later I shall strenuously argue against such an interpretation), thirteen years (the time that would elapse before Nero would be forced to commit suicide in order to escape a much crueler demise) is a long “road.” Certainly, given the unmistakable personalities of these two moral adversaries, it would be just as absurd to maintain that Junia, grief-stricken over the death of Britannicus, will ever find any consolation, as it would be to maintain that Nero