The Complete Plays of Jean Racine
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This is the fifth volume of a projected translation into English of all twelve of Jean Racine’s plays. Geoffrey Alan Argent’s translations faithfully convey all the urgency and keen psychological insight of Racine’s dramas, and the coiled strength of his verse, while breathing new vigor into the time-honored form of the “heroic” couplet. Complementing this translation are the Discussion and the Notes and Commentary—particularly detailed and extensive for this volume, Britannicus being by far Racine’s most historically informed play. Also noteworthy is Argent’s reinstatement of an eighty-two-line scene, originally intended to open Act III, that has never before appeared in an English translation of this play. Britannicus , one of Racine’s greatest plays, dramatizes the crucial day when Nero—son of Agrippina and stepson of the late emperor Claudius—overcomes his mother, his wife Octavia, his tutors, and his vaunted “three virtuous years” in order to announce his omnipotence. He callously murders his innocent stepbrother, Britannicus, and effectively destroys Britannicus’s beloved, the virtuous Junia, as well. Racine may claim, in his first preface, that this tragedy “does not concern itself at all with affairs of the world at large,” but nothing could be further from the truth. The tragedy represented in Britannicus is precisely that of the Roman Empire, for in Nero Racine has created a character who embodies the most infamous qualities of that empire — its cruelty, its depravity, and its refined barbarity.
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The Complete Plays of Jean Racine
Volume 5: Britannicus
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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.
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