The Complete Plays of Jean Racine. Jean Racine
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the legitimate empress, even after Nero has declared that he is planning to divorce Octavia, with Rome’s blessing. And when he reminds Junia, with some petulance no doubt, that “my wife I have renounced, as I’ve made clear” (II.iii.95), she, nothing daunted, tells him to his face that their marriage would be “a crime that robs the rightful heir” (II.iii.108). Campbell (130) cites Volker Schröder’s view of the play as “a lesson in history and politics, an expression of support for absolute monarchy that shows the kind of tyranny from which France has escaped.” But can one imagine anyone defying Louis XIV so fearlessly, so outspokenly? Accusing him of a crime? Talk about lèse-majesté! (Many of the operas of the French baroque, in fact, eulogized the monarch, whether through the allegorical implications of their story lines or, more explicitly, in their prologues, which featured mythological figures unmistakably embodying the king’s virtues. Racine’s only concession to such sycophantic homage — if one accepts Schröder’s view — would appear to have been to portray monarchs so egregiously vicious or tyrannical as to convey the consolatory moral: “And you think we have it bad!”) Indeed, Racine was to fall victim to the kind of tyranny from which France had not escaped. For reasons still obscure, Racine, toward the end of his life, came under a cloud, having somehow incited Louis XIV’s displeasure, the effects of which are poignantly registered in this letter of March 4, 1698, to Mme de Maintenon: “I sought consolation at least in my work; but judge what bitterness must be cast over this work by the thought that the great monarch himself with whom my mind is constantly occupied perhaps regards me as a man more worthy of his anger than of his favors” (cited by A. F. B. Clark, 244).
Nor does Junia fail to touch upon the subject of Agrippina, goading Nero on his most sensitive spot: his submissiveness (whether feigned or real) to his mother. When Junia observes that Britannicus “adopts his father’s view [that she and Britannicus are betrothed], / Which, I dare say, is yours — your mother’s, too, / Since your every design is her design” (II.iii.34–36), Nero once again has to set her straight, declaring testily, “My mother has her plans, and I have mine. / Of her and Claudius speak no further here” (II.iii.37–38). Thus, when Junia uses the expression “I dare say” (“j’ose dire”), it is not merely a figure of speech: she is verily bearding the lion in his lair. (She shows the same Daniel-like self-assurance and dauntlessness, if not temerity, that the ten-year-old Joash displays in his confrontation with the equally formidable Athaliah.) But what really irritates Nero’s vindictive nature is that, as he himself astutely surmises, “the brother, not the sister, claims your care” (II.iii.112), in other words, that Junia is in love with Britannicus. True to her own moral code (“What my heart declares, my lips repeat” [II.iii.116]), she makes no attempt to disguise her feelings for Britannicus, and rubs salt in the wound by assuring Nero that, gilded though his suit may be by “this grandeur and these gifts” (which she throws back in his face as “such senseless glory” [II.iii.105, 104]), she still gives the preference to the destitute and disinherited Britannicus.
So thoroughly has she managed to provoke Nero during this long interview that it would seem that nothing short of the ingeniously sadistic scene that he forces her to enact with Britannicus could serve as a sufficiently condign punishment to salve his sore ego. But what is so extraordinary about Nero’s response is that it is not, in fact, a scheme devised on the spur of the moment as an act of revenge, for we must remember that, at the end of the prior scene, Nero had already determined on such a meeting between Junia and Britannicus, as he announced to the nonplussed Narcissus: “I give my blessing. This sweet news convey: / He shall see her” (II.ii.147–48); and when Narcissus demurs (“No, Sire, send him away!”), he assures him that “Oh, I’ve my reasons; and you well may guess / He’ll pay a high price for his happiness” (II.ii.148–50), although neither Narcissus nor the audience can possibly imagine the nefarious scheme Nero has cold-bloodedly concocted, with no “heat of the moment” to extenuate its vileness.
XII
In fine, then, having surveyed Nero’s interactions with the other three principal characters, namely, Agrippina, Britannicus, and Junia, it is clear that only the last can in any way be considered a worthy antagonist to Nero. As a corollary, it is equally clear that, between Junia and Britannicus, she is the nobler, the more heroic, character. I use the last epithet deliberately, for I cannot resist putting forward the suggestion, however far-fetched, that it is possible to regard Junia and Britannicus as, in some respects, Wagner’s Brünnhilde and Siegfried (in Der Ring des Nibelungen) in miniature. Certainly, the parallels between these two couples are striking. Each young man is brash and fearless, boyishly naive but good-hearted; each young woman is fearless too, but withal sadder and wiser. Junia needs but one day at court to understand how power corrupts:
But in this court, alas! I have to say:
Men’s thoughts and words are worlds apart, my lord!
Between their hearts and tongues how slight the accord!
Here men betray each other with such glee!
(V.i.43–46)
Similarly, in the last act of Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods, the final installment of the Ring cycle tetralogy), Brünnhilde herself can declare, “Alles weiss ich, alles ist mir nun klar” (I understand everything, everything has now become clear to me). About her sojourn at Nero’s treacherous court, Junia famously exclaims, “How strange a stopping place for you and me!” (V.i.47); Brünnhilde and Siegfried find themselves similarly out of their depth when they stumble into the court of the Gibichungs, where treachery, greed, lust, and lust for power conspire to sabotage their love and bring them to ruin. At the mercy of the evil, scheming Hagen and the selfish Gunther and Gutrune, Siegfried, like Britannicus, falls victim to forces he cannot control or understand; both are treacherously murdered (Siegfried is, literally, stabbed in the back) by people whom they have been beguiled into trusting, but who, under the guise of friendship and reconciliation, plot against them. Further coincidences abound. Both are killed at parties: Britannicus at Nero’s celebratory fete, Siegfried at a hunting party organized by Hagen; both murderers glibly fabricate plausible explanations, which they deliver with the utmost brazen insolence, Nero matter-of-factly proclaiming that Britannicus’s apparent death throes are nothing more than a temporary indisposition, Hagen announcing that Siegfried was gored by a wild boar. More appropriately to their heroic stature, Brünnhilde and Junia both choose self-immolation, as a redemptive gesture intended to vindicate the power of love over the love of power, both, in some sense, passing through fire: Brünnhilde exultantly riding her steed into the purifying flames of Siegfried’s funeral pyre, Junia, more symbolically, sacrificing herself to “the precious flame... that glorifies the Gods to whom Rome prays” (V.fin.sc.30–31). But whereas the closing pages of Wagner’s magnum opus clearly signal, as a sequel to the Twilight of the Gods, the dawn of a new moral order (or the instauration of the unsullied, nature-based world evoked at the beginning of the cycle), uncorrupted by gold, greed, and self-aggrandizement, the end of Britannicus projects a much darker future: in fact, the Twilight of the Good.
XIII
Earlier, in discussing Britannicus’s conspicuous lack of any noble, let alone heroic, qualities, I raised the following question: What purpose is served by Nero’s ridding himself of such an unthreatening rival? The answer to this will become clear when we investigate Nero’s “agenda” in this play, for Nero’s strategy is a two-pronged one. I have already demonstrated that Nero’s supposed battle royal with Agrippina is really hardly more than a series of skirmishes whose victor is never in doubt. Nero’s hostilities against Britannicus and Junia, however, are at the heart of the play. Unlike Nero’s interactions with Agrippina, which, after all, alter nothing, Britannicus’s death and Junia’s defeat change everything. For what is the ultimate outcome of the play, the significant transformation that has occurred? Yes, Nero has finally been revealed as a fully formed monster, but that, as I have argued, is not a transformation. What has also become manifest by the end of the play — far more significantly — is that Nero is now, finally, omnipotent. A monster can be kept caged, after all; without Nero’s limitless power, then, his monstrous nature would have consequences far less grave, less far-reaching, than what is so frighteningly portended by Burrhus’s famous final line: