The Complete Plays of Jean Racine. Jean Racine
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(II.ii.34–37)
It is clear, then, that this temporary weakness on the part of a queen who is nothing if not strong-willed, indeed brazen, and whom Mathan describes as “that enlightened, fearless queen, / So far above her sex’s timid mean” (III.iii.13–14), is solely to be accounted for by her having espied the very child of her nightmares assisting in the rites. Zachariah’s account of the scene continues:
The both of us stood watching that cruel queen;
Our hearts were stricken with the same affright.
The priests, though, quickly veiled us both from sight
And hurried us away.
(II.ii.39–42)
Here is Athaliah’s version, three scenes later, of this “apparition”:
I saw that child who threatens me at night,
Just as, in that dread dream, he met my sight.
I saw him: his same garments, his same gait,
His air, his eyes, in fact, his every trait.
He stood near the high priest, as plain as day;
But soon I saw them spirit him away.
(II.v.78–83)
This double flashback, presented from two vantage points, gives us an almost cinematic view of the event, as if caught by two cameras. No actual representation of this scene could offer the stereoscopic depth provided by this dual narrative. (See my Discussion for The Fratricides, where I argue this point more expansively in reference to Creon’s climactic récit in that play.)
v
The second encounter between Joash and Athaliah, certainly the focal scene of the play, its most original and audacious, has the broad scale, the momentous sense of occasion, of an epic confrontation between good and evil, virtue and corruption. Although no such scene occurs in the Bible, it has its precedents in such famously unequal — or at least apparently so — encounters as David’s with Goliath and Daniel’s with the den full of lions. (It also calls to mind the temptation of Christ in Saint Luke’s gospel.) One might well have misgivings on behalf of a child who is summoned into so daunting a presence as Athaliah’s, especially after having seen her quickly recover from the debilitated state in which she made her first entrance, resuming an implacable, overbearing demeanor which, apart from the momentary accession of pity Joash will engender in her breast later in this scene, she will preserve to the end, becoming ever more brazen, even when she must finally acknowledge defeat. But Joash (like David and Daniel) proves a worthy antagonist for his adversary, their well-matched sparring skills signaled by the prominent use of stichomythia, which by its nature implies a balanced give and take:
athaliah
Have you no better pastimes to enjoy?
I pity the sad state of such a boy.
Come to my palace; see the splendors there.
joash
And in God’s blessed bounty cease to share?
athaliah
I won’t make you abandon Him, you know.
joash
You do not pray to Him.
athaliah
You may do so.
joash
Another god, though, I’d see worshipped there?
athaliah
I serve my god, as you do yours: that’s fair.
Each one is a most puissant deity.
joash
Mine reigns alone in fearsome majesty,
While yours, madame, is a nonentity.
athaliah
With me you’ll taste new pleasures every day.
joash
Like floods the wicked’s pleasures flow away.
(II.vii.61–73)
Joash more than holds his own against even so formidable an inquisitor as Athaliah, as the chorus confirm later, in their commentary on the events of this act: “By worldly show he’s not beguiled, / He’s proof against pride’s lures and lies, / Nor can his candor be defiled” (II.ix.3–5). Indeed, it is Athaliah who is discomfited and, in the end, bested. We are even shocked by the brusqueness of some of his replies:
athaliah
You shall be treated there like my own boy.
joash
Like yours?
athaliah
Yes. Come, speak up now, I implore.
joash
To leave a father whom I love! And for...
athaliah
Continue.
joash
For a mother I’d abhor!
(II.vii.83–86)
Racine was so aware of the startlingly precocious self-possession of this boy that he spends a whole page of his preface justifying it, citing the Greek text of Chronicles, which “has authorized me to make this prince nine or ten years old,” and arguing that the rigorous and early training he would have received in the temple could plausibly have produced such an extraordinarily astute child. (Racine even has recourse to the dryly droll admission that “it was not... the same with the children of the Jews as with most of ours.”) In addition, he takes occasion, practiced courtier that he was, to adduce a “precedent” closer to home: “a prince of eight and a half years, who is today her [France’s] dearest delight, an illustrious example of what a child with natural gifts, enhanced by an excellent education, can accomplish” — the child in question being the Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV’s grandson.
vi
The third confrontation, which occurs in Act V, is framed by an elaborate stage spectacle. It is rather remarkable that such a spectacle, the most elaborate climactic scene in any of Racine’s plays (in most of which the denouement is revealed in narratives of varying length, those in The Fratricides, Britannicus, Iphigenia, and Phaedra being quite extended), should have been planned for a girls’ seminary, with limited stage resources. Perhaps, then, it is less remarkable that Athaliah, unlike Esther, which had boasted elaborate sets and costumes at its premiere, was, in fact, first produced without costumes or scenery. (Its first fully staged performance was given by the Comédie-Française on March 3, 1716 — shorn, however, of its choral odes and, thus, of its music.) On the other hand, we should also bear in mind that Racine chose to present these events on the stage in Athaliah because they could be so presented: while there are drawn swords and opposed combatants, there is no actual armed conflict, no bloodshed, nor is anyone killed. Athaliah’s death occurs offstage and is reported almost as perfunctorily as Mathan’s, hers being allotted merely a whole line (V.fin.sc.1), his, only a half line (V.vi.24). Still, the very fact that the only staged representation of armed antagonists in Racine’s oeuvre should occur in a “sacred drama” is striking and significant, suggesting that the true nature of this drama, as passionate and violent as any of Racine’s plays, is less spiritual than sanguinary. (Here, even the religious rituals, as Zachariah describes them, bear the trace of blood: “The priests, with blood from this fresh immolation, / Aspersed the altar and the congregation” [II. ii.14–15]; and, later in Act II, after Athaliah leaves the temple, Jehoiada expresses his intention of pouring some “pure blood” — presumably his preferred cleansing agent — over the floor to “wash clean the very stones that bear her tread” [II.viii.11–12].) The chorus duly express their astonishment at this intrusion of worldly violence into the