The Complete Plays of Jean Racine: Volume 3: Iphigenia 9780271061665

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The Complete Plays of Jean Racine

The Complete Plays of Jean Racine volume 3: iphigenia

Translated into English rhymed couplets with critical notes and commentary by

geoffrey alan argent

the pennsylvania state university press university park, pennsylvania

All Rights Reserved caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that performances of iphigenia (“Play”) are subject to royalty. This Play is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and of all countries covered by Universal Copyright Convention, the PanAmerican Copyright Convention, the Berne Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional and amateur stage rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, and all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as cd-rom, cd-i, dvd, information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying are strictly reserved. All inquiries concerning any of the aforementioned rights should be addressed to Patrick H. Alexander, Director, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 820 N. University Drive, USB 1, Suite C, University Park, PA 16802, ​www​.psupress​.org.

Please Note After having received permission to produce this Play, it is required that the translator geoffrey alan argent be given credit as the sole and exclusive translator of the Play on the title page of all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all cases where the title of the Play appears for purposes of advertising or publicizing the production. The name of geoffrey alan argent must appear on a separate line immediately beneath the title line and in type size equal to 50% of the size of the largest letter of the title of the Play and the acknowledgment should read jean racine’s iphigenia Translated into English Rhymed Couplets by geoffrey alan argent

to

Leslie Eric Comens a most learned judge — “of that there is no manner of doubt” and to

Gilbert and Sullivan, whose words and music are as profound and paradoxical as life itself — “the only riddle that we shrink from giving up”

contents

Translator’s Note   ix Iphigenia: Discussion   1 Racine’s Preface   47 Iphigenia   57 Iphigenia: Notes and Commentary   131 Selected Bibliography   153

translator’s note

This translation of Iphigénie, Racine’s ninth play, is one of a series, which, when complete, will offer in English translation all twelve of Racine’s plays (eleven tragedies and one comedy), only the third such traversal since Racine’s death in 1699. This traversal, in addition, is the first to be composed in rhymed iambic pentameter couplets. My strategy has been to reconceive Racine in that pedigreed indigenous English verse form in order to produce a poetic translation of concentrated power and dramatic impact. After all, as Proust observes, “the tyranny of rhyme forces good poets into the discovery of their best lines”; and while subjected to that tyranny, I took great pains to render Racine’s French into English that is incisive, lucid, elegant, ingenious, and memorable. For  I believe that the proper goal of a translation of a work of literature must be, first and foremost, to produce a work of literature in the language of the target audience. For a considerably more expansive discussion of my approach to translation and a powerfully argued rationale for my decision to employ rhymed couplets, I direct the interested reader to the Translator’s Introduction that appears in Volume  I of this series, devoted to my translation of Racine’s first play, La Thébaïde (The Fratricides in my version). This translation is based on the definitive 1697 edition of Racine’s theater as it appears in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition of 1980, edited by Raymond Picard. The 1697 text represents Racine’s final thoughts on this play, which, with one exception, differ insignificantly from his earliest. (Racine’s few emendations, however

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minor, are nonetheless to be preferred to the earlier versions.) The one notable discrepancy is the absence in the 1697 edition of four lines for Iphigenia (III.vi.95 –98), an omission that I agree with Picard represents a printer’s error, rather than a deliberate deletion by Racine. (See note 15 for Act III for a brief rationale for my believing so.) The translation of Racine’s preface is my own, as are the translations of passages from the critical commentaries in the Picard and Forestier editions that appear in the Discussion and the Notes and Commentary. In my own critical commentaries, when I refer to a play or a character, I use the title or name as it appears in my translations. It should be noted, however, that where any other commentators (writing in English) retain the French spellings, I have respected that preference and beg the reader to pardon the discrepancies. I have preserved the scene divisions as they are given in the Pléiade edition (each new scene marking the arrival or departure of one or more characters) and have, likewise, listed the characters participating in each scene just below the scene number. I have, in addition, furnished these translations with line numbers (every fifth line being numbered, and the numbering beginning anew for each scene) for ease of reference for readers and actors and to enable me to cite passages precisely in the Discussion and the Notes and Commentary. It should be noted that these line numbers do not conform to those of any French edition, the Picard, for example, providing no line numbers at all and the Forestier using unbroken numbering from beginning to end; besides, I have sometimes expanded one of Racine’s couplets into a tercet (or even, more rarely, into two couplets), a procedure that would vitiate any linefor-line correspondence. The Discussion is intended as much to promote discussion as to provide it. The Notes and Commentary, in addition to clarifying obscure references and explicating the occasional gnarled conceit, offer, I hope, some fresh and thought-provoking insights, such as are occasionally vouchsafed the sedulous translator. But whatever the merit of the ancillary critical material, I wish to make it clear

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that I believe the enduring value of these volumes will reside in the excellence of the translations. New approaches to studying Racine will undoubtedly be discovered and developed, opponent schools of thought will continue to clash, arguments may be challenged or overturned, but I am hopeful that the value of these translations will prove indisputable. Once again I can think of no support, either moral or amendatory, worthier of acknowledgment than that unstintingly provided by Leslie Eric Comens, who has, moreover, always shown a particular partiality for Racine’s Iphigénie and for my translation of it, a partiality that, far from preventing him from discerning its deficiencies (of course I mean those of my translation), has only made him all the more persistent in prodding me to improve it.

iphigenia: discussion

i While there might be some truth in the observation that in both Iphigenia and Bajazet a key element of the drama involves the stoppage of the wind, the fact that in Iphigenia the wind in question is in the sails, whereas in Bajazet it is in the windpipe, is indicative of the marked contrast between the two plays. Encountering Iphigenia after Bajazet, with its tenebrous, stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere (Akhmet’s plea to Roxane to “let the bright sun at last greet Bajazet” [Bajazet I.ii.25] — and he might as well be speaking of the play as of its eponymous hero — is never heeded), one soon senses that Iphigenia exudes a far more breathable air, and this is in keeping with its more benign outlook and its unequivocally happy ending, neither awful nor elegiac, a unique phenomenon among Racine’s secular tragedies. Iphigenia begins in the predawn twilight (“Its feeble rays could scarcely light your way” [I.i.5]), which is soon overtaken by day (“Already I see the rising sun aglow” [I.i.159]), and ends in a radiant sunset — or is it the refulgence of Diana’s benison? (“The heavens, flashing lightning, opened wide: / By those blest beams we all felt sanctified” [V.fin.sc.64 – 65].) Geoffrey Brereton remarks (Brereton, 196): “It is the only one of Racine’s tragedies which gives the illusion of happening in the open air, under a clear sky

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on the shore of a windless sea. The lightness and grace of its atmosphere rise almost palpably from the poetry even as it stands on the printed page.” (And in fact, the play was first presented before the royal court, al fresco, in the gardens of Versailles.) The only shadows that darken the ending of Iphigenia are those cast by hindsight, by our knowledge of the eventual fate of the protagonists, of which no hint is allowed to mar the play’s final moments. And some of the heaviest of those shadows are cast by Racine’s own, earlier Andromache (a “presequel”), which treats the aftermath of the Trojan War and the ordeal of its survivors; but that play’s shadows are produced less by any dark allusions to Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Achilles, or Iphigenia than by its recapitulation of their tragic destiny in that of their children. After all, each of the four protagonists in Andromache is the child of characters who appear or are mentioned in Iphigenia: Hermione is the daughter of Menelaus and Helen; Orestes is the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra; Pyrrhus is the son of Achilles (but, clearly, not of Iphigenia — rather, of Deidamia, but that is quite another story); and Andromache is the daughter-inlaw, if not the daughter, of Priam, being the widow of Priam’s son Hector, the great Trojan hero. In this play, however, we are dealing with a tragicomedy, in its older, stricter sense, that is, a tragedy in which a tragic outcome is averted. (In its more colloquial sense — a mixture of tragedy and comedy — the term better applies, surprisingly enough, to Bajazet.) Part of the “wholesomeness” of the play arises from the dominant presence of a coherent, healthy family, also a unique phenomenon in Racine. Roland Barthes maintains that the family “is in fact the central character of the play. . . . In Iphigénie there is an intense family life. In no other play has Racine presented a family so solidly constituted, provided with a complete nucleus (father, mother, daughter), with collaterals (Helen, around whom the dispute rages), relatives (husband and wife hurl them at each other), and an imminent alliance” (Barthes, 114). If we scour Racine’s other plays, we find that the familial relations on display there are more often characterized by indifference, jealousy, or downright hatred. In The Fratricides (the title tells the whole story), Creon cynically but accurately observes: “When strangers hate, it’s not of

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long duration; / When nature’s bonds, though, suffer violation, / Nothing . . . can bind again / Those whom such potent ties could not restrain” (The Fratricides  III.vi.67–70). Creon himself, whom “nature’s bonds” scarcely incommode, dismisses the death of his son Haemon with the brutally callous line “Heav’n rids me of my rival with my son” (The Fratricides V.iv.33). In Phaedra, the drama centers on a family that, its integrity having been compromised by the wife’s infatuation for her stepson, is finally destroyed by it. Brothers, particularly, do not fare well in Racine: there are the titular enemies of The Fratricides, and in Mithridates, Xiphares and Pharnaces, the title character’s sons, are not only political opponents but amorous ones as well, vying for the love of Monima, their father’s young betrothed. In Britannicus, the smoldering rivalry between the title character and Nero, his stepbrother, ends in Nero’s horrific poisoning of Britannicus. And the intrafamilial vendetta in Athaliah, which has already resulted in a gruesome bloodbath before the action of the play commences, is destined to be renewed some years later (as we learn from the high priest’s prophetic utterances), when the seemingly virtuous new king of Judah orders the execution of his foster brother, the son of that same high priest, who had cared for him like his own son. In Iphigenia, by contrast, the family is not dysfunctional: it is beleaguered. It is not threatened from within by internecine conflict and hate, but from without, and bilaterally: on one side, it is menaced by an oracle that, ostensibly, ordains the “august sacrifice austere” (I.i.58) of the daughter Iphigenia; on the other, it is vulnerable to the insidious, invidious plotting of Eriphyle, Achilles’ Lesbian captive and Iphigenia’s protégée, who lusts after Iphigenia’s fiancé, Achilles, and attempts to thwart Iphigenia’s efforts to flee from Aulis with her life. Since for the first half of the play it is only Agamemnon (among the principals) who knows of the threat to his daughter, it is he who must contend with the fatal injunction. In the opening scene of the play, we learn of his earlier ploy to lure his daughter to Aulis (in order to comply with the oracle’s demands) and of his subsequent stratagem (after he has experienced a change of heart) to forestall Iphigenia’s arrival. Later we witness his tormented struggle as Ulysses tries to convince him “to spend

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the blood that buys our victory” (I.iii.42). Once his wife, daughter, and Achilles learn of the impending sacrifice, he must, in Eriphyle’s words, struggle against A mother’s rage, a daughter’s agony, The cries, the frenzy of her family, His own blood, too, so ready to betray him, And fierce Achilles, ready to waylay him. (IV.i.37–40) Thus, Agamemnon is caught between the opposing parties bearing down on him: on one side, those who wish to see the oracle’s death sentence carried out (Ulysses, Calchas, and the Greek army), and, on the other, those who, having learned of that death sentence, vehemently oppose its effectuation (principally Clytemnestra and Achilles, but Iphigenia, too, in her passive, but subtly persuasive, way). But Agamemnon is also caught in an internal struggle between, on one side, his pride, his ambition, his patriotism, and his greed for glory, and, on the other, his sincere and deep-rooted love for his daughter. These internal struggles and external clashes provide the dramatic scaffolding for the play, reaching their climax in Act IV with Agamemnon’s epic confrontations (as foreseen by Eriphyle) with his daughter, with his wife, with his prospective son-in-law, and, ultimately, with himself. And it is only after that final “encounter,” after his intense soul-searching (which protracts the end of the fourth act), that his tormented tergiversations finally stabilize into a determination to save his daughter at all costs.

ii More than one critic has seen Agamemnon as merely a shallow politician, whose gestures toward saving his daughter are half-hearted at best and whose protestations of love for her are meaningless mouthings, but such an interpretation, as we shall see, is facile and ignores the letter and the spirit of the play. Martin Turnell (who brings an irrelevant antiwar bias to his reading of the play), for example,

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likens Agamemnon to “an administrator or a bureaucrat” (Turnell, 227). To support a view that refuses to recognize Agamemnon as a painfully conflicted man, he resorts to such untenable arguments as the following: “Why then does he suddenly decide to save her? . . . Agamemnon throws in his hand . . . because the combination of wife, daughter and son-in-law is more powerful and more frightening than Ulysse” (Turnell, 230). But is it Ulysses alone who is urging him to go through with the sacrifice? No: in deciding to save his daughter, Agamemnon has made up his mind to brave Calchas and the whole Greek army and to sacrifice both his own position and the promise of gain and glory that the assault on Troy holds out. It is not merely one man’s dudgeon he is at risk of arousing. Bernard Weinberg, likewise, regards Agamemnon as a one-sided character, for whom, “in reality, there is no such struggle: Agamemnon is moved only by fear and ambition” (Weinberg, 222). To deny Agamemnon any motives other than fear and ambition is to deny him — and the play — any tragic dimension. If no struggle goes on in Agamemnon’s breast, then there is no internal struggle in the play at all. We are left, on the one hand, with an Agamemnon who is a character study, not a character, and, on the other, with a “rescue” melodrama, neither of which has anything to do with the stuff of drama, let alone with the “compassion and terror” that Racine declares in his preface are “the true ends of tragedy.” That Racine’s intention was, however, to create in Agamemnon a monumental and complex character (whose part, not coincidentally, is by a good margin the longest in the play), who would impart tragic stature to the play, may be irrefragably demonstrated by a less skewed, less tendentious examination of that character as Racine conceived it. While Turnell and Weinberg are correct in finding certain ignoble, even ugly, character traits in Agamemnon, it is crucial to note that Agamemnon himself is equally aware of them. Like so many of Racine’s characters, he is a surprisingly astute monitor of his own drives and emotions. He remarks on his vanity in the very first scene of the play: Arcas, I was (with shame I’m forced to say) Pleased with my power and swollen with my sway;

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The Lord of Greece and King of Kings: my pride By those grand names was basely gratified. (I.i.79 – 82) Moments later, when he realizes he has again been distracted by concern over his tenuously held power and by fears of its usurpation, he pulls himself up short and begs Arcas to save him from his own worse self: My glory embitters other men’s ambition: This might revive their schemes and their sedition, And wrest my envied power away from me . . . Go, I say: save her from my frailty. (I.i.140 –43) In Act III, his peremptory injunction to Clytemnestra to stay away from the “wedding” ceremony betrays his cowardice and shame, certainly, but does it not also bespeak the solicitous reluctance to “let a mother see her child’s demise” (I.v.34) that he earlier manifested to Ulysses? In his long apologia in Act IV, he tries, understandably, to deflect his guilt, but he offers a convincing assessment of the forces ranged against him, the crushing pressure from both gods and Greeks: Your wretched father’s plans were foiled by them: ’Twas vain to shield her whom the Gods condemn. My powers are feebler, child, than you may guess. What rein could curb the people’s recklessness, When, to their rash zeal leaving us a prey, Heav’n casts their too oppressive yoke away? (IV.iv.68 –73) In Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis (Racine’s acknowledged source), which also portrays Agamemnon as a tragically conflicted character, Agamemnon makes this point even more forcibly, assuring Iphigenia that “the army, angered, will come to Argos, / Slaughter my daughters, murder you and me / If the divine will of the goddess / I annul” (Euripides, lines 1268 –71).

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We must allow that it is possible, at least in a mythic context, for a father’s acquiescence in his child’s sacrifice to be consistent with his deep love for that child. After all, one does not recoil in horror from Abraham, or feel disposed either to blame him or to doubt that he dearly loved his son, even when poised to slash his throat. Indeed, if he did not love his son so dearly, his obedience to God would be less edifying. But it is no less true that if Abraham’s hand had not been stayed at the last moment, if he were left holding his son’s exsanguinated body, the inspirational uplift provided by the parable would, likewise, be distinctly diminished. Then it might be more difficult to prevent the story from slipping out of its mythic context into a contemporary, if still religious, context, and we might be hard pressed to find any distinction between Abraham and those parents who, under the influence of a fanatical persuasion, as good as sacrifice their own children by convincing them that a suicide mission is nothing less than a beautiful sacrament, an act of faith committed in the interests of a (chimerical — or, at least, otherworldly) higher good. In the biblical tale, in any case, we are asked to take the unanswerable imperative of God as a donnée. And if God’s imperative is unanswerable, Abraham’s devotion is unquestioning, for not only is he offered no reason why his son must be sacrificed, but that sacrifice would seem, on the face of it, to thwart God’s own plans for his chosen people. As Jehoiada, the high priest in Athaliah, puts it, Abraham would be “yielding up, by that cruel immolation, / The hopes, preserved in Isaac, of his nation” (Athaliah IV.v.22 –23). In Agamemnon’s case, we are asked to take the oracle as, likewise, a donnée. Although the gods’ endgame (the conquest of Troy) is made clearer to Agamemnon than God’s is to Abraham, Agamemnon is nonetheless compelled to admit, “I don’t know why / The wrathful Gods have deemed some child must die” (IV.iv.54 –55). The problem here is that the play does not in any way substantiate Agamemnon’s unquestioning devotion or lend it any credibility. Here, then, we feel a much stronger inclination to abstract Agamemnon’s predicament from its mythic context — indeed, from any religious context — and to place it squarely in a secular one. (And after all, in Racine’s world, the secular point of view is the only valid and relevant one, even in such an ostensibly “sacred”

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drama as Athaliah — as I argue in my Discussion for that play.) But in that context, the parallel that might suggest itself to us is a less distasteful, less repellent, one — or, to put it most benignly, a less exotic one — than the one, involving fundamentalist zealotry, suggested by the biblical parable. The parallel I have in mind is the case of those thousands of parents who, however tearfully, sent their children — or, at least, did not stop them from going — off to war (I am thinking especially of World War I), understanding full well the likelihood of their being killed, in the interests of what they fervently believed to be a necessary, indeed noble, cause, a cause involving the here and now. (If any fanaticism rears its head in this play, it relates to Iphigenia’s self-sacrificial devotion to the prospect of the immortal glory to be won for Achilles and herself by his triumph at Troy, of which she sees her death as the exalting first step.) Agamemnon, too, is concerned only with the here and now. On the one hand, he shows none of Abraham’s docility, recounting that “I stopped my ears and cursed our deities, / Resolved that I’d defy the Gods’ decrees” (I.i.67– 68); but, on the other hand, he operates with an open-eyed awareness of the inevitable and a responsible consideration of what will conduce to “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Agamemnon, furthermore, may appear to greater advantage when we compare his behavior with that of two other filicidal fathers of myth — and not merely because each does, in fact, murder his only child. For Agamemnon is certainly not liable to the opprobrium that Jephthah of the Bible and Idomeneus of Greek myth might be thought to merit for actively proposing to sacrifice an innocent victim — in Jephthah’s case, the motive being selfaggrandizement, in Idomeneus’s, self-preservation; it is their own intemperate vows (like Theseus’s in Phaedra) that lead, respectively, to Jephthah’s having to sacrifice his daughter and to Idomeneus’s having to sacrifice his son. Agamemnon, at least, has not instigated the gods to condemn his daughter. Granted, neither of the other fathers suspected he was putting his own child at risk, but what compelling reason did either have, after the fact, for fulfilling his promise at such a cost? It almost seems as if Agamemnon, precisely because he has compelling reasons to go through with the sacrifice,

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inspires us with horror, for now the unthinkable becomes, literally, thinkable: an option whose pros and cons can be weighed, rather than one that merely demands an unthinking, blind obedience.

iii Of the depth and sincerity of Agamemnon’s paternal love Racine’s text provides ample verification. The figures speak for themselves: Agamemnon’s part comprises 394 lines (in my translation), of which fully 207, or 52 percent, concern his love for his daughter, his elaborate efforts to save her, his grief and guilt when he thinks they have failed, and his relief when he thinks they have succeeded. More significant than that quantitative assessment, however, is the qualitative one. The lines in which Agamemnon voices his love for Iphigenia are among the most touching in all of Racine. It is inconceivable that Racine would have lavished such beautiful, convincingly precise expressions of that love on a character whose sincerity was to be called into question. We should bear in mind, too, that Racine usually makes it unmistakably clear when we are to believe that one of his characters is lying, even to him- or herself. (Hermione, in Andromache, is a good case in point.) As Ronald W. Tobin points out: “To avoid confusing the audience, Racine’s practice in the matter of falseness and deception is almost always to have a scene of lying preceded by one in which the truth is told” (Tobin, Jean Racine Revisited, 50). Racine did not want the audience to miss out on the consciously theatrical performances of an Eriphyle or a Hermione. In Agamemnon’s case, we have ample opportunities to judge the nature of his affection for his daughter before a situation arises in which he might have any reason to prevaricate. Having admitted to Arcas in the opening scene that fear of Achilles’ reprisal might have played a part in his decision to keep Iphigenia out of harm’s way, he goes on to say, with no one to impress (Arcas is a servant, and, in any case, Agamemnon seems to be communing with himself ): — My hand is stayed, though, by more puissant ties: My child, who hurries here to her demise,

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Unwitting of the dreadful doom she’ll find, And pleased, perhaps, her father is so kind; My child . . . It’s not that sacred name alone, Nor yet her youth, nor my blood, I bemoan; No, it’s her virtue, and the love we share, Her sweet devotion and my tender care, Respect for me that nothing can abate, And which I’d hoped to better compensate. (I.i.112 –21) If these words are not meant to depict for us a father bonded to his daughter by a profound love, what words could Racine have used to do so? Later, in his scene with Ulysses, Agamemnon interrupts him with a single “Alas!” — but one which so expressively sounds the depths of his soul, that Ulysses is able to read its meaning exactly:    What is the meaning of these sighs? From your rebellious blood do they arise? In just one night has such a change occurred? Is this a father’s heart that I’ve just heard? (I.iii.5 – 8) And that one expressive interjection instigates a thirty-eight-line tirade from Ulysses, in which he attempts to bring Agamemnon around to a sense of his political duty. Agamemnon responds: Were it Telemachus you saw being led Toward the altar in my daughter’s stead, The fatal fillet bound about his head, We’d soon see you, appalled at such a sight, Change your proud taunting into tears of fright; Undone by grief, as I have been undone, You’d throw yourself ’twixt Calchas and your son. (I.iii.47–53) Could it possibly occur to someone who has never known a father’s deep love for a child to answer Ulysses thus?

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Trusting that his plan to divert Iphigenia and her mother from Aulis has been successful, Agamemnon attempts to dupe Ulysses, asking for a concession that the latter, ignorant of his stratagem, should think an insignificant one: But if, despite my pains, her happy fate Should keep her home or cause her to be late, Let me not persevere in this grim slaughter, But take such signs as favoring my daughter. (I.iii.56 –59) Before Ulysses has time to reply, however, Eurybates brings word that Iphigenia’s arrival is imminent, which ironic announcement (so typically Racinian) provokes this anguished outburst from Agamemnon: In vain, just heav’n, my prudence has resorted To schemes which your vindictiveness has thwarted! If only I were free to find relief, By means of teeming tears, for my great grief! Sad destiny of kings! Such slaves are we To what men think and what the Fates decree! By ceaseless scrutiny our care’s increased, For those who suffer most may weep the least! (I.v.1– 8) This puts even the wily and pragmatic Ulysses into a lachrymose frame of mind (however momentary): I am a father, Sire, and take your part: My own weak heart can pardon your weak heart; And trembling from the blow that staggers you, I don’t condemn your tears — I shed them too. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . We’re still alone: hasten to vent those tears Engendered by a tender father’s fears. Weep for your blood, yes, weep. (I.v.9 –12, 17–19)

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Battle-hardened warriors weeping? Clearly, deep-rooted paternal emotions are in play here. In Act  II, when the guilt-ridden Agamemnon, trying to evade Iphigenia’s embraces and inquiries, is forced to reply to her, his responses, while deliberately ambiguous, reflect his tortured preoccupation with her impending fate. His Act IV tirade, focusing, of course, on his love for his daughter, contains what is surely one of the most poignant and poetic couplets in the play: “It’s hard for me to obey, but you must try. / This blow will kill you, but it’s I who’ll die” (literally, From the blow that awaits you you will die less than I) (IV.iv.76 –77). The first line, in particular, is a pathetic acknowledgment of his own weakness, of his having to rely on his young child’s strength. These verses are not cited by the anti-Agamemnon camp, but, again, Racine would hardly have bestowed them on a father whose love for his daughter is to be doubted. And after escaping from his wife’s fulminations (and with no one around to hear him), he gives vent to this piteous cry to heaven: “Great Gods, when you imposed this cruel decree, / Need you have left a father’s heart in me?” (IV.v.5 – 6). Later in Act IV, only moments after his heated encounter with Achilles has so wrought upon his pride and self-love that he can declare, “She’s doomed now by his arrogance and pride” (IV.vii.2), he is again plagued by doubt and remorse, and realizing at last how bleak his lot would be if Iphigenia were to die, he determines to save her (IV.viii.13 –16 and 19 –21, a passage whose signal significance I shall discuss in Section V). As extravagant as the emotions of his characters can sometimes seem, it is one of Racine’s great gifts that those characters, be they mythical, biblical, or historical, are grounded in reality for us by their behaving according to the same psychological mechanisms that we can observe operating in our own lives at moments of emotional crisis. When Agamemnon, wrestling with his soul and writhing under his terrible dilemma, bursts out with Surely, O heav’n, your justice can’t demand That this cruel sacrifice proceed as planned? Your oracles are tests for me, no doubt: You’d punish me if they were carried out, (I.i.122 –25)

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we recognize the moment of terrible desperation when one is forced to the wall, confronted with something so dreadful as to be almost beyond endurance, almost beyond belief, whether it be an assailant’s knife, a diagnosis of incurable cancer, or the imminent loss of a beloved child; and what response is more natural, more true to life than to say: “This can’t be happening to me. There must be some mistake, some other explanation”? Such sharply observed details of human behavior, such deftly delineated mental attitudes, bespeak Racine’s extraordinary psychological acuity. The most conclusive corroboration of the authenticity of Agamemnon’s love for his daughter, however, is to be found in the testimony Iphigenia herself provides of the love she bears her father, which her heated words to Achilles make clear is not one-sided: He is my father, sir, I say once more, A father whom I love, whom I adore, Who loves me too, and who, until today, Has proved his love for me in every way. My heart has cherished him from infancy; Whatever gives him grief, gives grief to me. (III.vi.56 – 61) A few moments later, she delivers a stinging rebuke to Achilles, followed by a passionate defense of her father: Be sure that if I loved you any less, I would not bear the insults and the blame With which your love’s besmirched my father’s name. Why think that he, barbarous and inhumane, Won’t shudder at the blow I must sustain? To lose a child, what father would agree? Why let me die, if he could rescue me? You wrong him if you think he hasn’t cried. Why judge him when you haven’t heard his side? (III.vi.65 –73) One could cite numerous other passages wherein Iphigenia avows her love for her father, but perhaps her actions are more eloquent

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than her words: even against the arguments of her mother and her lover, she remains determined to submit to the sacrifice, firm in the belief that “if my father’s will I disobeyed,  / I should deserve the death I tried to evade” (V.ii.60 – 61). Iphigenia is incorruptibly good, but she is also intelligent, sensitive, and astute. To believe she could be deceived in regard to the sincerity of her father’s love for her is to misread and diminish her character as well.

iv I believe the passages cited in the previous section amply bear witness to the care Racine took to ensure that Agamemnon should not be dismissed as merely a craven, self-serving politician or, worse, as another version of the cold-blooded Creon (in The Fratricides), who, speaking of fatherhood, boasts that “a joy so common has no charm for me” (The Fratricides V.iv.24). And if we wish to go farther afield to find some other far-from-exemplary father figures who offer an instructive comparison with the unfairly maligned paterfamilias of this play, Racine himself can help steer us in the right direction. An investigation of two of the passages Racine alludes to in his preface, where he cites ancient Greek treatments of the Iphigenia myth in which she is actually sacrificed, may provide us with some insight into Racine’s intentions when he created the character of Agamemnon (arguably the play’s protagonist). The relevant passages are from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and Horace’s Satires (II.3). The Horace reference is to a droll interview between Agamemnon and one Stertinius, who, with stinging wit, mercilessly targets Agamemnon’s ruthless ambition, which has led him to shed his own blood (meaning his daughter’s), but this Agamemnon is too callous to feel the sting (or, at least, to mind it) and merely parries it with his own witticism (“My own blood, I grant, / But my head was quite unaffected, I sincerely assure you” [Horace, Satires and Epistles of Horace, 120]), a repartee whose heartlessness makes it worthy of being placed alongside the above-mentioned Creon’s repellently smug observation about his son’s death: “Heav’n rids me of my rival with my son” (The Fratricides V.iv.33). Although Horace,

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with a few deft strokes, portrays an Agamemnon no different from Racine’s in his inordinate ambition, the subject of that portrait is conspicuously different in his callous cynicism, betraying no trace of tenderness for his daughter, between whose sacrifice and that of a heifer he makes no distinction. Whatever callousness and cynicism is to be found in Racine’s version has been consigned to the character of Ulysses. Thus, Agamemnon’s self-damning quip in the Horace passage finds its counterpart in Ulysses’ ruthless rebuke to Agamemnon that, having single-handedly instigated the mobilization of all of Greece and the launching of her thousand ships, he now “proves too miserly  / To spend the blood [i.e., Iphigenia’s] that buys our victory” (I.iii.41–42); whereas Racine’s Agamemnon, far from being able to adopt Ulysses’ pitiless pragmatism, complains to Ulysses that “you’ve gained too much dominion o’er my heart; / I blush . . . ” (I.iii.62 – 63). This transference of the Horatian Agamemnon’s heartlessness to Ulysses (which accounts for the preponderant contentiousness of his colloquies with Agamemnon) can only be seen as a deliberate strategy on Racine’s part to segregate Agamemnon from the ranks of the irredeemable. The passage from Aeschylus is, if anything, more telling, offering an even starker contrast to the Agamemnon Racine actually conceived. How much more hardened, more truly horrendous a character Racine could have given us had he modeled his character on the Agamemnon of Aeschylus! How far removed from Racine’s Agamemnon is a father who, drowning out his daughter’s cries for help, “called his henchmen on,  / on with a prayer,  / ‘Hoist her over the altar / like a yearling, give it all your strength! / She’s fainting — lift her, / sweep her robes around her, / but slip this strap in her gentle curving lips . . . / here, gag her hard, a sound will curse the house’ ” (Agamemnon, lines 229 –36 in Fagles’s potent translation). This is the Agamemnon that Turnell, Weinberg, and others have mistaken for Racine’s. One need only observe, first, how thoroughly Racine, as if in revulsion from the creations of Horace and Aeschylus, has purged his Agamemnon of the chilling cynicism of the one and the shocking barbarity of the other, and, second, how little chary he was of depicting, in his other plays, characters no less cold-blooded than those earlier Agamemnons (Creon in

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The Fratricides, Narcissus in Britannicus, Mathan in Athaliah), no less ferocious (Pyrrhus in Andromache, Roxane in Bajazet, Athaliah), to understand that Racine’s intention here was to portray, in Agamemnon, a man, not a monster, a father, not a fiend.

v The richness and complexity of Agamemnon’s character (which are just what make it so open to widely divergent, even extreme, interpretations) derive, to a great extent, from his position at the intersection of familial concerns and religio-political ones — just where, in fact, those interests not only meet, but collide. In a play where the claims of family exert so strong a pull on the characters (Eriphyle is a special case, as we shall see: the force that family exerts on her is equally powerful, but it is one of repulsion), Agamemnon is the only one of the four family members (I include Achilles) who is forced to contend with the pressures of the outside world as well as those of his family. (Later, I shall discuss how potent a determinant of Clytemnestra’s, Iphigenia’s, and Achilles’ character and behavior the concept of family is.) Agamemnon, in short, is the only character in the play who is at all conflicted. We can find sufficient confirmation of his uniqueness in that regard in the fact that he is the only one of the principals who is granted — indeed, who requires — a substantial soliloquy or monologue in which to voice his ambivalence, wrestle with his demons, and try to soothe his unsettled state of mind. Most of the lengthy opening scene is, in effect, a monologue for Agamemnon, and he has several later scenes of self-communion as well. Clytemnestra and Iphigenia have only brief, inconsequential soliloquies, undisturbed by any inner struggle, and the only lines of Achilles’ that could be construed as self-directed (at the end of Act II) express, not conflict, but mere befuddlement. And Racine provides another signifier, subtle but certain, of a deeply troubled, conflicted character (a favorite device of his): Agamemnon’s obliviousness to the presence of his interlocutor. Both Hermione (in Andromache) and Roxane (in Bajazet) display this self-absorption; in Agamemnon’s case, it occurs no less

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than three times: twice in his last speech of I.i and again in IV.viii. (It is worth remarking that the dilemma each of these characters faces, and which gives rise to their obsessive internal disputation, is the very same for all three: should I kill the thing I love?) By contrast, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Achilles, Ulysses, and, last but not least obsessively, Eriphyle, are all single-minded in their agendas and their loyalties: they know exactly what they want and never diverge from their goals. They are unflinching, undaunted, intractable. Iphigenia expresses regret that she must die, but, as Agamemnon comments, “Although the deadly altar she’d evade, / The blow I aim she faces undismayed” (IV.viii.11–12). Achilles meets her determination to acquiesce in the impending sacrifice with an equal determination to prevent its being carried out, vowing that “I’ll overturn, I’ll smash the funeral pyre” (V.ii.92), and in our last view of him in action, provided in Ulysses’ climactic récit, he is single-handedly defending Iphigenia against the entire Greek army: “Achilles on her side, all Greece opposed” (V.fin.sc.19). Eriphyle, expert masochist though she is (as I shall discuss later), is not indifferent to the delights of schadenfreude and, in order to provide herself with a delirious dose of it, is ruthlessly, monomaniacally intent on effecting Iphigenia’s downfall. Once she realizes how she can destroy her rival, she asks herself, “What holds my anger in check? Why be resigned?” (IV.i.44). These characters are grief-stricken, angry, vindictive, desperate, and despairing, but they are not troubled by the guilt, doubt, and crippling indecision to which Agamemnon is prey. Their conflicts are all with others, not with themselves, and while their confrontations make for drama, the dilemma is all Agamemnon’s. And here we should take a closer look at Agamemnon’s response to his dilemma, for it is, in certain respects, quite remarkable. We can pinpoint the exact moment when he reaches his decision not to allow his daughter to be sacrificed: No, I cannot. Let blood, let love prevail; A righteous pity does not make us frail. Yes, she shall live! (IV.viii.19 –21)

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Such is his decisive determination, and he immediately summons his wife and daughter to apprise them of his new resolve, explain his escape plan, and impress on them the need for caution. In the end, however, his decision to save his child proves to be, in another sense, not at all a decisive one, since, his sense of caution not extending to excluding Eriphyle from their counsels, she repairs to the Greek camp to expose their plot, and in the last act we learn that Iphigenia has been thwarted in her plan to escape. Thus, Agamemnon’s decision has changed nothing. But if it represents a strategic defeat, it represents a moral victory. And this is exactly what makes it so striking, so unique in Racine’s oeuvre. Here we have a moral dilemma confronted and a moral choice made. Agamemnon, for a wonder, is able to escape from the centripetal pull of his own passion (namely, his ambition) and foresee, with objective detachment, the consequence of yielding to it: But wait — this savage zeal: what will it gain? By killing her won’t all my hopes prove vain? Though crowns and wreaths await to deck my head, Will blood-soaked laurels please me when she’s dead? (IV.viii.13 –16) Realizing that if he yields up his daughter, the gains and the glory purchased by her death will lose all their value, his choice thus lies between sacrificing the gains and glory, and sacrificing not only the gains and the glory, but his daughter as well. But what seems like simple math for Agamemnon becomes something closer to rocket science for Racine’s other tormented heroes. Even when the consequences of their yielding to their passion are pointed out to them, when the futility of their self-indulgence is painstakingly demonstrated, the lesson does not sink in. We need only compare Agamemnon’s clear-sighted assessment of his options with the myopic self-delusion of some of Racine’s other characters to be impressed by the uniqueness of Agamemnon’s case. Orestes, for example, determined to “blindly follow destiny as my guide,” comes to Epirus to seek his beloved Hermione: “I’ll woo her, win her, bear away the prize, / Or, failing that, I’ll die before her eyes”

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(Andromache I.i.99, 101–2). His friend Pylades tries to convince him that Hermione may not be a prize worth winning: Trust me: you’d tire of her deceptive charms. Rather than seek her, you should flee her arms. Why covet such a fury for your wife? No doubt, Sire, she’ll detest you all your life. (Andromache III.i.43 –46) But Orestes, almost as if he were harboring in his breast an alien creature desperately bent on self-preservation, obsessively clings to his passion and, quite as blind as he admits himself to be, imagines he will be able to wring some satisfaction out of a situation pathetically far removed from any prospects of wedded bliss that he may once have entertained: Shall fortune smile on her, while I depart, Bearing a fruitless anger in my heart? In order to forget, must I then flee? No: she must share her discontent with me. Spare me your pity, I won’t repine alone: This heartless one shall heartily atone. Her eyes to endless weeping I’ll condemn, Till they accuse me as I once did them. (Andromache III.i.49 –56) Although Nero, who has designs on Junia, is insightful enough to understand what attracts him to her (“It’s just this virtue, not at all the fashion, / Whose perseverance stimulates my passion” [Britannicus II.ii.45 –46]), he, likewise unable to progress to the next level of self-knowledge (or self-control), fails to understand (or to care) that, were she to accede to his proposals of marriage, it would, by definition, put an end to such “perseverance,” and that by conquering her virtue, he would be losing the very thing that stimulated his passion. In Phaedra’s case, she is so blinded by her passion that when she receives a report of the death of her husband, Theseus (a report that proves false), she cannot see beyond its immediate

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consequence, namely, that her love for his son Hippolytus has suddenly become licit, and she wastes no time in confessing her passion to him. Having taken such an imprudent and irrevocable step, she proceeds to create for herself a wildly improbable scenario for a future relationship with Hippolytus (who had, to say the least, been anything but gratified by her passionate avowals), where her former stepson becomes the stepfather to her children (who also happen to be his half-siblings!): “Perhaps he’d like to raise a son and heir. / I place the son and mother in his care” (Phaedra III.i.69 –70). These characters are so carried away by their passion (four times does Phaedra, thus enrapt, stop short suddenly to ask herself where her mind is wandering [the same verb all four times: égarer]), so incapable of seeing — or, if capable of seeing, then showing no regard for — consequences, that one might almost say that for them no dilemma exists, or that theirs is a dilemma in which only one choice is possible for them. However sympathetic, or at least understandable, Racine has tried to render Agamemnon (as I have strenuously argued), it is his very clear-sightedness, his ability to make “an informed choice,” that, in the last analysis, robs him of our sympathy. For a modern audience, his “tragic flaw” is not his ambition, his weakness, or his pride; rather, it is his reasonableness. Falling victim, so to speak, to the prudent counsel and good sense that Achilles, at the end of Act III, hopes will prevail with him, Agamemnon proves himself capable of ruling his passions, of gaining mastery over them: hence, we can no longer find him “blameless,” nor can we forgive him his flaws. We cannot plead to ourselves on his behalf that, like Orestes, like Phaedra, even like Nero, he “was just following orders.” All the foregoing is really just another way of saying that, judging Agamemnon by the one unwaivable criterion of every true “Racinian” character — namely, that the passion in whose grasp he or she squirms, struggles, and suffers be an utterly overmastering one — we must conclude that Agamemnon, having failed, in one sense, to “make the final cut” (that is, sacrifice his daughter), fails, in the filmic sense of the term, to “make the final cut.” And, paradoxically, it is for those truly Racinian characters that we reserve our deepest sympathy, for, after all, they are the helpless ones, they are the victims. Phaedra may be a monster (indeed, she twice brands

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herself as one at the climax of her colloquy with Hippolytus), but she is a monstre sacré, whose actions it seems almost impious to censure. She may have caused Hippolytus’s death, but is she to blame for it? Does it ever occur to us to blame the sea monster for Hippolytus’s death? We should just as soon think of regarding Iphigenia as blameworthy, were she to have been, after all, offered up as the bloody victim her mother so graphically envisions in her Act IV tirade.

vi Let us turn our attention now to the other three family members (Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Achilles), who, unlike Agamemnon, are defined by the concept of family. And by “defined” I intend to suggest both that their meaning is to be found in the concept of family (or, in other words, that family is what they find meaningful) and that, as characters, they are delimited by the concept of family. Clytemnestra’s horizons (to begin with her) extend no farther than to her daughter’s marital prospects. Brooding about not being allowed to attend her daughter’s wedding (“a sight I’ve so longed for” [III.i.46]), she consoles herself thus: “Heaven gives you Achilles; my delight / Exceeds all bounds to know that you shall plight . . . ” (III.ii.12 –13). And, later, she declares to Achilles that “I brought her up for this, my one desire” (III.v.38). So focused is she on her daughter and her daughter’s interests, so insulated from what is going on in the Greek camp, that she mistakenly believes of her husband that “all heed your commands,” that “Asia’s destiny is in your hands,” and that “Greece submits to laws laid down by you” (III.i.37–39). (Only later will she come to realize, to her dismay, how little to be dismissed are the encroachments on his power by the army, the priest, and the oracle.) The first glimpse we have of Clytemnestra (a secondhand one, as reported by Eriphyle [II.i.2 –3]) is that of a devoted wife embracing her husband upon her arrival at Aulis. In her first entrance a few scenes later (II.iv), she bursts upon the stage in full defensive mode, intent on saving her daughter — or, more precisely, her daughter’s honor (not in the Victorian sense), which, her maternal instincts readily aroused, she believes is threatened by Achilles’ infidelity. By the beginning

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of Act  III, that threat having been nullified, she can resume her position as the obedient wife, even bowing in submission to orders she finds arbitrary and inexplicable. But she does so only because such capitulation will serve the greater good, namely, her daughter’s interests (“No matter, though: he asks and I accede. / Your happiness, my child, is all I need” [III.ii.10 –11]). Once those interests are jeopardized by her continued obedience, however, she turns at bay, like a lioness defending her cub, and maintains that stance for the rest of the play (discounting its concluding couplet, which finds her uxorial docility restored), ready now, if necessary, to defy her lord and master in order to save her daughter: Nothing shall wrest my precious child from me: My bleeding arms shall guard her ruthlessly. Cruel husband, crueler father, try to tear My daughter from her mother if you dare. (IV.iv.147–50) Indeed, her fierce maternal instincts compel her to brave even the Greek host for Iphigenia’s sake: On me their impious zeal let them come test, And tear life’s paltry remnant from my breast. Death is the only thing that will undo The clasp of arms that shall entwine us two. (V.iii.17–20) In her epic tirade in Act  IV (almost as long as Iphigenia’s and Agamemnon’s combined), Clytemnestra ranges widely, not to say wildly, seizing upon every argument that she thinks might prevail with her husband. For her, however, it all comes down to this: “Is this the way a father ought to feel?  / At such vile treachery my senses reel!” (IV.iv.134 –35). Whatever else he may be, Agamemnon is a father, and that he could betray that all-important (as she sees it) aspect of his being, is what she, who sees herself primarily as a mother, finds incomprehensible, staggering. (Earlier, she thought nothing of deprecating her “futile queenly state” [III.v.33], clasping Achilles’ knees to sue for his assistance in rescuing Iphigenia.) What

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is fascinating is that, however ineffectual, even counterproductive, Clytemnestra’s arguments seem to be (Agamemnon, when alone a few moments later, dismisses them as “no worse than I anticipated” [IV.v.1]), there is reason to believe that they have not gone entirely disregarded, that some part of Clytemnestra’s rant may have sunk in. In the most moving part of her speech, not really an argument at all, but rather an evocation, tinged with weariness and despair, she anticipates how desolate her life will be without Iphigenia: And I, who led her here triumphantly, Shall I return alone, in agony, Passing through every blossom-scented street, Where loving crowds flung flowers at her feet? (IV.iv.140 –43) And do we not find an echo of these lines in that very moving couplet of Agamemnon’s (IV.viii.15 –16) cited earlier, when the realization of how desolate, how pointless, his life will be if he acquiesces in the sacrifice of his daughter finally determines him to save her? Both passages make use of the botanical imagery Racine employs elsewhere to telling effect; here, both images suggest blighted life: “blood-soaked laurels” in Agamemnon’s case, and withered flowers in Clytemnestra’s. In the end, then, Clytemnestra, in her defining role as mother, teaches Agamemnon, through the singlemindedness, intensity, and fearlessness of her maternal feelings, “the way a father ought to feel.” Certainly, Iphigenia herself relates to the world only through her family. When she resigns herself to her fate, she is not obeying a supernal edict: she is obeying a paternal command. The fervent faith she displays is not in the omniscience, or even the omnipotence, of the gods, but in the indisputable wisdom of her father. In this regard, Racine’s treatment of the Iphigenia myth makes for another instructive comparison with the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac mentioned earlier. For in Racine’s play, it is not Agamemnon who plays the role of Abraham, it is Iphigenia. Among the influences acting upon Agamemnon, blind faith in the wisdom of the gods is certainly not one. It is Iphigenia’s blind faith in her father that makes her resolve, with no hesitation or wavering, to capitulate

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to the oracle’s demand. She is no more capable of questioning patriarchal authority than Abraham is of questioning the authority of his God. And, like her faith, her patriotism is directed, not outward, but centripetally, toward the family. Just as Achilles’ participation in the Trojan campaign is motivated, as we shall see, by “a husband’s pride” (IV.vi.75), so Iphigenia’s sense of Greece’s glorious destiny translates into the quasi-wifely pride she takes in the prospect of Achilles’ future conquests and immortal glory, and in the part she will play, by her death, in making those conquests possible: The glorious battlefield for which you’re bound, Unmoistened by my blood, is barren ground. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . With such a hope, I gladly yield my life. Though I couldn’t live to be Achilles’ wife, I trust a happy future will ensure That, through your feats, my memory will endure; And may my death, from which your fame will spring, Open the glorious lays our bards will sing. (V.ii.28 –29, 42 –47) Achilles’ interaction with the family (and with the concept of family) is perhaps the most complex and fascinating of all. In Act III, Agamemnon advises his wife (however strategically motivated the observation) that “here, men think not of weddings, but of war” (III.i.20), but in the case of Achilles, the greatest warrior of all, the very opposite applies. If he has his sights set on becoming a hero, he has his heart set on becoming a husband. He is more eager to march up the aisle than to march into battle, showing more respect for Agamemnon as his prospective father-in-law than as his commander-in-chief. In his very first speech, his exuberant impatience to embark for Troy is, by his own testimony, a product of his love for Iphigenia: And may the Gods, who plague us with delays, Soon offer me a field of noble scope To win that prize for which you’ve spurred my hope! (I.ii.10 –12)

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And when he speaks of news “by which my joy is crowned” and of a prospective event that will “render me the happiest man alive” (I.ii.14, 16), he is not referring to the resurgence of the winds or the sack of Troy, but rather to Iphigenia’s advent at Epirus and their imminent wedding. So preoccupied is he with those events that Ulysses is provoked to reprimand him (albeit for reasons other than those he adduces): Just heav’n! in such a crisis would you wed? .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . Achilles’ love is all that he holds dear; And flying in the face of public fear, He’d have our chief, defying destiny, Prepare his nuptial pomp and pageantry! (I.ii.24, 29 –32) Iphigenia herself seems convinced of his preoccupation, and when, having waited in vain for Achilles to arrive at Aulis, she is momentarily beset by doubts of his faithfulness, she can remind herself that To me Greece owes the assistance of his arms. He never went to Sparta when that band Swore oaths to Helen’s father for her hand: Alone of Greeks, high-minded, honest, free, When he lays siege to Troy, he fights for me. Delighting in a prize he’s striven for, He’ll leave as my proud husband for this war. (II.iii.41–47) And Achilles reaffirms those motives and priorities in his heated exchange with Agamemnon: I love your daughter; she loves me as well; In her alone my hopes and wishes dwell. A husband’s pride pledged her the aid you sought: Men, ships, and arms — but to your brother: naught. (IV.vi.73 –76)

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He shows himself quite ready to renounce the immortal glory destiny proffers to him in favor of the claims of love and family: “Troy, Helen, Paris are but names to me: / Robbed of your child, I will not put to sea” (IV.vi.79 – 80). And later he assures Iphigenia (to whom such protestations are now anything but welcome) that he holds the glory of saving her and the glory of sacking Troy as tantamount: “This crop of laurels, this immortal fame, / By rescuing you now, are mine to claim” (V.ii.54 –55). Nor do the claims of religion weigh any more with him than political considerations. From the first, he shows no patience for Calchas’s mumbo jumbo: The altars heap, fresh victims immolate, And in their entrails read our country’s fate. Ask them the reason why the winds are still. But I . . . leave such things to Calchas’ skill. (I.ii.39 –42) And if Achilles, in his brazen challenge that closes Act III, can hold the gods themselves in contempt (“The Gods have framed in vain their fell decree: / More certain is this than Calchas’ augury” [III. vii.36 –37]), then, to save his beloved, he will hardly draw the line at attacking their priest (“To my blind love all is permitted — all! / As its first victim, that proud priest shall fall” [V.ii.90 –91]).

vii But after all, we may be doing Achilles an injustice if we conclude from the above that for most of the play he appears more in the guise of a wooer than of a warrior. For, examining his behavior over the course of this play from a different viewpoint, we may find that the play has indeed offered him “a field of nobler scope,” one in which his heroic actions may force us to concede that, on the contrary, Achilles has shown himself, from first to last, a most indefatigable warrior. Although at Achilles’ entrance Agamemnon congratulates him on his recent military triumphs (“Thessaly’s foes defeated or disbanded, / The isle of Lesbos conquered single-handed” [I.ii.5 – 6]),

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and our last view of him is as the invincible warrior, contending mightily against the entire Greek army, throughout most of the play the battles he wages are against the three members of Agamemnon’s family, as he strives to be admitted among their number, to claim his place as a legitimate and equal member. (Indeed, examined in this light, the part that Racine has assigned to Achilles might almost suggest that his principal function is to corroborate the centrality and predominance of the family in this drama.) First, he must overcome the hostility of Clytemnestra, who, though admitting that, “awed by the birth fame gave him credit for, / I chose this husband whom a goddess bore” (II.iv.17–18), has already turned against him by the time she makes her first entrance, having been duped by the insinuations in Agamemnon’s letter into believing that he has jilted Iphigenia and is now in love with Eriphyle. In her anger, she is provoked to dismiss this supposedly faithless fiancé as “merely a nonentity” (II.iv.22). But once Achilles convinces Clytemnestra, “by oaths,” as she says, “whose earnestness I couldn’t gainsay,” that “he seeks this match some claimed he didn’t desire” (III.i.5, 7), she relents toward him; and when she learns of the impending sacrifice, she recognizes in him her daughter’s ideal intercessor — her only intercessor, acknowledging that he is now all in all to Iphigenia, even appropriating the place of her father: “You’re all she has. You must be, on this shore, / Her sire, her spouse, her Gods, her guarantor” (III.v.43 –44). The overriding importance she accords him is reflected in Racine’s producing, in the second line, one of his characteristic, potent sequences of four nouns (with their insistent, reiterated possessive pronouns), here functioning as appositions for Achilles. (There are two other excellent examples in this play of such a sequence: II.iii.17 and II.v.25.) Achilles, however, is offended by her having seen fit to throw herself at his feet, embrace his knees, and beg him to rescue her daughter, as if he were a stranger on whose assistance she had no reason to rely. And indeed, it is only after he has proved his worthiness by having, as Ulysses puts it, “dismayed our men and disarrayed the Gods” (V.fin.sc.21) — by having, in fact, offered just those martial proofs of his love for Iphigenia that Clytemnestra accused Agamemnon of having failed to provide (“Where are these wars

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you’ve waged to save your daughter? / Where are the streams of blood and where the slaughter?” [IV.iv.92 –93]) — that he wins her ultimate approval and acceptance, as manifested by the signal place he earns in her valedictory thanksgiving: “What incense can I burn, what prayers say, / To recompense Achilles[?]” (V.fin.sc.76 –77). Against Iphigenia, too, Achilles must wage war. Indeed, at one point he is provoked to exclaim, “Why must I fight with you first constantly?” (III.vii.11). In their very first encounter, Achilles is nearly speechless with astonishment and delight at seeing Iphigenia, but she, misconstruing his incoherence as guilty discomfiture, rewards him with one couplet’s worth of sarcasm and flounces off; and the last time we see them together, he rushes off at the end of their heated altercation, hurt, angry, and bent on mayhem. Nor do we ever witness their reconciliation after either of these scenes: in the first case, we can only infer that a rapprochement has taken place offstage between Acts II and III, and, in the second, it is only at the end of the play that we learn from Ulysses that the lovers, neither of whom appears in the final scene, have been reunited. Indeed, nowhere in the play are we (or they) treated to a tender tête-à-tête or even a stolen moment of whispered endearments. In both of Achilles’ two long scenes with Iphigenia (III.vi and V.ii), there is little sense of two young lovers united against a common threat (as is the case with Britannicus and Junia, Bajazet and Atalide, Xiphares and Monima [in Mithridates], and Hippolytus and Aricia [in Phaedra]); rather, both find in the other their chief antagonist, she taking up the cudgels on her father’s behalf, he countering her onslaughts with his own vehement insistence on his status as her husband, on his rightful concern for her welfare, and, above all, on the moral necessity of her transferring her obedience from her father, whom he describes as “more like his daughter’s murderer” (III.vi.55), to him (as Clytemnestra has already done on Iphigenia’s behalf ). The following exchange is typical: iphigenia What! if my father’s will I disobeyed, I should deserve the death I tried to evade. My foremost duty and respect are due . . .

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achilles Respect a spouse to whom he promised you. In vain he’d rob me of a husband’s name; Are troth and treachery, for him, the same? You, who obey his every strict command, Did not your father offer me your hand? Is your abject obedience only due When he — no father now! — renounces you? (V.ii.60 – 69) In both their scenes, her intransigence, and the continued preference she gives her father, provoke bitter outbursts from Achilles: This heartless fiend — how call him otherwise? — Leads you to Calchas and to your demise; And when, against his rage, I oppose my love, His peace of mind is all you’re thinking of ? I may not speak? He has your sympathy? You don’t condemn him for his perfidy? You fear for him, and you’re afraid of me? Poor showing for my passion! For my part, I thought I’d made more progress in your heart. (III.vi.78 – 86) Then, cruel one, no more words. Seek, if you must, A death you find so beautiful and just. Bear to your father a heart that, I can see, Shows less respect for him than hate for me. (V.ii.82 – 85) Although Iphigenia seems to emerge the victor in both these scenes, remaining unswayed in her determination to offer herself up to the priest’s blade, Achilles is equally determined to assert a husband’s rights by aggressively averting the impending sacrifice, even if the priest and her father should perish in the general bloodbath, and he seems well on his way to carrying out that threat when his intentions are forestalled by Calchas’s revelations, which render further bloodshed unnecessary.

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A similar dynamic is at work in the heated confrontation between Achilles and his prospective father-in-law. Although each blames the other for Iphigenia’s plight (Agamemnon’s arguments betraying a speciousness born of desperation), the underlying casus belli is, again, Achilles’ insistence on his status as Iphigenia’s de facto husband, with its implied consequent displacement of Agamemnon as the arbiter of her fate. Their exchanges parallel those between Achilles and Iphigenia: agamemnon Who bid you take charge of my family? Am I not free to guide her destiny? Am I not still her father? Are you two Already married, Prince? And can’t she do . . . ? achilles No longer does your child belong to you. Promises made to me shall not prove vain. While blood and hope within my heart remain — And you, Sire, swore to join my fate to hers — I will defend the rights your vow confers. Was it not for me you called her to this strand? (IV.vi.28 –37) This scene, too, ends in a stalemate, with Achilles vowing to protect his bride-to-be. Before rushing off, he hurls this challenge at Agamemnon: One final word I trust you’ll comprehend: My glory and your child I shall defend. To reach the heart that you would cleave in two, Here is the breast your blade must first pass through. (IV.vi.101–4) Once Iphigenia is out of danger, however, past hostilities are forgotten, harsh words are forgiven, and, as Ulysses assures Clytemnestra, Achilles will be officially received into the family as her daughter’s husband and her husband’s ally:

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From Agamemnon’s hands receive your child; He and Achilles, newly reconciled, Burn to embrace you. Come along now, please; Their oaths will join your august families. (V.fin.sc.72 –75) Thematically, nothing could provide a more fitting ending to Racine’s Iphigenia. For as the play reaches its conclusion (Ulysses’ are the last lines of the play, if we ignore Clytemnestra’s two-line orison that follows [a tercet in my version]), the conclusion that we reach is that the dominant theme, the recurrent motif, emphatically restated in these last lines, has been the family. In a play where, as we learn at the very outset, the embarkation of the Greek fleet for Troy (“our great cause” [I.i.73]) is in jeopardy, and “the spoils of Asia” (I.i.76) are at stake, we might expect due note to be taken when that crisis is resolved. But even from the ruthlessly bellicose Ulysses, formerly so urgent in his pressing for the Trojan campaign, we hear not one exulting word about its now-imminent launching. In the French, the very last word of Ulysses’ culminating récit is “alliance,” but far from denoting the military alliance that is destined to conquer Troy, it signifies the marriage of Achilles and Iphigenia (and, thus, Achilles’ long-fought-for acceptance into Agamemnon’s family). And when, at long last, the winds, till now “enchained aloft for ninety days” (I.i.30), resurge, the exquisite and unprecedented tone poem Racine composes to mark the miracle registers for us less as a chant de guerre than as an epithalamion.

viii If Achilles is the outsider who “wants in,” then Eriphyle is most certainly the outsider who doesn’t. This Eriphyle is an outsider not merely to this family drama, but to the standard myths surrounding Iphigenia, for she is a character Racine created out of whole cloth, or at least out of the rags and patches he found in some ancient sources. According to these sources, it was not Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia, but another Iphigenia, the unacknowledged daughter of Helen and Theseus (who would later marry Phaedra),

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who was sacrificed at Aulis to satisfy the stipulation of the oracle and thereby enable the Greek fleet to embark for Troy. In addition to fashioning a personality for this other Iphigenia, Racine provided her with a pseudonym, a contrivance to which he had to resort in order for the perceived threat against Agamemnon’s daughter — the engine that drives the action, without which, indeed, there would be neither dilemma nor drama — to be able to operate in full force for virtually the whole play. One valuable collateral effect of this pseudonymity factor (operating like a wheel within a wheel of the engine of the plot) is the compelling justification it generates for Eriphyle’s death. And here we must bear in mind that, if the oracle’s original pronouncement vouchsafes no justification at all for condemning Iphigenia (as everyone supposes), the explanation Calchas offers in the final scene, when “clarifying” the oracle’s true intent, merely provides fresh information about Eriphyle’s parentage and suggests that she is foredoomed, without making explicit the reason why she has been condemned. But, as a consequence of Eriphyle’s believing that it is Iphigenia, and not she herself, who is named as the intended sacrificial victim in the oracular pronouncement, she finds herself in a situation that affords her malevolent personality the opportunity and the scope to flourish, to act according to its true nature, to realize its full potential. And the more mercilessly she savors the prospect of Iphigenia’s demise, the more ruthlessly she contrives to bring it about, the more deserving she proves herself of the punishment visited on her at the end of the play. Just as Agamemnon’s misapprehension of the oracle’s intent sets up a situation, an ethical experiment, really, in which his moral behavior can be observed, analyzed, and assessed, so Eriphyle’s twofold ignorance — of her own real name and, thus, of the true identity of the sacrificial victim named in the oracular pronouncement — provides ideal test conditions for us to study her behavior. And under such close laboratorial scrutiny, she does indeed allow us to understand exactly who she is — to identify her true nature — without our having to wait for Calchas to tell us. A further end product of the steady operation of the pseudonymity component of the plot is that the double disclosure Calchas makes — that Eriphyle is really the “Iphigenia” the oracle

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demands, and that Iphigenia isn’t — transforms the climactic récit of Iphigenia (delivered by Ulysses) from the usual relation of events into a revelation, and one so startling, so serendipitous, that we are hardly unwarranted in calling it heaven-sent, miraculous even, however reluctant we remain to credit the testimony of “le soldat étonné” (the astonished soldier) who claimed to see Diana descend in a cloud to the altar, whence she, “rising with the fires that sought the sky,  / Our incense and our prayers bore up on high” (V.fin. sc.68 – 69). Racine takes care to ensure that his surprise ending shall be as stunning as possible by having Eriphyle keep a low profile (a strategy facilitated by her aggressive self-effacement). Just as in Old Master paintings of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, one can just make out, in an obscure corner of the canvas, the “ram caught in a thicket by his horns” (providentially placed there by the angel of the Lord), so, in Racine’s Iphigenia, the surrogate victim has been there all along, but relegated to the sidelines. She is, almost as if this were a detective novel, the “least likely suspect” who is unmasked at the end (although Racine, like any good mystery writer, has been careful to drop several “clues” that identify her as the illicit offspring of Helen and Theseus, if not as the “Iphigenia” of the oracle). Readers, if they are not keeping a scorecard, might be surprised to learn that she has been onstage in thirteen scenes of the play, the same number as Iphigenia, two fewer than Agamemnon, but three more than Achilles. In several of these scenes she does not speak, but stands apart, listening, watching, and biding her time. The pseudonym Racine provides for his creation is one of the few things about her that Racine did not invent himself. An Eriphyle, the wife of Amphiaraus, appears as a shade in Hades in both Homer’s Odyssey (“There Eriphylè weeps, who loosely sold / Her lord, her honor, for the lust of gold” [XI.406 –7 in Pope’s translation]) and Virgil’s Aeneid (“Eriphyle here he found / Baring her breast, yet bleeding from the wound  / Made by her son” [VI.602 –4 in Dryden’s translation]). Since Amphiaraus was one of the famed “seven against Thebes,” whose number included Polynices, one of the titular brothers in The Fratricides, Racine’s first play, and since, furthermore, the bribe this Eriphyle received, which resulted in

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her husband’s death and her subsequent retributive murder by her son Alcmaeon, was proffered by that same Polynices, there exists a strange, albeit tenuous, connection between Iphigenia and The Fratricides. (A character named Eriphile also appears in an eighteenth-century French opera, once quite famous and popular, Oedipe à Colone by Antonio Sacchini [1730 –1786], loosely based on the Sophocles play. Curiously enough, that Eriphile provides an explicit link between the scenarios of Racine’s first and ninth plays, for in that version, not only is she the daughter of Theseus, but, in addition, her father offers her hand in marriage to Polynices!)

ix In Racine’s preface to Iphigenia, the only aspect of the play itself that he addresses is his approach to the denouement. (He spends the rest of the preface defending Euripides against his detractors, subtly flaunting his own erudition at their expense; and one may surmise that the satiric swipes he takes at these “esteemed gentlemen” must have entrenched them firmly among the ranks of his own detractors.) He offers a lengthy justification for his rejection of the two well-known endings to the tale of Iphigenia, the first of which, wherein Iphigenia is actually killed, he dismisses as impossibly brutal, given her sex, age, and innocence. The second features her last-minute rescue by a dea ex machina, a resolution he mistakenly believed was resorted to by Euripides. (Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides’ last play, was left unfinished at his death, and modern scholarship has determined that that misconceived happy ending is a later addition by another hand.) In Euripides’ version (as Racine knew it), Iphigenia escapes the impending doom through the miraculous substitution of a “panting hind” (provided by the goddess Diana) on the sacrificial altar, “a metamorphosis which,” according to Racine’s preface, “might well have been found credible in Euripides’ time, but which would be too absurd and too unbelievable for today’s audience.” Closely examined, however, his rationale for rejecting these two options seems somewhat dubious. In regard to the first, Racine, after all, has Nero dispatch his brother, Britannicus, equally

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young and innocent, by a swift poison, whose convulsive workings are vividly described by Burrhus at the end of Britannicus; Hermione’s suicide is likewise (briefly) reported at the end of Andromache; Antigone, as we learn at the end of The Fratricides, has killed herself (as, earlier, had Creon’s youngest son, Meneceus, in a heroic but misguided attempt to end the Theban hostilities); and the hapless Atalide’s suicide actually takes place on stage at the end of Bajazet. There can be no doubt that, had Racine opted to have Iphigenia sacrificed at the end of the play, her death — far more gruesome than Atalide’s — would not have been enacted onstage, but narrated by an eyewitness. Indeed, for that matter, even in the Iphigenia Racine has given us, her prospective death is described in such bloodcurdling terms by her frantic mother that a description of her actual death could hardly have been more horrific: Shall this cruel priest, urged by a crueler crowd, Lay criminal hands on her and be allowed To rend her breast and, by his probing art, Consult the heav’ns in her still-heaving heart? (IV.iv.136 –39) So much for Racine’s solicitude for his audience’s squeamish susceptibilities. In regard to the second option, we should note — bearing in mind Racine’s disparagement of the (ersatz) ending to Euripides’ play — that in his preface he concludes, from the fact that many of his lines that had found greatest favor with his audience had been imitated from Euripides and Homer, that “good sense and intelligence have been the same throughout the centuries” and that “the taste of Paris has been found conformable to that of Athens.” That being his view, one is led to question his assertion that, while such an ending might well have found credence in Euripides’ day, the audience of his day would not have accepted it. (And all the more so when we consider that what Racine did ask his audience to accept was hardly less likely to strain their credulity.) No: I believe it was neither Racine’s regard for bienséance (decorum) nor his striving for vraisemblance (plausibility) in his denouement that led him to create such a character as Eriphyle.

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Rather, Racine may have had some sense that “without Eriphyle, Iphigénie would be a very good comedy” (Barthes, 116) and consequently felt the need of a character to embody the primal, profoundly dark emotions that are so characteristic of, so essential to, his theatrical oeuvre. What would Andromache be without Orestes and, especially, Hermione? Bajazet without Roxane? Phaedra without that tortured soul? Athaliah without its title character and her corrupt henchman, Mathan? The Fratricides without its titular warring siblings, or their malignant uncle, Creon, one of Racine’s truly horrific monsters? Britannicus without the depraved and mad Nero, or Narcissus, his evil genius? One need only compare Racine’s plays to Pierre Corneille’s to mark how little influence such ethical concerns as preoccupy Corneille and his characters exert on Racine’s most “Racinian” characters, whom he endows with an impervious egoism. (In Britannicus, Nero’s determined disregard for his mentor Burrhus’s edifying homilies is a convincing case in point.) Without such a character — and Eriphyle certainly qualifies as one — Iphigenia would in fact be, in its design at least, a Cornelian exploration of whether murder may be justified by “higher” considerations. In Corneille’s Le Cid, this very dilemma is faced by both the hero, Don Rodrigue (whether to kill his beloved’s father to avenge his own father’s wounded honor) and the heroine, Chimène, the said beloved (whether, after Don Rodrigue has indeed acted in accordance with those higher considerations, to follow her lover’s lead and kill him to avenge his murder of her father).

x Certainly, in Eriphyle Racine created a character whose morbid envy and malevolent anger are almost frightening in their uncontrollable excess. Even her confidante, Doris, seems quite afraid of her, quailing before the “étrange manie” (strange mania) that possesses her (IV.i.1). In addition, Eriphyle is, with the possible exception of Phaedra, the most erotically charged character Racine created. According to Roland Barthes, “Her Eros is the most tragic Racine has defined” (Barthes, 109). Like Phaedra’s, her passion, which has

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become an obsession, flies in the face of reason and nature, as she herself admits: “Achilles, cause of our calamities . . . Whose very name, by rights, I should despise, / Is of all mortals dearest to my eyes” (II.i.78, 81– 82). So intoxicated with desire is she that, in the very act of denying Iphigenia’s accusations of her seducing Achilles, she cannot help indulging her perverse passion by wallowing in evocations of her persecutor’s bloodthirsty barbarity: “I, madame, love this furious conqueror, who / Presents himself all bloody to my view, / Who, flame in hand and filled with deadly hate, / Burned Lesbos?” (II.v.19 –22). And Iphigenia, uncannily insightful ingénue that she is, recognizes the nature of Eriphyle’s self-arousal and, with cutting eloquence, strikes home in her reply:          Yes, you love him, you ingrate! And that same fury you describe so well, Those arms so steeped in blood, that foe so fell, Those dead, that hate, that Lesbos, and that fire Are etched into your soul by sharp desire; And far from hating their cruel memory, You’re pleased, madame, to speak of them to me. (II.v.22 –28) But Iphigenia is not telling Eriphyle anything she does not already know: Eriphyle is one of the least self-deluded of Racine’s impassioned women, as these lines she addresses to Doris attest: “Don’t ask me on what basis my hopes rest / For this mad love by which I’ve been possessed” (literally translated: by which I see myself possessed) (II.i.87– 88). As with Racine’s other women who are helpless in the grip of an amour fou (Hermione, Roxane, Phaedra), she wishes her rival to suffer with her: So maddened am I in my misery, I only accept the hand she [Iphigenia] offers me, To arm myself and secretly frustrate Her happiness, which I can’t tolerate. (II.i.111–14)

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And not her rival only, but her beloved as well: A secret voice enjoined me to be gone, Telling me that if I were to appear, Unwelcome, I would bring misfortune here; That those fond lovers, drawing close to me, Might be infected by my misery. (II.i.122 –26) Her invidious anger reaches its climax in the threat (similar to the one voiced by Roxane in Bajazet) to destroy the two lovers and then to take her own life: For if my hate, with help from destiny, Can frame some serviceable strategy, My tears won’t be the only ones to flow, And, vengeance taken, to my death I’ll go. (II.viii.12 –15) But avoiding the fate of Roxane, who, after having sent Bajazet to his death, but before having had a chance to dispose of Atalide, is herself dispatched by the sultan’s minion, Eriphyle takes charge of her own death: “Then, flying to the altar, as if possessed, / She plunged the sacral blade into her breast” (V.fin.sc.56 –57). In Racine’s theater, where passion, and not politics, is almost always the sole determinant of human behavior, the only laws his characters obey are not imposed from without, but are legislated by the heart. Eriphyle does not die to fulfill the terms of an oracular pronouncement or to help realize the Greeks’ “manifest destiny”: she dies to fulfill her own tortured destiny, a destiny preordained by her neurotic, masochistic personality. While it may well be that, as Calchas announces, “it’s she, in short, the wrathful Gods demand” (V.fin.sc.41), the priest had earlier foreseen that “her future loomed / Malign and sinister: the girl was doomed. / With borrowed name, her evil destiny  / And her black rage have drawn her here” (V.fin.sc.36 –39); and in Racine’s universe, Eriphyle’s evil destiny is implicit in her black rage. When she admonishes Calchas that “the blood of those heroes from whom you claim I descend will be able to shed itself

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without the assistance of your profane hands” (V.fin.sc.54 –55, literally translated), she is reaffirming the dominion of “blood” (i.e., the passions) over one’s destiny that Racine insisted on in his very first play (see my Discussion for The Fratricides); at the same time, she identifies “blood” in another sense (i.e., heredity) as a potent cause of those passions, a psychological truth also proclaimed by Racine at the outset of his career. (Indeed, Eriphyle’s blood, flowing from Theseus and Helen, hardly seems a compound more conducive to stability and self-restraint than the blood that flows from Oedipus and Jocasta into the veins of the warring brothers of The Fratricides.) In its broadest implications, Eriphyle’s wresting the sacrificial knife from Calchas is emblematic of Racine’s dramatic (in two senses) displacement of political, moral, and religious questions and concerns by intensive, but objective, observation of his characters’ psychology and behavior. For Racine is far less interested than his characters are in ascribing causes to their behavior: whether the fault (for their faults) is in their stars or in themselves is a question he leaves them to ponder. Sometimes his virtuous characters blame themselves; often his vicious characters blame the gods. Such instances of self-inculpation and self-exculpation — themselves aspects of his characters’ behavior whose cause, however, is a matter of indifference to him — may fascinate Racine no less than they do us, but he is content to describe them: he himself makes no judgments. It is not that Racine the man does not recognize moral guidelines, or that he does not believe that according to whether one’s behavior conforms to those guidelines one can be adjudged “good” or “bad”; rather, it is that Racine the playwright tells us that the moral person is no more capable of wantonly disregarding those guidelines than the immoral person is capable of conscientiously heeding them. (Iphigenia’s being moved, at the end of the play, to pity the unfortunate rival who pitilessly plotted to ensure her execution is a good case in point.)

xi Much ink has been expended (including by myself in the preceding sections) in discussing whether Racine’s newly fashioned solution

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to the problem of the denouement is dramatically and thematically viable. Weighing Racine’s success in this regard is, however, of secondary interest, as is the question, broached by Racine himself in his preface, of the justness of Eriphyle’s chastisement (a question he himself answers rather equivocally, deeming that Eriphyle “in a way deserves to be punished, without, however, being entirely unworthy of compassion”). The consideration that must override all others is that, whatever logistical concerns may seem to have prompted him to create Eriphyle, however successful or unsuccessful a solution she supplies to a technical challenge, the character Racine was thus motivated to create is crucial to the play’s success, first and foremost, by providing it with one of the most original of his portraits of women in extremis, one whose larger-than-life stature makes such considerations as credibility of plot somewhat irrelevant. For, in the end, it was not the terms of the oracle that had to be satisfied, but Racine’s own artistic urges. Eriphyle, by injecting the drama with a dose of pure Racinian passion and perversity, provides an “antidote” to the uncharacteristically wholesome constitution of the central family at the heart of the drama. The moral antinomy thus established between the family and the stranger comes into sharp focus when we consider the seemingly far-fetched, even ludicrous, coincidence of this interloper’s also being named Iphigenia as a clue to understanding her role in this play, for what is Iphigenia’s namesake and nemesis if not an anti-Iphigenia, an evil twin? Iphigenia herself highlights this contrast for us when she explains the nature of her own love for Achilles (“His fame, his love, my sire, my duty: all / Conspire to make my soul his rightful thrall” [II.iii.17–18]) and, shortly after, in the later part of her colloquy with Eriphyle, analyzes the neurotic arousal of Eriphyle’s passion for Achilles (“Those dead, that hate, that Lesbos, and that fire / Are etched into your soul by sharp desire” [II.v.25 –26]). (In each case, the significance of the couplet is signaled by one of Racine’s potent sequences of four substantives.) As Barthes remarks, confirming Iphigenia’s aperçu, “What attaches her to her ravisher . . . is strictly contra naturam” (Barthes, 109). And Eriphyle’s desires and designs are contra naturam in another, specifically Racinian way, which further contraposes her to Iphigenia,

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since, in Racine, “nature” is very often used as a signifier of the familial bond. For if Iphigenia is the embodiment of familial integrity, at once the champion and the victim of its principles, Eriphyle, in her characteristically masochistic way, draws a perverse pleasure from her status as an orphan, seizing every opportunity to flaunt, indeed to vaunt, her disjunct existence. (Barthes calls her “the rejected being par excellence” [Barthes, 109].) Nor can she resist contrasting it with Iphigenia’s ostensibly blessed life. When Doris, wondering why Eriphyle is so dejected, points out to her that “now fate smiles: with heartfelt sympathy / Iphigenia befriends you tenderly” (II.i.15 –16), her bitterness and envy at once rise to the surface: What! so you think the sad Eriphyle Should witness their sweet transports tranquilly? You think my woes will vanish into air, Charmed by a happiness I cannot share? I see a daughter by her father embraced: She, on whom her proud mother’s pride is based; While I, a prey to perils and to fears, Consigned to strangers’ arms from earliest years, I’ve always been, since birth, a luckless child, On whom no father, nor no mother, smiled. (II.i.23 –32) But so perverse is Eriphyle, so intent on maintaining her position contra Iphigenia, that when she learns that Iphigenia has finally been visited by misfortune — that she is, in fact, soon to be immolated — instead of gloating over the calamity that has overtaken her successful rival, as any normal unsuccessful rival would do, she persists in perceiving Iphigenia’s position as the enviable one, since her imminent demise has drawn a tear from Achilles: You pity her? What trials I’d undergo To evoke those tears that she has caused to flow! Were I, like her, to perish presently . . . (IV.i.19 –21)

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Doris registers due amazement at Eriphyle’s attitude (giving voice to our own appalled reaction) in a remonstrance that leaves her spluttering in dismay: What do you mean? What strangely maddened state Could make you envy Iphigenia’s fate? She dies within the hour, yet you confess You’re now more jealous of her happiness. Who could believe . . . ? Such wildness! How can you . . . ? (IV.i.1–5) When Eriphyle launches into the same well-rehearsed sob story for Iphigenia that she had offered Doris earlier (II.i.23 –32, cited above), savoring her own grievances and drawing attention to the familial succor available to Iphigenia, her envy is irrepressible, yet a subtle snideness seeps into her tone: Alas! how I have been condemned to sigh! Long since abandoned by my parents, I, A stranger everywhere, have not, perchance, Ever received from them a tender glance! But if your father’s slight leaves you distressed, You can seek solace on your mother’s breast; And whate’er the disgrace which makes you cry, What tears cannot an ardent lover dry? (II.iii.7–14) Later, Eriphyle, defending herself against Iphigenia’s charge that she has alienated Achilles’ affections, adduces her supposed lowly origins: You think Achilles, spurning a king’s child, By such a nameless wretch could be beguiled, Who knows no more than this of her sad fate: Hers is a race he burns to extirpate? (II.v.51–54)

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Iphigenia’s riposte, “You urge your meanness ’gainst my majesty / Just to enhance your unjust victory” (II.v.57–58), though based on a false assumption, is nonetheless perspicacious, zeroing in on Eriphyle’s perverse pride. Later, after this brief but nasty quarrel has been settled and Iphigenia’s ruffled feathers have been smoothed, she reverts to her protective, sisterly demeanor, suing Achilles for Eriphyle’s freedom. But Eriphyle’s reaction is, typically, to withdraw from the sheltering embrace of Iphigenia’s family, taking scant pains to conceal her envy: Could you impose on me a crueler test Than to expose my eyes to the sad sight Of my oppressors’ triumph and delight? .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . Allow me, far from here, unseen, alone, Ever unfortunate, ever unknown, To hide so dire a destiny from view. (III.iv.32 –34, 39 –41) Astute psychologist that he was, Racine makes it clear that Eriphyle, though aching for the love she has been denied since having been cruelly abandoned by her parents, would rather be the preemptive rejecter than risk being rejected once again. It is no mere accident that in Eriphyle’s first and last appearances (onstage) in this play — in fact, in her very first and almost her very last words — she demonstrates her aversion (in its archaic, and more literal, sense of “turning away”) from, and aversion (in its modern sense of antipathy) to, Iphigenia’s family. In her first scene, she absents herself from the infelicity of witnessing Agamemnon’s reunion with his wife and daughter: “Let’s not constrain them, Doris, but retire,  / Leaving them in the arms of spouse and sire” (II.i.1–2); in her last, when Agamemnon and his family go off, she refuses to follow, telling Doris: “We go another way now. Follow me,” and Doris reinforces the point with her question: “Not follow them?” (IV.xi.1–2). But it is not only Agamemnon’s family whose embrace she shuns. Although she wishes Iphigenia and her family to believe she made

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the journey to Aulis to learn her parentage from Calchas, she assures Doris that, when she did so, “it wasn’t to unearth / The secret of my sad, ill-fated birth” (II.i.127–28), but to sabotage Iphigenia’s wedding plans. Already convinced of her own regal birth, she has little interest in finding out who her parents are, much less in being reunited with them. That is why the revelation of their identity at the end of the play does not resonate with any momentous significance for her or for the audience, let alone provide any sense of redemption or catharsis. She is satisfied merely with having her presumption confirmed that “mine is the blood of heroes” (V.fin.sc.54). It is as if Eriphyle, to whom the very concept of family is anathema, by taking no other notice of Calchas’s disclosures, is making a final grand gesture of rejection. And we too, following Eriphyle’s lead in denying any significance to the names on her birth certificate, might well argue that her true — or at least her symbolic — parentage has been revealed earlier, when Clytemnestra, having been informed that Eriphyle, the “serpent, heartless, vile, / Iphigenia has harbored all this while . . . warned the Greeks you planned to flee” [V.iv.9 –10, 12], bursts out with this denunciation: “Monster, born of Megaera’s womb, no doubt! / To harass us, from hell you were hurled out!” [V.iv.13 –14]. To identify Eriphyle as the spawn of one of the three Furies — and the one associated, significantly, with jealousy — is to render any further investigation of her ancestry superfluous, for, as I have argued, her true nature, and her role in this play, are defined, not by who she is, but rather, by what she is, namely, an avatar of the irrational passion that is so distinguishing an element of Racinian tragedy.

xii When Eriphyle first appears, she is advised by Doris that “Iphigenia befriends you tenderly, / And, like a sister, offers consolation” (II.i.16 –17). In the next scene, we see Iphigenia sue for her father’s interest and protection on her behalf: There’s no one here with us but this princess, To whom I’ve praised your loving tenderness.

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Boasting of my great bliss, ten times I swore We’d mend her fortunes when she reached this shore. (II.ii.32 –35) This sororal relationship develops as the play progresses, but as it does so, it inexorably conforms to the sibling relationship as we have come to know it in Racine’s work, where nothing says brother (or, in this case, sister) like the festering jealousy, envy, and hatred that consumes Eriphyle and that renders these two “siblings” not merely incompatible, but incapable of coexisting. That Iphigenia, for her part, bears Eriphyle no ill will in no way lessens their opponent relationship: when Iphigenia extends her hand to her “to shelter [her] and mitigate [her] pain” (II.i.110), she might as well be raising it to strike a blow. Iphigenia functions as Eriphyle’s nemesis just as surely as Eriphyle functions as hers, and Eriphyle is finally driven to realize that “she [Iphigenia] or I must fall” (IV.xi.5). In uttering this ultimatum, she is echoing the similar declarations of Polynices to his brother, Eteocles (“And given my fierce hate, I cannot bear / To share with you the light, the sky, the air” [The Fratricides IV.iii.206 – 7]), and Nero’s about his stepbrother, Britannicus (“As long as he lives, I half live at best” [Britannicus  IV.iii.13]). In Eriphyle’s case, she proves as good as her word: once Calchas has made clear that it is not her hated rival, Iphigenia, whose sacrifice is ordained by the oracle, the further revelation that “it’s she [Eriphyle], in short, the wrathful Gods demand” (V.fin.sc.41) is a supererogatory sentence for Eriphyle, for the survival of Iphigenia mandates her own demise. She understands that (to borrow Antigone’s realization about her brothers, Eteocles and Polynices) there was not “room for both upon this earth” (The Fratricides V.ii.20). In his Iphigenia, Racine expunges almost all traces of the immortal, the iconic, familial fury that marks Aeschylus’s Oresteia. There are two retrospective references to it by Clytemnestra (“To Atreus’ and Thyestes’ race you’re true: / It’s their accursed blood that flows in you” [IV.iv.82 – 83] and “And you, Sun, you, who espy, here in his lair, / That beast, the son of Atreus, his true heir” [V.iv.23 –24]), and one ironic, prospective allusion by Iphigenia (“Your eyes will see me live on in my brother.  / Thank heav’n, Orestes will console

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you, mother!” [V.iii.45 –46]). But it is left to Eriphyle to supply the dysfunctional element that, so strongly marked in the Aeschylean House of Atreus, is equally characteristic of the other families who populate Racine’s plays. I pointed out in the preceding paragraph that the closer Eriphyle comes to occupying the position of a sister to Iphigenia, the more inevitably does that relationship become one of deadly antagonism; that observation, conversely — or, perhaps, perversely — stated, is not without its own validity: Eriphyle, by the very fact of her having spurned Iphigenia’s outstretched hand, which had beckoned her into her charmed family circle, proves herself, by her very malevolence, her envy, and her corrosive jealousy, a true (Racinian) sister to her. Almost against her will, then, Eriphyle, “the rejected being par excellence” (Barthes, previously cited), finds a place in Agamemnon’s family, and, alongside her “sister,” Iphigenia, joins the ranks of Racine’s illustrious pairs of antagonistic siblings, Polynices and Eteocles, Bajazet and Amurat, Nero and Britannicus, Xiphares and Pharnaces, and (prospectively) Joash and Zachariah. (Their antagonism, one might add, covers the entire gamut of reciprocity from absolute symmetry in the first case [The Fratricides, Racine’s first play] — such perfect mutuality being, indeed, almost the whole point of that play — to something distinctly more one-sided in the last [Athaliah, Racine’s last play], Zachariah being as blameless as Iphigenia.) Eriphyle’s strange relation with Iphigenia’s family is ingeniously resolved at the end of the play, and in such a way as contributes to our finding Racine’s freshly conceived and painstakingly contrived denouement a more substantially satisfying one than it might at first have appeared. For here we have a family (the central element in this play, as exhaustively discussed above) menaced from two sides: by the oracle’s (ostensibly) fatal decree and by the machinations of Eriphyle. And there is a beautiful symmetry in that those two threats cancel each other out: the oracle, in condemning Eriphyle to death, eliminates her as a threat, and her death, satisfying the terms of the oracle, neutralizes the threat it posed. The family unit, so fragile — or fractured — in Racine’s other plays, here, for once, comes through its ordeal, testifying to a soundness and a resilience which the radiant conclusion gives no hint will be further tested.

racine’s preface

There is nothing more celebrated among the poets than the sacrifice of Iphigenia; but they are not all in agreement about the most important particulars of this sacrifice. Some of them, like Aeschylus in Agamemnon, Sophocles in Electra, and after them, Lucretius, Horace,1 and many others, would have it that the blood of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, actually was shed, and that she died in Aulis. One need only read Lucretius, at the beginning of the first book: Aulide quo pacto Triviai virginis aram Iphianassai turparunt sanguine foede Ductores Danaum, etc.2 And in Aeschylus, Clytemnestra says that Agamemnon, her husband, who has just died, will encounter in Hades his daughter Iphigenia, whom he had sacrificed some time before.3 Others have maintained that Diana, having taken pity on this young princess, snatched her away and brought her to Tauris, just as she was about to be sacrificed, and that the goddess arranged that a doe, or another such victim, should be found to take her place. Euripides adopted this version of the fable, and Ovid included it among his Metamorphoses.4 There is a third opinion, which is no less ancient than the other two, about Iphigenia. Several authors, and among them Stesichorus,5 one of the oldest and most famous of the lyric poets, have written that it was indeed true that a princess of that name was sacrificed, but that this Iphigenia was a daughter whom Helen had had

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with Theseus. Helen, say these authors, had not dared to acknowledge her as her daughter, for she did not dare to confess to Menelaus that she had been secretly married to Theseus. Pausanias cites both the testimony and the names of those poets who were of this opinion;6 and he adds that such was the general belief throughout the land of Argos. Homer, finally, the father of poets, so little maintained that Iphigenia, Agamemnon’s daughter, had either been sacrificed in Aulis or been transported to Scythia, that, in the Ninth Book of the Iliad — that is to say, nearly ten years after the arrival of the Greeks before Troy — Agamemnon offers to Achilles in marriage his daughter Iphigenia, whom he left, he says, at home in Mycenae.7 I have mentioned all these widely divergent opinions, and especially the passage in Pausanias, because it is to this author that I owe the happy inspiration for the character of Eriphyle,8 without whom I would never have dared to undertake this tragedy. How would it have looked if I had sullied the stage with the gruesome murder of a person so virtuous and so lovable as it was necessary to represent Iphigenia? And how, furthermore, would it have looked, had I resolved my tragedy by the aid of a goddess and a machine [i.e., a dea ex machina], and by a metamorphosis9 which might well have been found credible in Euripides’ time, but which would be too absurd and too unbelievable for today’s audience?10 I can therefore say that I was very happy to find among the Ancients this other Iphigenia, whom I was able to portray exactly as I pleased, and who, falling victim to the very misfortune this jealous lover wished to visit upon her rival [i.e., Iphigenia], in a way deserves to be punished, without, however, being entirely unworthy of compassion.11 Thus the denouement of the play is derived from the central action of the play itself.12 And one need only to have seen the play performed to understand the pleasure I have afforded the audience in rescuing at the end of the play a virtuous princess for whom they were so concerned during the course of the play, and in saving her by means of something other than a miracle, which they would not have tolerated, because they would never have been able to believe it.

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The voyage of Achilles to Lesbos, which this hero manages to conquer, and whence he abducts Eriphyle before coming to Aulis, is also not without some foundation. Euphorion of Chalcis, a poet very well known among the Ancients, and of whom Virgil and Quintilian make favorable mention,13 spoke of this voyage to Lesbos. He said in one of his poems, according to Parthenius,14 that Achilles had conquered this isle before joining the army of the Greeks, and that he had even found a princess there who was smitten with love for him.15 Those are the principal respects in which I have distanced myself a little from the design and the plot of Euripides’ version. As for the passions, I was committed to following him more faithfully. I admit that I owe to him a good number of those passages that have been found most praiseworthy in my tragedy. And I admit it all the more willingly because that approbation has confirmed me in the esteem and veneration I have always entertained for the works that remain to us from Antiquity. I have come to realize, with pleasure, judging from the effect produced in our theater by everything I have imitated from Homer and Euripides, that good taste and intelligence have been the same throughout the centuries. The taste of Paris has been found conformable to that of Athens. My audience has been moved by the same things that once moved to tears the most cultivated people in Greece, and which caused them to say that, of the ancient poets, Euripides was extremely tragic, τραγικώτατος,16 that is to say, that he understood supremely well how to arouse compassion and terror, which are the true ends of tragedy. I am astonished, in view of the above, that the Moderns have of late evinced such distaste for this great poet, in the judgment they have made about his Alcestis.17 Alcestis is not at all the issue here, but in truth I am under too great an obligation to Euripides not to have some concern for his memory, and to let slip this opportunity of vindicating him before these gentlemen. I am convinced that they hold him in such low esteem only because they have not read properly the work on which they base their condemnation of him. I have selected their most important objection in order to demonstrate to them that I have good reason for making such a

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statement. I say their most important objection, because they repeat it on every page, utterly unaware that one can easily refute it. There is a marvelous scene in Euripides’ Alcestis, where Alcestis, who is dying and who can no longer bear up, delivers her last farewells to her husband. Admetus, weeping unrestrainedly, implores her to summon her strength and not let herself succumb. Alcestis, with the image of death before her eyes, replies to him thus: Already I see the fatal bark, the oar; I hear the old boatman on the Stygian shore, Impatient, cry: They await you down below; All’s ready, come, descend; it’s time to go.18 I would have liked to be able to capture in my verses the beauties of the original. But at least they convey the general sense. Now here is how these esteemed gentlemen have construed these lines. There has fallen into their hands a faulty edition of Euripides, in which the printer has forgotten to place in the Latin19 at the side of these verses an Al. to signify that it is Alcestis who is speaking, and at the side of the following verses an Ad. to signify that it is Admetus who replies. As a result the strangest thought in the world has taken shape in their mind. They have placed in the mouth of Admetus the words Alcestis addresses to him, including those she imagines spoken by Charon. Thus they suppose that Admetus (although he is in perfect health) thinks he already sees Charon coming to bear him off. And, in this passage from Euripides, instead of Charon impatiently pressing Alcestis to accompany him, according to these learned gentlemen, it is the frightened Admetus who is the impatient one, and who urges Alcestis to expire, fearing lest Charon should take him away. He exhorts her, as they put it, to have courage, not to be guilty of cowardice, and to die with a good grace; he interrupts Alcestis’s farewells to tell her to hurry up and die. Admetus barely stops short — to listen to them — of dispatching her himself.20 This conduct they have deemed rather villainous. And not without reason. No one could possibly fail to be quite scandalized by such behavior. But how could they have attributed it to Euripides? And indeed, even if all the other editions, in which this Al. had not been omitted, had

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not been able to give the lie to the unfortunate printer who misled them, the succeeding four verses, and all the other speeches of Admetus in this scene, were more than sufficient to prevent them from falling into an error so unreasonable. For Admetus, very far from pressing Alcestis to die, cries out that “all other deaths together would be less cruel than to see her in such a state. He begs her to take him with her. He can no longer live if she dies. He lives in her. He breathes only for her.”21 They are no more fortunate in their other objections. They say, for example, that Euripides has fashioned Admetus and Alcestis into an elderly couple, that one is an aged husband, and the other a princess already advanced in years. Euripides has taken care to answer them in a single verse, when he has the Chorus say that “Alcestis, quite young, and in the first flower of her age, dies for her young husband’s sake.”22 They further complain that Alcestis has two grown children to be married off. How can they not have seen this contradicted in a hundred passages, and especially in the beautiful speech that depicts “Alcestis dying, surrounded by her two young children, who, weeping, tug at her dress, and whom she takes in her arms, one after the other, to embrace them”?23 The remainder of their criticism is about as cogent as the foregoing. But I believe I have presented enough evidence to defend my author. I would advise these gentlemen in future not to make such easy judgments on the works of the Ancients. A man such as Euripides at least deserved that they should have examined him closely, if they were so eager to condemn him. They ought to have borne in mind these wise words of Quintilian: “One must be extremely circumspect and very restrained when pronouncing on the works of these great men, lest it happen to us, as it has to many others, that we condemn what we do not understand. And if we must fall into some excess, it is still preferable to err in admiring everything in their writings, than in finding fault with them for too many things.”24 Modeste tamen et circumspecto judicio de tantis viris pronuntiandum est, ne (quod plerisque accidit) damnent quae non intelligunt. Ac si necesse est in alteram errare partem, omnia eorum legentibus placere quam multa displicere maluerim.

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notes 1. In Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, the monumental opening Chorus provides a sweeping account of the circumstances leading up to the Trojan War, culminating in an account of Iphigenia’s sacrifice (lines 185 –247), which, for gut-wrenching horror, has few equals “among the poets.” In Sophocles’ Electra (lines 530 –48), Clytemnestra defends her murder of Agamemnon as a righteous punishment for his sacrifice of their daughter. See note 2 below for the Lucretius reference. In Horace’s Satires (Book II, Satire 3, lines 199 –210), Agamemnon takes part in a duologue with an ingeniously ironic interlocutor, who rallies him for having sacrificed (literally and figuratively) his own daughter to his ambition. See Section IV of my Discussion for some observations about how these cited passages may bear upon our interpretation of the character of Racine’s Agamemnon. 2. The relevant passage in Lucretius (De natura rerum, I, lines 80 –101) includes these lines quoted by Racine, which translate as “Thus in Aulis the Greek leaders shamefully besmirched the altar of the virgin goddess of the crossroads [i.e., Diana] with the blood of Iphigenia.” 3. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, lines 1582 – 87. 4. Euripides’ authorship of that ending is highly doubtful (see Section IX of my Discussion). The Ovid reference is to Metamorphoses, XII, lines 24 –38. 5. Stesichorus (ca. 630 –555 B.C.) was a Greek lyric poet, only a very few of whose verses have survived. According to Georges Forestier (1580), “The testimony of Stesichorus . . . and of the other authors invoked was in fact known to Racine only through Pausanias” (regarding whom, see note 6 below). 6. Racine’s own note refers the reader to Pausanias’s Corinthians, page 125 (in Racine’s unspecified edition). Pausanias (lived second century A.D.) was a Greek traveler and geographer; his magnum opus, Description of Greece, of which Corinthians constitutes the second book, is an invaluable guide to life and art in ancient Greece. 7. Racine omits to mention that in the relevant passage (Iliad  IX.141–47) Agamemnon offers Achilles his choice from among his three daughters, “each well worthy of a Royal Bed; / Laodice and Iphigenia fair, / And bright Chrysothemis with golden Hair” (Pope’s translation, lines 188 –90). 8. Happy indeed! Racine is only too warranted in saying that Eriphyle is a character “without whom I would never have dared to undertake this tragedy.” (See my Discussion for more — and, I believe, more significant — explanations than Racine adduces for his creation of such a character.) So crucial is Eriphyle’s role that, in view of the revelation at the end of the play that her real name is also Iphigenia, Ronald W. Tobin can reasonably pose this pointed question: “But which Iphigénie is the title figure in Iphigénie?” (Tobin, 117). How provocative I find his question may be inferred from the fact that well over a third of my Discussion (Sections IX–XIV) treats of her character and its significance (in both senses). 9. Forestier (1581) makes the nice point that this “metamorphosis” is, more properly speaking, a substitution, since the hind replaces Iphigenia, who is whisked off to Tauris.

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10. Raymond Picard (1135) answers Racine’s rhetorical question with the following wry observation: “In fact, one cannot quite see why the spectator, whom one asks to believe that the sacrifice of a young girl will cause the winds to blow — and they do blow at the end of the play — would not have been able to readily accept another miracle.” But whether or not Racine was aware of it, there is a subtle but critical distinction to be made between these two “miracles.” Although the winds blow at the end of the play after a young girl is sacrificed (the pseudonymous Eriphyle), they do not necessarily blow because she has been sacrificed: the explanation may be anemological, the timing coincidental. But when a goddess descends from the skies and declares herself satisfied with the sacrifice of a hind (which she graciously causes to materialize) in place of the proffered young girl, one would be hard pressed to offer an explanation that does not partake of the supernatural. Still, notwithstanding that Racine has taken care to expunge the explicitly supernatural (as he consistently does elsewhere, the notable exception being the sea monster in Phaedra), and that one is free to read the liberation of the winds, previously “enchained aloft for ninety days” (I.i.30) as a meteorological phenomenon rather than a miraculous one, when Ulysses reports that “scarce had her [Eriphyle’s] scarlet blood suffused the ground, / When heaven’s thunder started to resound” [V.fin.sc.58 –59], we need not be prevented from experiencing “the awe, the joy, the rapture” (V.fin.sc.12) that grips Ulysses, as if in the presence of something literally uncanny (i.e., unknown or inexplicable); and when Racine indulges in a rapturous evocation of reawakening Nature, a veritable symphony of light and sound, we may not find ourselves far from feeling the same “holy awe” that Ulysses testifies “reassured us all” (V.fin.sc.65, literally translated). A strikingly comparable, and therefore instructive, “miracle” occurs at the end of Scene I of Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan: moments after The Maid’s demand to raise the siege of Orleans has been granted (the audience having previously been given to understand that unless such accommodation were made the village hens would continue to refuse to lay), Robert de  Beaudricort’s steward runs in to announce breathlessly, “The hens are laying like mad, sir,” to which Robert responds, “Christ in heaven! She did come from god.” The hens, like the winds, long dormant, have been stirred into action at the very moment when a supposedly heavenly stipulation has been fulfilled, but Bernard Shaw’s joke (or, rather, point — always the same thing with him) is that the only “miracle” in Saint Joan (like Athaliah, an essentially secular play, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding) is what Joan is able to accomplish by a combination of precocious pluck, bold acumen, and utter freedom from the stifling social — not religious! — preconceptions of the age: qualities practically miraculous for someone of her youth, sex, and society. Bernard Shaw intends Joan’s example to inspire us with a sense of man’s potential (the “life force,” in Shavian jargon), indeed, of man’s godhead: to make us believe, in other words, that (whatever Joan’s contemporaries may have felt) it is not she who “comes from god,” but god who comes from her. I offer the example of Bernard Shaw’s play (believing as I do that, between Saint Joan and Saint Joan, it is the latter that represents the greater miracle) as a modern frame of reference for a play in which the conspicuous involvement of gods, oracles, and prodigies need not impinge on the purely humanist issues that Racine, like Bernard Shaw, explores.

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11. Racine here wishes to validate her credentials as a tragic character, in conformance with Aristotelian criteria: that is, someone who is not so irredeemably bad that the character’s downfall elicits neither fear nor pity. 12. In this sentence, though somewhat of a non sequitur where he has placed it, Racine would now validate his newly devised denouement, which relies, not on the intercession of either goddess or machine — expedients not sanctioned by Aristotle — but on circumstances developed, mentioned, or alluded to during the course of the play. 13. The Virgil reference is to his Tenth Eclogue, lines 50 –51 (as Racine notes); the Quintilian reference is to his Institutio Oratoria  X.1.56 (also footnoted by Racine). Euphorion (born ca. 275 B.C.), like Stesichorus (see note 5 above), is represented today by only a few fragments. 14. Parthenius of Nicaea, a Greek poet and grammarian (his life straddled the juncture between the first centuries B.C. and A.D.), having been taken to Rome as a prisoner of war, was there engaged to teach Virgil Greek. The episode about Achilles, derived from Euphorion’s earlier account, appears in Parthenius’s magnum opus, Of the Sorrows of Love. 15. That love, as Parthenius spins the tale, was requited, but alas! not in the way the princess in question could have wished, since, having generously offered to deliver her father’s city to Achilles, who was laying siege to it, in return for his marrying her, she found her gracious offer rebuked in no uncertain terms when Achilles, upon taking the city, unceremoniously ordered his soldiers to stone her to death for treason. Perhaps Racine failed to mention these touching particulars of the princess’s history because in several characteristics of this hapless heroine and in certain circumstances of her story one can find striking parallels with Eriphyle’s character and history, to wit, her mad infatuation (at first sight) for Achilles, the reckless malefaction to which that infatuation goads her, her ruthless, viperous treachery against those who had the greatest reason to trust to her gratitude, and the shocking but condign retribution visited on her in the end. 16. Forestier (1581) traces this word to Aristotle’s Poetics (XIII), where Euripides is singled out as “the most tragic of the poets.” 17. The final section of Racine’s preface represents return fire to what was the opening salvo in the literary battle of the day (between those immemorial adversaries, the Ancients and the Moderns), a contentious pamphlet by Pierre Perrault, published just a few weeks before Iphigénie premiered. Ostensibly discussing Alceste, the new opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully, with a libretto by his frequent collaborator, Philippe Quinault, Perrault took occasion to maintain the superiority of Quinault’s libretto to the Alcestis of Euripides. Racine’s polemical excursus, which takes up fully half his preface, has precious little bearing on his Iphigénie, as he himself acknowledges (“Alcestis is not at all the issue here”), but he cannot resist the twofold urge to discharge his debt to Euripides and his musket at the Moderns. 18. Alcestis, lines 262 – 63 and 252 –56 (Racine bypasses line 254). Following Racine’s example, I have translated the lines in my wonted rhymed couplets, rather than providing a literal translation of Racine’s lines, but I too trust that “at least they convey the general sense.”

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19. R. C. Knight (Jean Racine: Four Greek Plays, 55) suggests that in Racine’s casual reference to a Latin text there is a subtle vaunting of his own erudition (which included a thorough conversance with Greek) at the expense of “these esteemed gentlemen,” whose more limited scholarship had constrained them to consult a Latin translation of Euripides’ original. 20. Pressing his advantage in this section, Racine adopts a somewhat facetious tone and, in this sentence, employs the more informal diction in which he had been free to indulge when he wrote Les Plaideurs (1668), his lone comedy. 21. A loose translation of Alcestis, lines 273 –79. 22. Alcestis, lines 471–72. 23. Ibid., lines 189 –91. 24. Institutio Oratoria  X.1.26. Racine provides a translation of the original Latin, which he thoughtfully subjoins.

Iphigenia

1674

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cast of characters agamemnon achilles ulysses clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon eriphyle, daughter of Helen and Theseus arcas, servant of Agamemnon eurybates, servant of Agamemnon aegina, attendant of Clytemnestra doris, confidante of Eriphyle Troop of Guards The scene is at Aulis, in Agamemnon’s tent.

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act i Scene i [agamemnon, arcas] agamemnon Yes, your king, Agamemnon, calls; arise! Come, is my voice so hard to recognize?1 arcas It’s you! What urgent business are you on That makes you so anticipate the dawn? Its feeble rays could scarcely light your way. In Aulis, only we are astir today. Has any sound disturbed the slumbrous air? Perhaps this night the winds have heard our prayer? No, all is still: men, winds, and Neptune’s tide.2 agamemnon Happy is he who, humbly satisfied, Lives, free of the proud yoke that burdens me, Hidden by heav’n, in blest obscurity.3 arcas What suddenly incites you to complain? You’re heaped with honors: does some secret pain, Caused by the Gods, who’ve always favored you, Transform to hate the thanks their gifts are due? King, father, happy husband, Atreus’ son,4 You rule the richest realm in Greece, save none.5 Your blood descends from Jove on every side,6 And when you wed, joined Jove’s blood in your bride.7 Achilles, whom the oracles extol, Whom heav’n’s marked out for some heroic role, Woos your fair daughter, and, as a marriage rite,

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Their nuptial torch in burning Troy he’ll light. What spectacle could warrant greater praise Than the triumphant sight this shore displays? A thousand ships, by twenty monarchs manned, Await the winds to sail ’neath your command. True, this long calm your victory delays; These winds, enchained aloft for ninety days, For far too long have barred the way to Troy. But, though men’s awe and honor you enjoy, You’re still a man, and changeful destiny Didn’t promise you unflawed felicity. Soon . . . But what sorrows does that note record, Which draw forth from your eyes those tears, my lord? Has cruel death claimed the babe Orestes’ life? Is Iphigenia ill? Is it your wife?8 What do they write? Deign to confide in me. agamemnon No, you shan’t die! I never will agree!

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arcas My lord . . . agamemnon       You’ve seen my tears; learn why I weep, And judge if this is any time for sleep. Recall that day when, poised upon the seas, Our restless ships seemed summoned by the breeze. Embarking with a thousand cries of joy, We threatened from afar the towers of Troy. A shocking omen cut our rapture short: The once-fair wind forsook us in the port. We could not stir; the sculls, quite uselessly, Belabored the smooth surface of the sea.9 This prodigy to better understand, I sought the goddess worshipped on this strand.10

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Accompanied by three of Greece’s kings, I heaped her altars with choice offerings. But what was her reply! How was I stirred When Calchas’ solemn oracle I heard!11    The track to Troy your ships shall never trace    Unless, with august sacrifice austere,      A girl of Helen’s race    Shall stain with blood Diana’s altar here.    To win the favoring winds the heav’ns deny,      Iphigenia must die.12

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arcas Your daughter! agamemnon         Horrified, as you may guess, I felt my blood congeal with iciness. I could not speak; my silence found relief But by a thousand sobs that spoke my grief. I stopped my ears and cursed our deities, Resolved that I’d defy the Gods’ decrees.13 What plans I framed to bring a father peace! I swore I’d send our armies back to Greece. Ulysses seemed to second my intent, Waiting the while till my first grief was spent. Then, cruelly harking back to our great cause, He urged our country’s claims and honor’s laws, The myriad men, the kings I supervise, The spoils of Asia promised as our prize: Could I betray the State to save my child, Grow old among my kin, a king reviled?14 Arcas, I was (with shame I’m forced to say) Pleased with my power and swollen with my sway; The Lord of Greece and King of Kings: my pride By those grand names was basely gratified. To heighten my distress, the Gods, each night,

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So soon as sleep had put my fears to flight, Avenged the bloody rites I’d violated, The altars that my pity desecrated, And poising o’er my head the thunderbolt, Dared their beleaguered victim to revolt. Thus, forced to heed Ulysses’ stern advice, In tears, I ordained my daughter’s sacrifice. But how to wrest away her mother’s child? By some deep ploy they had to be beguiled. Now, of Achilles’ passion I made free: I wrote the Queen, advising her that she Should bring our daughter swiftly here to me, That, eager to leave Aulis at our side, This warrior wanted, first, to claim his bride. arcas And of Achilles’ wrath have you no fear? Will he ignore what touches him so near? Will such a man, whom love and honor arm, Lend you his name to bring his bride to harm, And mutely watch her meet a death so dire? agamemnon He was away, since Peleus, his sire, Fearing a neighboring enemy’s attack, From these shores, you recall, had called him back; That war, so it appeared to everyone, Should have detained him longer than it’s done. But who can countervail this juggernaut, Who wins his wars before a battle’s fought? Appearing here last night quite suddenly, He outstripped the reports of victory.15 — My hand is stayed, though, by more puissant ties: My child, who hurries here to her demise, Unwitting of the dreadful doom she’ll find, And pleased, perhaps, her father is so kind;

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My child . . . It’s not that sacred name alone, Nor yet her youth, nor my blood, I bemoan; No, it’s her virtue, and the love we share, Her sweet devotion and my tender care, Respect for me that nothing can abate, And which I’d hoped to better compensate. Surely, O heav’n, your justice can’t demand That this cruel sacrifice proceed as planned? Your oracles are tests for me, no doubt: You’d punish me if they were carried out.16 — Arcas, I’ve chosen to confide in you: You must display great zeal — great prudence, too. The Queen, in Sparta, saw your loyalty17 And gave you your position close to me. Run swiftly to her now; this letter bear; Don’t rest upon the road that takes you there. Soon as you see her, her advance forfend, And hand the Queen this letter I’ve just penned. Take a good guide, familiar with the way; If into Aulis my dear child should stray, She’s dead.18 For Calchas, who awaits her here, Will still our cries, but let the Gods’ sound clear. Religion, too, opponent and irate, Will make our timid Greeks capitulate.19 My glory embitters other men’s ambition: This might revive their schemes and their sedition, And wrest my envied power away from me . . . Go, I say: save her from my frailty. Do not, above all, by a tactless zeal, Let her suspect the secret I conceal; I would not have my daughter learn, through you, The perils that her father exposed her to. Spare me an outraged mother’s bitter spite; And let your words accord with what I write. To ensure my wife and child turn back, offended, I write, Achilles’ plans have been suspended,

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That he’s deferred, until he has returned, The nuptial bliss for which his love had burned. Add that Achilles’ coldness seems to be Caused, so it’s said, by young Eriphyle, The Lesbian slave Achilles led away, To join my daughter as her protégée.20 This is enough; the rest they need not know. Already I see the rising sun aglow. I hear some noise: what guests escort the day? Achilles! — and Ulysses! Hence, away!

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Scene ii [agamemnon, achilles, ulysses] agamemnon What’s this, my lord? Has your late victory Returned you to our ranks so rapidly? Are these the trials of young courageousness? What triumphs will succeed such bold success! Thessaly’s foes defeated or disbanded,21 The isle of Lesbos conquered single-handed: Such feats, assuring men immortal fame, Are, for Achilles, an amusing game. achilles So slight a victory scarce deserves such praise; And may the Gods, who plague us with delays, Soon offer me a field of nobler scope To win that prize for which you’ve spurred my hope! But is it true, this rumor spreading round, This stunning news by which my joy is crowned? Will you deign, Sire, to help my wishes thrive, And render me the happiest man alive? Iphigenia, whose advent you await, Will — so they say — soon share with me her fate.

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agamemnon My child! — Who told you that my daughter’s due? achilles My lord, why should this news astonish you?

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agamemnon [to Ulysses] Gods! has he guessed the dark scheme I devised? ulysses Prince, Agamemnon’s rightfully surprised. Think of the parlous times that loom ahead; Just heav’n! in such a crisis would you wed? While our great fleet is stranded in this bay, While Greece groans and our army wastes away, And while the Gods’ disfavor we endure, Which only precious blood, perhaps, can cure, Achilles’ love is all that he holds dear; And flying in the face of public fear, He’d have our chief, defying destiny, Prepare his nuptial pomp and pageantry! Is it thus, my lord, that your compassionate heart Pities your country’s cares and takes her part? achilles The Phrygian fields will amply testify22 Who holds his homeland dearer, you or I. Till then, I leave you to display your zeal: To heav’n, for Greece’s sake, make your appeal; The altars heap, fresh victims immolate, And in their entrails read our country’s fate. Ask them the reason why the winds are still. But I, who leave such things to Calchas’ skill, Grant, Sire, that I may swiftly implement A wedding which the Gods need not resent. Moved by an ardor that brooks no delay,

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I shall rejoin the Greek host straightaway. I’d rue it if some other warrior Should be the first to reach the Trojan shore. agamemnon O heavens, say: why must your secret wrath Hold back such heroes from the Asian path? And have I seen their noble courage burn, Only, more grieved, to watch them now return?

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ulysses What are you saying? achilles           Have I heard aright? agamemnon I say we must, my lords, yes, must take flight. By false hopes we have been too long abused, Awaiting winds which we have been refused. Heav’n shelters Troy and gives us ample signs Its anger will oppose all our designs.

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achilles What frightening portents signal heaven’s rage? agamemnon Think of your case and what the Fates presage: Let us speak plainly, Prince, since we all know The Gods reserve for you Troy’s overthrow. But we know, too, their price for such a prize: They’ve marked the Trojan fields for your demise. A rich, long life you would, elsewhere, enjoy, But in your prime you’ll be cut down at Troy. achilles These kings, then, gathered here to avenge your shame,

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act i, scene ii 

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Must now return, bowed down with endless blame; While Paris, his rash passion consummated, Keeps your wife’s sister, unintimidated!23 agamemnon Has not your valor, ere we had a chance, Sufficiently avenged us in advance? The sack of Lesbos, by your agency, Still terrifies the whole Aegean sea. Troy, too, has seen the flames, and on her shore24 The waves wash up the wreckage and the gore. Nay, more: Troy mourns another Helen, who Was sent in chains to Mycenae — by you.25 For this young beauty in vain attempts to hide A secret she betrays by her own pride; Her silence, too, bespeaks her nobleness And tells us it conceals a true princess. achilles No, no, your devious counsels I can’t heed. Heav’n’s deepest secrets are too dim to read. What! shall I let such futile threats frustrate me? Flee in your wake the honors that await me? The Fates approached my mother when she wed, Taking a mortal man into her bed;26 I could, they told her, choose my destiny: Live on for many years, ingloriously, Or, dying young, live on in memory. Now, since the grave’s awaited me from birth, Shall I, a useless burden here on earth, Too chary lest my godly blood be shed, Grow gray with age, by my sire’s side, instead, And still of glory’s pathway steering wide, Leave nothing but my dust when I have died?27 Unworthy obstacles let us not heed: Honor’s the only oracle we need. Our days are subject to the Gods’ commands;

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Iphigenia

Our glory rests, my lord, in our own hands. Why fret ourselves o’er heaven’s high decrees? We need but emulate our deities; Heedless of fate, let’s run where bravery Promises us a godlike destiny: To Troy I speed, despite dire auguries, And only ask of heav’n a favoring breeze. And if I must besiege Troy on my own, Then, with Patroclus’ aid, we two alone28 Shall right your wrongs and make proud Troy atone. But no: fate leaves her downfall in your hands; I only wish to follow your commands. I shall not press you now to win my bride, Nor let my love absent me from your side: That very love, though, mindful of your fame, Will fire the army with my dauntless flame, And will not let me leave you here a prey To timid counselors leading you astray.

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Scene iii [agamemnon, ulysses] ulysses My lord, you heard him: cost him what it may, He means to leave for Troy — and straightaway.29 We feared his love, but now his arguments Unwittingly provide our best defense.30 agamemnon Alas! ulysses    What is the meaning of these sighs? From your rebellious blood do they arise? In just one night has such a change occurred? Is this a father’s heart that I’ve just heard?

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You owe your child to Greece in her great need; You promised her to us. Since you agreed, Calchas, consulted by the Greeks each day, Has sworn the winds will waft without delay.31 You think, if his predictions are proved wrong, That Calchas will maintain his silence long? That his complaints, which you’d in vain subdue, Will brand the Gods as liars and not blame you? Robbed of her victim, what might not Greece try, Moved by an anger she can justify? Take care you don’t incite a furious horde To choose between the Gods and you, my lord. Indeed, was it not you whose pressing plea Called us to Xanthus’ plains;32 who urgently Persuaded Helen’s suitors to renew The erstwhile oaths they’d solemnly sworn to, When all your brother’s rivals, in one band, Besought Tyndareus for his daughter’s hand?33 Whome’er he chose as Helen’s happy mate, His rights we vowed we’d always vindicate; That, if some scoundrel stole his prize away, Then, with his head, we’d make the culprit pay. Without you, though, this vow — by love constrained — Would we have honored it, once love had waned? Tearing us from our present loves and lives, You’ve made us leave our children and our wives. And when we’ve gathered here from foreign parts, Your righteous cause inflaming all our hearts; When Greece, supporting you with might and main, Names you to head our glorious campaign; And when her kings, who might dispute your claim, Are ready with their blood to avenge your shame, Then Agamemnon proves too miserly To spend the blood that buys our victory,34 And felled by fear before the first attack, Commands our forces just to send them back.

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agamemnon Untouched by all the cares oppressing me, Your heart can easily act heroically! Were it Telemachus you saw being led Toward the altar, in my daughter’s stead, The fatal fillet bound about his head,35 We’d soon see you, appalled at such a sight, Change your proud taunting into tears of fright; Undone by grief, as I have been undone, You’d throw yourself ’twixt Calchas and your son. You know that on my word you can rely, And if my daughter comes, then she shall die. But if, despite my pains, her happy fate Should keep her home or cause her to be late, Let me not persevere in this grim slaughter, But take such signs as favoring my daughter, For which I’ll thank the God who guards my child And watches over her, benign and mild. You’ve gained too much dominion o’er my heart; I blush . . .

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Scene iv [agamemnon, ulysses, eurybates] eurybates       My lord . . . agamemnon             What news have you to impart? eurybates The Queen has sent me on ahead to say Your daughter, though delayed, is on her way.36 She lost some time in finding her way out Of those thick woods that gird the camp about:

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So dark were they, we scarcely could regain The path we’d left, and searched for hours in vain. agamemnon Heav’ns! eurybates      Young Eriphyle’s expected, too: The Lesbian slave Achilles sent to you. She comes to Aulis to interrogate Calchas, hoping he’ll clarify her fate.37 The news of their approach has spread about: The soldiers surge in an enchanted rout, Praising Iphigenia’s loveliness And praying for her lasting happiness. While some, with due respect, escort the Queen, Some ask me what her visit here may mean. All swear the Gods have never given us A king more godlike or more glorious, Nor, as his fortune and their favor attest, Was father ever so supremely blest.

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agamemnon Enough, enough. That’s all I need to know. I’ll think these matters over. You may go. Scene v [agamemnon, ulysses] agamemnon In vain, just heav’n, my prudence has resorted To schemes which your vindictiveness has thwarted! If only I were free to find relief, By means of teeming tears, for my great grief! Sad destiny of kings! Such slaves are we

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To what men think and what the Fates decree! By ceaseless scrutiny our care’s increased, For those who suffer most may weep the least!38 ulysses I am a father, Sire, and take your part: My own weak heart can pardon your weak heart; And trembling from the blow that staggers you, I don’t condemn your tears, but shed them too. But now you must be deaf to love’s demands: Heav’n’s led its victim into Calchas’ hands. He knows, he waits; and if he waits in vain, With upraised voice her presence he’ll constrain. We’re still alone: hasten to vent those tears Engendered by a tender father’s fears. Weep for your blood, yes, weep — but no: be strong, And think what honor we’ll enjoy ere long. Our churning oars will turn the Aegean white, Our torches will set treacherous Troy alight; Priam abased, his people enslaved or dead, We’ll lead back Helen to her marriage bed. You’ll see our fleet, the prows with flowers crowned, Return upon the waves, for Aulis bound; And, storying our feats, posterity Will keep alive our happy victory.39 agamemnon I see that all my efforts were misspent; I yield: let heav’n oppress the innocent. The victim will present herself ere long; Go, then. But take care Calchas holds his tongue; This deadly secret help me to disguise, Nor let a mother see her child’s demise.

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act ii Scene i [eriphyle, doris] eriphyle Let’s not constrain them, Doris, but retire, Leaving them in the arms of spouse and sire; And while they freely indulge the love they share, Conjoined in joy, let me vent my despair.1 doris What, madame! must you aggravate your grief ? From tears you think you’ll never find relief ? I know when one’s a captive one complains, And cheerfulness cannot survive in chains; But when, in that ill-fated time, we were Compelled to follow Lesbos’ conqueror,2 When, on his ship, a prisoner, terrified, You saw before you that cruel homicide, Then — dare I say? — you’d fewer tears to show; Your eyes were less disposed to weep your woe. But now fate smiles: with heartfelt sympathy Iphigenia befriends you tenderly, And, like a sister, offers consolation; Troy couldn’t treat you with more consideration.3 You wanted to see Aulis, where her sire Summoned her: now fate’s granted your desire. But, madame, by some puzzling twist of fate, Your grief, your pain, with each hour escalate. eriphyle What! so you think the sad Eriphyle Should witness their sweet transports tranquilly? You think my woes will vanish into air, Charmed by a happiness I cannot share?

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I see a daughter by her father embraced: She, on whom her proud mother’s pride is based; While I, a prey to perils and to fears, Consigned to strangers’ arms from earliest years, I’ve always been, since birth, a luckless child, On whom no father, nor no mother, smiled. I know not who I am; and — worse for me — An oracle guards that secret jealously, Telling me, when I ask, Whose child am I? — I cannot know myself unless I die.4 doris No, no, you must pursue your inquiries. Oracles love to veil their prophecies: Within one meaning others lie concealed.5 Your false name lost, your true will be revealed. That is the only risk you run thereby, And thus it is, perhaps, that you must die. Recall: they changed your birth name years ago. eriphyle And of my birth, my fate, that’s all I know. Your ill-starred father, who knew all my history,6 Would never let me penetrate this mystery. Alas! in Troy, where I was then awaited, He said my glory would be reinstated, And that, recovering my rank and name, My kinship with great kings I could reclaim. I longed to reach that city of renown — On Lesbos cruel Achilles then swooped down! Before his deadly force all fell or fled; Your father, lying ’neath the heaps of dead, Left me a slave, with no identity; And of the grandeur prophesied for me, All I’ve preserved, a slave in Greece’s chains, Is pride of blood, for which no proof remains.

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doris Ah! having felled that faithful witness too, How cruel his killer must appear to you! But you have Calchas here, known far and wide, In whom the Gods themselves deign to confide. Heav’n speaks to him and, by its agency, He knows all that has been, all that will be. Must he not know the pair who gave you life? With fond protectors, too, this camp is rife: Iphigenia, as Achilles’ bride, Can offer you asylum at their side. She promised you — and swore before me too — His love’s first pledge would be to shelter you.

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eriphyle What would you say if, weighed against my woes, Their marriage was more dire than all of those? doris How can that be? eriphyle         You view with disbelief The fact that all my ills find no relief. Listen — you’ll marvel I’m alive at all. It’s nothing, being a stranger and a thrall: This scourge who brought sad Lesbos to her knees, Achilles, cause of our calamities, Whose bloody arm, which dragged me off, a slave, Sent your sire — and my secret — to one grave, Whose very name, by rights, I should despise, Is of all mortals dearest to my eyes. doris What’s this?

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eriphyle       I told myself unceasingly, In silence I would hide my frailty; But now my heavy heart feels moved to explain, And speaks just once, never to speak again. Don’t ask me on what basis my hopes rest For this mad love by which I’ve been possessed. I cannot blame the pain he feigned to feel, The pity he deigned to show for my ordeal.7 No doubt it gives the Gods untold delight To wound me with the weapons of their spite. — Alas! the frightful memory remains Of that dread day that threw us both in chains.8 In those cruel hands, which forced me to their will,9 I lay for long in darkness, spent and still. At last my tear-filled eyes searched for some light; And when an arm, all bloody, gripped me tight, I trembled, Doris, so afraid I’d see The face of a ferocious enemy. Once on his ship, I felt new fears arise Of his fell rage and turned away my eyes. I saw him — on my lips my curses died: I had no reason to be terrified. I felt my heart rebel against me: I Forgot my anger; I could only cry. I yielded to my charming captor’s care. I love him here and now, as then and there. Iphigenia extends her hand in vain To shelter me and mitigate my pain: So maddened am I in my misery, I only accept the hand she offers me To arm myself and secretly frustrate Her happiness, which I can’t tolerate. doris She’s proof against your animosity.

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Shouldn’t you have remained in Mycenae, Sparing yourself the pain you’ve come to seek, And fought a love whose name you dare not speak? eriphyle I wished to; but, though I could visualize Her grand reception, galling to my eyes, I had to obey the fate that led me on: A secret voice enjoined me to be gone, Telling me that if I were to appear, Unwelcome, I would bring misfortune here; That those fond lovers, drawing close to me, Might be infected by my misery. That’s why I came; it wasn’t to unearth The secret of my sad, ill-fated birth. But on their marriage let my fate depend: If it takes place, then all is at an end. I shall die swiftly, Doris, and the tomb Shall hide my shame in its sepulchral gloom; My parents I’ll no longer seek to know, Whom my unbridled love’s dishonored so.10 doris I pity you, madame. The tyranny . . . eriphyle Here’s Agamemnon and his daughter: see! Scene ii [agamemnon, iphigenia, eriphyle, doris] iphigenia My lord, where do you run? And why this haste To draw back from the child you’ve scarce embraced? What is the reason for this sudden flight?

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Your first embraces were the Queen’s, by right; But may I not detain you in my turn And let you see my joy burst forth? I yearn . . .

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agamemnon Come, my child, give your father one more kiss: He loves you still. iphigenia         And that love is my bliss! How glad I am to see you and to gaze At the new brilliancy with which you blaze! What power! What honors! Fame had furnished me With stunning stories of your majesty, But seeing for myself this splendid sight, I feel still more surprise, still more delight! The reverence, the love Greece has professed! With such a father, who would not feel blest?11

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agamemnon My daughter, you deserve a happier sire. iphigenia Surely you have no unfulfilled desire? What greater heights can kings aspire to? Our fervent thanks to heav’n, I deemed, were due. agamemnon [aside] Great Gods! must I prepare her for her fate? iphigenia You turn away, you sigh, you hesitate; Your eyes, when they behold me, seem to grieve. Did we quit Mycenae without your leave?

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agamemnon My child, with the same eyes I look on you; But just as places change, so times do, too. By cruel care my joy’s been put to flight. iphigenia Father, forget your rank here in my sight. A long, bleak separation I foresee. Can’t you be just a father now to me, Unblushingly, if momentarily? There’s no one here with us but this princess, To whom I’ve praised your loving tenderness. Boasting of my great bliss, ten times I swore We’d mend her fortunes when she reached this shore. What will she think of your indifference? Have I raised up her hopes by false pretense? Can you not clear that brow that’s creased with care?

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agamemnon My child! iphigenia      Go on, my lord. agamemnon             I do not dare. iphigenia Perish the Trojan author of our woe!12 agamemnon His death will cause his conquerors’ tears to flow.13 iphigenia May the Gods shield you from adversity!

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agamemnon The Gods have been both deaf and cruel to me. iphigenia Calchas prepares some sacrifice, they say. agamemnon [aside] If only their injustice I could stay! iphigenia Will it be offered soon? agamemnon           Too soon, I fear. iphigenia And will your happy family appear? Will I, too, be allowed to add my prayer? agamemnon Alas! iphigenia    You’re silent? agamemnon          Child, you will be there.14 Farewell. Scene iii [iphigenia, eriphyle, doris] iphigenia      What must I make of what he said? I can’t help trembling with a secret dread.

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Some unknown evil fills me with dismay. Just Gods, you know on whose behalf I pray.15 eriphyle Come now! With all the cares that weigh him down, You tremble at his coldness, at his frown? Alas! how I have been condemned to sigh! Long since abandoned by my parents, I, A stranger everywhere, have not, perchance, Ever received from them a tender glance!16 But if your father’s slight leaves you distressed, You can seek solace on your mother’s breast; And whate’er the disgrace which makes you cry, What tears cannot an ardent lover dry? iphigenia It’s true: my sorrow, sweet Eriphyle, Would soon yield to Achilles’ sympathy. His fame, his love, my sire, my duty: all Conspire to make my soul his rightful thrall. But what does his behavior indicate? This man, whose longing for me was so great That he, defying Greece, would not leave here Till, summoned by my sire, I should appear: Is he, then, not as eager as I thought To seek a sight he once so fondly sought? Myself, these last two days, since I caught sight Of Aulis’s environs — to my delight — I sought him everywhere: with anxious eye I observed, on every road, each passerby. To find him, far before me my heart flew; I asked for him of all who came in view. But now, it seems, I’ve come and he’s not here. I struggled ’gainst the strangers who drew near; Alas! alone, Achilles failed to appear. Now Agamemnon’s plunged in misery

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Iphigenia

And seems to fear to speak of him to me. What means this mystery? What does he desire? Shall I find him as frigid as my sire? And have the cares of war, in just one day, Caused love and tenderness to fade away? But no: I offend him by unjust alarms. To me Greece owes the assistance of his arms. He never went to Sparta when that band Swore oaths to Helen’s father for her hand: Alone of Greeks, high-minded, honest, free, When he lays siege to Troy, he fights for me. Delighting in a prize he’s striven for, He’ll leave as my proud husband for this war.

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Scene iv [clytemnestra, iphigenia, eriphyle, doris] clytemnestra My child, let us depart without delay; To save your honor — and mine — we must away. I see now why your sire was so upset And why he seemed to greet us with regret. He feared to see you insulted and, to spare us, Sent Arcas with this letter to prepare us; He missed us while we wandered wearily, And only just now handed it to me. Our injured pride, I say, we must defend. Your wedding plans Achilles would amend, Disdaining the great honor we’ve conferred: Till he returns he wishes it deferred. eriphyle [aside] What’s this? clytemnestra       Your blushes show you’re mortified,

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act ii, scene v 

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83

But arm your courage with a noble pride. Myself approving what the ingrate planned, I offered him to you with my own hand; Awed by the birth Fame gave him credit for, I chose this husband whom a goddess bore.17 But since his cowardly maneuverings Belie the blood from which it’s said he springs, Just who we are, my child, the world must see, And that he’s merely a nonentity. He must not think, by our prolonged sojourn, That your heart waits upon his heart’s return. I’d fain break off a match which he’s delayed. I’ve let your father know the plans I’ve made; I await him here only to say good-bye: There’s much to arrange, my child, ere we can fly. [to Eriphyle] I don’t press you, madame, to come with me; My flight leaves you in dearer company. Your secret schemes have been made all too clear: It’s not for Calchas’ sake you’ve journeyed here.

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Scene v [iphigenia, eriphyle, doris] iphigenia To what dire thoughts these words leave me a prey! Achilles has postponed our wedding day; My steps I must dishonorably retrace. — Who, if not Calchas, drew you to this place? eriphyle As to your meaning, madame, I’ve no clue. iphigenia You’d understand me, if you wanted to. Cruel fate has robbed me of my spouse-to-be,

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And will you leave me to my misery? When I left Argos, you refused to stay, Yet you’ll remain here, when I go away?

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eriphyle I wish to visit Calchas ere I go. iphigenia Then why do you delay to let him know? eriphyle For Argos, in a moment, you set out. iphigenia Sometimes a moment clarifies all doubt. But, madame, I need trouble you no more; I see what I didn’t want to see before: Achilles . . . You’re on fire to see me go! eriphyle I? Do you think I could betray you so? I, madame, love this furious conqueror, who Presents himself all bloody to my view, Who, flame in hand and filled with deadly hate, Burned Lesbos . . . ?18 iphigenia          Yes, you love him, you ingrate! And that same fury you describe so well, Those arms so steeped in blood, that foe so fell, Those dead, that hate, that Lesbos, and that fire Are etched into your soul by sharp desire;19 And far from hating their cruel memory, You’re pleased, madame, to speak of them to me. Why, more than once, beneath your feigned lament, I should have seen — did see — your true intent.

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act ii, scene v 

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85

But my good nature conquered me, and I’d Replace the blindfold which I’d cast aside. You love him. What mad error made me take My rival in my arms? Fatal mistake! I loved her! Fool! The promises I made! I offered her my faithless lover’s aid! Witness the triumph that I have attained: To trail your chariot, a slave enchained!20 Alas! I can forgive your selfish love, Your coveting the heart you’ve robbed me of; But how could you not warn me of this snare, Luring me here to seek, all unaware, This ingrate who had planned to abandon me? Traitress, can I forgive this injury? eriphyle These unjust names are jarring to my ear, Madame; they’re not what I’ve been taught to hear. Even the Gods, for long my enemies, Have spared me such uncalled-for calumnies. But, though unjust, we pardon those in love. And what was it I should have warned you of ? You think Achilles, spurning a king’s child, By such a nameless wretch could be beguiled, Who knows no more than this of her sad fate: Hers is a race he burns to extirpate? iphigenia You triumph and exult in my distress. I never felt, till now, such wretchedness. You urge your meanness ’gainst my majesty21 Just to enhance your unjust victory. Perhaps, though, you too hastily exult: This Agamemnon, whom you choose to insult, Rules over Greece, but is my father, too, And feels my grief more sharply than I do.

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Iphigenia

He seemed touched by my tears before they fell; The sighs he tried to stifle I sensed as well. Alas! I thought his welcome was too stern, And dared complain he showed me no concern!

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Scene vi [achilles, iphigenia, eriphyle, doris] achilles It’s you! The tales were true, then. I’m astounded! I thought those rumors must have been ill-founded. In Aulis! You! What brings you here? And why Did Agamemnon feel the need to lie? iphigenia Rest easy. All your wishes will come true. Iphigenia will not long trouble you.22

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Scene vii [achilles, eriphyle, doris] achilles She flees! Am I awake or do I dream? Gods! with her flight, what newborn troubles teem! — I don’t know if, without disturbing you, Achilles dare request an interview; But if you could indulge an enemy Who tried to treat his prisoner mercifully, Tell me, madame, what errand’s brought them here. You know . . . eriphyle        To you, my lord, is that not clear; You who, a month ago, in burning need,

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act ii, scene viii 

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Urged them to journey hither with all speed?23

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achilles For the last month, you see, I’ve been away, And just returned to Aulis yesterday. eriphyle When Agamemnon wrote to Mycenae, Did not your hand guide his, at love’s decree? What! you, whom his child’s charms so captivated . . . achilles But now you see me more intoxicated! And if mere wishes could have brought me there, I’d have reached Argos ere she left, I swear. Yet they all shun me. What wrong have I done? I meet such hostile stares from everyone! Ulysses, Nestor, Calchas, all the while, Using their eloquence with futile guile, Attempt to quell my passion, and insist That love and glory cannot coexist.24 Can this, I ask, be a conspiracy? Have I been made a dupe unknowingly? These riddles’ answers I must seek inside.

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Scene viii [eriphyle, doris] eriphyle You Gods, who see my shame, where can I hide? Proud rival whom he loves, you dare complain? Must I endure your glory and disdain? Ah! rather let . . . But either I mistake, Or upon their heads some storm’s about to break. My eyes are open, Doris; I am sure

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Iphigenia

Their seeming happiness is not secure. They keep Iphigenia mystified; And when Achilles seeks them out, they hide; Nay, I’ve seen Agamemnon groan with care. It’s not yet time to give in to despair: For if my hate, with help from destiny, Can frame some serviceable strategy, My tears won’t be the only ones to flow, And, vengeance taken, to my death I’ll go.25

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act iii, scene i 

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89

act iii Scene i [agamemnon, clytemnestra] clytemnestra Yes, justly outraged, I’d made up my mind To leave Achilles and the camp behind. My child, disgraced, was hastening home to grieve. But he, amazed we should so swiftly leave, By oaths whose earnestness I couldn’t gainsay, Has just convinced me, after all, to stay! He seeks this match some claimed he didn’t desire, And looks for you, with love and rage afire: He means to silence these outrageous lies, Whose author he’ll discover and chastise. Banish those doubts which marred our happiness. agamemnon Enough. ’Twas wrong to doubt him, I confess. I see the error which led us astray, And share your joy, to the extent I may. You wish that Calchas should unite this pair; Then, to the altar let your child repair; I’ll meet her there. But now, ere it’s too late, I’d like to have a little tête-à-tête. You know what you’ve encountered on this shore: Here, men think not of weddings, but of war. Soldiers and sailors throng these martial fields; The altar’s stuck with spears and slung with shields. While for Achilles such a scene is fit, Your gentler nature would recoil at it. The consort of her king Greece must not see In such a state as stains our dignity. Harken to my advice, then: stay away, And let your ladies lead her there today.

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Iphigenia

clytemnestra What? I let others take my child in hand And not bring to fruition what I planned? Did I escort her here from Mycenae For her to approach the altar without me? I’m banished, and you’ll stand at Calchas’ side? To her new husband who’ll present the bride? To whom will my blest office be assigned?

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agamemnon This is not Atreus’ palace, bear in mind. You’re in a camp . . . clytemnestra          Where all heed your commands, Where Asia’s destiny is in your hands, Where Greece submits to laws laid down by you, Where Thetis’ son shall call me mother too. In what proud palace could I ever appear With greater splendor, greater pomp, than here?

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agamemnon Now, by the Gods, the authors of our race, Deign, madame, to accord my love this grace. I have good cause. clytemnestra          By those same Gods, I implore: Don’t rob me of a sight I’ve so longed for! Surely you need not feel ashamed of me. agamemnon I’d hoped you would agree more readily. But since by reason you will not be led, Since you have not been moved by what I’ve said, What I demand, you’ve understood quite well,

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act iii, scene iii 

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91

And if you won’t comply, I must compel. Obey. Scene ii [clytemnestra, alone] clytemnestra     How comes it that, with cruel care, Unjustly, he forbids my being there? Newly exalted, does he dare disdain His loyal consort? Can he entertain The thought that I’m unfit to grace his train? Or as the Greeks’ new leader, does he fear Some scene, were Helen’s sister to appear?1 Why should I hide? By what inequity Must Helen’s shameful crime recoil on me? No matter, though: he asks, and I accede. Your happiness, my child, is all I need. Heaven gives you Achilles; my delight Exceeds all bounds to know that you shall plight . . . 2 But here he is.

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Scene iii [achilles, clytemnestra] achilles        My ardor has succeeded: The King declared no further proof was needed. He trusts my love; scarce listening to me, He’s just embraced me as his son-to-be, But hardly spoke a word.3 Has he related How your arrival’s left the camp elated? The Gods have smiled, or, very soon, at least, They will be pacified — so claims the priest;

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Iphigenia

And Neptune’s winds, obedient to our will, Only await the blood his hand must spill.4 Already our ships their restless sails deploy, And at his word they turn their prows toward Troy. For me, while I confess that it would please My love, if heav’n held back the favoring breeze; Though with regret I leave this happy strand, Where I’m about to light the nuptial brand; Must I not, after all, be grateful for This chance to seal our bond in Trojan gore, And ’neath Troy’s smoking ruins inter the shame That stains a name allied now to my name?5

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Scene iv [achilles, clytemnestra, iphigenia, eriphyle, doris, aegina] achilles Princess, my happiness is in your hands. Your sire gives you a husband: here he stands. Come, at the altar claim his loving heart. iphigenia We’ve still some time before we need depart. The Queen will surely pardon me if I Beg of your love a boon it can’t deny. Let me present to you this young princess. Heaven has stamped her brow with nobleness; But every day fresh tears her eyes bedew. Her griefs you know: who caused those griefs but you? Yet I myself — such anger blinded me! — I callously increased her misery. If I can only, by some timely aid, Help heal the wounds my unjust words have made!6 I plead on her behalf; more I can’t do. None can undo the harm you’ve done but you.

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act iii, scene iv 

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She’s your slave, and these chains which I deplore, At your command will bind her hands no more. With such a deed begin this happy day, And from our presence let her turn away. Let all men see the king I am to wed Is not content to fill their hearts with dread, That flame and sword do not define his fame, That a wife’s tears his victories can tame, That he, disarmed by others’ sufferings, Can emulate the Gods from whom he springs.7 eriphyle Yes, my lord, soothe my sharpest misery. The Lesbian conflict made a slave of me; But it exceeds the injurious rights of war That, here in Aulis, I should suffer more.

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achilles You? eriphyle    Yes, my lord: ignoring all the rest, Could you impose on me a crueler test Than to expose my eyes to the sad sight Of my oppressors’ triumph and delight? I hear new threats against my country each day; I see a furious army march her way; This marriage, to ensure my ruination, Ignites the fire that will devour my nation.8 Allow me, far from here, unseen, alone, Ever unfortunate, ever unknown, To hide so dire a destiny from view, Of which my tears conceal the half from you.9 achilles Enough, fair princess. Only follow me:

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Iphigenia

The Greeks shall see Achilles set you free. Let the sweet moment of my happiness Be one that you too, newly freed, shall bless.

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Scene v [clytemnestra, achilles, iphigenia, eriphyle, arcas, aegina, doris] arcas The altar stands prepared, madame: the King Awaits his child, whom I’ve been asked to bring. But rather than obey his orders, sir, I’ve come to implore your help in rescuing her. achilles What are you saying? clytemnestra           Don’t keep us in suspense!

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arcas [to Achilles] It seems to me that you’re her sole defense. achilles ’Gainst whom? arcas        My lord, I scarcely dare to tell; I’ve tried my best to guard his secret well. But all’s prepared: the fillet, fire, and knife:10 I must speak out, though it should mean my life. clytemnestra I tremble. Please explain yourself to me.

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act iii, scene v 

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95

achilles Don’t be afraid to speak, whoe’er it be. arcas You are her mother; you, her fiancé: Don’t send the Princess to her father, I pray. achilles Why this mistrust of him? clytemnestra             What need we fear?

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arcas He’ll sacrifice her, if she should appear! achilles What! he? clytemnestra      His child! iphigenia          My father! eriphyle               Can it be? achilles What blind rage makes him act so ruthlessly? Who, hearing this, would not be horrified? arcas Ah! would to heav’n my words could be belied! The oracle demands, through Calchas’ voice,

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Iphigenia

This victim and admits no other choice. The Gods, who’ve sheltered Paris heretofore, Impose this price to win your winds and war. clytemnestra Could the Gods instigate a crime so dread?

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iphigenia So dire a fate how have I merited? clytemnestra I’m not surprised: yes, now I understand Why, from the altar, I was cruelly banned. iphigenia [to Achilles] This was the wedding that he had in view! arcas Your father feigned these nuptials, and, like you, The camp’s been duped by this sly strategy.

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clytemnestra My lord, you see me now on bended knee. achilles [raising her up] Madame! clytemnestra      Forget my futile queenly state; This sad abasement better suits my fate. Happy if you are softened by my pleas, A mother, unashamed, may clasp your knees. Your wife, alas! is wrested from you, Sire. I brought her up for this, my one desire. We sought you on this fatal shore, my lord, And now your name’s brought death as her reward.

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act iii, scene vi 

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97

Must she, then, begging heaven’s mercy, embrace The altar where this sacrifice takes place? You’re all she has. You must be, on this shore, Her sire, her spouse, her Gods, her guarantor.11 I read your suffering in your troubled brow. My child, I leave you with your husband now. Don’t quit her side, my lord; wait here for me. My spouse must answer for his treachery. Against the fury I feel, he can’t hold out. Some other victim Calchas must seek out. Or if, my child, I can’t prevent the worst, To seize you, they will have to kill me first.12

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Scene vi [achilles, iphigenia] achilles I’m stunned and speechless. Gods! does she not know That I’m Achilles, to address me so? A mother thinks she need implore for you? A queen, on bended knees, must stoop to sue? And shaming me by such unfounded fears, To move my heart she must resort to tears? Who has more interest in your life than I? Surely, on my good faith she can rely. This outrage touches me; whate’er betide, I’ll answer for the life of my new bride. But my just rage demands that more be done: It’s little to defend you; I must run To avenge you, and chastise this dastard who, Armed with my name, dared scheme to injure you.13 iphigenia Ah! stay, my lord, and hear me out at least.

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Iphigenia

achilles What! shall I be insulted by this beast? He sees me run to avenge his sister’s shame;14 He knows I was the first to urge his claim, And over twenty kings to make him king; Now, for my cares, my pains, for everything, As payment for our triumph over Troy And the illustrious victory we’ll enjoy, By which his vengeance will be satisfied, His coffers filled, his glory amplified, Supremely proud to have you as my wife, I asked no more than to be yours for life. Today, though, stained with blood and steeped in lies, Not only does he violate family ties, Not only must I see your heart displayed, Still steaming, underneath the fatal blade, But, letting me believe we’re to be wed, He’d have me lead you to your death instead! So that my guileless hand, guiding the knife, Instead of taking you, would take your life! How bloody would have been this wedding rite, If I had not arrived until tonight! Just think: by now you’d have been helplessly Dragged to the altar, struggling to break free, Looking about in vain for sight of me; Surprised, struck down by steel, there you would lie, Cursing my treacherous name with your last cry. He must be called to account, in Greece’s eyes, For his vile schemes, his treachery, his lies. Your husband’s honor should concern you too: You must, then, madame, feel the way I do. The brazen, barbarous man who framed this ruse Must learn whose name it is he’s dared abuse. iphigenia Alas! if you still hold your lover dear,

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act iii, scene vi 

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99

If her last prayer, my lord, you’d deign to hear, It’s now that you must prove your love to me; For this cruel man you’d brave so recklessly, This bloody foe of whom you think so ill, Whate’er he’s done, he is my father still. achilles Your father? After such nefarious schemes, More like his daughter’s murderer he seems. iphigenia He is my father, sir, I say once more, A father whom I love, whom I adore, Who loves me too, and who, until today, Has proved his love for me in every way. My heart has cherished him from infancy; Whatever gives him grief, gives grief to me. And far from daring, by a rash accord, To approve the fury gripping you, my lord, Or, by my words, to inflame your recklessness, Be sure that if I loved you any less, I would not bear the insults and the blame With which your love’s besmirched my father’s name. Why think that he, barbarous and inhumane, Won’t shudder at the blow I must sustain? To lose a child, what father would agree? Why let me die, if he could rescue me? You wrong him if you think he hasn’t cried. Why judge him when you haven’t heard his side? Heav’ns! must his heart, oppressed by fortune’s blows, Now bear your hate to aggravate his woes? achilles What! with the many fears you’re liable to, Are these the only ones that trouble you? This heartless fiend — how call him otherwise? —

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Iphigenia

Leads you to Calchas and to your demise; And when, against his rage, I oppose my love, His peace of mind is all you’re thinking of ? I may not speak? He has your sympathy? You don’t condemn him for his perfidy? You fear for him, and you’re afraid of me? Poor showing for my passion! For my part, I thought I’d made more progress in your heart. iphigenia Ah, cruel one! my love, which you dare doubt: Don’t think it’s waited this long to burst out. You see with what a calm, indifferent eye I took the bitter news I was to die: I didn’t blanch. But if you had been there To see the violence of my despair When, newly landed here, I learned that you — For so the rumors went — had proved untrue: What heartbreak, what travail assailed me then! What hateful words I hurled at Gods and men! Then you’d have seen, my lord, with your own eyes, How, more than life itself, your love I prize.15 Who knows? It may be heaven’s jealousy Begrudged me my too great felicity. Alas! it seemed that I was raised above A mortal’s lot by such a radiant love. achilles Ah! if I’m dear to you, you must not die! Scene vii [clytemnestra, iphigenia, achilles, aegina] clytemnestra All’s lost, if on your aid we can’t rely.

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act iii, scene vii 

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Fearing my sight, the King’s avoiding me. He bars me from the altar, ruthlessly, Placing his guards on watch, who’ve taken care To cut off every passage leading there. He flees, his daring daunted by my grief.

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achilles In that case, I must come to your relief. He shall see me, madame, and hear me, too. iphigenia Ah! madame . . . Ah, my lord! what would you do? achilles Now what would you unjustly ask of me? Why must I fight with you first constantly?

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clytemnestra What do you wish, my child? iphigenia              By heav’n above, Restrain a lover maddened by his love! We must prevent this fatal interview. My lord, your ire would overmaster you: A thwarted lover knows no moderation. My father’s fiercely jealous of his station: One knows only too well the Atrides’ pride.16 Let tamer tongues, my lord, present your side. He’ll wonder why I’m late and, have no doubt, He’ll come himself — and soon — to seek me out: He’ll hear a mother moan in misery; And what inspired idea mayn’t come to me To avoid the tears that must elsewise ensue, To quell your fury, and to live for you?

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Iphigenia

achilles Since this is what you wish, I must consent. With prudent counsel he may yet relent. His reason — his good sense — make him recall, For your sake, my sake, his sake most of all. In empty talk we let the minutes fly: On actions, not on words, we must rely. [to Clytemnestra] Madame, I shall arrange things for the best. Return to your apartment now and rest. This I predict: your child won’t meet her death. Believe at least, believe, while I draw breath, The Gods have framed in vain their fell decree: More certain is this than Calchas’ augury.

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act iv, scene i 

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act iv Scene i [eriphyle, doris] doris What do you mean? What strangely maddened state Could make you envy Iphigenia’s fate? She dies within the hour, yet you confess You’re now more jealous of her happiness. Who could believe . . . ? Such wildness! How can you . . . ? eriphyle My tongue has never uttered words more true. Never has my heart, weighed down with misery, So fiercely envied her felicity. Fortunate dangers! Hopes that have proved vain!1 Did you not see her glorying in his pain? I saw those too sure signs: that’s why I fled. This hero, whom the rest of mankind dread, Who knows no tears save those he’s caused to flow, Who learned to stifle his tears long ago, And who, if what the rumors claim be true, Has sucked the blood of bears — nay, lions, too —2 This hero has been taught by her to fear: She’s seen him blanch, she’s seen him shed a tear. You pity her? What trials I’d undergo To evoke those tears that she has caused to flow!3 Were I, like her, to perish presently . . . Perish, I said? She shall not die: you’ll see. You think Achilles, faint of heart, will quail, That he won’t punish those who turned him pale? This sentence he won’t let them carry out. The Gods have issued it, I have no doubt, But to augment her glory and my plight, And render her more lovely in his sight.

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Iphigenia

See how they succor her in her distress? The Gods’ death sentence they wish to suppress; And though the sacrificial fire’s been lit, It’s still not known who shall be led to it: The camp knows naught. This silence, don’t you find, Bespeaks a father uncertain of his mind? What can he do? What courage wouldn’t give way Before the assaults awaiting him today: A mother’s rage, a daughter’s agony, The cries, the frenzy of her family, His own blood, too, so likely to betray him,4 And fierce Achilles, ready to waylay him?5 No, no, the Gods have sentenced her in vain: I’m their sole victim, and so shall remain. Ah! if I thought . . .

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doris           What do you have in mind? eriphyle What holds my anger in check? Why be resigned? Why not reveal at once all that’s occurred — The threats from heav’n that I’ve just overheard; Divulge the criminal complots under way Against their Gods, whose altars they’d betray?

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doris Ah! what a scheme, madame! eriphyle              Ah! what a joy! What grateful incense they would burn in Troy If I, to plague Greece and avenge my woes, Made Agamemnon and Achilles foes; If they, forgetting Troy for their discord, Turned on each other the uplifted sword,

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act iv, scene iii 

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And if their armies, by my revelation, Might fall a sacrifice to save my nation!

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doris I hear someone. It’s Clytemnestra: see! Restrain yourself, madame, or, better, flee. eriphyle Come, then. Inspired by fury, I’ll prevent This hateful marriage, with the Gods’ consent.

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Scene ii [clytemnestra, aegina] clytemnestra You see, Aegina, I must flee her sight, For, far from weeping, far from taking fright, My child forgives him and, despite my woe, Bids me respect the hand that aims the blow. Such constancy, such love, her words express! And, to reward his daughter’s tenderness, This monster grumbles at her tardiness! I expect him soon, seeking to know its reason, And thinking he can still conceal his treason. He’s coming. Now, without my casting blame, Let’s see if he sustains his shameful game.6 Scene iii [agamemnon, clytemnestra, aegina] agamemnon What is happening, madame? Why don’t I see My daughter here with you, as she should be? I sent Arcas to fetch her straightaway.

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Are you, perhaps, the cause of her delay? Do you refuse to heed my just demand? To approach the altar must she hold your hand? Answer.

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clytemnestra      If she must go, she’s ready to. But is there nothing, Sire, that hinders you? agamemnon Me? clytemnestra    All your preparations have been made? agamemnon Calchas awaits; the altar is arrayed. I’ve done my righteous duty faithfully.

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clytemnestra But of the victim you say naught to me. agamemnon What’s this? With jealous care, would you undo . . . ? Scene iv [iphigenia, agamemnon, clytemnestra, aegina] clytemnestra Come, my child, come: we only wait for you; Come thank a loving father who delights To escort you to the altar for these rites.7 agamemnon What words, madame! My child, what do I see? You weep and turn your troubled eyes from me.

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Such grief! The child, the mother: both in tears! Ah! Arcas, you’ve betrayed me, it appears.8 iphigenia My father, don’t be upset, you’re not betrayed: Whatever your commands, they’ll be obeyed. My life’s your property, yours to reclaim: You need but ask, without disguise or shame. With the same trust, the same complacency, That I approved the spouse you’d promised me, I’ll offer, trusting and obedient, To Calchas’ blade a heart still innocent, And bowing to the blow that you’ve ordained, I’ll let my blood, which flows from yours, be drained. But if that trust and that obedience Seem worthy of another recompense, If you can pity a mother’s misery, Then let me say, as things now stand with me, My life has been so blest until today, I cannot wish to have it snatched away By a harsh fate which has decreed that I, Who’ve just begun to live, so soon must die. ’Twas I, as Agamemnon’s eldest child, Who called you father first, that name so mild; Who, for so long, used to delight your eye, And made you grateful to the Gods on high; Whom you embraced so oft, so tenderly, Nor deemed a father’s feelings frailty.9 Alas! what joy it gave me when I’d name The many countries you were going to tame; And thinking Troy’s defeat would soon ensue, I planned a splendid victory feast for you. I little thought that, ere the assault was led, My blood would be the first you’d have to shed. Not that my terror at death’s imminence Makes me recall your past benevolence.10 Fear not: your honor’s precious to me too,

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Nor would I shame a father such as you; And if my life alone were at risk here, I’d have suppressed a memory so dear. To my sad fate, though — can it be denied? — A mother’s and a lover’s joy are tied. A worthy prince believed this day would light The celebration of our wedding rite; Sure of my heart, which he longed to possess, Your blessing guaranteed his happiness. He knows what you intend: conceive his fears. My mother stands here and you see her tears. Pardon these words: I was endeavoring To avert the weeping that my death must bring. agamemnon My daughter, it’s too true. I don’t know why The wrathful Gods have deemed some child must die;11 But you’ve been named: an oracle’s decreed That on the altar you, my child, must bleed. To attempt to save you from their murderous laws My love didn’t need your prayers to plead your cause. I won’t say how I strove to rescue you: Trust in that love that you’ve attested to. Only last night — as you, perhaps, have heard — I quashed the order and went back on my word. You triumphed o’er the interests of Greece; For you, I sacrificed my rank, my peace. I sent Arcas to keep you from harm’s way; The Gods desired that he should go astray. Your wretched father’s plans were foiled by them: ’Twas vain to shield her whom the Gods condemn.12 My powers are feebler, child, than you may guess. What rein could curb the people’s recklessness, When, to their rash zeal leaving us a prey, Heav’n casts their too oppressive yoke away? Your hour has come: you must be reconciled. Think of your noble upbringing, my child.

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It’s hard for me to obey, but you must try. This blow will kill you, but it’s I who’ll die.13 In facing death, affirm your ancestry: Make the Gods blush to see their cruelty.14 Go now, and let the Greeks, who claim your life, See it’s my blood that flows beneath the knife.15 clytemnestra To Atreus’ and Thyestes’ race you’re true: It’s their accursed blood that flows in you. Butcher of your own child, you must at least Invite her mother to the gruesome feast!16 You monster! This, then, was the joyous rite You took such pains to arrange for our delight! The horror of endorsing heav’n’s command Did not appall you and arrest your hand? Why need you feign, for us, a false distress? You think with tears you prove your tenderness? Where are these wars you’ve waged to save your daughter? Where are the streams of blood and where the slaughter? What havoc can convince me you held out? What corpse-strewn fields forbid me to speak out? Such evidence alone would prove to me That your love fought to set your daughter free. A fatal oracle says she must die! On riddling oracles should we rely? Is not just heav’n, by such a crime, defiled? And can it crave the chaste blood of a child? If, for her crime, they’d punish Helen’s kin, Let Helen’s daughter expiate her sin: Yes, let them, rather, seek Hermione And bring her here from Sparta immediately.17 Let Menelaus ransom, with her life, His so beloved, though so guilty, wife. But you, what madness holds you in its sway, That for her crime you feel that you must pay? Indeed, why must I too be torn apart,

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And let her lawless love drain dry my heart? But, then, this object of such jealousy, Europe’s and Asia’s nemesis: is she A worthy prize for all the pains you take? How many times we blushed for Helen’s sake! Before your brother won her for his bride, Theseus stole her from her father’s side. You know — for hasn’t Calchas often said? — A secret marriage placed him in her bed; A young princess, as pledge, she bore him there, Whom Helen hid from Greece with cautious care.18 But no — a brother’s love, his wounded pride, Are hardly cares with which you’re occupied. This thirst for power that nothing can allay, The pride of seeing twenty kings obey, An empire placed into your hands to steer: These are the Gods, cruel man, whom you revere; And far from fending off this pending blow, You make it seem a boon that you bestow! Too jealous of a power men might resent, You’re quick to let your daughter’s blood be spent, Quelling, at such a price, the audacity Of those who question your authority. Is this the way a father ought to feel? At such vile treachery my senses reel! Shall this cruel priest, urged by a crueler crowd, Lay criminal hands on her and be allowed To rend her breast and, by his probing art, Consult the heav’ns in her still-heaving heart? And I, who led her here triumphantly, Shall I return alone, in agony, Passing through every blossom-scented street Where loving crowds flung flowers at her feet? No, to this butchery she shall not fall prey, Unless the Greeks would claim two lives today. I will not yield to any threat or plea.

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Nothing shall wrest my precious child from me: My bleeding arms shall guard her ruthlessly. Cruel husband, crueler father, try to tear My daughter from her mother, if you dare. Meanwhile, my child, please do as I request: Return inside; obey this last behest.

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Scene v [agamemnon, alone] agamemnon That was no worse than I anticipated: Those were the cries that, trembling, I awaited. If only, midst the woes that plague me here, I’d nothing worse than her shrill cries to fear! Great Gods, when you imposed this cruel decree, Need you have left a father’s heart in me?

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Scene vi [agamemnon, achilles] achilles Sire, what a strange report I’ve just received!19 So strange, indeed, it’s scarce to be believed. They say — how can such horror be expressed? — Your daughter dies today at your behest, That, stifling every human sentiment, To Calchas you yield up this innocent; Lured to the altar by my name, they say I was to lead her to her death today; That, duping us with hopes of nuptial joy, You thought to involve me in this shameful ploy. What say you, Sire? What am I to surmise? Will you not contradict such shocking lies?

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agamemnon To justify my actions I refuse. My child’s not privy to my sovereign views; And when it’s time for her to be apprised, You’ll learn her fate: the troops will be advised.

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achilles I know too well the fate that lies in store. agamemnon Then, if you know, what are you asking for? achilles Why ask? Just heav’n! am I to think, then, Sire, That you confess to crimes so black, so dire? You think such fell designs I’ll authorize, And let your child be slain before my eyes? That faith, that love, that honor will consent? agamemnon But you, whose words are so belligerent, Do you forget to whom you’re speaking here?

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achilles Do you forget I hold your daughter dear? That she’s the victim of your treachery? agamemnon Who bid you take charge of my family? Am I not free to guide her destiny? Am I not still her father? Are you two Already married, Prince? And can’t she do . . . ? achilles No longer does your child belong to you. Promises made to me shall not prove vain.20 While blood and hope within my heart remain —

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Since you, Sire, swore to join my fate to hers — I will defend the rights your vow confers. Was it not for me you called her to this strand? agamemnon Then blame the Gods who made such a demand; Blame Menelaus, Ulysses, all our host, Blame Calchas too, but blame Achilles most.

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achilles Me! agamemnon    You, so keen for Ilion’s overthrow, Who railed at heav’n for winds that would not blow; You, who decried the just fears troubling me And stormed about the camp so angrily. I tried to show you how she might be saved, But Troy was all you cared for, all you craved.21 The martial fields you sought I closed to you; Go seek them now: her death permits you to. achilles Just heav’n! Can I endure such taunts? How vile! With insults you compound your treacherous guile? You think I’d leave here at her life’s expense? What harm has Troy done me, to urge me hence? What interest draws me to her battlements? For whom, blind to a goddess-mother’s tears, And heedless of a frantic father’s fears, Shall I seek out the death their son must meet? When have Scamander’s shores e’er launched a fleet That dared to threaten Thessaly with defeat? And from Larissa has some craven foe Abducted my wife or my sister? No!22 Whose grievances, whose wrongs, brought me this far? I came for your sake, monster that you are:

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You, to whom I alone owed not a thing, But whom, o’er Greece and me, I had named king; You, whom my arm avenged ’gainst Lesbos’ might, Which fell in flames ere you could join the fight. And what’s the cause that’s called us to your side? So Helen’s husband can reclaim his bride? Since when has it been thought I’d let my wife Be stolen and not defend her with my life? Your brother alone, then, injured and aggrieved, May avenge the insult that his love’s received? I love your daughter; she loves me as well; In her alone my hopes and wishes dwell. A husband’s pride pledged her the aid you sought: Men, ships, and arms — but to your brother: naught. Let him pursue his ravished spouse, and try To gain a victory that my blood must buy. Troy, Helen, Paris are but names to me; Robbed of your child, I will not put to sea. agamemnon To Thessaly return, then; fly home now. Hear: I myself release you from your vow. Others, at my command, will gather round, And with your promised laurels they’ll be crowned. Their glorious feats will force the hand of fate, And Troy’s last days my troops will celebrate. I sense your scorn; your discourse has betrayed How dearly I’d have paid for your proud aid. Already you think Greece is your domain, That her kings named me their king all in vain. Proud of your valor, if you had your way, We’d march, we’d cringe, we’d tremble ’neath your sway. A favor boasted of is an offense. I want less valor, more obedience. Flee then. Your futile fury I defy. The ties that bound us once I now untie.

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achilles Be thankful that one tie restrains my ire: I still respect Iphigenia’s sire. Without that name, this king, howe’er sublime, Would have affronted me for the last time. One final word I trust you’ll comprehend: My glory and your child I shall defend. To reach the heart that you would cleave in two, Here is the breast your blade must first pass through.23

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Scene vii [agamemnon, alone] agamemnon Alone, my child was better fortified: She’s doomed now by his arrogance and pride. This reckless lover, deeming I’m afraid, Has hastened the event he thinks he’s stayed. Enough debate — his violence must be braved: My glory is at stake and must be saved. Achilles’ threats make my decision clear: Pity would seem a product of my fear. Ho, guards, to me! Scene viii [agamemnon, eurybates, guards] eurybates          My lord. agamemnon [to himself]             What shall I do? This bloody mandate can I carry through? Cruel man, this cruel ordeal can you withstand?

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Who is this enemy the Greeks demand? A mother’s waiting, who, unfazed by fear, Will shield her, should her murderous father appear. My soldiers, less bloodthirsty, will respect Their king’s own daughter, whom her arms protect. Achilles taunts, Achilles threatens me; But has my daughter lapsed in loyalty? Although the deadly altar she’d evade, The blow I aim she faces undismayed. But wait — this godless zeal: what will it gain? By killing her won’t all my hopes prove vain? Though crowns and wreaths await to deck my head, Will blood-soaked laurels please me when she’s dead? The mighty Gods I wish to mollify: Ah! what Gods could be crueler than I? No, I cannot. Let blood, let love prevail; A righteous pity does not make us frail. Yes, she shall live!24 But what becomes of me? If I don’t guard my glory jealously, Won’t proud Achilles claim the victory? This haughty blusterer, who’ll become more proud, Will think that I have yielded, that I’m cowed! Such trifling cares my mind is troubled by! His arrogance I still can mortify. My child shall prove the scourge to tame his pride: He loves her; she shall live — another’s bride. — Eurybates, call the Princess and the Queen. They need not fear. Scene ix [agamemnon, guards] agamemnon          Great Gods, if you still mean, In your stern hate, to wrest her from my hands,

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How can frail mortals counter your commands? My love has hurt, not helped her — this I know; To such a victim, though, great Gods, we owe A second chance: make your cruel wishes plain By asking for my daughter once again.

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Scene x [agamemnon, clytemnestra, iphigenia, eriphyle, eurybates, doris, guards] agamemnon Come, take your child, madame, don’t leave her side; To you her life and welfare I confide. Convey her quickly from this cruel land; My guards go too, ’neath Arcas’s command: I gladly excuse his fortunate treachery.25 Now all depends on speed and secrecy. Ulysses keeps his counsel; Calchas, too; Let neither learn what you intend to do. Hide our child well, and let the camp believe I keep her here, that you alone will leave. Flee. May the Gods, contented with my tears, Keep her from my sad sight for many years! [to the guards] Follow the Queen.

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clytemnestra          My lord! iphigenia             Ah, father dear! agamemnon Of Calchas’s cruel zeal you must keep clear. Be off, I say; to ensure your safe flight hence,

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I’ll waylay him with specious arguments. This deadly rite I’ll get him to delay, And give you a reprieve of one more day.26 Scene xi [eriphyle, doris] eriphyle We go another way now. Follow me. doris Not follow them? eriphyle         I’m beaten, finally. Achilles’ love, I see, has saved his bride. My wrath shall not be left unsatisfied. So — no more wavering. She or I must fall. Come, then. To Calchas I’ll uncover all.27

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act v, scene i 

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act v Scene i [iphigenia, aegina] iphigenia Go to my mother; don’t detain me, please: The anger of the Gods we must appease. For this ill-fated blood we’d rob them of, See what a tempest threatens from above.1 Think of the Queen, Aegina — her sad plight. See: the whole camp unites to oppose our flight; By brazen troops we find ourselves defied, Taunted with glinting spears on every side. Our guards repulsed, the Queen in swoons . . . Ah, no! It’s all too much for her: please let me go; I’d best not wait here for her futile aid, But profit from her senses’ having strayed. My sire, alas! (to be quite frank with you), My sire, in saving me, condemns me, too.

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aegina He? Why, what’s happened? iphigenia              No doubt, in his ire, The rash Achilles has provoked my sire, Who, hating him, insists that I do so: Cruel sacrifice my heart must undergo! Through Arcas he’s just made his wishes plain: He bids me never speak to him again. aegina Ah! no!

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iphigenia     Stern sentence! — sterner than he thought! You Gods, more kind: my life was all you sought! Let me obey and die. What’s this I see? Achilles! Heav’ns!2 Scene ii [achilles, iphigenia] achilles          Come, madame, follow me. Don’t fear this feckless, clamoring crowd who press About your tent, preventing your egress. Appear; and soon, before I strike a blow, This turbid tide will part and let you go. Patroclus and some chieftains of my suite Have come for you, with Thessaly’s elite. The rest surround you: thus accompanied, Beneath my flag, your safety’s guaranteed. You shall be sheltered from your foes’ offense. Let them come seek you in Achilles’ tents! What! madame, is it thus you second me? Tears are no answer to my urgent plea. You trust to such weak weapons ’gainst your foe? Make haste: your sire’s already seen them flow.3

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iphigenia I know it well, my lord: all my hopes rest Upon the mortal blow aimed at my breast.4 achilles You, die? Ah! such cruel words I can’t abide! Think of the solemn vow by which we’re tied. Think, too, of this (to waste no further breath): Achilles’ happiness dies with your death.

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iphigenia The happiness of your destiny depends Not on my wretched life: so heav’n intends. Our love misled us, and fate has decreed: Of your success my death must be the seed. Think of the glory you will reap, my lord, Which victory to valor will accord. The glorious battlefield for which you’re bound, Unmoistened by my blood, is barren ground.5 The Gods have ruled; my father must obey. In vain he sought to stand in Calchas’ way: The voice of Greece, raised up against me here, Has made the Gods’ intentions all too clear. Go now, lest I defer your glorious fate. Your oracles you now must vindicate; Show Greece the hero of her prophecies, And turn your grief against her enemies. Already Priam blanches, while Troy fears To see my pyre and trembles at your tears.6 Go; empty Troy of soldiers, while, inside, All her new widows weep that I have died. With such a hope, I gladly yield my life. If I couldn’t live to be Achilles’ wife, I trust a happy future will ensure That, through your feats, my memory will endure; And may my death, from which your fame will spring, Open the glorious lays our bards will sing.7 Farewell. Prove worthy of your godly line. achilles No, no, your dismal adieus I must decline. In vain you strive, by such a cruel address, To serve your sire and thwart my tenderness. Though you’re resolved to die, don’t think that I, Seduced by glory’s prize, would let you die! This crop of laurels, this immortal fame,

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By rescuing you now, are mine to claim. And who’d be inclined to ask support from me, If my bride’s life I could not guarantee? My love, my honor, order you to live. Believe in them; accept the aid I give. iphigenia What! if my father’s will I disobeyed, I should deserve the death I tried to evade. My foremost duty and respect are due . . . achilles Respect a spouse to whom he promised you. In vain he’d rob me of a husband’s name; Are troth and treachery, for him, the same? You, who obey his every strict command, Did not your father offer me your hand? Is your abject obedience only due When he — no father now! — renounces you? But time is pressing, Princess, and I fear . . . iphigenia What’s this? By force shall I be dragged from here? Heeding your ardent heart so culpably, You pile more misery on my misery. You hold my honor less dear than my life? Ah, Prince! spare poor Iphigenia this strife. Subject to laws which I’m forced to respect, By listening, my duty I neglect.8 Your unjust victory you must not pursue, Or with these hands, to my own honor true, I’ll free myself, in this extremity, From the injurious aid you offer me. achilles Then, cruel one, no more words. Seek, if you must,

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A death you find so beautiful and just. Bear to your father a heart that, I can see, Shows less respect for him than hate for me. I feel a righteous rage I scarce can bear. March to the altar, then; I shall fly there.9 If heav’n craves blood, its altars shall run red With more blood than its priests have ever shed! To my blind love all is permitted — all! As its first victim, that proud priest shall fall. I’ll overturn, I’ll smash the funeral pyre, And in those butchers’ blood put out its fire. And if it chance that, in the ensuing strife, Your father should be felled and lose his life, Then, seeing, from your respect, what woes ensue, You’ll realize those blows were aimed by you. [Rushes off.] iphigenia My lord! Ah, cruel one! . . . Alas! he’s flown. O you, who seek my death, see: I’m alone; Strike now, just heav’n, end life, end agony; Let fly your shafts, but aim them all at me.

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Scene iii [clytemnestra, iphigenia, aegina, eurybates, guards] clytemnestra To shield her, I’ll keep all those troops at bay. Cowards! your harried queen would you betray? eurybates No, an assault you need but authorize: You’ll see us fight and fall before your eyes. From our weak arms, though, what can be expected? ’Gainst such an army can you be protected?

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It’s not an idle throng that lies in wait: It’s the whole camp: blind, zealous, and irate. Pity is dead. Calchas, victorious, reigns: This sacrifice stern piety ordains. The King now sees his power nullified And bids us not to try to stem this tide. In vain even bold Achilles would oppose His mighty arm against that flood of foes. What can he do, madame? Who could confound Those waves of enemies in which he’d be drowned? clytemnestra On me their impious zeal let them come test, And tear life’s paltry remnant from my breast. Death is the only thing that will undo The clasp of arms that shall entwine us two. Let soul and body first part company Before I will allow . . . 10 What’s this I see? My child! iphigenia      What baleful star burned when you bore This wretched child you tenderly adore? But what can you do in our present plight? Against both Gods and men you’d have to fight. To this mad horde you wish to be exposed? Don’t brave such men, to their own king opposed, And vainly trying to keep me here with you, Risk being mauled by that ferocious crew, Only, for all your pains, to have me see A spectacle more cruel than death to me. Go; let the Greeks proceed with what they’ve planned, And leave forever this ill-fated strand. The pyre awaiting me is too nearby: The flames that rise from it would blind your eye.

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And if you love me, I beg, with my last breath, Never reproach my father for my death.11 clytemnestra What! he, who, offering you to Calchas’ knife . . . ? iphigenia What means has he not tried to save my life?

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clytemnestra How cruelly the traitor has deceived me! iphigenia He gives me back to heav’n, whence he received me. But of your love yet other fruits remain: Though I die, other ties unite you twain; Your eyes will see me live on in my brother. Thank heav’n, Orestes will console you, mother!12 — Listen: you hear the people’s restless roar? Now, madame, take me in your arms once more. Sublimely virtuous, you will not falter . . . [to Eurybates] It’s time: conduct the victim to the altar. Scene iv [clytemnestra, aegina, guards] clytemnestra Ah! you shan’t go alone, nor will I stay . . . This mob, though, throws itself athwart my way . . . Traitors, your raging bloodlust satisfy. aegina What would you do, madame? Where do you fly?

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clytemnestra Alas! my utmost efforts all prove vain: I rise from anguish but to sink again. Do I still live, who’ve died so many times? aegina Madame, here are new treacheries, new crimes! Could you have guessed what serpent — heartless, vile — Iphigenia has harbored all this while? That girl whom you brought here — Eriphyle: ’Twas she who warned the Greeks you planned to flee! clytemnestra Monster, born of Megaera’s womb, no doubt!13 To harass us, from hell you were hurled out! What! you still live? I’ll find some punishment . . . But on this victim should my rage be spent? To drown Greece and her thousand ships for me, Can’t you create some new abyss, O Sea? When, chasing them from off her sheltering strand, Aulis has vomited that murderous band, Won’t those same winds they cursed so angrily Cover your waves with their foul fleet’s debris? And you, Sun, you, who espy, here in his lair, That beast, the son of Atreus, his true heir; You, who from his sire’s feast withheld the day; Turn back: they’ve shown you that accursed way.14 — But, wretched mother, think what’s happening now! My daughter, ghastly garlands on her brow, To knives her father’s honed lays her throat bare; Calchas is poised to shed . . . How can you dare? Butchers! The Thunderer’s own pure blood will flow!15 Lightning bolts crack above, earth quakes below. These blows bespeak a God who’s been defied.

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Scene v [clytemnestra, arcas, aegina, guards] arcas No doubt, madame, a God fights on your side. Achilles answers all your prayers for you: The Greek defenses he’s now broken through. He’s at the altar; Calchas stands dismayed. The fatal sacrifice has been delayed. Threats fly, troops charge, swords glitter, arrows whine.16 Around your child he ranges, in a line, His comrades, all devoted, unafraid. Your woeful spouse, who dares not lend him aid, To shield his eyes from all the doomed and dead — Or to conceal his weeping — hides his head.17 Since he is silent, you must come along And with your words keep your defender strong. With his own hand, which blood and gore imbrue, He wishes to restore his bride to you. To guide your steps, on me you may rely. You need not fear. clytemnestra          I, fear? No, let us fly! The greatest peril could not frighten me Or keep me here. But, heav’ns! whom do I see? Ulysses! It’s too late — my child has died! Final Scene [ulysses, clytemnestra, arcas, aegina, guards] ulysses No, your child lives; the Gods are satisfied. Rest easy: heav’n restores her willingly.

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clytemnestra She lives! And you convey this news to me! ulysses Yes, I, who urged your husband to pursue His painful duty ’gainst your child and you; Jealous of Greece’s honor, ’twas I, I know, Whose sober counsels caused your tears to flow; But now I come, since heav’n’s appeased at last, To assuage the pain I’ve caused you in the past. clytemnestra My child! I’m stunned! Prince, how did this occur? What miracle, what God, has rescued her? ulysses The awe, the joy, the rapture gripping you Have, in this happy moment, seized me too. This nearly proved for Greece a fatal day. Already o’er the camp Discord held sway; With fatal blindfolds all our eyes were bound; Her deadly call to arms was heard to sound. To your child’s frightened gaze was then disclosed Achilles on her side, all Greece opposed. But fierce Achilles, facing such great odds, Dismayed our men and disarrayed the Gods. Already clouds of arrows dimmed the skies; Blood flowed; the toll of dead began to rise. Between the camps, then, Calchas made his way, Eyes flashing, stern-browed, hair in disarray, Full of the God within, as all could see: Achilles, Greeks, he said, attend to me. The God who now gives utterance through my voice Explains his oracle and reveals his choice. Although it’s Helen’s blood the heav’ns require, Another Iphigenia must mount the pyre.

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Theseus abducted Helen for his bride, And, secretly, the marriage knot was tied. They had a child, whom Helen hid from view; She named that child Iphigenia, too. I saw their passion’s fruit; her future loomed Malign and sinister: the girl was doomed. With borrowed name, her evil destiny And her black rage have drawn her here, I see. She sees me, hears me, trembles near at hand. It’s she, in short, the wrathful Gods demand.18 Thus Calchas. All the camp stood rigidly, Listening, appalled, then eyed Eriphyle, Who, near the altar, was, perhaps, dismayed The fatal sacrifice should be delayed: ’Twas she who had just breathlessly revealed To all the Greeks the flight you had concealed. Her birth, her fate, stirred wonder in us all, But since her death would purchase Troy’s downfall, She was condemned, aloud, by all our men, Who spoke the fatal sentence there and then. Calchas had raised his arm to strike, when she Cried out to him, Stop! Keep away from me. Mine is the blood of heroes, so you’ve said: By your profane hands it shall not be shed.19 Then, flying to the altar, as if possessed, She plunged the sacral blade into her breast. Scarce had her scarlet blood suffused the ground, When the Gods’ thunder started to resound; The winds, then, moved the air to happy song; With booming voice the vast sea sang along. The far shore brimmed with breakers, foaming white.20 The pyre appeared to set itself alight. The heavens, flashing lightning, opened wide: By those blest beams we all felt sanctified. Some say Diana, descended from the skies, Approached the altar in a cloud’s disguise,

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And rising with the fires that sought the sky, Our incense and our prayers bore up on high. The crowd rushed off. Iphigenia, though, Midst all our joy, alone wept for her foe.21 From Agamemnon’s hands receive your child; He and Achilles, newly reconciled, Burn to embrace you.22 Come along now, please; Their oaths will join your august families. clytemnestra What incense can I burn, what prayers say, To recompense Achilles and repay The boons, O heav’n, you’ve blessed me with today!

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iphigenia: notes and commentary

act i 1. This opening exchange immediately establishes an intimate tone between the paterfamilias and the family retainer, a tone consistent with what is, after all, the tale of a beleaguered family. Compare the similar opening of The Fratricides, where, however, it is the servant, Olympia, who awakens the mistress, Jocasta; in both cases, a careworn parent is anxious about the possible death of a child. And in the first scene of Athaliah, which also opens at daybreak (“The temple dome glows white with dawn’s first flare” [Athaliah I.i.160]), Jehoiada, the high priest, is given cause for concern about the safety of his foster son, Joash. 2. Racine marks the significance of this line, which provides the first hint of the crisis Greece is facing (the immobility of the winds, which thwarts her offensive against Troy), by a rare and beautiful employment of onomatopoeia: “Mais tout dort, et l’armée, et les vents, et Neptune” (But all sleep: the army, the winds, and Neptune). I have sought to achieve the same sense of immobility with the drone of the repeated nasals (five in Racine’s line, seven in mine) and the doze of the voiced sibilants. Racine resorts to onomatopoeia again, for a similar purpose, later in this scene (line 50). 3. This abrupt maxim, at once complaining and complacent, is adapted from Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, Racine’s source play. It speaks to an essential element of classical tragedy, namely, that the protagonists be of lofty station, first, so that they may be subject to a hubris that will undo them, and, second, so that their consequent fall may be precipitous. (Whether Iphigenia, with its radiant conclusion, in which all ends well [except for the foredoomed Eriphyle], can be considered a neoclassical

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tragedy is another question; certainly, the grievously tormented Agamemnon, with so much to lose and so much to gain, achieves a tragic stature.) Agamemnon bewails his yoke, but considers it a proud one (“joug superbe”), revealing the inveterate pride that characterizes his whole family. Later, Iphigenia declares: “One knows only too well the Atrides’ pride” (III.vii.18). Considerations of pride, reputation, and loss of face (too numerous to cite) are a constant preoccupation of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and even the otherwise meek and docile Iphigenia. Achilles, too, shares such concerns (see I.ii.89 –97), scorning to live in the “blest obscurity” that Agamemnon is momentarily moved to covet. Also see lines 77–78 of this scene and note 14. 4. The first of many instances in this play of Racine’s characteristic dramatic irony. Here, the ironic point will not be made explicit until Agamemnon’s lengthy récit (beginning at line 41), but Racine’s audience would have known that the life of his daughter Iphigenia has been placed in jeopardy by the demands of an oracle. 5. This “richest realm” comprised Argos, Mycenae, and Tiryns. 6. Agamemnon could claim direct descent from Zeus ( Jupiter or Jove) on his paternal grandfather’s side (Zeus  →  Tantalus  →  Pelops  →  Atreus  →  Agamemnon), as well as on his paternal grandmother’s (Zeus  →  Ares  →  Oenomaus  →  Hippodamia  →  Atreus  →  Agamemnon). 7. Since Clytemnestra was the child of mortals (Leda and her husband, Tyndareus), when Agamemnon wed her his blood “joined Jove’s blood in his bride” only inasmuch as Clytemnestra’s sister Helen was of godly descent, having been famously sired by Jove in his avatar as a swan. Helen’s putative father, however, was Tyndareus, who is mentioned as such later in this act (I.iii.26). 8. This couplet, expressing Arcas’s concern for Agamemnon’s son, daughter, and wife, focuses our attention on one of the major concerns of the play: the imperiled family. Indeed, Roland Barthes asserts that “the family . . . is in fact the central character of the play” (Barthes, 114). 9. This is another of Racine’s onomatopoetically suggestive verses (“et la rame inutile  / Fatigua vainement une mer immobile”). See note 2 above. In this case, I have attempted to reproduce his effect with liquid labials and soughing sibilants, as well as with the offbeat stress of the longvoweled “smooth” to slow the rhythm of the line. 10. That is, Diana, virgin goddess, associated with the moon and the hunt; the Roman counterpart to the Greek Artemis. In the following line, the three kings (mentioned by name in the French) are Menelaus (Agamemnon’s brother and Helen’s husband), Nestor, and Ulysses. 11. Calchas, priest of Apollo, was revered as the most gifted seer among the Greeks at the time of the Trojan War. He appears most notably in the Iliad and — unrecognizably metamorphosed — in Shakespeare’s Troilus and

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Cressida. It should be remarked — indeed, it is remarkable — that neither in this play nor in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis is any explanation given, or even sought, regarding why the goddess, speaking through Calchas, demands the sacrifice of Iphigenia in exchange for the resurgence of the winds necessary for the Greek fleet to set sail. But whereas in Euripides’ version the question remains unresolved, in Racine’s, one can infer from his newly minted denouement a plausible, if not wholly satisfactory, justification for the quid pro quo stipulated by the oracle. See note 19 for Act V. 12. This oracular pronouncement breaks up the pattern of rhymed alexandrines. One finds among Racine’s plays several other excursions into the strophic forms of lyric poetry, which offer different rhyme patterns and lines of variegated length. The Fratricides, for example, features another compactly versified oracular utterance, and its fifth act opens with an elegiac three-strophe monologue for Antigone. Bajazet contains two crucial letters, the first comprising two quatrains flanking a couplet, and the second, two quatrains. Racine’s last two plays, the “sacred dramas” Esther and Athaliah, feature extended choral odes. 13. Raymond Picard (1136) makes the useful point that such oracles, being, strictly, neither decrees nor predictions, offer the recipient a choice, or rather, a dilemma: in this case, whether to agree to the sacrifice of Iphigenia as the price for waging and winning the war against Troy (“To spend the blood that buys our victory,” as Ulysses ruthlessly puts it [I.iii.42]), or to spare her life at the expense of the rich plunder and the everlasting glory that the sack of Troy would assure. That dilemma is the primary catalyst of the drama. Resolving that dilemma is rendered even more problematic by the misleading (as it will prove to be) wording of the oracular pronouncement. (This is true of The Fratricides as well, but there the wording is ambiguous, rather than misleading.) 14. Here Ulysses, as Agamemnon relates, has painted for him a cautionary picture of the very obscurity Agamemnon briefly, and with little conviction, pined for at the beginning of this scene (lines 10 –12). 15. The news of Achilles’ victory represents an exceptional case in Racine of rapid telecommunication (comparatively speaking). Elsewhere in his plays, reports of victory, death, and so on are very slow in arriving and are, more often than not, inaccurate: in Mithridates and Phaedra the erroneous reports of the death of, respectively, Mithridates and Theseus are significant catalysts of the action; in Bajazet the outcome of a battle that has taken place long before the rise of the curtain is not revealed until the play is more than half over. (In my version, I must admit, Achilles’ return from the scene of his triumph is even swifter than in Racine’s, where Agamemnon remarks that Achilles merely “followed closely” the reports of his victory. I also indulge in some hyperbole in the prior couplet, where, in the original [literally translated], “Achilles goes to battle and triumphs on the run.”)

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16. Agamemnon’s desperate hope that the sacrifice of his daughter (like Abraham’s of his son Isaac) may be a test (but in a reverse sense from the biblical story, where the “right” decision is to submit to God’s command) turns out to be close to the truth: he would be committing an unpardonable crime in letting his daughter be killed, since, as the priest Calchas later clarifies, the Iphigenia the gods intend as the sacrificial victim is a different Iphigenia, namely, Helen’s unacknowledged daughter, who appears in the play under the pseudonym Eriphyle. Like the “ram caught in a thicket by his horns” (Genesis 22:13), which the angel of the Lord provides for Abraham to offer in place of his son, this other Iphigenia waits in the shadows nearby, but is by no means so innocent a victim. 17. Arcas had served in the house of Clytemnestra’s father, Tyndareus, king of Sparta. 18. Cf. Bajazet, where the sultaness, Roxane, declares that “once he [Bajazet] leaves [the seraglio], he’s dead” (Bajazet V.iii.4). There, the contingent outcome is a threat; here, a fear. 19. In Bajazet, the wily vizier, Akhmet, remarks, “I know the people’s slavish piety: / They bear religion’s yoke devotedly” (Bajazet I.ii.23 –24). And in Britannicus, Nero’s corrupt adviser, Narcissus, observes of the Romans, “To meekly bear the yoke they’ve long been trained:  / They love to kiss the hand that holds them chained” (Britannicus IV.iv.51–52). In Racine, the masses are frequently described as willingly servile, especially to religious authority. In the following scene, however, Ulysses cautions Agamemnon not to “incite a furious horde / To choose between the Gods and you” (I.iii.19 –20), and Agamemnon, understanding all too well that the herd mentality and the mob mentality are but two sides of the same coin, echoes Ulysses’ warning when, after it has been revealed that he plans to sacrifice Iphigenia, he makes this self-exculpatory disclaimer: My powers are feebler, child, than you may guess. What rein could curb the people’s recklessness, When, to their rash zeal leaving us a prey, Heav’n casts their too oppressive yoke away? (IV.iv.70 –73) 20. The first reference to the pseudonymous Eriphyle. (See note 16 above.) Agamemnon’s invented insinuation comes closer to the truth than he is aware, since in fact Eriphyle would love nothing better than to steal Achilles away from her benefactress. 21. Thessaly is Achilles’ homeland. 22. Phrygia was the country in Asia Minor where Troy was located; “Phrygian” is commonly used interchangeably with “Trojan.”

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23. Achilles refers to Helen, Agamemnon’s wife’s sister as well as his brother’s wife (Agamemnon and Menelaus, like Clytemnestra and Helen, being siblings). Paris is the son of Priam, king of Troy. 24. Georges Forestier (1585) calls attention to the poetic exaggeration here: Troy is too far removed from Lesbos to have “seen the flames.” 25. The second reference to Eriphyle. To ensure the integration of this newly adopted character into Euripides’ plot, Racine has her referred to no less than three times in Act I, and, indeed, she makes her appearance in Act II before Iphigenia herself. In his preface to the play, Racine emphasizes that “the denouement of the play is derived from the central action of the play itself.” Accordingly, the allusion to her as “another Helen” foreshadows that denouement, where she is revealed as, less figuratively, another Helen: as, in fact, Helen’s daughter. 26. Thetis, a Nereid (sea nymph or goddess), was Achilles’ mother; Peleus, a mortal, was his father. Peleus’s own father, Aeacus, was, however, a son of Zeus. 27. Cf. I.i.10 –12 and 77–78. 28. Patroclus was Achilles’ bosom companion; in the Iliad, his death at Hector’s hands finally incites Achilles, angrily brooding in his tent on the Trojan shore, to rejoin the fray. 29. Picard (1137) points out that it is Achilles’ perseverance in pushing for the assault on Troy that indirectly condemns Iphigenia (the very argument Agamemnon will use to defend himself against Achilles’ accusations in their epic confrontation in Act IV), at least according to the ostensible meaning of the oracle; but Iphigenia herself, no less proud and no less covetous of immortality than Achilles, urges him to seek glory at Troy (V.ii), though believing it can only be won at the cost of her life. 30. Racine’s couplet, literally translated, reads: We feared his love, and today he himself, by a fortunate error, arms us against him. Judging that the original sentence — almost late-Jamesian in its blend of concentration and vagueness — was susceptible of too many possible constructions, I have tried to render its correct meaning as explicit as possible. But this couplet (again, like late James) is thought-provoking enough to warrant further commentary. Agamemnon and Ulysses having aroused Achilles’ patriotic fervor and craving for immortality to the highest pitch — Ulysses by design, slyly taunting him with having his impending marriage, rather than his country’s interests, at heart (I.ii.22 –34), Agamemnon inadvertently, by his all-too-understandable, desperate attempt to call off the Trojan expedition (I.ii.54 –58) — Ulysses trusts that Achilles’ urgent, irresistible determination to “make proud Troy atone” (I.ii.110), even at the cost of his own life, will stand them in good stead when he learns that they have been complicit in the sacrifice of his bride-to-be, as they will be

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able to deflect the blame onto him, for having been so determined to persevere in a campaign whose success, whose very launching, depended on that sacrifice. And indeed, when Achilles calls Agamemnon to account in their blistering confrontation late in Act IV, Agamemnon does pass the buck (“Blame Menelaus, Ulysses, all our host, / Blame Calchas too, but blame Achilles most” [IV.vi.39 –40]), availing himself of just that defensive maneuver: “I tried to show you how she might be saved, / But Troy was all you cared for, all you craved” (IV.vi.45 –46). Of course, at that point, Iphigenia’s sacrifice not having come off as planned, the two conspirators have to contend with something far more troubling than Achilles’ outrage about a fait accompli, for now Achilles is just as determined to back out of the expedition to Troy and, worse yet, to protect Iphigenia, even at the cost of his own life, from a fate that they believe is the sine qua non of that offensive. 31. In my rendition, a breezily onomatopoetic line, with its five gusty w’s. 32. Xanthus is another name for Scamander, one of the two main rivers of Troy, the other being Simois. 33. Tyndareus was Helen’s putative father. See note 7 above. 34. One of Racine’s mercantile metaphors. Cf. Orestes’ lines: “They closed their temples, thwarting my intent, / And saved the blood that I’d have gladly spent” (Andromache II.ii.17–18). And in Athaliah, Jehoiada, the high priest, advises Joash “to repay the Lord the debt you owe” (Athaliah IV.ii.5). 35. The headband (often comprising a blindfold) prepared for sacrificial victims. Telemachus is Ulysses’ son (as becomes clear in line 53). He is immortalized in Homer’s Odyssey as the brave and worthy son of Odysseus (the Greek version of Ulysses) and his wife, Penelope. 36. Racine is quite fond of setting up this sort of ironic junction between scenes, one scene concluding with some character confidently, or at least hopefully, expecting a certain outcome, only to have another character punctually appear (signaling the beginning of a new scene) and frustrate or overturn that expectation. Here, no sooner does Agamemnon wax optimistic about Iphigenia’s delayed arrival than Eurybates appears, informing the king that his daughter is about to arrive. Another striking example occurs in Andromache, when Orestes, having just convinced himself that Pyrrhus no longer has designs on his beloved Hermione, is greeted by Pyrrhus in the very next scene (II.iv) with the news of his imminent marriage to Hermione; there, in the wake of Orestes’ fatuous optimism, the effect is almost comic. Yet another example occurs at the end of The Fratricides, when Creon, congratulating himself on winning the hand of his niece, Antigone, is abruptly informed of her suicide (V.v). Often, it is merely the untimely advent of the least expected, least desired, most disturbing person that triggers the ironic effect (see, for example, V.i.24).

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37. The third reference to Eriphyle; her hope that Calchas will “clarify her fate” suggests future revelations, and, indeed, in the final scene of the play, he will reveal her true identity both to the audience and to Eriphyle herself. 38. Not only must kings bear the “proud yoke” that most men are unburdened by (see I.i.10 –12), but they must bear the burden of their sufferings in silence. Phaedra voices the same grievance: “Closely observed, and suffering all the while, / I didn’t dare to indulge my grief at leisure” (Phaedra IV.vi.31–32). 39. Ulysses tries to fix Agamemnon’s eye on the prize of immortal glory. Later, Iphigenia, also peering through the dim mists of time toward a distant posterity, urges Achilles on with a prospect of his immortality: “And may my death, from which your fame will spring, / Open the glorious lays our bards will sing” (V.ii.46 –47).

act ii 1. With Eriphyle’s first words, an antithesis is set up between her despairing isolation and the blissful closeness of Iphigenia’s family, whose integrity, though threatened, will triumphantly reaffirm itself by the end of the play. 2. The conqueror of Lesbos, as mentioned earlier (I.ii.6), is Achilles. 3. Only later in this scene is it explained that Eriphyle, who believes she is a Trojan, was on her way to Troy to learn her parentage and, as she hoped, to be restored to her due rank and station, when Achilles’ onslaught intervened. 4. It is open to question whether Eriphyle, one of Racine’s most selfknowing characters, learns anything new about herself when she finds out whose child she is. See note 19 for Act V. 5. This will certainly prove true in the case of the other, weightier oracle (I.i.57– 62). Cf.  Clytemnestra’s “On riddling oracles should we rely?” (IV.iv.99). 6. Since the character of Eriphyle is Racine’s own creation, it follows that her confidante, Doris, and, a fortiori, Doris’s father, appear nowhere else; nor, in this play, do we ever learn her father’s name, and we can only infer that he was somehow privy to information about Eriphyle’s parentage and personal history. 7. Eriphyle, masochistically savoring her own unlovableness, insists that the pity and compassion Achilles demonstrated must have been insincere and, thus, could hardly have engendered her mad infatuation for him. 8. As Forestier (1587) points out, Eriphyle’s recounting of the events of “that dread day” recalls Andromache’s great speech (Andromache

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III.viii.21–32) which begins: “Recall, Cephise, recall that cruel night,  / That night that proved for Troy an endless night.” The tone and tenor of her narrative, however, are diametrically opposed to those of Eriphyle’s, as Forestier further observes: “Although he is the author of a like carnage, Achilles seems to arouse as much love in Eriphyle as his son Pyrrhus seems to arouse horror in Andromache.” 9. Although the implication of this line is, I believe, sufficiently clear, the French is more brutally frank: “les cruelles mains par qui je fus ravie” (the cruel hands by which I was ravished). 10. This line is dramatically ironic before the fact, since it will later be revealed that her parents’ love was hardly less unbridled than her own. See Ulysses’ narrative in the final scene of the play (V.fin.sc.27–37). 11. Iphigenia’s unintentionally stinging outburst is the first of many instances of dramatic irony in this scene; indeed, one might say that dramatic irony is the raison d’être of the whole scene. There is a further irony in this couplet, for it is in order to preserve Greece’s reverence and love for him that Agamemnon has agreed to the sacrifice of his daughter. 12. She refers to Paris, the abductor of Helen. 13. This is one of Racine’s trickily elliptical logical sequences, here further complicated by what seems to be an inverted temporal relationship between cause and effect. Racine’s use of the future tense (“will cost many tears,” as the French translates) suggests that after Paris’s death, his conquerors will weep. Had Racine (less piquantly) used the future perfect (“His death will have caused his conquerors’ tears to flow”), the implication of Agamemnon’s doom-laden prediction, while remaining no less inscrutable to Iphigenia — and, clearly, Agamemnon is careful to say nothing that might allow his daughter to suspect the truth — would have been more easily scrutable for the reader/audience. That implication, unraveled, is as follows: in order for the goal of wreaking vengeance on Paris to be achieved, Iphigenia will first have to be sacrificed, and it is her death that will cause the Greeks’ tears to flow — long before Paris would be killed (by Philoctetes, with a poisoned arrow). 14. This last devastatingly ironic exchange, discharged in relentless stichomythia (an intense exchange of single lines of dialogue), is closely adapted from Euripides. 15. One presumes, considering that Iphigenia has just seen her father so distraught, that it is for him that she offers up her prayers. In any case, they are, typically, not for herself. 16. Cf.  II.i.29 –32, of which these four lines are a close paraphrase (like some well-rehearsed spiel). Eriphyle, as we have seen, is prone, given the least provocation, to recur to the two subjects that obsess her: her pathetic, quasi-orphaned state, which she can and does freely air in public, and her passion for Achilles, as to which she needs to exercise greater

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circumspection. For an involuntary lapse thereof, see II.v.18 –22 (and note 18 below); also, see III.iv.39 –42 and note 9 for Act III. 17. See note 26 for Act I. 18. Even as she attempts to disguise her attraction as repulsion, Eriphyle fires herself up by her evocation of Achilles’ barbarous masculinity and can scarcely keep a lid on her simmering passion; one whiff of the escaping fumes is enough to alert the keen-nosed Iphigenia to the subterfuge (lines 22 –28 below). 19. One of Racine’s great, supercharged, incantatory couplets: “Ces morts, cette Lesbos, ces cendres, cette flamme,  / Sont les traits dont l’amour l’a gravé dans votre âme” (These dead, this Lesbos, these ashes, this flame / Are the strokes by which love has engraved him in your soul). 20. In Andromache, Hermione, in a jealous rage, envisions for herself the same humiliating fate at the hands of her rival (although there she is not addressing her rival, but her lover, Pyrrhus, who actually is faithless): “You’d have me trail, in tears, the Trojan’s [Andromache’s] chair” (Andromache IV.v.55). In Bajazet, too, mention is made of this practice (a Roman one, in fact): “One of your own emperors . . . / Saw his wife chained behind the victor’s chair / And dragged, in ignominy, everywhere” (Bajazet II.i.36, 38 –39). 21. The meaning of “meanness” here is Eriphyle’s undistinguished (as she allows the world to suppose) ancestry; Iphigenia is saying, in other words, “You, a nobody, boast of having won Achilles from me, a king’s daughter.” Iphigenia’s accusation, while it is based on a false assumption (that Eriphyle has alienated Achilles’ affections), demonstrates a cognizance of Eriphyle’s aggressive humility (like that of the malevolently “ ’umble” Uriah Heep in Dickens’s David Copperfield). It nonetheless manages, oddly enough, to sound not only like something Eriphyle would say, but like something she does say in the “strangely maddened state” (IV.i.1) we will find her in at the beginning of Act IV: “The Gods have issued it [Iphigenia’s death sentence], I have no doubt, / But to augment her glory and my plight, / And render her more lovely in his [Achilles’] sight” (IV.i.26 –28). Eriphyle’s twisted declaration, betraying the disquieting mixture of paranoia and perverse self-aggrandizement that so marks her character, echoes her earlier outburst: “No doubt it gives the Gods untold delight / To wound me with the weapons of their spite” (II.i.91–92), a bitter boast, which, tellingly, recalls the beginning of Orestes’ “mad scene” at the end of Andromache, as his mind swiftly becomes unhinged by the news of Hermione’s suicide: I praise you, Gods, for your tenacity: With constant care to aggravate my pain, The height of grief you’ve helped me to attain. Your hate has made my misery your delight;

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I’ve lived but to exemplify your spite And feature as misfortune’s paragon. (Andromache V.fin.sc.32 –37) 22. Achilles’ astonishment, confusion, and near incoherence at the sight of Iphigenia, which she interprets as confirmation of the rumors of his unfaithfulness, provoke the sort of sarcastic, stinging, soubrettish retort that would not be out of place in a comic context. In Molière’s Tartuffe, for example, when Valère, Mariane’s beau, provoked by jealousy, hints that he has another sweetheart eager to marry him should Mariane jilt him, she replies, with similar sarcasm, “I’m sure your gain outweighs your loss, all told, / And you’ll be but too easily consoled,” assuring him that “I’m tickled pink to hear it; as for me, / I wish the fait were already accompli” (Tartuffe, II.iv.727–28, 741–42, translations mine). There are other minute infusions of comic elements into Iphigenia, to some extent bearing out Roland Barthes’s provocative assertion that “without Eriphyle, Iphigénie would be a very good comedy” (Barthes, 116). Perhaps we can find additional corroboration of that assertion if we consider the following brief synopsis (slightly skewed for my purpose, I admit) of the plot of Iphigenia “without Eriphyle”: a father, having come under the influence of a man who holds himself out as God’s spokesman, is persuaded to capitulate to his demands and yield up his daughter to him, against the violent protests of his whole family and of his daughter’s prospective husband, with whom she is in love; the daughter herself, though she feels obliged to yield to her father’s demands out of a sense of filial love, duty, and gratitude, nonetheless makes an impassioned plea to her father to reconsider his decision, but to no avail. When, at the eleventh hour, it turns out that the man of God has claimed the daughter under what one might call false pretenses, and the truth behind his representations is exposed, the daughter is spared and is reunited with her lover. While the foregoing is, as I have suggested, a somewhat strained précis of Iphigenia, it is a fairly accurate one of Tartuffe. Nor is the instance of comic osmosis cited at the beginning of this note the only such seepage between the two plays. But, after all, Tartuffe “is not at all the issue here” (to snatch a phrase from Racine’s preface); so, not wishing to follow the example of Racine (who nevertheless proceeds to make Euripides’ Alcestis the issue for the remainder of that preface), I will merely suggest that, since the premise of a father determined to “sacrifice” his daughter for what he believes are just and justifiable reasons is a paradigmatic one for comedy — commedia dell’arte, Molière, and opera buffa would hardly exist without it — further examination of this Iphigenia-Tartuffe nexus might throw some light on the ways in which the dynamics of comedy manifest themselves in the design, the diction, the characterizations, and the confrontations of Racine’s Iphigenia.

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23. In this speech and in her next, Eriphyle, like some psychotic version of an Austen flirt, masochistically goads herself by insisting on Achilles’ burning love for Iphigenia. 24. The problematic coexistence of love and glory is a recurrent theme in Racine’s plays (albeit to a far lesser extent than in Pierre Corneille’s); it is the central conflict in Berenice, and is treated in Bajazet, Britannicus, and Andromache as well. In the last, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, remarks, “Perhaps one day I’ll learn to accommodate  / The affairs of love to the affairs of state” (Andromache I.ii.102 –3). 25. Cf. the similarly murderous intentions expressed by Hermione: “I’ll die, but with my vengeance satisfied: / For when I’m dead, another will have died” (Andromache V.ii.62 – 63); and by Roxane: “Uniting both of them [Bajazet and Atalide] then with one knife, / I’ll turn it on myself and take my life” (Bajazet IV.iv.40 –41).

act iii 1. That is, were she herself, Helen’s sister, to appear. 2. These lines emphasize the overriding importance of the family bond (here extended to embrace Achilles), whose strength the impending crisis will test to the limit. 3. Unlike Iphigenia, who was keenly sensitive to her father’s distracted state when they met (II.ii), the impetuous Achilles is untroubled by Agamemnon’s distraction. 4. Another instance of the dramatic irony that is rife in a play in which, for nearly three acts, only Agamemnon (among the principals) and the audience know what impends. Cf. Bajazet, where everyone (characters and audience) knows from the outset about the death sentence that threatens Bajazet, and no one (neither characters nor audience) learns until the very end of the play that Roxane’s life was forfeit as well (that “it was . . . the Sultan’s secret plan  / To sacrifice her lover, then Roxane” [Bajazet V.xi.6 –7]): in that situation, dramatic irony is precluded, since characters and audience are “on the same page.” As in several other plays of Racine, however, the clandestine nature of the central love relationship in Bajazet (between Atalide and the title character) provides ample opportunity for dramatic irony. 5. The shame that stains his future in-laws’ name is the elopement of Helen, Menelaus’s wife, with Paris, and their adulterous affair. 6. Clearly, Iphigenia has once again “replace[d] the blindfold which I’d put aside” (II.v.32) and been reconciled with Eriphyle; equally clearly, she has had an éclaircissement with her fiancé, Achilles, and they have been reconciled.

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7. Whereas Eriphyle is constantly aroused by thinking of Achilles in his most brutal role as conqueror and destroyer, Iphigenia wishes to see him defined by his gentler, nobler qualities as well. 8. Their marriage, as the harbinger of the campaign against Troy, will signal the destruction of what she mistakenly believes to be her homeland — mistakenly, since the denouement will reveal that she is as Greek as the other characters. 9. Eriphyle, harping once more on her pitiful state, wishes, with characteristic masochism, to remain rootless, without family or friends. (The other half of her pitiable plight, which she strategically suppresses, is, we can surmise, her love for Achilles.) 10. The usual accoutrements of a sacrifice, human or animal, the fillet being the ritual headband or blindfold. 11. Another potent sequence of four nouns (again undiluted by any conjunction) used to eloquently enforce a point, namely, her daughter’s utter reliance on her fiancé: “Elle n’a que vous seul. Vous êtes en ces lieux / Son père, son époux, son asile, ses Dieux” (She has no one but you. You are, in this place, / Her father, her husband, her asylum, her Gods). Cf. II.v.25 –26. 12. In Achilles’ climactic confrontation with Agamemnon, he too vows to act as a shield for the helpless Iphigenia: “To reach the heart that you would cleave in two, / Here is the breast your blade must first pass through” (IV.vi.103 –4). 13. Achilles’ anger is partially fueled by the personal insult implicit in his name’s having been used to lure Iphigenia to Aulis to marry him. In Racine’s source, Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, although there is no preexisting love interest between Achilles and Iphigenia, Agamemnon makes use of the same ploy. There, Achilles, out of a mixture of anger at his having been thus duped and a growing respect for Iphigenia’s stoic courage, and in response to Clytemnestra’s urgent pleas on behalf of her daughter, comes to Iphigenia’s defense. 14. In French (and English) literature of this period (and continuing into the twentieth century), “sister” could signify “sister-in-law”; here, Helen is doubly Agamemnon’s sister-in-law, being both his brother’s wife and his wife’s sister. See note 5 above. 15. While this line and the three preceding ones do not appear in the 1697 edition (and this is the only important textual variant in Iphigenia), there is no justification for their omission. Picard (1140) reinstates them “because the sequence of ideas certainly indicates that it is a question of a printer’s error”; Forestier (1580), however, maintains that Racine deliberately excised these lines “in which Iphigenia expresses with violence her love for Achilles — violence which Racine finally judged to be excessive.” I must side with Picard here for two reasons: first, Iphigenia, usually so

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demure and pliant, can, when provoked, be quite outspoken, whether in her confrontations with Eriphyle, with Achilles, or with her mother; and, second, as Picard suggests, the omission of these lines creates a noticeable disruption of the rhetorical rhythm so characteristic of the French classical school. 16. The Atrides are the sons of Atreus: Agamemnon and Menelaus.

act iv 1. The “fortunate dangers” are the perils hanging over Iphigenia’s head, which have aroused Achilles’ anger and even elicited his tears. (See IV.x.5 for a similar oxymoron.) The “hopes that have proved vain” are her own with respect to Achilles. 2. Forestier (1592) informs us that Eriphyle’s awestruck description of Achilles is adopted from the Roman poet Statius’s unfinished epic, the Achilleid, wherein Achilles himself gives this account of his youth: “I never shed the usual childish tears, nor did I appease my hunger with ordinary fare, but enjoyed feasting on the wild flesh of lions and sucking their stillhot blood.” Again, her fixation on the savage side of Achilles’ nature says much about Eriphyle. 3. Although Eriphyle is enthralled by Achilles’ savage nature, she still envies Iphigenia’s power to tame it. Phaedra, too, in love with Hippolytus, her proud and austere stepson, whose heart she had concluded (from his rejection of her) was unsusceptible to love’s influence, is driven to distraction when she learns that “another [i.e., Aricia] . . . has softened his stern air, / Searched his cruel eyes, and found some pity there” (Phaedra IV.v.17–18). 4. That is, his natural paternal feelings, which might move him to abort the sacrifice. 5. In these last two couplets Eriphyle has given us an accurate preview of the remainder of this act, which features the grueling succession of confrontations Agamemnon must weather: with Iphigenia, with Clytemnestra, with Achilles, and with his own guilt. 6. So consistent and insistent is Racine in stressing the family dynamics of this tragedy that he portrays Clytemnestra, weighed down by grief though she is, as being unable to resist the impulse to best her husband. 7. Her last sarcastic sally before the real hostilities begin. 8. Forestier (1593) likens the following three magnificent tirades to the stages of a trial in which Iphigenia is the prosecutor/victim, Agamemnon the defense attorney/defendant, and Clytemnestra the judge/jury. Playing with Forestier’s courtroom metaphor, I would “argue” that, from the prosecution’s point of view, it would have been better if Iphigenia, and

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not Clytemnestra, had been entrusted with the “closing”; for after the latter has had her say and Agamemnon is alone, he remarks: “That was no worse than I anticipated: / Those were the cries that, trembling, I awaited” (IV.v.1–2). Whether those expectations were founded on bitter connubial experience — on his having had to endure similar diatribes from his consort in the past — or on the similar, and no less impassioned, remonstrations that he has had to endure from his own conscience, Clytemnestra’s contentiousness has only confirmed him in his purpose. (Similarly, after his confrontation with Achilles later in this act, Agamemnon says: “Alone, my child was better fortified: / She’s doomed now by his arrogance and pride” [IV.vii.1–2]). Clytemnestra’s speech blunts the much more poignant effect of her daughter’s words, which (as suggested by my use of “blunt”) are poignant not only in the usual sense of that word, but also in its root signification of “stabbing”; as Ronald  W. Tobin observes: “In the cruel refinement of her language, which she uses like a scalpel, Racine’s Iphigénie becomes more ferocious than any of the murderers and criminals of Corneille” (Tobin, 163). See note 10 below. 9. Agamemnon is subject to more than one kind of weakness; here, it is the “weakness” of a father’s love for his daughter, which Iphigenia plays upon with this recollection. Another kind, his craving for power, is one that he acknowledged in the play’s opening scene, telling his servant Arcas: “Go, I say: save her [Iphigenia] from my frailty” (I.i.143). 10. After the “zinger” Iphigenia has just delivered in the prior couplet (lines 36 –37), one can almost sense her realization that she has perhaps gone too far and needs to retrench, which she proceeds to do in this couplet, a somewhat strained disclaimer. Its purport seems to be that she need not be threatened with death to recall all her father’s past benevolence toward her: those recollections are always with her; she is not mentioning them to induce him to save her — or so she claims. For we should recall that at the end of the last act she had reassured Achilles: “And what inspired idea mayn’t come to me  / To avoid the tears . . . and to live for you?” (III.vii.23 –25). And the rhetorical stance she adopts here is inspired indeed: the more acquiescent she professes to be, the sharper is the implied remonstrance, every self-deprecating remark reminding her father of the magnitude of his prospective loss. Perhaps she is hoping for the sort of response that Bajazet makes to his beloved Atalide in a somewhat parallel situation ( just read “take your life” for “be untrue to you”): “The more you bid me be untrue to you, / The more your worth is made too manifest, / Madame, for me to honor your request” (Bajazet  II.v.46 –48). After all, Iphigenia admits that “I cannot wish to have it [my life] snatched away” (line 23), and her speech is a subtle, psychologically shrewd attempt to preserve that life. 11. We should note that, at this point, Agamemnon is resolved to go through with the sacrifice without even understanding why the gods

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demand it. (See note 11 for Act I.) But although the play in no way suggests that he has brought this horrific predicament on himself, we have a strong tendency to judge him more on the basis of his prospective guilt than on his past innocence. The issue of guilt in this play is a complex one. Does the ending of the play vindicate Agamemnon, since his final defiance of the gods’ decree has been rewarded by the salvation of his daughter, or does it condemn him for his earlier willingness to sacrifice his daughter (a willingness that his understandable failure to grasp the oracle’s meaning has exposed), since it transpires that the gods have not, after all, demanded it? 12. Picard asserts (1141) that “it is to political necessities that Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter; one sees here no fear of the gods, and yet the gods do wield power, since they have prevented Arcas from fulfilling his mission.” Earlier, however, Agamemnon had testified to just such a fear: To heighten my distress, the Gods, each night, So soon as sleep had put my fears to flight, Avenged the bloody rites I’d violated, The altars that my pity desecrated, And poising o’er my head the thunderbolt, Dared their beleaguered victim to revolt. (Iphigenia I.i.83 – 88) But although Picard may choose to find, in Arcas’s having taken a wrong turn or two, proof, or at least a suggestion, of the gods’ power, and although Agamemnon may here plead his own impotence in the face of that power (as he had earlier: “In vain, just heav’n, my prudence has resorted  / To schemes which your vindictiveness has thwarted!” [I.v.1–2]), we prefer to see in the closing off of all escape routes and the plugging up of all loopholes, the playwright’s determination to ensure that Agamemnon is left to confront a clearly defined moral dilemma, where either choice is feasible, but neither is facile. 13. The French for this climactic line (which I have rendered slightly more epigrammatic) reads: “Du coup qui vous attend vous mourrez moins que moi” (From the blow that awaits you you will die less than I). 14. Certainly, many of Racine’s characters accuse the gods — and with good cause — of cruelty, perverseness, and malignity. At this point in the play it would appear that such accusations are warranted as well, since Agamemnon’s family has done nothing to deserve its agonizing trials. Indeed, the more the gods’ actions partake of capriciousness, indifference, or injustice, the less meaningful becomes any distinction between “a Divinity that shapes our ends” and harsh Destiny, blind Fate, or mere chance. (Perhaps Orestes puts it most eloquently: “Wherever one directs one’s eyes, one sees  / Misfortunes which condemn our deities”

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[Andromache  III.i.67– 68].) By the play’s conclusion, however, when the oracle’s meaning has been clarified, the justness of the gods would appear, after all, to have been vindicated, at least insofar as the innocent are spared and the guilty punished. But such a fluctuating assessment of the justice of the gods, running the gamut from vilification to vindication, while it may answer the momentary needs of Racine’s characters, has no authorial sanction and represents no authorial pronouncement, having no validity other than as a mere reflection of those needs. And we may assert categorically that Racine’s plays do not concern themselves with the justice of the gods’ — or, for that matter, of God’s — actions; it forms no part of Racine’s dramatic design to explore, examine, or assess any actions, motivations, or designs other than those that arise from his characters’ characters, let alone to justify the ways of God to man. 15. Martin Turnell calls this final couplet “a shocking piece of vainglory” (Turnell, 226), a judgment (in more than one sense) consistent with his willful misreading of Agamemnon’s character, which he sees as marked by unrelieved “insincerity.” (He further opines that “Agamemnon is immensely relieved to find that she is ‘going quietly,’ that his own job is safe.”) This couplet is better viewed as responding to the dauntless resolve expressed in Iphigenia’s own words in her preceding speech: “And bowing to the blow that you’ve ordained, / I’ll let my blood, which flows from yours, be drained” (IV.iv.16 –17). For if Agamemnon is urging her to face her death with a pride worthy of their race, she, for whom pride is such a dominant aspect of her character (see note 3 for Act I), needs no urging to do so. And in his last, grief-stricken remark to Iphigenia, what Agamemnon tells her he would have the Greeks understand is not that the blood they are shedding is precious because it flows from his own, but, rather, that in shedding the blood of his child, they might as well be shedding his, so precious is she to him — a reading that is, surely, neither strained nor implausible, considering that the line, thus interpreted, is, after all, just a variation on the grief-laden line 77. 16. Thyestes, Atreus’s brother, seduced Atreus’s wife. Atreus, in revenge, killed his brother’s children and served them to their father at a banquet. 17. These four lines anticipate the surprise “solution” to the oracle’s seemingly straightforward, but actually deviously riddling, utterance: in the denouement of the play a daughter of Helen does in fact expiate her mother’s sin. (See note 19 for Act V.) Clytemnestra’s suggestion fails, however, to identify correctly the daughter who is to be sacrificed. (Hermione, Helen’s daughter by Menelaus, figures as one of the protagonists of Andromache, Racine’s third play, set in the aftermath of the Trojan War.) 18. These six lines, recounting the history of Helen’s prior liaison with Theseus, provide the other half of the oracle’s “solution” (see prior note),

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but the distraite Clytemnestra could hardly be expected to make the necessary connection. We will hear this history rehearsed by Calchas himself (as reported in Ulysses’ récit) at the end of the play (V.fin.sc.30 –41). 19. Forestier (1594), noting that this confrontation between Agamemnon and Achilles is not in Euripides, suggests that Racine, in inventing it, wished to present his own version of the confrontation between these two warriors that occurs at the beginning of the Iliad and gives rise to the central subject of that epic: “Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring / Of woes unnumbered” (in Alexander Pope’s nonpareil translation [Book I, lines 1–2]). Forestier also points out that, whereas in the Iliad the dispute arises from Agamemnon’s unjust and arbitrary appropriation of Achilles’ concubine, Briseis, here, Agamemnon has some justice on his side. (But given what is at stake in the two disputes, and that whatever justice operates on Agamemnon’s behalf does so in furtherance of the sacrifice of his own child, he undoubtedly comes off as the less sympathetic of the two adversaries.) A more intriguing precedent for this confrontation, however, occurs in Racine’s own earlier Andromache, where Pyrrhus and Orestes face off in their first encounter (I.ii). The parallels between these two scenes are striking: Pyrrhus is Achilles’ son, Orestes is Agamemnon’s; in both scenes the point of contention is that one of the adversaries (Agamemnon in Iphigenia, Agamemnon’s son in Andromache) insists that a child (Iphigenia in the former play, Andromache’s son, Astyanax, in the latter play) be turned over to the Greeks to be killed, and his opponent (Achilles in Iphigenia, Achilles’ son in Andromache) refuses to do so, determined to protect the child at the cost of his life, if necessary. In both cases, the refusal is prompted by considerations of love: Achilles’ for Iphigenia, and Pyrrhus’s for Andromache. There is one further parallel between these two scenes (but a reverse one, so to speak): in Iphigenia the child is to be sacrificed in order to begin the Trojan War, in Andromache, in order to put an end, in effect, to the Trojan War. (Orestes warns Pyrrhus of the ever-present threat to Greece that Troy will rise from its ashes: “The baleful blood of Troy she sees you raise, / Since, touched by parlous pity, you embrace / The last survivor of a deadly race” [Andromache I.ii.10 –12].) 20. In other words: You’ve promised your daughter to me, and I will see that that promise is fulfilled. 21. In their Act  I conference, Agamemnon had tried to persuade Achilles and Ulysses to give up a quest which he pretended to consider hopeless: “I say we must, my lords, yes, must take flight. / By false hopes we have been too long abused, / Awaiting winds which we have been refused” (I.ii.54 –56). 22. Larissa is the principal city of Thessaly, Achilles’ homeland. Achilles alludes to Paris’s abduction of Menelaus’s wife, Helen, who is Agamemnon’s “sister” (i.e., sister-in-law). See note 14 for Act III.

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23. Cf. III.v.51–52. 24. This represents the final outcome of the agonizing conflict between Agamemnon’s warring “weaknesses”: the “bad” weakness, his desire to reign at any price, yields to the “good” weakness, his fatherly feelings. Henceforth, it will only be his involuntary weakness in the face of greater odds that prevents his defending his child’s life, the events described in Act V (“The King now sees his power nullified / And bids us not to try to stem the tide” [V.iii.11–12]) validating his words earlier in this act: “My powers are feebler, child, than you may guess. / What rein could curb the people’s recklessness, / When, to their rash zeal leaving us a prey, / Heav’n casts their too oppressive yoke away?” (IV.iv.70 –73). (See my Discussion, where I expatiate on the significance of Agamemnon’s decision in the context of Racine’s oeuvre, as representing a unique case of a moral dilemma confronted and a moral choice made.) 25. The “fortunate treachery” is Arcas’s timely disclosure to Agamemnon’s family of the intended sacrifice of Iphigenia, a disclosure that has not only prevented the sacrifice from proceeding smoothly to its conclusion, but has given the family time to take counsel and arrange for Iphigenia’s escape from Aulis (or so Agamemnon hopes). Cf. IV.i.9 and see note 1 for Act IV. 26. The classical “unity of time,” no less inexorable than fate or the gods, demands that the sacrifice not be delayed another day, and Eriphyle, by the disclosures she makes to Calchas (see IV.xi.6), will obligingly precipitate, to her own cost, the final crisis. 27. Once again Eriphyle is given the curtain line, and, as she did at the end of Act II, she vows revenge. See note 25 for Act II.

act v 1. This line recalls Agamemnon’s words in Act  I: “The Gods . . . avenged the bloody rites I’d violated . . . poising o’er my head the thunderbolt” (I.i.83, 85, 87). 2. See note 36 for Act I. No sooner does Iphigenia announce that she has been forbidden by her father to speak to Achilles than he appears. 3. He means that her tears are futile, since, though her father has seen her cry, he has not relented (but we know that he has). 4. As she explains below, his glory (and by extension her own) will be made possible by her death. 5. This agricultural metaphor (“ces moissons de gloire”: these harvests of glory) gives a twist to the earlier one in Agamemnon’s warning to Achilles: “Que votre vie, ailleurs et longue et fortunée, / Devant Troie en sa fleur doit être moissonnée” (“A rich, long life you would, elsewhere,

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enjoy, / But in your prime [“flower” in the original] you’ll be cut down at Troy” [I.ii.65 – 66]). Here, Achilles’ glory is what is to be reaped; there, it is Achilles himself whose life is to be “cropped.” 6. This is another elliptical cause-and-effect sequence. (See  II.ii.41 and note 13 for Act II.) It is not Iphigenia’s pyre per se that would strike fear into Troy, or Achilles’ tears that would cause Troy to tremble, but what they imply: that she has been sacrificed (hence his tears) and that the Greek fleet has thus been enabled to embark for Troy. (Of course, the conceit is fancifully hyperbolic in any case, since Troy could not literally see such a sight. See note 24 for Act I.) 7. Cf. I.v.25 –28. 8. The “laws” are Agamemnon’s ban on her speaking with Achilles, mentioned at the end of the prior scene. 9. This line recalls Hermione’s threat to Pyrrhus in Andromache: “Fly to the altar. Leave me in despair.  / Hurry. But fear to find Hermione there” (Andromache IV.v.112 –13) — the altar in that case being the wedding altar prepared for Pyrrhus’s marriage to Andromache. That wedding, although not intended as an ambush, as in Iphigenia, does end in an assassination, for Pyrrhus, heedless of Hermione’s threat, proceeds to the altar, where he is set upon and brutally murdered by just such a “furious horde” as Agamemnon feared would claim his daughter: To deal the glorious death-stroke each Greek sought, While in their hands some time he furiously fought. Bloody with blows, he tried to break away, But at the altar fell, and lifeless lay. (Andromache V.iii.25 –28) 10. See III.v.52 and note 12 for Act III. 11. This line (with its prospective “never”) prompts us, with ironic intent, to call to mind that in the traditional version of the saga of the House of Atreus Clytemnestra “reproaches” Iphigenia’s father in no uncertain terms for allowing his daughter to be killed. In Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, vaunting over her husband’s bloody, butchered body, which she has dragged out of the palace to the outraged horror of the Chorus, testifies that for “the death he dealt / our house and the offspring of our loins, / Iphigeneia, girl of tears” she has dealt out “act for act, wound for wound!” and proceeds to pronounce posthumous sentence on her victim: “By the sword / you did your work and by the sword you die” (Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1552 –55, 1557–58, trans. Robert Fagles). But what makes this line even more ironic — or, rather, meta-ironic — is that, given Iphigenia’s rescue in Racine’s version, Clytemnestra’s motive for killing her husband is so substantially weakened as to obviate the vengeance that is so essential

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a feature of the myth ( just as if some time traveler, by going back in time and changing the past, has consequently changed the future). 12. This flamboyant line, more piquantly ironic than line 38 (discussed in the prior note), reads in the original: “Puisse-t-il être, hélas! moins funeste à sa mère!” (May he prove, alas! less grievous to his mother!). My translation provides a slightly different ironic twist with its “console.” Of course, the intended irony relies on one’s awareness that — again, traditionally — Orestes will later murder Clytemnestra to avenge her murder of his father, Agamemnon. But, as a corollary to the point made in the prior note, it follows from the preclusion of Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband (for want of any motive) that Orestes would, likewise, have no reason to murder his mother. 13. Megaera is one of the three Furies (Erinyes); she is associated, appropriately, with jealousy. 14. See IV.iv.82 – 85 and note 16 for Act IV. The sun, horrified at the sight of the cannibalistic feast alluded to there, stopped in its traversal of the skies. (Presumably it is Atreus and Agamemnon, “his true heir,” who have “shown you that accursed way.”) Clytemnestra’s words recall Jocasta’s invocation to the sun in The Fratricides: O Sun, whose bright rays bathe the world in light, Would that you’d left it in profoundest night! Can you illume such black iniquity, And see, unhorrified, the things we see? (The Fratricides I.i.23 –26) 15. The Thunderer is Zeus ( Jove), from whom Iphigenia descends on her father’s side. See note 6 for Act I. 16. An action-packed line, comprising four verbs: “On se menace, on court, l’air gémit, le fer brille” (Men threaten each other, they run about, the air groans, the sword flashes). 17. A poignant last glimpse (not counting V.fin.sc.72 –74) of Agamemnon, “king of kings,” helpless, and awaiting the worst. 18. Calchas here furnishes us with the solution to this mystery: the clues were there for us all the time, ready to be pieced together. (See note 17 for Act IV.) While Racine is justified in claiming that “the denouement of the play is derived from the central action of the play itself ” (see Racine’s preface), I cannot help being reminded of a similarly critical moment in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (III, 93 –94), when, at the climax of the game of ombre (a bridge-like game, popular in the eighteenth century) that Belinda and the Baron are playing, the “bard” of that epic announces: “And now, (as oft in some distemper’d State) / On one nice Trick depends the gen’ral Fate.” For Calchas’s revelation is apt to strike us as a “nice trick” (in its

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current, colloquial sense) on Racine’s part. Terence Cave (in a remark cited by Tobin, 175) registers this same nagging reservation about the denouement when he remarks that “it is a consequence of Racine’s rewriting of the plot that Agamemnon appears to be the victim of what looks uncommonly (uncannily) like a practical joke or pun devised by Calchas and doubtless, the gods” (Cave, 343). The chief discomfort audiences and readers are apt to feel with this last-minute rescue of Iphigenia arises, I believe, from the denouement’s hinging on the coincidence of the names; were that aspect of Calchas’s revelation not so salient, so distracting, Eriphyle’s sacrifice would more readily strike us as just, even inevitable (rather than disconcertingly coincidental), given the priest’s exposure of Eriphyle as Helen’s daughter and the play’s exposure of her as a “malign and sinister” soul. On the other hand, the existence of two Iphigenias encourages us to view them as twinned, or, rather, mirror-image characters, one virtuous and selfless, the other malevolent and ruthless. But, as Tobin pointedly asks, “Which Iphigénie is the title figure in Iphigénie?” (Tobin, 117). One reasonable response to his query would be to suggest (as I do in my Discussion) that it is Eriphyle, at least, who is unquestionably the true “Racinian” protagonist. 19. Eriphyle, “recovering rank and name” (II.i.49) at the moment of death, fulfills, but only in the most literal way, the enigmatic words of the oracle who, jealously guarding the secret of her birth, told her that she cannot know herself without her dying (II.i.36). For Calchas’s revelation, far from representing some sort of epiphany for her, resonates with hardly any significance, either for her or for the audience. Indeed, she all but ignores it before stabbing herself to death. In the deepest sense, she has always known just who she is, and her true identity has been revealed to us as well over the course of the play (even if Racine’s newly contrived denouement necessarily constitutes a “surprise ending”). As to whether her death can be read as a just expiation for her mother’s guilt, the play itself offers only a glancing hint at such an interpretation, when Clytemnestra suggests that “if, for her crime, they’d punish Helen’s kin, / Let Helen’s daughter expiate her sin” (IV.iv.102 –3); but since it is Helen’s acknowledged daughter, Hermione, whom she means, and not Eriphyle, the echo of her suggestion dies away long before the end of the play. Racine, typically, abstracts the personal/psychological pith of the myth from its cosmic context, and in his preface he merely observes that Eriphyle “in a way deserves to be punished, without, however, being entirely unworthy of compassion.” Setting aside, then, as Racine does, those broader, but not deeper, questions of whether Eriphyle’s death placates an offended deity, whether it balances the scales of justice by expiating Helen’s sin, whether it balances them by expiating her own guilt — or, indeed, whether it points any moral at all — we can confidently declare that, in contrast to the devastating effect

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Iphigenia’s death would have had on everyone who knew her, the dispatching of Eriphyle is likely to have little more effect on those who knew her — with one exception — than the sacrifice of a doe (the doe that, in other versions of this legend, Diana provides as a last-minute substitute for Iphigenia) would have had. That exception, far from being Helen, her own mother, who, having abandoned her years before, could hardly be counted on to shed a tear, is the irrepressibly virtuous Iphigenia, who, in fact, does just that. (But then, she might well have done no less for the doe.) See note 21 below. 20. The silent winds and the still water, held in suspense from the very opening of the play, now rapturously come alive in this exuberant poetic outpouring. (In line 66, where I have “Some say,” Racine, oddly employing the definite article, has “Le soldat étonné dit” [the awestruck soldier says].) 21. This couplet emphatically underscores the Iphigenia-Eriphyle antithesis: Iphigenia actually weeps for the rival who did her utmost to consign her, with no hesitation and no compunction, to the sacrificial altar. 22. The family unit is here reaffirmed, now embracing Achilles as well. The jubilant ending of the play diverts our thoughts not only from those gruesome future events (Agamemnon’s murder at Clytemnestra’s hands and hers at the hands of her son, Orestes) that form a well-known and integral part of the traditional House of Atreus myth (but which would seem, in this case — as successive acts of retribution consequent on a murder [Iphigenia’s] that never occurs — to be anything but inevitable [see notes 11 and 12 for this act]), but even from those unfortunate developments that still loom ahead as certainties in this version, namely, Iphigenia’s and Achilles’ imminent separation, and his death, in ten years’ time, at Troy, which will make that separation an eternal one.

selected bibliography

I include in this Selected Bibliography only those works to which I refer in the Discussion or in the Notes and Commentary. There are countless other studies available, in English and French; a helpful selection may be found in the bibliography of Ronald W. Tobin’s Jean Racine Revisited. As Roland Barthes’s Sur Racine is one of the most important and thought-provoking, I thought it expedient to refer the reader to the English-language edition.

primary sources Racine, Jean. Oeuvres complètes. Ed. Georges Forestier. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard, 1999. ———. Oeuvres complètes. Ed. Raymond Picard. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard, 1980.

secondary sources Aeschylus. The Oresteia. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1975; rev. 1979. Barthes, Roland. On Racine. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1963. Brereton, Geoffrey. Jean Racine: A Critical Biography. London: Cassel, 1951. Cave, Terence. Recognitions: A Study in Poetics. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1988. Euridpides. Complete Greek Tragedies III: Iphigenia in Aulis. Trans. C. R. Walker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

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Horace. Satires and Epistles of Horace. Trans. Smith Palmer Bovie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. Pope, Alexander. Poems of Alexander Pope. Vols. 7 and 9. New York: Yale University Press, 1967. Racine, Jean. Four Greek Plays. Trans. R. C. Knight. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Tobin, Ronald W. Jean Racine Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1999. Turnell, Martin. Jean Racine: Dramatist. New York: New Directions Books, 1972. Virgil. The Aeneid. Trans. John Dryden. New York: Macmillan, 1964. Weinberg, Bernard. The Art of Jean Racine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Racine, Jean, 1639 –1699. [Plays. English]  The complete plays of Jean Racine / translated into English rhymed couplets with critical notes and commentary by Geoffrey Alan Argent.    p.  cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “An English translation, in rhyming couplets, of the French playwright Jean Racine’s Iphigenia. Includes critical notes and commentary.” — Provided by publisher. isbn 978-0-271-04859-8 (v. 3 : cloth : alk. paper) 1. Racine, Jean, 1639 –1699 — Translations into English. 2. Racine, Jean, 1639 –1699 — Criticism and interpretation. I. Argent, Geoffrey Alan. II. Title. pq1888.e5a74 2010 842’.4 — dc22 2010014681 Copyright © 2011 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48 –1992.