The Complete Plays of Jean Racine: Volume 4: Athaliah 9780271061672

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The Complete Plays of Jean Racine

The Complete Plays of Jean Racine volume 4: athaliah

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 athaliah (“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 Pan-American 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 athaliah Translated into English Rhymed Couplets by geoffrey alan argent Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data will be found in the back of this book.

All Rights Reserved caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that performances of athaliah (“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 Pan-American 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 athaliah Translated into English Rhymed Couplets by geoffrey alan argent Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data will be found in the back of this book.

dedicated to

Leslie Eric Comens, “— hypercritique lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!” and to

The Reverend Melchisedech Howler, “who had consented, on very urgent solicitation, to give the world another two years of existence, but had informed his followers that, then, it must positively go.”

contents

Translator’s Note   ix Athaliah: Discussion   1 Racine’s Preface   29 Athaliah   37 Athaliah: Notes and Commentary   119 Selected Bibliography   141

translator’s note

This translation of Athaliah, Racine’s twelfth and last play, is one of a series that, 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, as well as a vigorously, rigorously, 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, The Fratricides. 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. The divergences between this edition and the two prior editions that Racine oversaw (1691 and 1692) are

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extremely minor, involving touch-ups to a mere handful of lines, changes in punctuation, and the reinstatement of several verses and strophes of the choral odes concluding Acts I, II, and III that had been omitted in the earlier editions. 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. Speaking of discrepancies, I should note, now that this traversal is a third of the way toward completion, that the extremely alert reader may begin to notice occasional (and inevitable) discrepancies between lines of verse from any particular play, as cited in earlier volumes, and the revised and (one hopes) improved versions of those verses as they appear in the volume devoted to the complete translation of the play in question. I like to think that so astute a reader would find such discrepancies more interesting than irritating, so I shall not beg her or him to pardon them. 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. Be it 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 line-for-line correspondence.

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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 merits of the ancillary critical material, I believe that 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. I feel myself blessed — ​however much I may occasionally feel myself cursed — ​in having as my sole consultant and counselor in this epic enterprise one who, refusing to caress my ear with “la voix enchanteresse des lâches flatteurs” that Jehoiada warns Joash not to heed, displays, rather, “l’inflexible rudesse” of Jehoiada himself, and, far from “dérobant à mes yeux la triste vérité,” as Mathan would do, lets me have it right between them; I refer to Leslie Eric Comens, the “hypercritique lecteur” of my Dedication. Often and often has he pulled me back when I was about to take a faux pas, one or another of which would have brought me perilously close to “le bord des précipices.” That I am still here to tell the tale is a tribute to his vigilance. Indeed, I might well assure him, as Britannicus does Narcissus (but without the ironic subtext), “Tes yeux, sur ma conduite incessamment ouverts, / M’ont sauvé jusqu’ici de mille écueils couverts” (“Your eyes, observing me with vigilance, / Have saved me from a thousand accidents”).

athaliah: discussion

i After completing Phaedra, Racine underwent a self-imposed retirement from the theater and only resumed his career as a playwright a dozen years later at the persuasive, if not peremptory, request of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV’s morganatic wife, who solicited a play to be performed by the schoolgirls of Saint-Cyr, the school she had recently established for daughters of the impoverished nobility. Instructed to choose a subject without a strong love interest (the schoolgirls’ performance of the too torrid Andromache had convinced their patroness of the necessity for this precaution), and probably considering a biblical subject as most appropriate to the venue, Racine produced Esther, which was successful enough to have induced the king, at his wife’s urging, to demand another. The resultant play, Athaliah, which was to prove his last, finds Racine at the top of his form, more than one critic, both then and now, judging it Racine’s supreme masterpiece. Unlike the plot of Esther, whose general outline is taken intact from the biblical book of that name, Athaliah’s broad narrative arc (most notably its conflation of the Bible’s accounts of Athaliah and Joash) and all the details of its plot and characterization were fashioned by Racine (who, somewhat misleadingly, labeled the play

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“a tragedy drawn from sacred scripture”) from the merest hints in the biblical passages relating to its protagonists. Considering that for his last two plays Racine chose biblical subjects and that his earlier abandonment of the theater was partially motivated by a renewed religious fervor, which would have precluded writing plays as too worldly an occupation, we might be disposed to assume that those two plays are in some strong sense “religious” plays, perhaps even meditations on God, faith, and providence. And there are indeed some critics who, however ready they may be to dismiss as irrelevant the role of the heathen gods in Racine’s other plays, regard Jehoiada’s God as an unseen but potent presence in the play under consideration, directing the proceedings and impinging on the action, as does Sultan Amurat in Bajazet. But whereas in that play the sultan’s decree has determined the outcome even before the action commences, here one can make no case for any direct interference by the God so often invoked, any more than one can do for such interference on the part of the Greek gods in The Fratricides or Iphigenia. True, the characters in those plays are ever ready to hold “heaven” (a metonymy for those gods) accountable for the reverses they suffer. In The Fratricides Jocasta instructs her daughter in its malignant ways: Heav’n’s deadly spite, my child, you little know: It always grants some easement to my woe; Alas! just when its aspect seems most fair, Its deadliest stroke it hastens to prepare. (The Fratricides III.iii.63 – 66) Agamemnon, too, imputes to heaven a watchful and cunning interference in his affairs: “In vain, just heav’n, my prudence has resorted  / To schemes which your vindictiveness has thwarted!” (Iphigenia I.v.1–2). But in neither play do the gods actually intrude upon the action. In the denouement of Iphigenia certain manifestations suggest a benign numinous presence: Scarce had her scarlet blood suffused the ground, When the Gods’ thunder started to resound;

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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. The pyre appeared to set itself alight. The heavens, flashing lightning, opened wide: By those blest beams we all felt sanctified. (Iphigenia V.fin.sc.58 – 65) But these can just as easily be explained as meteorological phenomena, and Racine is careful to suggest that it is only one “astonished soldier” who claimed that      Diana, descended from the skies, Approached the altar in a cloud’s disguise, And rising with the fires that sought the sky, Our incense and our prayers bore up on high. (Iphigenia V.fin.sc.66 – 69) And in Athaliah there is no more significant evidence of any supernatural intervention. This laissez-faire policy on the part of the Deity must be all the more striking for an audience who has heard Jehoiada scolding Abner for needing to be reminded of “the spate / Of prodigies that God’s poured forth of late” (I.i.109 –10), several of them clearly the result of intercession by a heavenly agent. He seems to promise us the renewal of such miracles: Abner, mark well, these miracles betray A God who, as He once was, is today. He still can show His might when He’s inclined, His people ever present to His mind. (I.i.125 –28) But our expectations are belied by the event. The climactic scene of Athaliah features not so much a coup de foudre as a coup de théâtre and seems less the product of providential interference by a benign deity than the triumph of savvy stagecraft on the part of Jehoiada.

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ii In Athaliah, there are two episodes that we would be hard pressed to explain away as having anything but a supernatural basis: Athaliah’s dream and Jehoiada’s prophetic vision. As to the latter, it has no bearing whatever on the action of the play: Jehoiada himself retains no memory of it when he comes out of his trance, and none of the other characters mentions it, alludes to it, or, indeed, gives any sign of its ever having taken place. (The chorus react to it in their act-ending ode, but only to express their puzzlement over this “dark mystery” [III.viii.26]: “Who can explain to us its sense?” [III.viii.23].) And as to the former, one should take note of the fact that the last recurrence of Athaliah’s dream (she has had the same dream three times: “Twice more to this same dream I’ve fallen prey” [II.v.63]) has already taken place before the action of the play unfolds. And, of course, neither Jehoiada’s vision nor Athaliah’s dream is necessarily unearthly in itself; each will be revealed as having been uncannily prophetic only by subsequent events: Athaliah’s dream within a matter of days, when she sees for the first time the very boy of her nightmare serving the high priest in the temple, Jehoiada’s vision only over the course of years (thirty, to be precise, in the case of Joash’s ordering Zachariah to be stoned to death) and even centuries (in the case of the destruction of the temple, the ruin of Jerusalem, and the coming of the Savior). Whereas the most indubitable intrusion of the supernatural — ​ indeed, the only intrusion — ​in any of Racine’s other plays, namely, the eruption, toward the end of Phaedra, of the fantastic sea beast, which leads to Hippolytus’s death, can be plausibly read as a “monstrification” of unbridled passion (Phaedra’s “monstrous” love for her stepson), a symbol of its destructive force, Athaliah’s dream lends itself to no such easy interpretation. Granted, within the context of the dream itself, it is not hard to perceive a clarifying nexus between its two apparently disparate halves: “Racine presents two visions clearly seen and described, first of the dead Jezebel, then of the living Joas, and the prophecy of the former is rendered explicit by the dagger thrust of the latter” (Lapp, 182). But if, reluctant to accept Jehoiada’s preemption of God’s role in bringing about

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Athaliah’s downfall, we would wish to construe this oneiric omen as the sort of God-sent miracle that Jehoiada has led Abner (and us) to believe is forthcoming (after all, as he rebukingly asks Abner, “With miracles was ever age so filled? [I.i.104]); if we would prefer to believe that it is this stratagem by which Athaliah is betrayed (and Joash enthroned), and not Jehoiada’s much deprecated (even by Racine himself ) indulgence in some dirty pool (see note 16 for Act V), then we must applaud Him for having cannily foreseen (or artfully predetermined) the lengthy and intricate concatenation of circumstances that would lead from Athaliah’s sudden urge to visit the temple (“To the Jews’ temple I was, by instinct, led: / I thought I’d try to appease their God instead” [II.v.70 –71]) to her equally urgent second visit, this time with the idea, not of bearing God gifts, but, rather, of bearing them away (in the form of David’s fabled hoard), the many links of the chain thus coming full circle, beginning and ending at the temple. But is this the form one expects God’s miracles to take? Rather than being dependent on the fluctuating psychological states — ​however predictable — ​of those He would manipulate, His miracles are wont to dispense with Jamesian subtlety and go for “high concept” drama, something that screams “blockbuster.” In a matter of fourteen lines, Jehoiada is able to rattle off “the spate / Of prodigies that God’s poured forth of late” (I.i.109 –10), an impressive list, ranging from tyrants toppled and personal vendettas gorily gratified, through climate change on an epic scale, to the raising of the dead. Try condensing the convoluted narrative of the “miracle” of Athaliah’s downfall and death — ​ if we insist on believing it a product of divine intervention — ​into anything less than a completely worked-out “treatment.” If, on the other hand, we dismiss this episode as being merely uncanny rather than literally numinous, then we are free to regard Athaliah’s tragic end as the (if not inevitable, then certainly plausible) result of a combination of regrettable character flaws, potentially self-destructive in themselves, but craftily exploited by her archenemy, Jehoiada. And, in fact, Athaliah herself, while she professes to have been outsmarted, outmaneuvered, outplayed by an inimical God (“God of the Jews, you win!” [V.vi.24]), makes no mention of her dream’s having formed part of her opponent’s

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strategy, accusing Him only of having instilled in her breast an arrogant self-satisfaction (better known as hubris) that, by implication, she querulously disclaims as being entirely alien to her nature(!), and of having “played” her, having “set me against myself repeatedly” (V.vi.32). She may credit God with the victory, but it is hard to see Jehoiada as a mere cat’s paw: he seems to be the one pulling the strings. Indeed, when Jehoiada assures Joash, right before the final contest with Athaliah, that “next to you / the exterminating angel stands” (V. iv.9 –10), he might well be speaking of himself. After all, we can perhaps make a more convincing case for her nocturnal visitations being the doing of Baal! After all, they would seem to have been thoughtfully designed to caution her, and quite unequivocally at that, about the boy, warning her, no less “pointedly” than she was stabbed through the heart, that he represented some clear and present danger, a threat to her very life. One might, in that case, be further warranted in believing that it was Baal himself who redirected her footsteps from his own temple to that of the Jews (“I meant to pray to Baal for absolution. . . . / To the Jews’ temple I was, by instinct, led” [II.v.67, 70]), so that she might encounter this very threatening apparition in the flesh and take necessary measures to safeguard herself against him. Once the encounter has taken place, however, and both deities have retired to the sidelines to await the outcome, it simply comes down, for her, to what Martin Turnell describes as “a head-on collision between a ruthless secular tyrant and an equally or an even more ruthless religious leader who eventually outwits the tyrant” (Turnell, 302).

iii It would appear, after all, that the presence of God in this play is no more relevant than the presence of “the gods” in Racine’s Greek plays. Rather, it seems likely that Racine, while recognizing the propriety of choosing a biblical subject, in keeping with both the predilections of Madame de  Maintenon, who in effect commissioned the work, and the proposed venue for its production, chose one that would nonetheless afford ample scope for his treatment of the subject most dear to his heart — ​one which had been so

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from his very first play — ​namely, unbridled human passion, here manifested variously in a fervent believer, a ferocious tyrant, and a flagitious apostate priest. Certainly, in his particular choice of the biblical story of Jezebel’s daughter, Racine made no concession to the delicate sensibilities of either the virginal cast or the audience. One is reminded of the distinction Mathan makes between himself and Jehoiada: And while Jehoiada’s rigorous, rude address Offended their proud ears’ soft tenderness, I learned to charm them with my dexterous lies, Hiding unpleasant truths from all their eyes. (III.iii.83 – 86) Unlike Mathan, Racine has no interest in “hiding unpleasant truths” from our eyes: with its background of blood feuding and wholesale slaughter, the story of Athaliah quite outdoes in violence all his earlier plays, even those dealing with the internecine histories of Oedipus (The Fratricides) and Agamemnon (Iphigenia); nor can Bajazet, set in the heart of the “barbarous” Ottoman Empire, boast a bloodbath on the epic scale of those described in Athaliah (see the second and third passages quoted just below). Indeed, just as in his first play he had chosen the subject that, in the words of his preface, was “the most tragic theme of antiquity,” so at the end of his career he scoured the Bible for this unparalleled tale of dynastic strife and bloodshed, whose pattern of murder and retaliation is so involved that he felt compelled to provide a précis of prior events in his preface. All that need be said about that history here is that the warring factions seem equally bloodthirsty, as the following accounts (by Jehoiada, Josabeth, and Athaliah, respectively) amply demonstrate: God, who hates tyrants and, in Jezreel, Swore to destroy Ahab and Jezebel; God, who then slew their family one by one: Jehoram first, and then Jehoram’s son; God, whose avenging arm, withheld a while, Will once more smite this race, corrupt and vile. (I.ii.65 –70)

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The princes lay there, slaughtered savagely; Goading her henchmen to more butchery, The barbarous Athaliah, knife in hand, Pursued the murderous project she had planned. I suddenly spied Joash, left for dead; I still can see his nurse, o’ercome by dread: She’d tried to shield his body with her own. (I.ii.79 – 85) Could I have seen a father slain, a brother; Seen them from a high turret hurl my mother; Then — ​most horrific! — ​seen them cruelly slay Eighty young princes in one blood-soaked day? And why? To avenge my mother’s punishment Of some vile prophets — ​raving, impudent. (II.vii.98 –103) And both factions now seem equally bent on perpetuating the slaughter. Athaliah instructs Mathan to “have all my Tyrian troops prepare to arm” (II.vi.16), and, later, he reports her confident hopes: “We’re ready with our falchions and our fire; / Their temple’s ruin nothing can prevent” (III.iii.40 –41). For his part, Jehoiada invokes God to sanction the acts of violence he enjoins his priests and Levites to perform: “With terror God will blight the enemy; / In your foes’ faithless blood bathe fearlessly” (IV.iii.55 –56). He even urges them to follow the example of their forbears, those Levites who “shed blamelessly the blood of their next kin  / And consecrated their brave hands therein” (IV.iii.61– 62). Clearly, he believes that his is a God who will not condone any conscientious objections. But, providentially (if not miraculously), there appears on the scene a child who may put an end to this generations-long vendetta. In the very opening scene, Abner alludes to this promised descendent of David and Solomon: We hoped that from their blessed race would spring A line of kings too long for reckoning;

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That over every tribe and every nation One of them would establish domination, Eliminate all discord, wipe out war: One whom the kings of earth would bow before. (I.i.131–36) It is this child on whom the play will focus and on whom all the other characters’ thoughts are already bent. For Jehoiada he represents the hopes of his race, and he describes him in the most laudatory terms: With all our Hebrew princes’ strengths he’s blest, And shows more wisdom than his years suggest. (I.ii.11–12) Joash will move them by his noble grace, Whence shines anew the splendor of his race. (I.ii.109 –10) To Josabeth he represents not merely a savior, but a son, on whom she can lavish her inexhaustible maternal feelings. The role she played in rescuing him from near death makes him almost dearer to her than her own children; certainly, he offers fuller scope for her maternal anxieties: “Alas! the perils I once saved him from! / Alas! the perils that are yet to come!” (I.ii.21–22). She can even worry that her loving him too much may itself prove a peril: Fearing I loved this child more than I should, I’ve kept away from him as best I could, Lest, seeing him, my injudicious woe Might let my secret, with my tears, o’erflow. (I.ii.27–30) The chorus, too, take an active interest in this remarkable child; the first half of their lengthy Act II ode is devoted to registering their wonder and singing his praises:

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What star have we just seen arise? What will he be one day, this wise and wondrous child? By worldly show he’s not beguiled, He’s proof against pride’s lures and lies, Nor can his candor be defiled. (II.ix.1–5)

But see this dauntless boy proclaim The Lord is God, the Lord is One, And bring this Jezebel to shame, Just as Elijah might have done. (II.ix.8 –11)

Even for Abner, who, ignorant of Eliakim’s true identity, believes Joash was murdered years ago, the idea of this boy has remained with him as a painfully vanished hope, but one to which he still clings: His death, while yet a babe, the Queen contrived. Can the dead, after eight years, be revived? Ah! if the Queen, in her blind rage, had erred; If, of that kingly blood, one drop was spared . . . (I.i.141–44) But it is Athaliah on whom he makes the most striking impression, even appearing to her in the aforementioned dream, before she has actually set eyes on the boy whom, as an infant, she left for dead:       Midst my dismay there met my sight A young child clad in garments gleaming white, Such as the Hebrew priests are wont to wear. The sight of him relieved my crippling care. But as I stood, reclaimed from misery, Admiring his sweet, shy nobility, I suddenly felt a blade, treacherously keen, Thrust through my heart by this same child I’d seen! (II.v.50 –57)

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This oneiric encounter sets the stage, so to speak, for the three confrontations between the reigning queen and the future king; at once the most important and most dramatic scenes in Athaliah, they function as three pillars supporting the edifice of the play. Each of these key scenes has been uniquely and elaborately conceived by Racine.

iv By the time the action of the play commences Athaliah is already obsessed with this child, as a result of that disturbing dream, which has proved a recurrent one. Her first actual confrontation with the child occurs between Acts I and II, but though the audience never witnesses it, it is reported to us by two participants: first by Zachariah, the son of Jehoiada and Josabeth, and shortly afterward by Athaliah herself. (And, as is the case with many of the récits in Racine’s plays, it loses none of its significance or power by being merely recounted after the fact.) Before we are vouchsafed Athaliah’s account of their encounter, its impact on her, barely hinted at in Zachariah’s narrative, is signalized by her extraordinary first appearance in the play, which finds her “almost as exhausted as Phèdre in her first appearance. Instead of a self-assured imperial presence, we discover a weary monarch” (Tobin, 153). To what are we to attribute her collapse? Not to her unceremonious dismissal from the temple by Jehoiada — ​in the opening scene of the play Abner cautions Jehoiada that Athaliah is resolved to brave his opposition and drive him from the temple: I fear lest Athaliah (to speak plain), Seeking to oust you from this sacred fane, Effect her fell revenge on you at last And shed the forced respect shown in the past. (I.i.21–24) Besides, by the time Athaliah appears, we have had Zachariah’s eyewitness testimony concerning what transpired in the temple:

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     Reaching the court reserved for men, With head raised high she proudly bustled in And, on the threshold, seemed prepared to invade The Levites’ inner sanctum, undismayed. (II.ii.20 –23) Then, far from being cowed by Jehoiada, though “his eyes flashed with a furious fire” (II.ii.25), or paying any heed to his attempt to ban her from the temple, “the Queen, letting a savage glance shoot out, / Opened her mouth, poised to blaspheme no doubt” (II.ii.30 –31). It is only upon her noticing Joash that her effrontery falters: The words froze on her lips, though, instantly; Something had daunted her audacity. Her frightened eyes grew transfixed as she gazed; By Eliakim, above all, she seemed fazed. (II.ii.34 –37) It is clear, then, that this temporary weakness on the part of a queen who is nothing if not strong-willed, indeed brazen, and whom Mathan describes as “that enlightened, fearless queen, / So far above her sex’s timid mean” (III.iii.13 –14), is solely to be accounted for by her having espied the very child of her nightmares assisting in the rites. Zachariah’s account of the scene continues: The both of us stood watching that cruel queen; Our hearts were stricken with the same affright. The priests, though, quickly veiled us both from sight And hurried us away. (II.ii.39 –42) Here is Athaliah’s version, three scenes later, of this “apparition”: I saw that child who threatens me at night, Just as, in that dread dream, he met my sight. I saw him: his same garments, his same gait,

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His air, his eyes, in fact, his every trait. He stood near the high priest, as plain as day; But soon I saw them spirit him away. (II.v.78 – 83) This double flashback, presented from two vantage points, gives us an almost cinematic view of the event, as if caught by two cameras. No actual representation of this scene could offer the stereoscopic depth provided by this dual narrative. (See my Discussion for The Fratricides, where I argue this point more expansively in reference to Creon’s climactic récit in that play.)

v The second encounter between Joash and Athaliah, certainly the focal scene of the play, its most original and audacious, has the broad scale, the momentous sense of occasion, of an epic confrontation between good and evil, virtue and corruption. Although no such scene occurs in the Bible, it has its precedents in such famously unequal — ​or at least apparently so — ​encounters as David’s with Goliath and Daniel’s with the den full of lions. (It also calls to mind the temptation of Christ in Saint Luke’s gospel.) One might well have misgivings on behalf of a child who is summoned into so daunting a presence as Athaliah’s, especially after having seen her quickly recover from the debilitated state in which she made her first entrance, resuming an implacable, overbearing demeanor which, apart from the momentary accession of pity Joash will engender in her breast later in this scene, she will preserve to the end, becoming ever more brazen, even when she must finally acknowledge defeat. But Joash (like David and Daniel) proves a worthy antagonist for his adversary, their well-matched sparring skills signaled by the prominent use of stichomythia, which by its nature implies a balanced give and take: athaliah Have you no better pastimes to enjoy?

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I pity the sad state of such a boy. Come to my palace; see the splendors there. joash And in God’s blessed bounty cease to share? athaliah I won’t make you abandon Him, you know. joash You do not pray to Him. athaliah            You may do so. joash Another god, though, I’d see worshipped there? athaliah I serve my god, as you do yours: that’s fair. Each one is a most puissant deity. joash Mine reigns alone in fearsome majesty, While yours, madame, is a nonentity. athaliah With me you’ll taste new pleasures every day. joash Like floods the wicked’s pleasures flow away. (II.vii.61–73) Joash more than holds his own against even so formidable an inquisitor as Athaliah, as the chorus confirm later, in their commentary on the events of this act: “By worldly show he’s not beguiled, / He’s proof against pride’s lures and lies, / Nor can his candor be defiled”

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(II.ix.3 –5). Indeed, it is Athaliah who is discomfited and, in the end, bested. We are even shocked by the brusqueness of some of his replies:

athaliah You shall be treated there like my own boy. joash Like yours? athaliah       Yes. Come, speak up now, I implore. joash To leave a father whom I love! And for . . . athaliah Continue. joash      For a mother I’d abhor! (II.vii.83 – 86) Racine was so aware of the startlingly precocious self-possession of this boy that he spends a whole page of his preface justifying it, citing the Greek text of Chronicles, which “has authorized me to make this prince nine or ten years old,” and arguing that the rigorous and early training he would have received in the temple could plausibly have produced such an extraordinarily astute child. (Racine even has recourse to the dryly droll admission that “it was not . . . the same with the children of the Jews as with most of ours.”) In addition, he takes occasion, practiced courtier that he was, to adduce a “precedent” closer to home: “a prince of eight and a half years, who is today her [France’s] dearest delight, an illustrious example of what a child with natural gifts, enhanced by an excellent education, can accomplish” — ​the child in question being the Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV’s grandson.

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vi The third confrontation, which occurs in Act  V, is framed by an elaborate stage spectacle. It is rather remarkable that such a spectacle, the most elaborate climactic scene in any of Racine’s plays (in most of which the denouement is revealed in narratives of varying length, those in The Fratricides, Britannicus, Iphigenia, and Phaedra being quite extended), should have been planned for a girls’ seminary, with limited stage resources. Perhaps, then, it is less remarkable that Athaliah, unlike Esther, which had boasted elaborate sets and costumes at its premiere, was, in fact, first produced without costumes or scenery. (Its first fully staged performance was given by the ComédieFrançaise on March  3, 1716 — ​shorn, however, of its choral odes and, thus, of its music.) On the other hand, we should also bear in mind that Racine chose to present these events on the stage in Athaliah because they could be so presented: while there are drawn swords and opposed combatants, there is no actual armed conflict, no bloodshed, nor is anyone killed. Athaliah’s death occurs offstage and is reported almost as perfunctorily as Mathan’s, hers being allotted merely a whole line (V.fin.sc.1), his, only a half line (V.vi.24). Still, the very fact that the only staged representation of armed antagonists in Racine’s oeuvre should occur in a “sacred drama” is striking and significant, suggesting that the true nature of this drama, as passionate and violent as any of Racine’s plays, is less spiritual than sanguinary. (Here, even the religious rituals, as Zachariah describes them, bear the trace of blood: “The priests, with blood from this fresh immolation, / Aspersed the altar and the congregation” [II. ii.14 –15]; and, later in Act II, after Athaliah leaves the temple, Jehoiada expresses his intention of pouring some “pure blood” — ​presumably his preferred cleansing agent — ​over the floor to “wash clean the very stones that bear her tread” [II.viii.11–12].) The chorus duly express their astonishment at this intrusion of worldly violence into the temple:

What spectacle confronts our timid gaze! Who’d have believed that we would ever see These deadly daggers and this wicked weaponry,

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Here, in this house of peace, so fiercely blaze? (III.viii.5 – 8)

To stage such a complex and crucial spectacle, Jehoiada has had to set things in motion as early as the end of Act IV: — ​Friends, it is prudent now to separate. You, Ishmael, must guard the western gate; You, take the north gate; you, the south; you, east; Let no one, be it Levite, be it priest, Disclose, by thoughtless zeal, the plans I’ve laid, Marching out ere our preparation’s made. And, last, let each, of one impassioned mind, Guard to the death the post he’s been assigned. (IV.v.24 –31) Up to the very moment of Athaliah’s entrance, Jehoiada continues to micromanage the scene: These crucial orders carefully obey. Above all, when she enters and walks by, A calm — ​complete, profound — ​must greet her eye. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . You, once this queen, drunk with a foolish pride, Has passed the temple door and stepped inside, Let her who ventured in find no way out. (V.iii.7–9, 14 –16) As the scene plays out, the audience, minutely apprised of the details of the scheme, is kept in a state of anticipatory suspense, waiting for the trap to spring shut. When Joash is finally produced, almost like a deus ex machina, Athaliah’s horror and dismay are twofold as she learns at once that the scion she believed dead is still alive, having been kept hidden in the temple for years, and that the treasure she believed hidden in the temple for years never existed, that, in fact, David’s fabled “treasure” is none other than this very child.

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vii There are other such symmetries to be observed in these three scenes, which bespeak Racine’s ingenuity in the construction of this play. First, in the outer scenes Joash says not a word, while in the central scene, he not only speaks at length, but does so most precociously and eloquently, with a power that ensures that his confrontation with Athaliah will be a dramatic meeting of equals. Second, those outer scenes are both, in some sense, “recognition” scenes. In the first, Athaliah recognizes the child who had stabbed her through the heart in her dream; in the second, she recognizes him as the grandson who will, figuratively, stab her through the heart — ​that is, who will actually bring about her downfall and death. Athaliah herself points up the symmetry: Then, let him reign, Your son, Your favorite; And, to inaugurate his reign, ’twere best That he should plant a dagger in my breast. (V.vi.36 –38) The recognition comes complete with the obligatory bodily marking, here a telltale scar left by Athaliah’s failed stabbing: “Yes, Joash lives! To fool myself is vain: / The scars my dagger left are all too plain” (V.vi.25 –26). But there is one further recognition (or, better, a canny precognition) vouchsafed Athaliah, the most telling. Although she has been hopelessly defeated, she can yet find some consolation, some revenge, in recognizing and vindictively proclaiming that this boy, universally admired and now acclaimed as king, will, following in the path of Athaliah herself, prove true to his ancestry and false to his people and his God, as was his father before him: Hear now his mother’s last wish, as she dies. Her wish? No! — ​Athaliah prophesies That, weary of laws that make his soul repine, Faithful to Ahab’s blood, which flows from mine,

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Shunning his forebears’ influence in vain, David’s abhorrent scion will profane Your altar and defame Your majesty, Avenging Ahab, Jezebel, and me. (V.vi.39 –46)

viii At this revelation, we might well experience the same horror, the sheer surprise, Athaliah felt in her dream when she envisioned this seemingly innocent boy brutally stab her. Thinking back, however, we may recall that hints of this inevitable apostasy have been dropped earlier. In the first scene of the play, Abner had alluded to the line of David as “this blasted tree” (I.i.139), and this arboreal image is developed later, when Jehoiada considers the possibility that Joash may be corrupted: Great God, if You foresee that he’ll disgrace David’s ideals and betray his race, Let him be as the fruit that, ere ripe, dies, Or, shaken by harsh winds, all shriveled lies. (I.ii.119 –22) This hint of Joash’s fall from grace becomes more vivid when Jehoiada, sinking into a divine trance, utters these (at the time) cryptic lines: “How has pure gold become the vilest lead? / What priest lies here on holy ground, struck dead?” (III.vii.45 –46). With the aid of hindsight (or if one knows the Bible very well), one can interpret Jehoiada’s words and infer that he foresees that this very youth, the jealously guarded, carefully nurtured, precious scion of David’s line, will in fact become corrupt and order the death of Zachariah, the high priest’s own son and, later, high priest himself, a crime that gains in heinousness from one’s having seen this same Zachariah impersonated on stage as a wholly sympathetic character,

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full of love and concern for his foster brother, Joash. ( John C. Lapp goes too far in asserting that, aside from serving as “a living symbol of the future catastrophe,” the introduction of Zachariah “is quite unnecessary on any other grounds” [Lapp, 62]: Zachariah’s eyewitness account of Athaliah’s intrusion into the temple is, as I discussed in Section IV above, crucial, both to the plot of the play and to Racine’s monumental and original design.) But whether or not these hints would have been picked up by Racine’s audience (not to speak of today’s), Athaliah’s final diatribe provides a fairly accurate prediction of Joash’s ultimate downfall, if we accept the biblical account: “And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and followed the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin; he departed not therefrom” (2 Kings 13:2). One cannot help being reminded of Agrippina’s visionary denunciation of her son, Nero (in Racine’s Britannicus): Your rage will work itself up to new rage, Its course marked with fresh blood at every stage. But heav’n, worn out by your career of crime, Will add your death to all the rest, in time. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . In times to come, the mention of your name Will make the cruelest tyrants blush with shame. Thus does my heart predict your destiny. (Britannicus V.vi.38 –41, 44 –46) It is chastening to consider that this apparently virtuous child is really just another Nero, seen at a much earlier stage of his development. Such a parallel is pointed up by the similarity of the admonitions Burrhus, Nero’s mentor, and Jehoiada, respectively, give their charges (admonitions that ultimately prove futile): Your way is clear, nor can you be withstood; You need but guide your steps from good to good. But if you heed your flatterers’ advice, You’ll find your course career from vice to vice. (Britannicus IV.iii.37–40)

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Absolute power can intoxicate, And fawning, flattering voices fascinate . . . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . And thus, from snare to snare, abyss to abyss, Corrupting your pure heart, your pristine youth, They’ll make you, in the end, despise the truth, Painting fair virtue as a frightful thing. (Athaliah IV.iii.85 – 86, 95 –98) And in the following exchange, in which Agrippina and her confidante, Albina, exchange views about Nero, they might be speaking of Joash, another boy whose “soul has been well taught”:

albina His conduct proves his soul has been well taught. For three years now has he done anything That does not promise Rome a perfect king? .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . agrippina I’m not unjust: his virtues I’ve commended; But, though he starts where great Augustus ended, I fear his future may undo his past. (Britannicus I.i.24 –26, 31–33) Even more telling is Mathan’s warning to Athaliah, “Within this temple a monster’s being bred” (II.vi.3), for we should observe that the original French, “Quelque monstre naissant dans ce temple s’élève“ (Some budding monster is arising in the temple), features the very phrase (“monstre naissant”) that Racine employed in his preface to Britannicus to describe Nero, whom, in that play, he was trying to depict, not as a full-blown monster, but as a budding monster: “Je l’ai toujours regardé comme un monstre. Mais c’est ici un monstre naissant” (I have always regarded him as a monster. But here it is a monster being born). For the biblical account of the latter part of Joash’s life, only hinted at in this play, bears out the

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inadvertent truth of Mathan’s suggestion: the Joash we see in this play is another monster in the bud. But may we not go further — ​or rather, nearer? May we not think of Joash as a Mathan-in-embryo? Mathan, too, was educated within the temple and groomed to be a priest of the Hebrew faith. Undoubtedly, he too was glib in rehearsing God’s Holy Writ. His description of himself traces the arc of Joash’s life as well: Raised as a priest of this God they revere, Mathan, perhaps, might still be serving here, If thirst for power and love of luxury Could have endured His strict authority. (III.iii.67–70) For, according to the Bible, it will be the future high priest Zachariah’s rebuke of Joash for his licentious ways, and his attempt to recall him to obedience to “His strict authority,” that will provoke Joash to have him killed. Mathan’s recollection of “the quarrel that arose  / ’Twixt the high priest and me . . .  / When  I aspired to claim the censer’s care” (III.iii.71–73) may even remind us of what seemed at the time to be Joash’s touching pride when he mentioned one of his “pleasures”: “Sometimes I offer / To the high priest the salt or incense coffer” (II.vii.57–58). In short, then, this child, who has been eulogized throughout the play, is finally exposed as being no better than Mathan, who, according to Tobin, is “the object of the most damaging epithets in Racine’s theater” (Tobin, 155). There is one further nexus to note between Mathan and Joash. In Jehoiada’s admonition to Joash (“Brought up far from the throne, you’re unaware / Of the envenomed charms that wait you there” [IV.iii.83 – 84]), there is an echo of Josabeth’s earlier excoriating denunciation of Mathan: “You, seated on a pestilential throne,  / Where falsehood reigns and its foul poisons spread” (III.iv.54 –55), words that unwittingly foreshadow the downfall of Joash, whom we see, at the conclusion of the play, conspicuously, tellingly, seated on the throne of temporal power. And, in turn, Josabeth’s description recalls an earlier representation of the throne and its perils, for

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Jocasta (in The Fratricides) might be foretelling the history of the throne of Judah when she offers this warning to her son Polynices: A throne that’s always been a perilous pit: Crime festers there and lightning threatens it. Your father and all those who wore the crown No sooner mounted it than were cast down. (The Fratricides IV.iii.184 – 87) Hence, we can observe that Racine’s preoccupations remained fairly constant from his first play to his last: in terms of the virulence of the human passions (their own and others’) against which Racine’s monarchs must contend (almost always succumbing to their own) — ​the heartlessness and the hatred, the vindictiveness and the vice, the fanaticism and the folly — ​there is not much to choose between the throne of Thebes and the throne of Judah.

ix Taking one last survey of these three pivotal scenes, we can observe that, whereas in the middle scene Joash represents himself, so to speak, in the two outer scenes (symmetry again) it is Athaliah who does so for him, and, in both, she represents him as anything but the blameless, harmless, helpless child the other characters take him for. In the first, she recognizes in him the dagger-wielding boy of her dreams — ​in other words, as a murderer. In the second, she foresees him as an apostate, destined to defame God’s altar. Since that defamation will be a consequence of Joash’s ordering that Zachariah be stoned to death in the temple courtyard, her second depiction of him is, again, as a murderer. Viewed in the context of these two equally premonitory flanking scenes, Joash’s recital of his catechism in the central scene seems to ring hollow, like the mouthings of a canting hypocrite. From the anxious point of view of one living in today’s terrorized world, however, it might be more comforting to believe that

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Joash recites the lessons he has learned without any conviction than to believe he has taken to heart the lessons of his foster parents, lessons that can only conduce to a perpetuation of the blood feud devastating the house of David. From that point of view, Athaliah’s sarcastic comment (“I’m charmed to see the schooling that he’s had” [II.vii.75]) registers as somewhat chilling. Indeed, it is hard to avoid considering the following reasonably accurate recrimination that she directs at Josabeth as a timely (for us) condemnation of the inveterate inculcation of unthinking hatred and prejudice that is so rife today: His memory’s accurate: in his replies Jehoiada’s spirit and yours I recognize. The freedom that I’ve given you you use To infect these children with your venomous views. Their fury and their fear you cultivate; You’ve made my name the object of their hate. (II.vii.87–92) Certainly there is enough of a hint of the fanatic in the following pronouncements of Joash to validate Athaliah’s accusation:         God wants our love, and He Will, soon or late, avenge all blasphemy; In the Lord’s strength the orphan can confide; He humbles the proud and smites the homicide. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . Mine reigns alone in fearsome majesty, While yours, madame, is a nonentity. (II.vii.49 –52, 70 –71) Such remarks betray a predilection for violence and intolerance. Roland Barthes describes Joash as “a vindictive child intelligent only in proportion to his native cruelty” (Barthes, 133). While Joash may not actually act on Athaliah’s sardonic suggestion “that he should plant a dagger in my breast” (V.vi.38) and, by doing so, vindicate her dream-vision of him stabbing her through the heart, we may

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infer that this boy — ​pious pupil of his paternal pedagogue that he is — ​would wholeheartedly approve of Jehoiada’s order to “have Athaliah slaughtered like an animal” (Turnell, 308). For a contemporary audience, the indoctrination of such values at so early an age, and the resultant arrogance and religious chauvinism, can only be an unsettling phenomenon.

x While certain of the circumstances surrounding the composition of Racine’s last play — ​the choice of a biblical subject, his twelve-year retirement from the worldly milieu of the theater, the commissioning of the work by the pious Madame de Maintenon for the girls’ school she had established — ​might have led one to suppose that this play would be, in some sense that would distinguish it from his nine secular tragedies, a “religious” play, such a supposition, as we have seen, is not borne out by a careful examination of the play. As Turnell observes, “With the exception of the chorus and possibly Joad’s prophecy, religious feeling, in so far as it is present at all, is largely aggressive” (Turnell, 302). Here we are offered no redemptive epiphany, no religious consolation, no ultimate uplifting triumph of good over evil, hardly even a comforting sense of man’s innate decency. No more so, in truth, than we are in The Fratricides or Racine’s other secular tragedies. It is scarcely surprising, then, that, while the four previous acts end with choral odes, which fluctuate between fervent hope and fervent despair, at the end of Act V, where we might well have expected a paean of praise, a grand affirmation of God’s beneficence and justice, the chorus fall silent. Instead, we are given Jehoiada’s last, brief admonition to Joash that “kings have, in heav’n, a Judge, stern and severe” (V.fin. sc.7), a line that carries some of the portent of Burrhus’s famous last line in Britannicus: “Please heav’n this prove the last of Nero’s crimes!” (Britannicus  V.fin.sc.52). For, in the end, all the years Jehoiada has spent nurturing and educating Joash (putting aside the issue of the questionable values with which Joash was being indoctrinated), biding his time, awaiting the strategic moment

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for the boy’s assumption of the throne, will prove to have been wasted. Earlier, Jehoiada had revealed to Josabeth his hopes for the boy: “Two impious kings have held Him in disdain; / A new king now must mount the throne and reign . . .  / That David’s torch may once again burn bright” (I.ii.113 –14, 118). Unfortunately for Jehoiada, “third time’s the charm” will not hold true in Joash’s case, for this prodigy will prove no more God-fearing than his father and his father’s father. (Indeed, the Bible hints that the thirty pious years of Joash’s reign were attributable less to any inherent goodness of his than to the watchful eye that Jehoiada kept on his actions: “And Jehoash did that which was right in the sight of the Lord all his days wherein Jehoiada the priest instructed him” [2 Kings 12:2]. After Jehoiada’s death, it was not long before Joash went to the bad.) On a more epic scale, and from a contemporary audience’s vantage point, Jehoiada’s invocation, “Heavens, let your blest dew rain down;  / Let earth bring forth her Savior in due time” (III.vii.75 –76), takes on an especially moving poignancy. The prospect of a Savior is too dim and distant to illuminate the final pages of Racine’s last play; rather, the tenor of the play might prompt us to consider how little the advent of the Savior seems to have enlightened mankind, to judge from its actions on the world’s stage. Thus, the expectation of an epic confrontation between good and evil, as embodied in the characters of Joash and Athaliah, has also proved misleading. Although Athaliah has been dubbed (by Winton Dean, the great Handel scholar1) “a Jewish Clytemnestra” (not the essentially benign one we see in Iphigenia), and Joash appears as innocent and selfless as Iphigenia herself, what we get is less a confrontation than a confraternity: of two corrupt monarchs, one already steeped in cruelty and crime, the other doomed to be so. If Athaliah turns out after all to be a morality play (in which guise it had presented itself ), the epic contest that Racine seems to have staged is not between good and evil, but between the intransigent psyche and all the forces religion, morality, and society bring to bear in an effort to restrain and direct it. It is as if Racine, in his opus ultimum, was trying to present once and for all the ultimate test case for the indomitability of man’s passionate nature. We are presented with a child “raised in the temple, sheltered ’neath God’s

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wing” (I.ii.10), carefully tutored in God’s ways, and wise beyond his years. Yet this very child will not be able to defend himself against the inherent, the inherited, viciousness of his own character. Could a stronger case have been made for the absolute authority of the innate and inviolable personality?

xi Just as we are somewhat taken aback to discover that a play with all the trappings of a “religious” drama is no such thing, we may also be surprised to realize that Racine’s plays, in general, overturn such expectations as we might have had for plays that “had several possible audiences, but the most important was the monarch” (Tobin, 27). For consider what is implicit in the idea of “monarchy.” The essence of monarchy does not reside in “absolute power,” even if God-given: a dictator may wield as much power and a pope claim the same authority. No, its essence lies in the concept that the right (divine or otherwise) that entitles a king to rule can be, must be, transmitted to his heir: in other words, in the concept of succession. And it is just that concept, so precious to a monarch like Louis XIV, that is, astonishingly, put into such conspicuous jeopardy in so many of Racine’s plays, certainly in three of the four plays that have thus far appeared in this series (The Fratricides, Bajazet, and Athaliah). In the first, it informs the entire action of the play; in the other two, it is a central issue. But however contingent and complicated such succession invariably is in these plays, there is another type of “succession,” much more germane to Racine’s interests, that is so absolute and uncomplicated as to be ineluctable. This “succession” is the transmission, in the “blood” (like “divine right”), of those vicious propensities, those congenital personality disorders, that doom “the fratricides” (indeed the whole line of Oedipus), doom Joash, doom Nero, doom Phaedra. As Creon, speaking for Racine, observes: “Blood will exercise its wonted sway” (The Fratricides III.v.22). In this regard, it might be said that Racine discovered and incorporated into his plays a fourth unity: the unity of character, which stipulates that, just as the play in which the dramatis personae

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appear must be contained within a limiting frame of time, place, and action, so those characters themselves are entrapped within the limits of their own personalities and constrained to act according to the dictates of their passions. They may blame fate or the gods for forcing them to behave in a certain way, they may even believe they could have behaved in a different way, but in the world Racine has created, the possibility of acting outside one’s own nature is not merely elusive, it is illusive.

note 1. In his monumental reference work, Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques, 249. I shall have further occasion to cite this superb study when, in the volume devoted to my translation of Racine’s Esther, I discuss Racine’s crucial role in Handel’s invention and development of the English oratorio (“so great is the debt of English oratorio to Racine,” as Dean puts it).

racine’s preface

Everyone knows that the Kingdom of Judah was composed of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and that the ten other tribes who revolted against Reboam made up the Kingdom of Israel.1 As the kings of Judah were of the house of David, and their inheritance included the city of Jerusalem and its temple, all the priests and Levites betook themselves there and resided in the temple and its environs permanently. For since the temple of Solomon was built, it was no longer permitted to perform sacrifices anywhere else, and all those other altars to God that were set up in the mountains — ​ referred to in Scripture for that reason as the high places — ​were no longer at all acceptable to Him. Thus the legitimate cult existed henceforth only in Judah. The ten tribes, apart from a very small number of persons, were either idolatrous or schismatic. For the rest, these priests and Levites themselves made up a rather large tribe.2 They were divided into diverse classes so that they could serve by turns in the temple, from one Sabbath to the next. The priests were of the line of Aaron; and only members of this family could perform sacrifices. The Levites were subordinate to them, and had charge, among other things, of the chanting, the preparation of the sacrificial victims, and the guarding of the temple. This name of Levite is sometimes given indiscriminately to all the members of this tribe. Those who were on their weekly tour of duty lodged, like the high priest, in the porches or the galleries that surrounded the temple, and which formed part of the temple itself. The whole edifice was usually referred to as the holy place.

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But this name was more particularly applied to that part of the temple’s interior where were the golden candelabrum, the incense altar, and the tables for the shewbread.3 And this area was itself distinguished from the Holy of Holies, where the Ark was housed, and where only the high priest had the right to enter once a year.4 It was a well-established traditional belief that the mount on which the temple was erected was the very mount where Abraham had once offered up his son Isaac as a sacrifice.5 I thought I ought to explain these particulars here, so that those who are not sufficiently conversant with the history of the Old Testament may not be impeded in their reading of this tragedy. Its subject is the recognition and enthronement of Joash; and according to the rules I should have titled the play Joash.6 But, most people having heard it spoken of only under the name Athaliah, I did not think it advisable to offer it to the world under a different title; besides, Athaliah plays such a considerable part in it, and indeed it is with her death that the play ends. Here is a summary of the principal events that precede the main action of the play.7 Jehoram, king of Judah, son of Jehoshaphat, and the seventh king of David’s line, married Athaliah, daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, who reigned in Israel, notorious, both of them, but especially Jezebel, for their bloody persecution of the prophets. Athaliah, no less impious than her mother, soon drew the king, her husband, into idolatry, and even had a temple built in Jerusalem to Baal, the god worshipped in Tyre and in Sidon, where Jezebel had been born.8 Jehoram, after having seen all the princes, his sons, with the exception of Ahaziah, perish at the hands of the Arabs and the Philistines, himself died miserably from a prolonged illness that consumed his bowels. His horrible death did not prevent Ahaziah from imitating his impiety and that of Athaliah, his mother. But this prince, after having reigned for just one year, while paying a visit to the king of Israel, Athaliah’s brother, was engulfed in the ruin of the house of Ahab and killed by order of Jehu, whom God had had anointed by his prophets to reign over Israel and to be the minister of His vengeance. Jehu exterminated all of Ahab’s progeny and had Jezebel thrown from a window; as had been foretold by the prophet Elijah, her body was devoured by dogs in the vineyard

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of that very Naboth whom she had formerly had killed in order to lay hold of his heritage. Athaliah, having learned at Jerusalem of all these massacres, undertook on her part to entirely wipe out David’s royal race, by putting to death all of Ahaziah’s children, her own grandchildren. Fortunately, however, Josabeth, Ahaziah’s sister, and the daughter of Jehoram, but by another mother than Athaliah, appearing on the scene while the slaughter of the princes, her nephews, was in progress, contrived to snatch from among the corpses the infant Joash, still at the breast, and confide him, along with his nurse, to the care of the high priest, her husband, who hid them both in the temple, where the child was raised in secret, until the day when he should be proclaimed king of Judah. The Book of Kings says that this occurred seven years later. But the Greek text of the Paralipomenon [i.e., the Book of Chronicles], which Sulpicius Severus has followed, says that it was eight years later.9 This is what has authorized me to make this prince nine or ten years old, in order to render him capable of answering the questions that are put to him. I believe I have given him nothing to say that is beyond the ability of a child of that age, who is intelligent and has a good memory. But even if I should have gone a bit further in that respect, one must bear in mind that we are dealing here with a quite extraordinary child, one raised in the temple by a high priest, who, regarding him as the sole hope of his nation, had instructed him from an early age in all the duties appertaining to religion and to royalty. It was not, in this regard, the same with the children of the Jews as with most of ours. They were taught the Holy Scriptures, not merely as soon as they attained the use of reason, but, to borrow an expression of Saint Paul’s, “from the breast.”10 Every Jew was required to write, once in his lifetime, with his own hand, the volume of the Law in its entirety. Their kings were even obliged to write it twice, and were expected to have it continually before their eyes. I can assert here that France may behold in the person of a prince of eight and a half years,11 who is today her dearest delight, an illustrious example of what a child with natural gifts, enhanced by an excellent education, can accomplish; and, furthermore, that if I had endowed little Joash with the same vivacity and the same discernment that

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shines in the replies of this young prince, I would have rightly been accused of having violated the rules of vraisemblance [verisimilitude]. The age of Zachariah, the high priest’s son, not being indicated, one may suppose him, if one wishes, to be two or three years older than Joash. I have followed the explanation of several very expert commentators, who prove, from the text of Holy Scripture itself, that all the soldiers whom Jehoiada — ​or Joad, as he is called in Josephus12 — ​ outfitted with the arms consecrated to God by David, were so many priests and Levites, as were the five centurions [captains of a hundred men] who commanded them. Indeed, these exegetes say, everything had to be holy in so holy an enterprise, and no profane person could be involved in it. It was a question not merely of retaining the scepter within the house of David, but, in addition, of ensuring to that great king a line of descendents from whom the Messiah would be born. For this Messiah, so often promised as the son of Abraham, was also to be the son of David and of all the kings of Judah. Whence comes it that the illustrious and learned prelate13 from whom I have borrowed these words calls Joash the precious relic of the house of David. Josephus speaks of him in the same terms. And Scripture expressly declares that God did not wipe out all of Jehoram’s family, wishing to conserve for David the lamp He had promised him.14 Now this lamp, what else was it than the light that was one day to be revealed to the nations? History does not specify the day on which Joash was proclaimed [king of Judah]. Some exegetes maintain that it was a feast day. I have chosen that of Pentecost, which was one of the three great Jewish festivals.15 On that day was celebrated the anniversary of the proclamation of the Law on Mount  Sinai, and on that day were offered up to God the first loaves of the new harvest; that is why it was also referred to as the feast of the first fruits. I felt that these circumstances would enable me to provide some variety for the songs of the chorus. This chorus is composed of girls of the tribe of Levi, and I place at their head a girl whom I represent as the sister of Zachariah. It is she who introduces the chorus into her mother’s home. She sings with it, speaks on its behalf, and indeed performs the functions of

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that member of the Classical choruses who was called the coryphaeus.16 I have also attempted to imitate the ancients in that continuity of action which ensures that their stage never remains empty; the intervals between the acts being marked only by the hymns and moralizing comments of the chorus, which relate to what is transpiring. One will perhaps think me somewhat audacious for having dared to put on the stage a prophet inspired by God, and who predicts the future. But I have taken the precaution of placing in his mouth only expressions drawn from the prophets themselves. Although Scripture does not expressly state that Jehoiada had the gift of prophecy, as it does of his son,17 it describes him as a man wholly possessed of the spirit of God. And besides, does it not appear from the Gospel that he was able to prophesy in his capacity as sovereign pontiff ?18 I conceive, then, that he sees with his mind’s eye the baleful change in Joash, who, after having reigned in utmost piety for thirty years, gave himself up to the evil counsels of flatterers, and defiled himself by the murder of Zachariah, son and successor of the high priest.19 This murder, committed within the temple, was one of the principal causes of God’s anger against the Jews, and of all the misfortunes that befell them subsequently. It is even claimed that since that day the responses of God in the sanctuary ceased entirely. This is what has authorized me to have Jehoiada prophesy all that ensued: both the destruction of the temple and the ruin of Jerusalem. But as the prophets usually conjoin to their minatory utterances some consoling words, and since, furthermore, we are dealing with the enthronement of one of the ancestors of the Messiah, I have taken occasion to afford a preview of the advent of that great comforter, for whom all the righteous men of old pined. This scene, which is in the nature of an interlude, lends itself quite naturally to musical accompaniment, in accordance with that custom among several prophets of entering into their holy trances to the sound of musical instruments. Witness that band of prophets who were to come before Saul with harps and lyres carried before them;20 and witness Elisha himself, who, being consulted about the future by the king of Judah and the king of Israel, said, as Jehoiada does here: Adducite mihi psaltem [Bring me a minstrel].21 Add to this

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that Jehoiada’s prophecy serves to greatly heighten the tension in this play, by the consternation into which it throws the chorus and by the diverse effects it has on the principal characters.22

notes 1. This revolt is chronicled in 1 Kings 12 and recapitulated in 2 Chronicles 10. 2. “Now the Levites were numbered from the age of thirty years and upward: and their number by their polls, man by man, was thirty and eight thousand” (1  Chronicles 23:3). The divisions referred to in the next sentence are elaborately detailed and enumerated in 1 Chronicles 23 –26. 3. For these details, Racine drew upon Exodus 35 –37 as well as Leviticus 24. 4. “And Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it [the altar] once in a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonements: once in the year shall he make atonement upon it throughout your generations: it is most holy unto the Lord” (Exodus 30:10). 5. Racine has the high priest, Jehoiada, aver this view when (as is his wont) he scolds his wife, Josabeth, for her momentary lapse of faith: “Are you not standing on the sacred site / Where our first sire, letting God’s will be done, / Raised up his arm against his guiltless son[?]” (IV.v.17–19). 6. What determined Racine’s choice for the titles of his plays is a vexed — ​ and ultimately pointless — ​question. Picard, who asserts that “these rules are neither clear nor imperative,” finds it “rather difficult to justify the titles of Andromache, of Britannicus, or of Berenice” (Picard, 1162). But however surprising those titles may seem to some, we surely cannot take seriously Racine’s rather glib statement that he “should have titled the play Joash,” after a character who speaks in only five scenes of the play and makes a substantial contribution to only one of them. (Of course, in Seneca’s Agamemnon, the title character’s part is all of twenty-two lines!) And although Athaliah’s part is less than half as long as Jehoiada’s (and among Racine’s titular characters, only Andromache has fewer lines), Athaliah’s presence in the play is surely the dominant one, and to have called the play after any other character would have been absurd (except to those who believe that His dominating presence in the play would have warranted Racine’s titling the play Jehovah). 7. Racine’s recital of these events is gleaned from the two books of Kings, the account of Ahab’s reign beginning with 1 Kings 16:29 and the account of Jehoram’s beginning with 2 Kings 3, the latter recapitulated beginning with 2 Chronicles 21. 8. Racine has Jehoiada refer to Athaliah as “an impious stranger” (I.i.72), but she was only half Phoenician, through her mother, Jezebel. 9. Sulpicius Severus (c. 363 – c. 425) was an ecclesiastical historian, his magnum opus being Historia sacra, a chronicle of sacred history from the beginning of time. 10. The French translation of 2 Timothy 3:15 may begin, “Et parce que tu as su dès la mamelle les saintes lettres” (italics mine), but the more squeamish King

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James version renders it thus: “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures.” 11. This would be the duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV’s grandson, born in 1682, whose “excellent education” included being tutored by the eminent and erudite theologian and writer François Fénelon, among others. Upon the death of his father, the duke became the heir apparent (the dauphin) to the throne of France; sadly, he died of the measles in 1712, predeceasing his grandfather by three years. 12. Titus Flavius Josephus (a.d. 37– c. 100) was a Roman Jewish historian. His best-known and most influential work, Antiquities of the Jews, which Racine drew on for his preface, offers some of the most important historical accounts of the early Christian era, outside the Gospels. 13. Racine’s own note identifies this “illustrious and learned prelate” as “M. de Meaux” — ​that is, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, theologian, court preacher to Louis XIV, and gifted writer and orator, to whose Discours sur l’histoire universelle (1681) Racine was much indebted both for the exegetical views explicitly expressed in this preface and for those that implicitly inform Athaliah. 14. “Yet the Lord would not destroy Judah for David his servant’s sake, as he promised him to give him alway a light, and to his children” (2 Kings 8:19). 15. The two other festivals are Pesach or Passover (or Feast of Unleavened Bread), memorializing the exterminating angel’s “passing over” (pesach in Hebrew) the houses of the Jews, whose doorposts had been smeared with lamb’s blood (thus sparing their firstborn), and the Jews’ subsequent exodus from Egypt; and Sukkoth (the Feast of Booths or Feast of Tabernacles), commemorating the period during which the Jews wandered in the wilderness after the Exodus, while continuing to practice their rituals in makeshift booths, serving as temporary tabernacles. Shavuoth means “weeks” in Hebrew; its Christian counterpart, Pentecost, meaning “fiftieth” (day) in Greek, is sometimes referred to as the Feast of Weeks. 16. The leader of the chorus in ancient Greek drama. Salomith is, however, at best, prima inter pares (she is the only chorister named), rather than a true leader. Indeed, she fails to perform the most striking function of the ancient coryphaeus, namely, to interact with the main characters, advising them, rebuking them, and consoling them (as occurs, for instance, in the Theban plays of Sophocles). Of course, since the chorus — ​and Salomith, when she joins with them — ​were meant to sing their verses and strophes, while the rest of the dramatis personae speak their parts, there could be no such interaction as was usual in Greek tragedy, where everything was sung or chanted. 17. According to 2 Chronicles 24:20, “And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, which stood above the people, and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the Lord, he hath also forsaken you.” While such an utterance confirms Racine’s assertion that Zachariah was endowed with the gift of prophecy, in its original Greek sense of “speaking for” (God), it would appear that his powers of prophecy, in the currently accepted sense of predicting the future, were no better developed than his sense of

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prudence, since in the very next verse we learn that “they conspired against him, and stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the Lord.” In Racine’s play, Zachariah is not present when Jehoiada, having fallen into a holy trance, envisions his son lying dead at his feet (“What priest lies here on holy ground, struck dead?” [III.vii.46]), but even if he had been, and had understood his father to be referring to him in his darkly cryptic question, he might, after living through thirty years of Joash’s “quite pious reign,” have ceased to tremble for his life or learned to dismiss as mere raving his father’s ominous words. 18. Racine’s precedent is to be found in John 11:51: “And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation” (the high priest in question being none other than Caiaphas). 19. As recounted in 2 Chronicles 24:17–22. See note 16 above. 20. As Samuel prophesied to Saul: “And it shall come to pass, when thou art come thither to the city, that thou shalt meet a company of prophets, coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp, before them; and they shall prophesy” (1 Samuel 10:5). 21. “But now bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him [i.e., Elisha]” (2 Kings 3:15). As Forestier (1733) points out, “Whatever Racine might lead us to believe, this is the only passage in the Bible where music is a prelude to prophesying,” the prior precedent Racine cites (see previous note) offering only a sequential, not a causative, connection between the instrumental quartet and any subsequent prophetic trance, nor does the Bible go on to report any prophecies, as it does in the passage concerning Elisha. 22. The tension of the play is hardly heightened to the extent Racine would have us believe by Jehoiada’s prophetic rapture: while it may throw the Chorus into some consternation (perhaps confusion might be a more accurate description of their reaction), it is somewhat misleading to speak of “the diverse effects it has on the principal characters,” since only two of the principal characters are present during this scene, and, of them, Jehoiada himself retains no memory of his trance, nor even any awareness of having been in one, and Josabeth’s reaction is only brief and inconsequential, her subsequent words and actions betraying no aftereffects of her having witnessed it.

Athaliah

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cast of characters joash, King of Judah, son of Ahaziah athaliah, widow of Jehoram, grandmother of Joash jehoiada, high priest josabeth, aunt of Joash, wife of the high priest zachariah, son of Jehoiada and Josabeth salomith, sister of Zachariah abner, one of the chief officers of the King of Judah azariah, ishmael, and the three other chiefs of the priests and Levites mathan, an apostate priest, high priest of Baal nabal, confidential friend of Mathan hagar, attendant of Athaliah Troop of priests and Levites Athaliah’s guard Nurse of Joash Chorus of young girls of the tribe of Levi The scene is in the Temple of Jerusalem, in an antechamber of the high priest’s apartments.

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act i Scene i [jehoiada, abner] abner Yes, to His temple I come, to adore the Lord, As, solemnly, from old, He’s been adored, And celebrate that glorious day that saw Our God, on Sinai’s height, bestow His Law.1 How times have changed! Once, at the trumpet’s sound, Announcing this great day had come around, This hall, magnificently decorated, With floods of pious folk was inundated; They passed before the altar solemnly, Bearing the first fruits of their husbandry, To consecrate them to our Heavenly King. We’d too few priests to accept their offering! No longer: since one woman’s brazen spite2 Has changed to dismal days days once so bright. Of such devoted souls but few remain Who dare to trace those pious paths again. The rest, alas! forget the Lord Most High, Or, what is worse, to Baal’s altars fly, Where they, in shameful rites initiated, Blaspheme the Name their fathers venerated. I fear lest Athaliah (to speak plain), By driving you, the high priest, from this fane, Wreak her malign revenge on you at last, Spurning the forced respect shown in the past. jehoiada What prompts today this baleful augury?3

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abner Can you be pious with impunity? The righteousness that crowns your priestly state Has long provoked her unforgiving hate. Long has your ardent faith, your sacred mission, Been treated as rebellion and sedition. She hates, above all, Josabeth, your wife, For her resplendent worth and blameless life; For if you are the high priest Aaron’s heir, Your wife’s our late king’s sister.4 And beware: Mathan incites the Queen incessantly, That sacrilegious priest, more fell than she, Who, shameless, fled our altars and, today, Persecutes virtue when and where he may.5 Enough this Levite wears a heathen crown And lends his ministry to Baal’s renown; This temple affronts him: his impiety Would crush the God he’s fled so faithlessly. To ruin you, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do: Sometimes he pities — nay, oft praises you; He affects a fond regard he does not feel, His venomous sting the better to conceal; Now, he informs the Queen you’ve grown too bold; Now, playing on her boundless lust for gold,6 He slyly hints you’ve hoarded, secretly, The untold wealth of David’s treasury. Besides, for two days now this haughty queen Has wallowed in a mood of blackest spleen. Yesterday, in her glances I could trace The furious hate she bears this holy place, As if God hid within this vasty fane An armed avenger who would prove her bane. Trust me: the more I think, the less I doubt That o’er your head her wrath will soon break out, And that this ruthless child of Jezebel’s7 Will dare attack the Lord e’en where He dwells.8

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jehoiada He who can curb the fury of the seas Can frustrate evildoers’ conspiracies. I humbly let His sacred will be done;9 I fear the Lord: of other fears I’ve none. I’m grateful, though, for your kind zeal, my friend, In warning me of perils that impend; I see injustice galls you secretly; You have a Hebrew heart, that’s clear to me. Thank heav’n for that! But are you satisfied With secret wrath and virtue still untried? Does faith that never acts deserve the name?10 Eight years ago an impious stranger came11 And, seizing David’s scepter, rights, and lands, In our kings’ blood brazenly bathed her hands: Ruthlessly butchering her son’s children, she, With upraised arm, defied the Deity. And you, who keep our State from tottering; Who fought for blest Jehoshaphat our king; Who, ’neath his son Jehoram, took command; Who maintained order in our frightened land When Ahaziah fell to Jehu’s might, And, devastated, all his troops took flight —12 I fear God, so you say, His Word is true. Thus, through my mouth, that God replies to you: What good is all your zeal and piety? With barren prayers you think to honor Me? By fruitless rites our covenant you keep? What need have I of blood from bulls and sheep?13 The blood of kings cries out, but do you care? Your compacts with impiety forswear; Stamp out the crimes that stain My people’s fame, Then, sacrifice your victims in My Name. abner What can I do? Our people have grown meek;

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Judah is wanton, Benjamin is weak.14 The day that saw their royal race expire Snuffed out their age-old, once-audacious fire. The Lord Himself, they say, abandons us. Of Hebrew fame once so solicitous, He sees, unmoved, our erstwhile grandeur flown, And wearies of the mercy He has shown. No longer does His mighty arm display Those miracles that struck men with dismay. The Ark is mute, its oracles are stilled. jehoiada With miracles was ever age so filled? When has God shown His power more patently? Do you have eyes, then, so as not to see, Ungrateful folk? These marvels strike your ear, Yet with your heart you still refuse to hear? Abner, must I recall to you the spate Of prodigies that God’s poured forth of late? Israel’s faithless tyrants’ famed defeats; God, ever faithful, making good his threats; The impious Ahab dead and, on the field He’d killed to gain, his own vile blood congealed;15 Nearby, his wicked consort Jezebel, Who, trampled ’neath her horses, also fell, Her hideous, mangled body torn apart, Dogs lapping up the blood from her cruel heart; The troop of lying prophets put to shame, Our altar set alight with heaven’s flame;16 Elijah governing the elements, Sealing in brass the heav’ns’ circumference, Till earth lay, for three years, of rain deprived;17 The dead, hearing Elisha’s voice, revived:18 Abner, mark well, these miracles betray A God who, as He once was, is today. He still can show His might when He’s inclined,

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His people ever present to His mind.19 abner But where is the glory we were to have won, Foretold to David and to Solomon?20 We hoped that from their blessed race would spring A line of kings too long for reckoning; That over every tribe and every nation One of them would establish domination, Eliminate all discord, wipe out war: One whom the kings of earth would bow before.

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jehoiada Of heaven’s promised blessings why despair? abner Where can we find King David’s royal heir? Can heav’n itself revive this blasted tree, Whose very roots are withered hopelessly?21 His death, while yet a babe, the Queen contrived. Can the dead, after eight years, be revived? Ah! if the Queen, in her blind rage, had erred; If, of that kingly blood, one drop was spared . . . 22

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jehoiada What would you do? abner           O happy day for me! I would proclaim him king so eagerly! Our tribes, aroused to serve their king again . . . But why delude myself with hopes so vain? Sad scion of all those glorious kings who reigned, Ahaziah — and his sons — alone remained: By Jehu’s lance I saw the King pierced through; You saw his mother slay his children too.

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jehoiada I say no more. But when the star of day Through one third of its arc has made its way, When, calling us to prayer, the three chimes peal, Come to the temple fired with the same zeal. Then, by great wonders, God will prove to you His word abides, His promises hold true. Go now: for this great day I must prepare; The temple dome glows white with dawn’s first flare.

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abner What these great wonders are I cannot say. Illustrious Josabeth now comes this way.23 Let me now join the faithful company, Drawn here for this day’s high festivity. Scene ii [jehoiada, josabeth] jehoiada It’s time at last, Princess, that we revealed Your fortunate theft, so crucially concealed. Too long God’s foes have mocked Him brazenly, Because we’ve kept so silent, claiming He Reneges on all the vows that He once swore. Your father’s wicked widow, furthermore,24 Emboldened by success, seeks to defame Our altar with foul incense in Baal’s name. Let us reveal this boy you saved, this king, Raised in the temple, sheltered ’neath God’s wing. With all our Hebrew princes’ strengths he’s blest, And shows more wisdom than his years suggest.25 Before I make his destined kingship plain, I’ll offer him to God, by Whom kings reign. I want our priests and Levites to be there

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When I proclaim him as their masters’ heir. josabeth Is his name, his great calling, known to him?26 jehoiada He knows no other name but Eliakim. He thinks he was cast off in infancy, A child I raised in fatherly charity.

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josabeth Alas! the perils I once saved him from! Alas! the perils that are yet to come! jehoiada What! does your faith prove weak as soon as tried? josabeth By your sage counsels, Sire, I will abide. Since that blest day I saved him from her hate, I’ve trusted you to oversee his fate. Fearing I loved this child more than I should, I’ve kept away from him as best I could, Lest, seeing him, my injudicious woe Might let my secret, with my tears, o’erflow. Through three whole days and three whole nights I’ve kept A vigil, during which I’ve prayed and wept. But now I wish to ask you, if I may, What friends you have to second you today? Will the brave Abner help defend us now? To serve his king, Sire, has he sworn a vow? jehoiada Although on Abner’s faith we may depend, He still thinks he has no king to defend.

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josabeth But by what guard will Joash be protected? Is it Obed or Amnon you’ve selected? My father honored both of them of old . . .

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jehoiada By Athaliah they’ve been bought and sold. josabeth Who will oppose her minions, then, today? jehoiada Our Levites and our priests — did I not say? josabeth I know your prudent care has secretly Increased their numbers quite substantially, And, hating Athaliah and loving you, A solemn vow ensures that they’ll prove true To David’s heir, whom you are to reveal. No matter, though, what ardor they may feel, Can they support their king’s claim to the throne? Can this great work be wrought by zeal alone?27 For, surely, Athaliah, when it’s revealed That Ahaziah’s son is here concealed, Will summon her ferocious foreign thralls To gird the temple and to breach its walls. Can pious priests prevail against such bands, Who, raising to the Lord their blameless hands, Know only how to pray for us and weep, And who have only shed the blood of sheep? What if, in their weak arms, the boy’s run through? jehoiada Does God’s strong arm, then, count for naught with you?28 God, who relieves the helpless orphan’s plight,

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Who, through our weakness, demonstrates His might; God, who hates tyrants, and, in Jezreel,29 Swore to destroy Ahab and Jezebel; God, who then slew their family one by one: Jehoram first, and then Jehoram’s son;30 God, whose avenging arm, withheld a while, Will once more smite this race, corrupt and vile. josabeth God’s judgment on those kings is so severe That for my ill-starred brother’s son I fear. Who knows if this child’s not condemned to pay For crimes committed ere his natal day?31 If God, sequestering him from this curst race, Will, for the sake of David, grant him grace? — Alas! I can recall his fearful plight: The horror still afflicts my soul with fright. The princes lay there, slaughtered savagely; Goading her henchmen to more butchery, The barbarous Athaliah, knife in hand,32 Pursued the murderous project she had planned. I suddenly spied Joash, left for dead; I still can see his nurse, o’ercome by dread: She’d tried to shield his body with her own; Now, clutched against her breast, the babe lay prone. I took him, bleeding, but alive and well; My tears seemed to revive him as they fell. Whether from fear, or just to fondle me, With tiny arms he pressed me tenderly. — Let not my love for him, Lord, prove malign, This precious vestige of blest David’s line! Raised in Your house, he’s made Your Law his own; You are the only father he has known. Poised to attack a homicidal queen, If my faith quails, foreseeing such a scene, If flesh and blood demand, in my dismay,

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These troubled tears I shed for him today, Redeem Your promises: save David’s heir, And punish me alone if I should err.33 jehoiada They are not criminal, these tears you shed, But God would rather have your trust instead. He would not blindly punish, in His ire, The righteous son for the unrighteous sire.34 Those loyal Hebrews who still own God’s sway Will reaffirm their vows to Him today. As much as David’s race is venerated, So much this child of Jezebel is hated. Joash will move them by his noble grace, Whence shines anew the splendor of his race; And God, in His own voice, taking our part, Will speak directly to each eager heart. Two impious kings have held Him in disdain;35 A new king now must mount the throne and reign, Who’ll bear in mind that he has been restored To his ancestral status by the Lord, Whose priests have saved him from the tomb’s dark night, That David’s torch may once again burn bright.36 — Great God, if You foresee that he’ll disgrace David’s ideals and betray his race, Let him be as the fruit that, ere ripe, dies, Or, shaken by harsh winds, all shriveled lies.37 But if this child, obedient to Your will, Can do Your work and Your designs fulfill, Then grant the rightful heir his kingly crown, And let my weak hands hurl his strong foes down. Confound the plans this cruel queen has laid. My God, let her and Mathan be betrayed By their imprudence and their wicked ways, Sure portents of a tyrant’s final days. — Time’s short. Farewell. Our children come, I see, With girls from every pious family.

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act i, scene iv 

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Scene iii [josabeth, zachariah, salomith, the chorus] josabeth Dear Zachariah, go now, don’t delay: Accompany your father on his way. — Daughters of Levi, whom the Lord inspires, Young though you are, with His most ardent fires: Children, who often come to sigh with me, My only joy midst endless misery, These wreaths you bear, these garlands on your brow, Once well became our solemn fetes, but now, Alas! the shame and grief heaped on our head Seem best accompanied by these tears we shed.38 Already I hear the sacred trumpet’s call: The temple gates will soon admit us all. While I prepare for this great day of days, Lift up your voice to God in prayer and praise.

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Scene iv 39 [the chorus]



the chorus [chanting] His splendor and His power pervade all heav’n and earth. Let us adore the Lord and ever praise His Name. His glorious reign began before Time had its birth. His goodness sing, His might proclaim.



first solo voice In vain the unjust and wicked try 5 To silence us, His flock, who praise the Lord Most High: Eternal is the Almighty’s Name. Day unto day proclaims the Lord’s omnipotence. The universe o’erflows with His magnificence. His goodness sing, His might proclaim. 10

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the chorus [repeats] The universe o’erflows with His magnificence. His goodness sing, His might proclaim.

first solo voice He paints the fragrant flowers exquisitely. The fruits He ripens on the trees, And, tending them so carefully, 15 Grants them warm winds by day, by night the cooling breeze. The grateful fields return His gifts abundantly.



second solo voice The sun enlivens nature at the Lord’s behest, And heaven sheds its light at His decree. But it’s His Law, so pure, so blest, That is the richest gift He gave humanity.

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third solo voice O Sinai, blessed mount, conserve the memory Of that great day, forever august and renowned, When, on your peak, which bright flames crowned, The Lord, with veils of densest vapors wrapped around, 25 Let mortals glimpse a glimmer of His majesty. Tell us wherefore the fiery lightning flashed, The billowing smoke spewed forth, the stormy heavens crashed, The trumpets blared, the thunder rolled. Did the Lord come, then, to reorder all the world, 30 Or let the ancient earth be hurled From off its staunch foundations old?



fourth solo voice The Lord came to reveal to the blest Hebrew race The eternal radiance of His Law, its sanctity; And on their heads He shed His grace, Enjoining them to cherish Him eternally.

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act i, scene iv 

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the chorus O cherished Law, O Law divine! O justice great! O grace supreme! What ample reasons, and what joy extreme, To pledge our love and faith to God, our Lord benign!



first solo voice He saved our people from cruel slavery; His manna, in the desert, fed them bountifully.40 He gives His laws to us, and gives Himself as well, And in return our love He does compel.



the chorus O justice great! O grace supreme!



first solo voice The seas He sundered, saving us from slaughter, And from an arid rock He summoned streams of water.41 He gives His laws to us, and gives Himself as well. And in return our love He does compel.



the chorus O cherished Law, O Law divine! What ample reasons, and what joy extreme, To pledge our faith and love to God, our Lord benign!



second solo voice You who know nothing but your fear-born, slavish cult: Ingrates, are you not drawn toward a God so good? Is it so painful to your hearts, so difficult, To love the Lord God as you should? The cruel tyrant fills the slave with fear; The loving father holds his children dear. You wish this God to shower all His gifts on you, Yet you deny the love He’s due?

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the chorus O cherished Law, O Law divine! O justice great! O grace supreme! What ample reasons, and what joy extreme, To pledge our faith and love to God, our Lord benign!

act ii, scene ii 

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act ii Scene i [josabeth, salomith, the chorus] josabeth My daughters, cease your song: it’s time we went To join the public prayers and sacrament.1 Our turn has come. Now let us make our way To celebrate with God His holy day. Scene ii [zachariah, josabeth, salomith, the chorus] josabeth But what is this? What brings you back, my son? You’re pale and out of breath: where do you run? zachariah O mother! josabeth       Child! What’s wrong? Speak out, I pray. zachariah The temple is profaned. josabeth             What’s that you say? zachariah From the Lord’s altar all have run away.

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josabeth I tremble. Tell me quickly what’s transpired. zachariah My sire, the high priest, as the Law required, Had offered to the God who feeds us all The first breads from the harvest in the hall; His hands, then, with the victims’ blood engored, Raised up their steaming entrails to the Lord. On either side we stood: Eliakim, Like me, robed in white linen, serving him; The priests, with blood from this fresh immolation, Aspersed the altar and the congregation. A noise arose then; taken by surprise, The people turned aside their thoughts and eyes.2 A woman . . . Naming her is blasphemy. A woman . . . Athaliah . . . Yes, ’twas she!3

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josabeth Heavens! zachariah      Reaching the court reserved for men, With head raised high she proudly bustled in And, on the threshold, seemed prepared to invade The Levites’ inner sanctum, undismayed. The people were aghast and fled. My sire . . . Ah! how his eyes flashed with a furious fire! In Moses’ gaze Pharaoh found less to dread. Queen, leave this sacred place. You’re banned, he said, Both by your sex and your impiety. Have you come here to brave God’s majesty? The Queen, letting a savage glance shoot out, Opened her mouth, poised to blaspheme, no doubt. I don’t know if an angel of the Lord Appeared before her with a glittering sword;

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act ii, scene ii 

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The words froze on her lips, though, instantly: Something had daunted her audacity. Her frightened eyes grew transfixed as she gazed; By Eliakim, above all, she seemed fazed.

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josabeth What’s that? She noticed Eliakim, you mean?4 zachariah The both of us stood watching that cruel queen; Our hearts were stricken with the same affright. The priests, though, quickly veiled us both from sight And hurried us away. I know no more, But ran to tell you of this strange uproar. josabeth Doubtless, she came to snatch Eliakim, And in her rage went looking there for him! Perhaps, even now, this object of our tears . . . Remember David, Lord, Who see my fears.

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salomith Who is this object of the tears you shed? zachariah Does danger hang o’er Eliakim’s head? salomith Could he have called forth Athaliah’s ire? zachariah Why fear a child with no support, no sire? josabeth She’s here! We must avoid her. Let us go.

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Scene iii [athaliah, hagar, abner, athaliah’s guard] hagar Madame, why linger here, I’d like to know? This place disturbs you, nay, makes you unwell. Leave to the priests this temple where they dwell. Flee all this tumult; in your palace find The peace you need to soothe your troubled mind.

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athaliah I can’t: you see how racked I am, how frail. Go and bid Mathan come here without fail. What joy! if only he could furnish me With that sweet peace that flees me constantly! [She sits down.] Scene iv [athaliah, abner, athaliah’s guard] abner Pardon me if I dare to apologize: Jehoiada’s zeal should come as no surprise.5 Such is the mandate of the God we serve, From whose eternal rules we never swerve. The Lord Himself ordained what we must do, Both in His temple and at His altar too: The sacrifices fell to Aaron’s heirs; The Levites He assigned their place and cares; Above all, He forbade their progeny From worshipping another deity. But then, as wife and mother of our kings, Can you be unacquainted with such things? No stranger to our laws, you know today . . .

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act ii, scene v 

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But, now your Mathan’s come, I need not stay. athaliah Abner, don’t go; I want you here with me. Forget Jehoiada’s rash audacity, That heap of superstitions and oblations That keep your temple closed to other nations. More pressing matters waken my alarms. I know that, brought up midst the clash of arms, The noble-hearted Abner knows what’s due To his own God — and to his sovereign too. Please stay.

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Scene v [mathan, athaliah, abner, athaliah’s guard] mathan       Great Queen, why have you ventured here? What troubles you? What makes you freeze with fear? Amongst your foes what can you hope to gain? Dare you approach a temple so profane? Have you forsworn a hate once so severe? athaliah Both of you, lend me an attentive ear. I’ve no wish to recall what’s past and dead, Nor give you reasons for the blood I’ve shed. What I have done I thought I had to do. No brazen folk shall pass me in review. Let them revile me in their insolence; Heaven itself has come to my defense.6 By dint of many a brilliant victory, My power commands respect from sea to sea.7 Through me, Jerusalem tastes tranquillity; Marauding Arabs no longer molest

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The Jordan’s banks, nor are its towns oppressed By haughty Philistines and their forays, As once they were, Abner, in your kings’ days. As sister-queen to Syria’s king I reign.8 Indeed, the enemy of my house, its bane, Proud Jehu, whose fell forces pressed so near,9 Hides trembling in Samaria, fraught with fear.10 A neighboring power, to whom I am allied, Threatens this murderous foe from every side, So that my sovereignty no one disputes. In peace I have enjoyed my wisdom’s fruits. But troubling care has come these last few days, Afflicting my calm mind with deep malaise. A dream (and by a dream am I distressed?) Gnaws at my heart, depriving me of rest; It’s followed me wherever I have fled. — Midnight had struck, profound, instilling dread; My mother Jezebel appeared to me, As on her death day, in full finery. Her sorrows had not undermined her pride. On powder, paint, and rouge she still relied: With borrowed bloom she kept the years at bay, Repairing time’s irreparable decay.11 Tremble, my child, she said, my worthy daughter: The Jews’ cruel God has marked you too for slaughter. I pity you, should you come within His reach. Then, having uttered such a frightful speech, Her shade bent toward me, where I lay in bed. I reached to embrace her, with my arms outspread, But all I found was, in a mangled pile, Black bones and putrid flesh, corrupt and vile, Limbs torn apart and scraps still dripping blood, Which ravenous dogs fought over in the mud.12 abner Great God!

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act ii, scene v 

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athaliah        Midst my dismay there met my sight A young child clad in garments gleaming white, Such as the Hebrew priests are wont to wear. The sight of him relieved my crippling care. But as I stood, reclaimed from misery, Admiring his sweet, shy nobility, I suddenly felt a blade, treacherously keen, Thrust through my heart by this same child I’d seen! Perhaps this strange farrago, at first glance, May seem to you a consequence of chance; Ashamed, myself, that fear had mastered me, I took it for some fevered fantasy. Its memory haunts my soul, though, night and day: Twice more to this same dream I’ve fallen prey; Twice more have my sad eyes been forced to view This same child, ever poised to run me through. Weary of this nightmarish persecution, I meant to pray to Baal for absolution, And, at his altar prone, to seek repose. What will not mortals do, in terror’s throes? To the Jews’ temple I was, by instinct, led: I thought I’d try to appease their God instead, Hoping that gifts might calm His enmity And mollify this God, whoe’er He be. Pontiff of Baal, I’m sorry I was misled.13 I entered, the rites ceased, the people fled. The high priest came toward me, rage in his eyes. But as he spoke, O terrible surprise! I saw that child who threatens me at night, Just as, in that dread dream, he met my sight. I saw him: his same garments, his same gait, His air, his eyes, in fact, his every trait. He stood near the high priest, as plain as day; But soon I saw them spirit him away. That is what made me seek this spot to rest,

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And learn what remedies you two think best. Mathan, what means this fearful prodigy?

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mathan This dream, this chilling likeness, trouble me. athaliah Abner, you saw this child, observed his face: What is he? Of what tribe, what blood, what race? abner At the altar two youths served the high priest: one Was Josabeth’s and the high priest’s own son; The other I know not. mathan            Need we debate? We must make sure of both, ere it’s too late. You know my tact, how I respect this priest; I don’t aspire to vengeance in the least; Fairness alone determines all my views. But were it his own son whom we accuse, He would not spare a criminal, admit.

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abner But what crime could a helpless child commit? mathan Heav’n showed him with a dagger in hand, quite plain. Heav’n’s just and sage; it does not act in vain.14 What more is needed? abner           Then you would agree, Putting your faith in futile fantasy, To bathe in this boy’s blood so barbarously?15

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act ii, scene v 

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You don’t know who he is, by what sire reared. mathan He stands condemned while he is to be feared. If it should prove he comes of high descent, The swifter must ensue his punishment; And if he prove to be of lowly birth, What matter if we shed blood of no worth? Must kings attend slow justice’s decrees? Their safety oft demands swift penalties. Such scruples might work to their detriment. Once suspect, one’s no longer innocent. abner What sort of priest do such remarks reveal? I, taught in bloody battle not to feel, Of kingly vengeance the remorseless arm, It’s I who wish to shield this wretch from harm; And you, who owe this boy a father’s care, You who, in war, the olive branch should bear, With feigned zeal veiling your hostility, His blood flows, for your taste, too sluggishly? Madame, you’ve bid me speak without reserve. What, after all, has made you lose your nerve? A helpless child, whom your deluded eyes, Warned by a dream, believe they recognize. athaliah I hope that’s true and that I’ve been misled. Perhaps vain dreams run riot in my head. Well then, this child I must observe anew And scan his features in a closer view. Let both be brought before me. abner                 Don’t rely . . .

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athaliah You think it possible they won’t comply? Curious reluctance! What could be the cause? Strange new suspicions might well give me pause. Jehoiada or his wife must bring them here. I speak now as your sovereign: is that clear? Your priests have reason, I would have you know, To thank me for the indulgence that I show. I know how far my power, my plans, my pride, Have, in their bold discourse, been vilified. Their temple stands, though, and I’ve let them live. I’m not sure how much more I can forgive. His savage zeal Jehoiada must restrain, And learn not to offend me thus again. Go.

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Scene vi [athaliah, mathan, athaliah’s guard] mathan    At last, I can freely have my say And place the truth before you, clear as day. Within this temple a monster’s being bred.16 Don’t wait until the storm breaks o’er your head. Abner was with the priest some hours ago. The royal blood is dear to him, you know. What if, my queen, Jehoiada has in view To crown as king this child who’s menaced you, Be it his son, or . . . ? athaliah            Yes, you’ve made it clear What heaven’s warning means — and what to fear. But first I want my doubts all laid to rest. A child can hardly hide what’s in his breast:

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act ii, scene vii 

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A deep design one word will oft betray. Let me, dear Mathan, question him, I pray. Go now and, without raising an alarm, Have all my Tyrian troops prepare to arm.17

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Scene vii [joash, josabeth, athaliah, zachariah, abner, salomith, two levites, the chorus, athaliah’s guard] josabeth [to two Levites] O ministers of God, keep watchful eyes On these two precious children whom I prize. abner [to Josabeth] Trust me, Princess: I’ll keep them in my care. athaliah O heav’n! Now that I see him close, I swear It’s him. By horror I’m again undone. Wife of Jehoiada, is this boy your son? josabeth Who? He, madame? athaliah           Yes, he. josabeth                No, certainly. This is my son. athaliah        Young boy, please answer me: Who is your father?

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josabeth          Heav’n until today . . . athaliah Why do you rush to tell him what to say? It’s up to him to speak.

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josabeth           From one so young What helpful explanations can be wrung? athaliah His innocence, his guilelessness, his youth, Would never tamper with the simple truth. This touches him, so let him speak, I pray.

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josabeth [aside] Lord, let Your wisdom brush his lips today. athaliah What is your name? joash          Eliakim, madame. athaliah Your father? joash       I have none, orphan that I am. Since birth, into God’s hands I have been thrown, And who my parents were I’ve never known. athaliah You have no parents?

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act ii, scene vii 

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joash            They abandoned me. athaliah How so? Since when? joash           Since my nativity. athaliah But say, what homeland do you call your own? joash This temple’s all the homeland I have known. athaliah Where were you when they found you all alone?

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joash Amongst cruel wolves who’d marked me for their prey.18 athaliah Who brought you to this temple? joash                 I can’t say. She gave no name and made off straightaway. athaliah Whose hands, though, tended you in infancy? joash The Lord wouldn’t leave His child in need, would He? To fledglings in the nest He offers food; All nature profits from His plenitude. I pray to Him and, with paternal care,

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The altar’s offerings He lets me share. athaliah What new-felt wonder comes to trouble me? His youth, his grace, his sweet-voiced harmony, Have stilled the enmity within my breast. Can this be pity by which I’m possessed? abner This, madame, is the foe that roused your fear! The falseness of your dreams is now made clear — Unless this pity that you say you feel Is just that fatal blow that made you reel.19

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athaliah [to Joash and Josabeth] You’re going? josabeth         His tale is told: what’s left to say? He’d only prove a burden, should he stay. athaliah No. Come back. Tell me how you pass your days.

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joash I worship God; they instruct me in His ways. They teach me how to read His Holy Writ; Already I have learned to copy it. athaliah What does it say? joash         God wants our love, and He Will, soon or late, avenge all blasphemy; In the Lord’s strength the orphan can confide; He humbles the proud and smites the homicide.20

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athaliah I see. But in this temple what takes place? joash We praise the Lord and bless His loving grace. athaliah You worship God all day, at His command?

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joash All profane practices are strictly banned. athaliah What are your pleasures, then? joash               Sometimes I offer To the high priest the salt or incense coffer; I hear God’s grandeur when the chants take flight, I see His goodness in each pious rite.

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athaliah Have you no better pastimes to enjoy? I pity the sad fate of such a boy. Come to my palace; see the splendors there. joash And in God’s blessed bounty cease to share? athaliah I won’t make you abandon Him, you know. joash You do not pray to Him. athaliah            You may do so.

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joash Another god, though, I’d see worshipped there? athaliah I serve my god, as you do yours: that’s fair. Each one is a most puissant deity. joash Mine reigns alone in fearsome majesty, While yours, madame, is a nonentity.21

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athaliah With me you’ll taste new pleasures every day. joash Like floods the wicked’s pleasures flow away. athaliah Who are these wicked? josabeth            Please excuse a lad . . . athaliah [to Josabeth] I’m charmed to see the schooling that he’s had. I must say, Eliakim, you’ve pleased me well;22 You are no common child, that I can tell. You see, I am a queen and have no heir. Throw off that smock and leave this lowly lair. I mean for you to share my wealth with me; And what that promise means you soon shall see. Seated by me, my bounty you’ll enjoy: You shall be treated there like my own boy. joash Like yours?

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athaliah       Yes. Come, speak up now, I implore. joash To leave a father whom I love! And for . . .

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athaliah Continue. joash      For a mother I’d abhor! athaliah [to Josabeth] His memory’s accurate: in his replies Jehoiada’s spirit and yours I recognize. The freedom that I’ve given you you use To infect these children with your venomous views. Their fury and their fear you cultivate; You’ve made my name the object of their hate. josabeth Could we conceal the history of our woes? Our trials, our tragedies, the whole world knows; You yourself glory in them brazenly. athaliah Yes, my just wrath — I vaunt it openly — Has venged my parents on my progeny. Could I have seen a father slain, a brother;23 Seen them from a high turret hurl my mother; Then — most horrific! — seen them cruelly slay Eighty young princes in one blood-soaked day? And why? To avenge my mother’s punishment Of some vile prophets — raving, impudent. And I — a callous child and heartless queen, Slave to a pity craven, vain, and mean —

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Should I not have, provoked thus, Josabeth, Met wrath with wrath, and dealt out death for death; Not punished David’s race as savagely As they did Ahab’s hapless progeny? Where would I be now, had I not suppressed Those weak, maternal feelings in my breast; If my own blood I hadn’t caused to flow, Foiling your plots and schemes with one bold blow? Your God’s relentless hatred and defiance ’Twixt our two houses ruptured all alliance. David I execrate; his progeny, Though of my blood, are strangers now to me.

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josabeth You think you’ve won? Let God see and decide. athaliah This God, on whom alone you’ve long relied: Will His predictions be fulfilled one day? Where is this king, for whom the nations pray: David’s true heir, this savior heaven-sent? But we shall meet again. I leave content: I wished to see; I’ve seen. abner [to Josabeth]             Just as I swore, The precious charge you gave me I restore. Scene viii [joash, josabeth, jehoiada, zachariah, abner, salomith, levites, the chorus] josabeth [to Jehoiada] Did you mark her high words, her haughtiness?

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act ii, scene ix 

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jehoiada I heard it all and felt your keen distress. These Levites and myself were standing by, Ready to rescue you, resolved to die. [to Joash, embracing him] Dear boy, whose courage has borne witness to God’s blessed Name, may He watch over you. This service, Abner, I can scarce repay. Remember that we meet later today. Now, sullied by this queen’s vile impiousness, Disturbed in prayer by this foul murderess, Let us go in; may the pure blood I shed Wash clean the very stones that bear her tread.

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Scene ix [the chorus]



first girl from the chorus What star have we just seen arise? What will he be one day, this wise and wondrous child? By worldly show he’s not beguiled, He’s proof against pride’s lures and lies, Nor can his candor be defiled.



second girl from the chorus To offer incense in his name, To Athaliah’s god men run; But see this dauntless boy proclaim The Lord is God, the Lord is One, And bring this Jezebel to shame, Just as Elijah might have done.



third girl from the chorus Of your mysterious birth, when will we learn the truth? Of some blest prophet can you be the son, fair youth?

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fourth girl from the chorus Thus did our most beloved Samuel,24 Raised in the Tabernacle’s shade, Become the Hebrews’ hope, their oracle, their aid. May you, like him, console the sorrowing Israel.

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first solo voice [sings] How great is his felicity Whom the Lord loves, for such a youth, Who hears His voice from infancy, 20 Is taught by God Himself His blessed truth! Brought up far from the world, from birth he is endowed With heaven’s gifts, and all in vain The wicked and contagious crowd Attempt his innocence to stain. 25



the chorus How blessed, blessed is the youth Whom the Lord God defends and teaches His great truth!



first solo voice Thus, in a vale, hidden away, Grows, cradled in a sheltering bower, By a pure, purling stream at play, 30 A tender lily, nature’s darling flower. Brought up far from the world, from birth he is endowed With heaven’s gifts, and all in vain The wicked and contagious crowd Attempt his innocence to stain. 35



the chorus Happy a thousandfold the child Who finds the Lord God’s laws benign and mild!



second solo voice My God, the child on virtue bent, ’Mongst many perils marches, with no certain guide!

act ii, scene ix 





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The soul that seeks You, wishing to be innocent, By many obstacles is tried! On every side so many foes! Where can Your saints and saviors hide? With wickedness the world o’erflows!

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third solo voice O David’s palace, David’s city, loved so well,25 45 O famous mount, where God Himself was wont to dwell, How have you drawn the wrath of heaven down? Zion, dear Zion, what do you say when you see, Wearing the sacred royal crown, A foreign queen, proud in impiety? 50



the chorus Zion, dear Zion, what do you say when you see, Wearing the sacred royal crown, A foreign queen, proud in impiety?



third solo voice Your halls with David’s psalms once rang, Wherein the sacred raptures of his soul he sang, Blessing his God, his Father, and his Lord; Zion, dear Zion, what do you say when you see This impious stranger’s god being adored, And God’s Name, once revered, exposed to blasphemy?



fourth solo voice O how much longer, how much longer still, O Lord, Must we see wicked men rise up in opposition? E’en in Your sacred temple they would sow sedition. They flout Your faithful folk, by whom You are adored. O how much longer, how much longer still, O Lord, Must we see wicked men rise up in opposition?



fifth solo voice What use is it, they ask, this virtue so severe?

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Wherefore are you disposed to flee Such sweet delights abounding here? What does He do for you, this deity?



sixth solo voice Let’s laugh, let’s sing, this impious rabble say; From pleasure to new pleasure let us run, From flower to flower, sipping each one. Why worry what the future brings our way? The number of our years is veiled in mystery. Today let’s hasten to enjoy life while we may; Who knows tomorrow if we’ll be!

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the chorus Lord, make them quake with fear and weep with misery, These reckless wretches who will never see Your sainted city’s grand magnificence. We blest may sing, to whom You have vouchsafed the sight 80 Of Your immortal, splendid light; We blest may praise Your grandeur, Your beneficence.



first solo voice What will remain to them of all those pleasures vain In which they blindly plunge? Of dreams what can remain, Whose falsehood dawn’s first rays betray? 85 That dawn will be the dawn of their dismay! And while the humble take their place At Your blest table, tasting Your sweet grace, They’ll drink the overflowing cup of their disgrace, Which You, just Lord, will offer on that wrathful day 90 To all that godless, guilty race.



the chorus O dawn filled with dismay! O dreams that melt at day! O pleasures that betray!

act iii, scene ii 

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act iii Scene i [mathan, nabal, the chorus] mathan Go now, you girls, bid Josabeth appear; Say Mathan craves an audience with her here. one of the girls of the chorus Mathan! Confound his soul, O God on high! nabal What! they run off and give you no reply?1 mathan Let us approach.

5 Scene ii [zachariah, mathan, nabal]

zachariah           Rash one, stay where you are! Take care now lest you go one step too far. This holy place is where God’s priests reside; Our laws allow no godless souls inside. Whom do you seek? My sire, this solemn day, From the curst sight of heathens turns away. Prostrate before the Lord, my mother, too, Wouldn’t wish to have her prayers disturbed by you. mathan My son, we’ll wait; don’t trouble needlessly. It is your illustrious mother I would see. The Queen’s command I’ve come here to confide.

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Scene iii [mathan, nabal] nabal These children boast their parents’ brazen pride. But what does Athaliah wish today? Whence come her counsels in such disarray?2 By rude Jehoiada just this morn reviled, Menaced in nightmares by a murderous child, She was prepared, in her just wrath, to install In this proud temple Mathan, priest of Baal, Once she had brought about Jehoiada’s fall.3 You told me what joy that afforded you; From this rich prize I’d hoped to profit, too. What makes her, then, misdoubt the plans she lays? mathan My friend, she’s not herself these last two days: No longer that enlightened, fearless queen, So far above her sex’s timid mean, Who smote her foes so swiftly, to their cost, And knew the price of just one moment lost. By vain remorse that noble soul is stirred; She’s wavering, weak — a woman, in a word.4 I’d filled her heart with bitterness and hate, A heart oppressed by heaven’s threats of late; Her plans for vengeance in my hands she’d placed, Bidding me gather her armed guard with all haste. But, be it that this child who had been brought Before her — an abandoned waif, it’s thought — Lessened the fear her nightmare had excited, Be it that by his charms she was delighted, I found her anger uncertain, nay, allayed, And till tomorrow her vengeance she’s delayed. Her plans confound themselves, it seems to me.

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act iii, scene iii 

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I’ve probed, I said, this orphan’s history. His forebears they’ve begun to brag about; The priest displays him to that wrangling rout: Another Moses — so he’s advertised — Whom lying oracles have authorized. She reddened at these words. I must say I Have never told so effectual a lie.5 What! shall I linger in such uncertainty? I’ll banish my uneasiness, said she. Explain to Josabeth what I require; We’re ready with our falchions and our fire: Their temple’s ruin nothing can prevent, Unless they show themselves obedient By yielding up this child. Then I’ll relent.6 nabal What? for a child whom chance, perhaps, has thrown Into their arms, whose origin’s unknown, These Jews would let their precious temple fall? mathan Ah! you don’t know the proudest Jew of all: Sooner than this Jehoiada would agree To yield a consecrated child to me, He’d brave the cruelest death we could invent. Besides, they love this child: that’s evident. If I have understood the Queen’s words well, Jehoiada knows more than he cares to tell Of this boy’s birth. Howbeit, I foresee He’ll prove their bane and bring them misery. They’ll keep the child. The rest is up to me: Soon, I hope, sword and flame will spare my eyes The sight of this vile temple I despise. nabal What fires you with a hatred so intense?

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Does zeal for Baal provoke such vehemence? For me, you know, a child of Ishmael’s race, Nor Israel’s creed nor Baal’s do I embrace.7 mathan My friend, can you think that, with frivolous zeal, I’m blinded by some idol’s vain appeal: Mere fragile wood, which, take what care I may, I witness worms consuming day by day? Raised as a priest of this God they revere, Mathan, perhaps, might still be serving here,8 If thirst for power and love of luxury Could have endured His strict authority. You must recall the quarrel that arose ’Twixt the high priest and me — the whole world knows — When I aspired to claim the censer’s care: My tears, my schemes, my struggles, my despair. Vanquished by him, I sought a new career, At court my proud soul found its ideal sphere. By small degrees the ear of kings I neared; Soon, as an oracle, I was revered. Studying men’s hearts, I flattered every whim, Sowing with flowers the precipice’s rim. As for their vices, naught was sacred: I Bent all the rules, with their tastes to comply. And while Jehoiada’s rigorous, rude address Offended their proud ears’ soft tenderness, I learned to charm them with my dexterous lies, Hiding unpleasant truths from all their eyes; I placed their passions in a favorable light, And shedding blameless blood was my delight. At last, to honor the new god she chose, At Athaliah’s word a temple arose. Jerusalem wept to see herself profaned. The tribe of Levi, seeing her disdained, Hurled up to heav’n loud cries at her disgrace;

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act iii, scene iv 

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While I, example to that timid race, Scorning their Law, praised what the Queen had done, And, thus, the priesthood of Baal I won. Thus, too, my rival’s power I defied: Wearing my crown, I walked with equal pride. But though I’ve reached the height of glory now, The memory of their God, I must avow, Still fills my soul with grave uneasiness, And that’s what drives my anger to excess. Now, if His temple I could devastate, Proving how powerless is Jehovah’s hate, And, midst the dead, the damage, the debris, Rid myself of remorse through infamy,9 What joy I’d feel at such a victory! — Josabeth comes.

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Scene iv [josabeth, mathan, nabal] mathan          The Queen has sent me here To foster peace and banish hate and fear; Please don’t be shocked I’ve sought you out, Princess, You whom heav’n’s blessed with grace and gentleness. A rumor — one whose truth, though, I debate — Confirming the bad dreams she’s had of late, Nearly brought down on the high priest, in torrents, The wrath the Queen believes his treachery warrants. I won’t boast here of my diplomacy. I know Jehoiada’s been unjust to me; With good deeds, though, such hurts we must repay; Thus, charged with words of peace I come today. Live, safely celebrate your sacraments. She asks but this of your obedience: She wants — I tried my best to intervene — That orphan child she says that she has seen.

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josabeth Eliakim! mathan      I’m quite ashamed that she Should take this idle dream so seriously. But as her mortal foes you take your stand, Unless you yield this boy into my hand. Impatiently the Queen waits your reply.

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josabeth This is the peace she’d have us ratify? mathan To accept such terms do you dare hesitate, Which purchase peace at such an easy rate? josabeth How wondrous if, eschewing craft and art, Mathan could conquer his dishonest heart, And if this master of malign invention Could be the author of a good intention! mathan Princess, of what are you complaining, pray? Have we come here to tear your son away? Who is this child who claims your tenderness? So great a love astounds me, I confess. Is he a treasure, then, so rare, so dear? Is he a savior heaven has sent here?10 Consider: your refusal might bear out A muffled rumor that’s being spread about. josabeth What rumor?

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act iii, scene v 

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mathan        That this child’s of noble line, That your spouse grooms him for some grand design.11 josabeth Fueled by false tales, you let you fury grow. mathan Princess, if I am wrong, then prove me so. I know that, tireless foe of any lie, You, Josabeth, would doubtless rather die Than save your life, if that would mean that you Had to speak just one word that was untrue.12 Of this child’s history there rests no trace? Impenetrable night enshrouds his race? And you yourself know not his origin, From whose hands kind Jehoiada took him in? Speak: I will credit every word you say. Give glory to the God Whom you obey. josabeth O wicked one, how dare you name to me A God whose foes you instruct in blasphemy? His truth you judge, to whom the truth’s unknown? You, seated on a pestilential throne, Where falsehood reigns and its foul poisons spread, You, nourished on deceit, on treachery fed? Scene v [jehoiada, josabeth, mathan, nabal] jehoiada Where am I? Is this Baal’s priest I see here? What! to this traitor David’s child gives ear? You let him speak? Were you not terrified

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That at his feet the abyss would open wide, That its engulfing flames would seize on you, That these walls, crushing him, would crush you too? What does he want? Does God’s foe have the face To infect the airs we breathe in this blest place? mathan Jehoiada’s wonted wrath we recognize; But, surely, a little prudence would be wise. Respect a queen, and do not dare molest Him whom she’s deigned to charge with her behest.

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jehoiada Speak then! No doubt the news you bear is sinister: What else could be conveyed by such a minister? mathan I’ve let the Princess know the Queen’s will. She . . . jehoiada Get out then, monster of impiety! Your cup is full of infamies: imbibe. God will consign you to that treacherous tribe: Abiram, Dathan, Doeg, Ahithophel.13 The dogs Jehovah set on Jezebel Wait for His wrath to fall on you, when they, Already at your door, will claim their prey.

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mathan [troubled] By sunset . . . we shall see . . . which of us will . . . But let us go, Nabal. nabal           Sire, are you ill? You seem distraught; you’re wandering about.14 This is the way.

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act iii, scene vi 

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Scene vi [jehoiada, josabeth] josabeth         The storm has broken out. The Queen, enraged, demands Eliakim, My lord. His birth, your grand design for him, Are now, it seems, no longer a mystery: Nay, Mathan nearly named his sire to me.

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jehoiada To treacherous Mathan who could have disclosed them? Perhaps, though, your undue concern exposed them? josabeth I tried my best to master my distress. But, trust me, Sire, the gravest perils press. For a more prosperous hour let the boy wait. And while that wicked pair deliberate, Before we’re trapped, before he’s snatched away, Let him be hidden one more time, I pray. The roads are open still, if we make haste. Must he take refuge in some desert waste? I’m ready. There’s a passage leading out, A secret passage no one knows about, Whence we can safely cross the Kidron’s tide15 And reach the desert where, so sorely tried, And, like us, seeking safety on the run, David eluded a rebellious son.16 Of lions and bears I would be less afraid . . . But why should we refuse King Jehu’s aid? My plan, perhaps, may prove most salutary. With Jehu let our prize find sanctuary. Let us conduct him there without delay;

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His realm is near and may be reached today. Jehu’s not ruthless: what is there to fear? He’s always held the name of David dear. Alas! is there a king so fierce, so fell — Whose mother’s not another Jezebel — Who would not pity this boy’s sufferings? Is not his cause the common cause of kings? jehoiada What timid counsels are you offering me? You’d trust to Jehu’s help so readily?

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josabeth Does God forbid all aid, all self-defense? Won’t He resent too blind a confidence? His sacred schemes use human agency:17 He Himself armed Jehu most powerfully. jehoiada This Jehu, whom His wisdom raised so high, Jehu, on whom I see your hopes rely, Repays His boons, the ingrate, with disdain. He suffers Ahab’s horrid child to reign, Follows the heathen rites of Israel’s kings, Allows the Egyptians’ god their offerings; In the high places, Jehu, rash, impure,18 Dares offer incense God cannot endure. To serve His cause and venge His slighted glory, His heart’s too guilty and his hands too gory. No, God is mighty, let us cling to Him,19 And far from trying to hide Eliakim, With royal crown his brow I’ll decorate. The destined hour I wish to anticipate, Before the plots of Mathan can be laid.

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act iii, scene vii 

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85

Scene vii [jehoiada, josabeth, azariah followed by the chorus and several levites] jehoiada Well, is the temple closed now, as I bade? azariah I watched as each and every gate was barred. jehoiada There’s no one left, then, but the priestly guard? azariah Twice of the sacred courts I’ve made a tour. Everyone’s fled and won’t return, I’m sure: A wretched troop, dispersed by faithless fear; Only God’s blessed tribe now serves Him here.20 Since from the Pharaoh’s grasp this people fled, They never have been stricken with such dread. jehoiada A craven people, born for slavery’s chains, Brave only against God! Much work remains . . . But who’s permitted these young girls to stay? one of the girls of the chorus My lord, how could we bear being sent away? No strangers to the temple of God are we. Our fathers, brothers, serve you loyally. another girl Alas! if we cannot, like famed Jael, Avenge the shame that’s smitten Israel,

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And boldly impale God’s enemy’s impious head,21 We can yield up our lives for Him instead. While you defend the embattled sacred place, Our tears at least can sue God for His grace. jehoiada Behold who, for Your cause, prepare to fight: Children and priests, O Endless Wisdom’s Light! But if You shield them, who can work their doom? You can recall us even from the tomb. You wound and cure. You strike down and revive. They don’t trust in themselves, howe’er they strive, But in Your Name they’re ever uttering, In vows You swore to their most saintly king, And in this temple wherein You reside, Which, like the sun, will evermore abide.22 — But what makes my heart tremble ecstatically? Is it God’s Spirit taking hold of me? It is. It burns me, speaks, unseals my eyes: Before me distant ages dimly rise. Levites, lend me your sacred harmonies, And second these prophetic reveries.23 the chorus [singing to the accompaniment of musical instruments]   Now let the Lord’s inspiring voice be heard,   And may it move our hearts, as in the spring     The tender grass is stirred   By the fresh breeze at morn’s awakening. jehoiada O heavens, hear my voice, O earth, give ear!24 Your Lord sleeps not, O Jacob, never fear!25 The Lord is roused: O sinners, disappear! [Here the music recommences and Jehoiada at once resumes.] How has pure gold become the vilest lead?26 What priest lies here on holy ground, struck dead?27 Jerusalem, weep for your treachery!

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act iii, scene vii 

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You’ve slain our prophets by your perfidy. God has withdrawn from you His love and light; Your incense has been sullied in His sight.   Where are these captives being led?28 God’s brought the queen of cities to her knees: Her priests are slaves, her kings are refugees. He’s banished her from His solemnities. Temple, collapse! With flames, you cedars, spread!29   Jerusalem, source of my woe, What hand has ravaged what was once so fair? Who’ll make my eyes two founts, in my despair,   Which, at your fate, will overflow?

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azariah O holy temple! josabeth          O David! the chorus              Lord of Zion, we 60 Implore the grace You granted once to our great king. [The music begins once again, and Jehoiada, after a moment, interrupts it.] jehoiada     What new Jerusalem do I see30 Rise from the desert waste, so bright and shimmering, Her brow bearing the mark of immortality?     You peoples of the earth, now sing: Jerusalem is reborn in greater majesty.     Whence come, on all sides gathering, These children who were never suckled at her breast?31 Lift up, Jerusalem, lift up your lofty head. See all these kings whom your great glory has impressed. The kings of every nation, by your might suppressed,     Now kiss the dust on which you tread; All peoples hasten now toward the light you shed.

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Happy is he who feels for Zion a zeal sublime     In which his soul delights to drown!     Heavens, let your blest dew rain down;   Let earth bring forth her Savior in due time.32

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josabeth Alas! how can we gain that longed-for prize, If the race whence this Savior must arise . . . ? jehoiada Josabeth, fetch the costly crown here now,33 The crown that graced King David’s blessed brow. [to the Levites] And you, to arm yourselves, must follow me To where we guard the awesome armory Of swords and spears, well hid from profane eyes, Arms that the blood of Philistines still dyes, Arms that victorious David, old, respected, Offered to God, by Whom he’d been protected. To wield them now who has a better right? Come, I myself will arm you for the fight.34

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Scene viii [salomith, the chorus]



salomith What fears, what mortal woes, my sisters, come our way! Are these the first fruits You would have us bring, The fragrant offerings, Celestial King, That on Your altars we must offer up today?



one of the girls of the chorus What spectacle confronts our timid gaze! Who’d have believed that we would ever see These deadly daggers and this wicked weaponry,

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act iii, scene viii 



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Here, in this house of peace, so fiercely blaze?35



another girl How comes it that, full of indifference for her Lord, Jerusalem stands mute while fearful dangers press? 10 How comes it, sisters, in our great distress, Brave Abner comes not, armed with upraised voice and sword?



salomith Alas! here, in a court where men obey Naught but brute force and violence, Where honors, rank, and power repay The blindest and most base obedience, To succor tearful innocence Who dares raise up his voice today?



another girl In this great peril by which we are beset, For whom do they prepare the sacred coronet?

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salomith The Lord has let His will be known. But what He has revealed His prophet knows alone. Who can explain to us its sense? Does He now arm Himself in our defense, Or does He arm Himself that we may be o’erthrown?

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the chorus [singing] O promise! O dire menace! O dark mystery! What evils and what blessings are foretold in turn! How can such love exist harmoniously With wrath so rigorous and stern?36



a voice [singing alone] Zion will be no more. By cruel fire and sword She’ll be despoiled, her walls laid waste.

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another voice God shelters Zion. Her unending glory is based On the Lord God’s Eternal Word.



first voice I see her splendor disappear before my eyes.



second voice I see her brilliant fame illuminate the world.



first voice Into the deepest chasm Zion will be hurled.



second voice Her head will reach unto the skies.



first voice What a sad fall!



second voice What glorious immortality!



first voice What cries of wretchedness!



second voice What songs of victory!37



a third voice Let us cease worrying, for surely God one day Will make this awful mystery clear.38



all three voices His anger let us duly fear, And for His mercy let us pray.

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act iii, scene viii 



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another voice The heart that harbors love for You, From anxious care, Lord, will be ever free. To Your supreme will ever true, It seeks to serve You selflessly. On earth and, yea, in heaven too, It alone knows a blest tranquillity: The heart that harbors love for You.39

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Athaliah

act iv Scene i [jehoiada, josabeth, zachariah, salomith, a levite, the chorus] salomith With a majestic stride, beside my mother, Young Eliakim advances with my brother. Sisters, what do their veils conceal from view?1 What is this sword that’s borne before these two? josabeth [to Zachariah] My son, place on this table, with due awe, This volume that contains our holy Law. And you too now, beloved Eliakim: Place by this book the royal diadem.2 Levite, obey Jehoiada now and set King David’s sword beside his coronet.

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joash Princess, what is this strange and novel scene? This book, this sword, this crown: what do they mean? Since God first brought me here to learn His ways, Such preparations never met my gaze. josabeth On all your doubts, my son, light will be shed. joash You wish to place this crown upon my head? Its glory, Princess, please do not profane! That great king’s memory we must maintain. A wretch left prey to wolves out in the wild . . . 3

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act iv, scene ii 

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josabeth [trying the diadem on him] Hush: let me do as I’ve been bid, my child.

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joash But from your mouth I hear sobs make their way. Princess, you weep! What pity moves you? Say: Must I be sacrificed upon the pyre, Like Jephthah’s daughter, to appease God’s ire?4 Alas! a son must yield all to his sire.

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josabeth Here comes one who shall make the Lord’s will known. Fear nothing. — Come, let’s leave these two alone. Scene ii [joash, jehoiada] joash My father! jehoiada        Well, my son? joash             What’s happening here? jehoiada It’s time, my child, I made these matters clear. You must now learn, before the others do, Of God’s great plans for Israel and for you. Arm yourself with new faith and strength of will. The ardor I have tried hard to instill Deep in your heart it’s time for you to show, And to repay the Lord the debt you owe.5 Do you feel such a generous, noble fire?

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joash I’ll give my life, if such be His desire.

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jehoiada You’ve often heard our great kings’ history. Do you remember by what strict laws he Who’s worthy of a kingdom must be led? joash A righteous king, so God Himself has said,6 On riches and on gold does not rely, Fears the Lord God, keeping before his eye His laws, His teachings, His severe decrees, And from harsh burdens grants his brothers ease. jehoiada But, ’mongst our kings, had you to choose just one To emulate, who would it be, my son?

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joash David, who loved the Lord so faithfully, Was the most perfect king, it seems to me. jehoiada Then you’d not imitate, in their excess, Jehoram’s and Ahaziah’s wickedness? joash O father! jehoiada        Tell me what you think, I pray. joash Perish, as they did, all such men as they!7 My father, wherefore do you bow so low?

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act iv, scene iii 

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jehoiada [prostrates himself at his feet] I pay my king the reverence I owe. Be worthy, Joash, of great David’s race. joash I, Joash? jehoiada      Learn now by what signal grace God foiled a furious mother’s fell intent,8 When, skewered by her knife, you — nearly spent — Were rescued by Him from her butchery. Her rage, though, still leaves you in jeopardy. With the same lust that moved her to pursue The last of her son’s progeny in you, Her cruelty seeks to slaughter you today, And under your false name still stalks its prey. But ’neath your banners I have marshaled here Men prompt to avenge you: loyal, without fear. Enter, brave chiefs of pious family, Who serve by turns the sacred ministry.9 Scene iii [joash, jehoiada, azariah, ishmael, and three other chiefs of the levites] jehoiada [continuing] My king, here are the men who will subdue Your enemies, an army staunch and true. And priests, here is the king I promised you. azariah What! Eliakim? ishmael          What! can this sweet child be . . . ?

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jehoiada The heir of Judah’s kings? Yes, verily. Last-born of Ahaziah, our king who fell, Named Joash at his birth, as you know well, Whose fate all Judah — just like you — bewailed: This tender shoot so cruelly curtailed, And midst his bleeding brothers left for dead. By that same treacherous knife his blood was shed; The Lord, though, turned the mortal blow aside, Kept warm his waning heart, who else had died, Let Josabeth, cheating their watchful eyes, Deprive those butchers of their bloody prize And, aided in her theft by none but me, Convey both babe and nurse here secretly.

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joash Alas! the love and kindness you’ve displayed: How can such goodness ever be repaid? jehoiada Another time your thanks shall be expressed. — Here is your king, on whom your hopes all rest. I’ve kept him safe thus far; now I must ask That you, God’s ministers, complete my task. Soon Jezebel’s fell daughter, once she’s heard Joash is not enshrouded and interred, Will come to plunge him in the tomb again. Even now, not knowing him, she wants him slain. Her fury, saintly priests, you must forfend. This slavish bondage of the Jews must end: Avenge your dead, your ancient Law renew; Make the two tribes bestow the deference due10 To their new king whom I’ve revealed to you. Our enterprise is perilous, but grand. Against a prideful queen I take a stand, Beneath whose flags march, furious and strong,

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A foreign horde and faithless Hebrew throng. But God is my strength, and God will be my guide. Think: in this child you, Israel, reside. Already a vengeful God fills her with fear; Already, duping her, I’ve brought you here. She deems us undefended for a fray. Let Joash be proclaimed without delay. Then you, our new king’s dauntless soldiery, Invoking God, Who grants the victory, Shall rouse men’s slumbering faith, march on our foe, And in her palace work her overthrow.11 What hearts, though spellbound in a craven trance, Seeing our saintly, strong-armed troops advance, Will not be spurred to follow our example? A king whom God has reared in His own temple, His loyal priests, with Aaron’s heir afore,12 Conducting Levi’s children into war, In each of whose revered right hands a sword That David consecrated to the Lord? With terror God will blight the enemy; In your foes’ faithless blood bathe fearlessly. Strike down the men of Tyre — of Israel, too:13 Don’t you descend from those famed Levites who, When fickle Israel, debauched and vile, Prayed in the desert to the god of Nile, Shed blamelessly the blood of their next kin And consecrated their brave hands therein?14 And has their noble deed not won for you The right to tend God’s altars as you do? I see, though, that you burn to follow me. First, on this august tome, swear solemnly, That for this king whom heav’n restores to us You’ll live and fight and die victorious. azariah We pledge our word — our brethren’s and our own —

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To establish Joash on his fathers’ throne And not lay down these weapons you bestow Till we’ve avenged him on his every foe. If some transgressor fails to keep his word, Let Your unbridled vengeance strike him, Lord: That, with his sons, denied Your blessed lot, He rank amongst the dead whom You know not.

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jehoiada And to the Lord’s eternal Law do you, My king, swear that you always will be true? joash His righteous Law how could I not obey? jehoiada My son — I’ll call you that still, if I may — Suffer this tenderness; forgive these tears Which flow for your sake from my too just fears. Brought up far from the throne, you’re unaware Of the envenomed charms that wait you there: Absolute power can intoxicate, And fawning, flattering voices fascinate; Our sacred laws — so they’ll be counseling — Rule the vile people, but obey the king; From all constraints, they’ll say, kings should be free; Their will should be their sole authority; All else must bow before their majesty; Only to weep, to work, are most men fit, And to an iron scepter would submit; If they are not oppressed, they will oppress. And thus, from snare to snare, abyss to abyss, Corrupting your pure heart, your pristine youth, They’ll make you, in the end, despise the truth, Painting fair virtue as a frightful thing.15 Alas! they led astray our wisest king.16 Swear on this book, and let all hear you swear,

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That God will always be your foremost care; That, scourging wickedness, shielding the just, When judging of the poor, in God you’ll trust, Recalling that, beneath your linen dress, You once, like them, were poor and fatherless.

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joash I swear to do as the Law bids me do. Chastise me, Lord, if I abandon You. jehoiada Come, holy unction now must consecrate you. — Stand forth now, Josabeth: we all await you. Scene iv [joash, jehoiada, josabeth, zachariah, azariah, ishmael, the three chiefs, salomith, the chorus] josabeth [embracing Joash] O son of David! King! joash            My only mother! Dear Zachariah, come, embrace your brother. josabeth [to Zachariah] Prostrate yourself at your king’s feet, my son. jehoiada [while they embrace] My children, may you thus be ever one!17 josabeth [to Joash] You know then, child, whose kingly blood you share? joash And who’d have shed that blood, but for your care.

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josabeth Now, Joash, I can call you by your name. joash Though Joash now, I’ll love you just the same. the chorus What! this is . . . ? josabeth            Joash. jehoiada            — Wait! Let’s hear this man. Scene v [joash, jehoiada, josabeth, etc., a levite] a levite I do not know what sacrilege they plan, But rattling brazen arms hem us about; Amidst the banners fires are breaking out; Athaliah’s troops, no doubt, are drawing near. All routes for rescue are cut off, I fear. The sacred mount, whereon the temple stands, Is overrun by reckless Tyrian bands. Blaspheming, one of them has just made known Abner’s in chains and we must stand alone. josabeth [to Joash] Dear child, by whom, in vain, I have been blessed, Alas! to save you I have done my best. God has forgotten David, your great sire.18 jehoiada [to Josabeth] What! are you not afraid to draw His ire

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On you and on this king you hold so dear? But if God means to snatch him, as you fear, Consigning David’s line to eternal night — Are you not standing on the sacred site Where our first sire, letting God’s will be done, Raised up his arm against his guiltless son, That dear late fruit, his aged wife’s firstborn, Leaving to God to achieve what He had sworn, And yielding up, by that cruel immolation, The hopes, preserved in Isaac, of his nation?19  — Friends, it is prudent now to separate. You, Ishmael, must guard the western gate; You, take the north gate; you, the south; you, east; Let no one, be it Levite, be it priest, Disclose, by thoughtless zeal, the plans I’ve laid, Marching out ere our preparation’s made; And, last, let each, of one impassioned mind, Guard to the death the post he’s been assigned. Our foes, in their blind rage, imagine we Are sheep who’ll troop to slaughter docilely, And think to find but fear and panicking. You, Azariah, accompany the King. [to Joash] Come, precious scion of David’s race, inspire Your champions with new fervor and new fire; Appear now, in your crown, to every eye, And die a king, at least, if you must die. Go with him, Josabeth. [to a Levite] Give me my sword. Offer your pure tears, children, to the Lord. Scene vi [salomith, the chorus]



the chorus [singing] Go forth, children of Aaron, join the fray. Never in all your fabled history

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Did juster cause compel your bravery. Go forth, children of Aaron, join the fray. It is your king, your God, for whom you fight today.



first solo voice The bolts You hurl, Lord, where are they, The signs of righteous wrath divine? Our jealous God has gone away, The God Who said, Vengeance is mine.20



second solo voice O bounteous God of Jacob, once You heard our pleas. Amidst the horrors we now face, You only hear the voice of our iniquities? Are You no longer a God of grace?



the chorus O bounteous God of Jacob, once You heard our pleas.



first solo voice It is for You that in this war, O Lord, the arrows of the wicked are intended.21 They say, His reign on earth must now be ended, His festal days be marked no more. Let all mankind be freed from His oppressive thrall. Let all His saints be massacred, His altars fall. Wipe out all memory of His fame, Wipe out all mention of His Name; That neither He nor His Anointed One hold sway.22



the chorus The bolts You hurl, Lord, where are they, The signs of righteous wrath divine? Our jealous God has gone away, The God Who said, Vengeance is mine.

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second solo voice Sad remnant of a royal dynasty, The last and dearest flower of a stem so fair,23 Alas! will this most cruel of mothers once more dare To lift the fatal knife against her progeny? Say, sweet prince, by some angel were you blessed, Who, at your cradle, stayed the assassin’s blade? Or did God’s voice, when you’d been laid to rest, From the tomb’s darkest night recall your shade?



third solo voice What though his sire and grandsire went astray?24 For their crimes, Lord, must he be made to pay?25 You, pitiless, leave him a helpless prey?



the chorus O bounteous God of Jacob, once You heard our pleas. Are You no more a God of grace?



a girl of the chorus [without singing] Dear sisters, can’t you hear The cruel Tyrians’ trumpet sounding near?



salomith The barbarous soldiers’ cries now strike my ear. With horror is my soul undone. Come, let us fly, O let us run: The august sanctuary will provide A sheltering shade for us inside: The sanctuary is our last resort.26

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act v Scene i [zachariah, salomith, the chorus] salomith Dear Zachariah, what have you to report?1 zachariah Put all your faith in prayer and in God’s power. Perhaps we’ve come now to our final hour. The order’s given for this frightful fray. salomith And Joash? zachariah       Joash has been crowned today. The high priest has anointed the King’s head. O’er all those faces, heav’ns! what joy was spread, To see this king brought back from death to life! One still could see the traces of the knife! We saw his faithful nurse at last revealed, Who, in the vastness of these halls concealed, Guarded this precious pledge; her industry None but our mother and the Lord could see.2 Most joyous tears suffused our Levites’ eyes; Their sobs were mingled with their happy cries. He, midst these transports, friendly, without pride, Gave one his hand, another, sweetly eyed; Swearing to heed the advice of everyone, He called himself their brother and their son. salomith Outside these walls this secret’s been revealed?

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zachariah Within these halls this secret’s still concealed. The sons of Levi, at our sire’s command Deployed at every gate, in silence stand. With swift steps, all at once they’re to rush out, Crying, “Long live King Joash!” — the signal shout.3 My sire forbids the King to venture there And places him in Azariah’s care. But Athaliah, a dagger in her hand,4 Mocks these bronze gates she thinks too weak to stand, Trusting to break them with her engines dire, And breathing ruination, blood, and fire. Some priests, my sister, urged that underground, Deep in a carved-out hollow, safe and sound, Our precious Ark, at least, we should conceal. Unworthy, our father cried, this fear you feel! This Ark that’s brought so many proud towers low And forced the Jordan to reverse its flow,5 Oft triumphing o’er hostile gods’ defense, Should flee before a woman’s insolence? My mother, anxious, standing by the King, Her eye ’twixt prince and altar wavering, Silent, succumbing to her weighty fears, From the most callous eyes would call forth tears. The King, embracing her now and again, Comforts her. . . . — Sisters, follow in my train; And if today our new-crowned king must perish, Then let us share the fate of him we cherish. salomith What impious hand pounds at the gate without? What makes these troubled Levites rush about? And what precaution makes them hide their arms?6 The temple’s breached?

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zachariah            No need for these alarms: God sends us Abner. Scene ii [abner, jehoiada, josabeth, zachariah, salomith, ishmael, two levites, the chorus] jehoiada           Can I trust my eyes? Dear Abner, by what route did you devise To cross the hostile camp that girds us round? They said that Ahab’s godless child had bound Your valiant hands in chains, to guarantee Her wicked schemes would work more certainly. abner Yes, Sire, she feared my courage and my nerve. Her rage, though, had worse treatment in reserve: In a dark cell at her command interned, I waited till, our precious temple burned, She’d come, by those cascades of blood unsated, To free me from a weary life I hated, Curtailing days grief should have terminated A thousand times: the ceaseless suffering Engendered by surviving our last king.7 jehoiada How comes it you’re no longer thus confined? abner God alone sees into her cruel mind. She bid me approach and said, distractedly:8 My troops surround your temple, as you see;

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Avenging fires will lay that temple low, Nor can your God prevent their doing so. His priests can, though, if they will act with speed, And to these two conditions will accede: They must hand Eliakim to me and yield A treasure that I know they have concealed, The one King David formerly amassed, Now in the high priest’s keeping, guarded fast. Go, tell them at that price I’ll let them live.

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jehoiada What counsel, valiant Abner, would you give? abner Let her have David’s gold — if it be true This secret treasure’s safeguarded by you — And all that, rich and rare, you could succeed In keeping from this queen’s devouring greed. You cannot wish her troops, so fierce and grim, To smash the altar, burn the cherubim,9 Defile our holy Ark with hands profane, And, with your blood, the sanctuary stain? jehoiada But how can generous hearts be reconciled To send to death a helpless, wretched child — A child God bid me shield from violence — And save our own lives at his life’s expense? abner God sees my heart. Would it but please the Lord That by the Queen this child might be ignored, That, slaked by Abner’s blood, her cruelty Might hope to soothe harsh heav’n by killing me! But what, alas! can your vain efforts do?

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Will he perish the less, if you do too? Does God ask you to do what can’t be done? When Moses’ mother abandoned her young son To Nile, obeying a tyrant’s stern decree, He seemed condemned to die in infancy;10 But God arranged that, when all hope had flown, That very tyrant raised him as his own.11 Who knows what may await your Eliakim, And if, preparing a like fate for him, The Lord has not instilled with pity’s grace This stern destroyer of our kingly race? At least — as Josabeth could also see — She looked at him, before, quite tenderly; The violence of her rage melted away.12 [to Josabeth] In such a crisis, have you naught to say? What! for this stranger’s sake, this orphan boy, Jehoiada should let infidels destroy You and your son, your race; consign to flame The one place where God bids us praise His Name?13 What more could you do for this child were he Your royal forebears’ precious progeny?14

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josabeth [aside to Jehoiada] For David’s blood you see his tenderness: Why don’t you speak? jehoiada           ’Tis not yet time, Princess. abner Time’s precious, Sire: we can’t afford to wait. You’ve heard my views; while you deliberate, Mathan, inflamed with rage, fires Ahab’s daughter To sound the signal and to start the slaughter.

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What! at your saintly knees must I then sue? By the blest Ark, which opens but to you, That Ark wherein resides God’s majesty,15 Though sacred Law may bind you stringently, We must repel this unforeseen attack. Just give me time to summon my breath back. Tomorrow — nay, tonight — some plan I’ll frame To save the temple and avenge this shame. I see, though, that my tears and my discourse Have proved too weak to steer you from your course: Your virtue is too stern to bend or yield. So be it! Then find me armor, sword, and shield, That I may fly to where the foe awaits And die in combat at the temple’s gates. jehoiada Abner, I am convinced; you counsel well. The ills that menace us we must repel. It’s true: here David’s treasure’s safely stored; I was assigned to guard that precious hoard: The last hope of our hapless Jewish race, I’ve carefully concealed its hiding place. But since to your queen’s claims we must accede, Fling wide the gates and satisfy her greed.16 I grant her, with her bravest chiefs, entrée; But from our altars let her keep away Her foreign hordes, with fury intoxicated; I would not have the temple desecrated. From priests, from children, what has she to fear?17 Decide, with her, who shall gain entry here. As for this child, who fills her heart with care: I read your heart and know it’s just and fair. Before you both his birth shall be revealed: You’ll see then if this orphan I need yield. I’ll make you judge ’twixt Athaliah and him.

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abner Fear not: I shall protect Eliakim. Now I must run to her who sent me here. Scene iii [jehoiada, josabeth, ishmael, zachariah, etc.] jehoiada Great God, this is Your hour, Your prey draws near.18 Listen, Ishmael. [He whispers in his ear.] josabeth         O Lord of sovereign might, Replace the blind with which You veiled her sight, When of her bloody prize she was beguiled, And in my breast You hid that helpless child. jehoiada Sage Ishmael, now go without delay: These crucial orders carefully obey. Above all, as she enters and walks by, A calm — complete, profound — must greet her eye. Children, prepare a throne for Joash; then, Let him advance, followed by our armed men. Have his devoted nurse come forward too, Princess; your weeping you must now subdue.19 [to a Levite] You, once this queen, drunk with a foolish pride, Has passed the temple door and stepped inside, Let her who ventured in find no way out; At once, then, let the martial trump ring out, Whose blast will strike our enemy’s camp with fear. To aid their king, call all the people here;

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Proclaim this wondrous miracle: let them share The news that Joash lives, King David’s heir. He comes.

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Scene iv [joash, jehoiada, josabeth, troop of priests and levites, etc.] jehoiada [continuing]       Priests, Levites, standing in God’s grace: Keep yourselves hidden, but surround this place; And letting me control your zeal, wait here Until my voice calls out for you to appear. [They all conceal themselves.] My king, I trust the vision will prove sweet Of all your enemies falling at your feet. She, whose fierce hate once marked you for its prey, With murderous intent now strides this way. But fear her not. Bethink that next to you The exterminating angel stands here too.20 Ascend your throne and . . . Stay! I hear the Queen. I’ll draw this veil: remain behind, unseen. [He draws a curtain.] You blanch, Princess? josabeth             How could I not, to see Assassins fill the temple, brazenly? What? don’t you see how numerous a train . . . ? jehoiada I see they bar the temple gates again. All is secure.

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Scene v [athaliah, joash, hidden behind the curtain, jehoiada, josabeth, abner, nurse of joash, athaliah’s guard]21 athaliah        False one, you’re here, I see: Framer of plots and fount of perfidy, Whose hopes lie in the discord he foments, Eternal foe of royal omnipotence. On God’s support you’ve heretofore relied. Your foolish hopes now seem unjustified:22 He leaves His temple and you my helpless prey. Perhaps on your own altar I should slay . . . But with this prize I must be satisfied: What you have promised, hasten to provide. This child, this treasure, which you owe to me, Where are they? jehoiada           You shall see them instantly. I’ll show them both at once: look over there. — Appear, dear child, our kings’ deserving heir. [The curtain is drawn back.] You recognize the saintly David’s seed? Observe the scars that mark your murderous deed!23 Here’s your true king, yes — Ahaziah’s son! ’Tis Joash: hail him, Abner, everyone! athaliah [to Jehoiada] Villain! abner     O heav’n!

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jehoiada          This faithful Jewess see, Who suckled him in his frail infancy. Josabeth snatched him from your wrathful arm; These halls received him, God kept him from harm. What’s left of David’s hoard, behold right here! athaliah Traitor, your trick will cost this orphan dear. From this vile phantom, soldiers, rescue me.24

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jehoiada Soldiers of God, defend his majesty. [Here the back of the stage opens; one sees from within the temple armed Levites pouring onto the scene from all sides.] athaliah Where am I? Treason! Queen, you are confounded! By enemies and arms I am surrounded. jehoiada There’s no escape, search wheresoe’er you may: On every side the Lord has barred your way. This God you’ve flouted leaves you in our hands; Atonement for your bloodlust He demands.

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athaliah What! do my worthless soldiers freeze with fear? In what snare, Abner, have you entrapped me here? abner My Queen, as God can witness here today . . . 25 athaliah Traitor, forget your God! Avenge me!

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abner [throwing himself at Joash’s feet]                  Nay! What! on Joash, my king, whom I obey? athaliah What! he, your king? Fools, wicked fools! Recall: My troops without have laid siege to you all. I hear my soldiers call with rousing hue. They come to aid me. Tremble, treacherous crew.

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Scene vi [ishmael, joash, jehoiada, athaliah, etc.] ishmael Our foes are felled, Sire, and the temple is free. The Jews submit, the mercenaries flee. As strong winds scatter storm clouds from the sky, So, at the Almighty’s voice, those armies fly. Our Levites have proclaimed to everyone, From the high court, King Ahaziah’s son, Told of the babe, from bloody sword secured, And Ahab’s daughter, to her downfall lured. Everywhere trumpets all at once resounded: The cries, the clamor, left their camp astounded, Instilling panic and the same affright With which brave Gideon smote the Midianite.26 The Tyrian host, discarding spear and shield, By diverse roads and routes first fled the field. Some Jews, distracted, joined the frantic rout; But seeing God had singled Joash out, The rest have hailed him with uplifted voice. Moved by one spirit, the people all rejoice; Men, women, old and young, embrace with joy, Blessing the Lord and Joash, His envoy.

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All sing of David’s son, to life restored. In the blest city, Baal is abhorred. His heathen temple’s gates are battered in. Mathan is slain.27 athaliah          God of the Jews, You win! Yes, Joash lives! To fool myself is vain: The scars my dagger left are all too plain; I see, too, Ahaziah’s form and face: They bear the marks of his detested race. David has triumphed, Ahab’s driven out. Pitiless God, ’twas You brought this about. ’Twas You Who, flattering me with victory, Set me against myself repeatedly: Now roused to pity for this hapless child, Now by the lure of treasure too beguiled, Afraid to see the flames devour it.28 Then let him reign, Your son, Your favorite; And, to inaugurate his reign, ’twere best That he should plant a dagger in my breast.29 Hear now his mother’s last wish, as she dies. Her wish? No! — Athaliah prophesies30 That, weary of laws that make his soul repine, Faithful to Ahab’s blood, which flows from mine, Shunning his forbears’ influence in vain,31 David’s abhorrent scion will profane Your altar and defame Your majesty,32 Avenging Ahab, Jezebel, and me. jehoiada Let her at once be dragged away from here, Lest she pollute this sacred atmosphere. Go, holy avengers, have this woman killed, That your slain princes’ cries at last be stilled.

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If any rashly come to her defense, Let the same sword mete out their recompense. Scene vii [joash, jehoiada, josabeth, abner, etc.] joash Lord God, Who see my pain and my affliction, Turn far from me her fearful malediction, And never let her prophecy prove true. May Joash die ere he abandon You. jehoiada [to the Levites] Call all the people here that they may see Their new-crowned king and pledge him fealty. King, people, priests, come swear, in gratitude, That Jacob’s bond with God shall be renewed; Touched by His grace, ashamed of having erred, To reunite with Him, let’s pledge our word. Abner, resume your place beside the King.

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Final Scene [a levite, joash, jehoiada, etc.] jehoiada [to a Levite] Well, has her rashness met its reckoning? a levite For her fell deeds the falchion’s made her pay. Jerusalem, to her fury long a prey, From her detested yoke freed finally, Observes her, bathed in her own blood, with glee.33

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jehoiada From that condign and dreadful end she’s met, Learn well, king of the Jews, and ne’er forget: Kings have, in heav’n, a Judge, stern and severe, Innocence an Avenger, hovering near, Orphans a Father, Who holds His children dear.34

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athaliah: notes and commentary

act i 1. Since “history does not specify the day on which Joash was proclaimed [king of Judah],” as Racine states in his preface, he chose to set his play on Pentecost (or, more properly, the Hebrew Shavuoth), commemorating the day Moses received the Ten Commandments (the “Law”) on Mount Sinai. (The most reliable biblical scholarship has, however, established the year as 837 b.c.) On this day, too, the people would offer up the first loaves of the new harvest to their God, as described in lines 5 –12. The choice of Pentecost signals the significance of the Law in this play and, according to Georges Forestier (1718), “can legitimately serve to frame Jehoiada’s enterprise, which is nothing other than the restoration of the ‘Law’ of Moses, in face of the idolatrous tyranny and anti-Hebrew prejudice of Athaliah.” In addition, Racine felt that the coincidence of these two festal occasions “would enable me to provide some variety for the songs of the chorus.” 2. The “one woman” is Athaliah, the usurper of the throne of Judah. 3. Since the action of the play takes place in one day (as in all of Racine’s plays), that day must represent a crisis, a crossroads, when decisions will be made and action taken. Jehoiada, unaware himself of the imminence of any crisis, puts this question to Abner (thereby serving the audience’s interests as well as his own), who answers it only toward the end of his speech (lines 51– 60). See note 8 below. 4. The explication of this couplet, which recapitulates the point Abner has just made (lines 27–32), is: in addition to the fact that Athaliah hates you for being, as high priest, the powerful leader of a faith she fears

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and despises, she hates your wife, who, being the (half ) sister of Athaliah’s own son Ahaziah (“our late king”), is herself a child of Jehoram, Ahaziah’s father and king of Judah before him, which not only places her in David’s line, a race Athaliah has marked for extermination, but would seem to give her a plausibly legitimate claim to the throne of Judah — certainly more legitimate than Athaliah’s. See the fourth paragraph of Racine’s preface. (There may also be something of a “stepmother complex” at work here. See note 23 below.) 5. Mathan is, for all intents and purposes, a creation of Racine’s. He is mentioned only once in the Bible in relation to the story of Athaliah, when his death is reported. See note 27 for Act V. Forestier (1723) suggests that he was “probably originally conceived on the pattern of Haman” (in Esther), but we can recognize his forebears in Creon (The Fratricides) and Narcissus (Britannicus) as well. Ruthless, cold-blooded, treacherous villains, all four come to a bad end. 6. Racine is careful to drop this early hint of Athaliah’s avarice, which will play a crucial part in the denouement: it is her “lust for gold” (an expedient invention of Racine’s) that will lure her into the trap Jehoiada cunningly lays for her. 7. The “ruthless child” is Athaliah, daughter of Jezebel and Ahab. 8. The last ten lines of Abner’s speech convince Jehoiada that “it’s time at last” (I.ii.1) to divulge Eliakim’s true identity, which strategy Racine will ingeniously dovetail with Athaliah’s newly awakened interest in this boy (as will appear in Act II); together, these two plot elements will precipitate the crisis that will be spectacularly resolved at the end of the play. (See note 3 above.) Since Abner has no grounds for believing (what will prove to be the case) that “God hid within this vasty fane / An armed avenger who would prove her bane,” he demonstrates an uncanny astuteness in reading Athaliah’s expression. For the audience, though equally in the dark, these lines seem nonetheless pregnant with dramatic possibilities. 9. The passive humility professed in this verse will be belied by Jehoiada’s actions in the rest of the play, in the course of which he will aggressively and single-handedly effect Athaliah’s overthrow and Joash’s enthronement. 10. Here Jehoiada modifies the stance he adopted in line 63 (see prior note). One might, indeed, be justified in inverting his question and asking, Does faith that always acts, that leaves nothing in the hands of God, deserve the name? These questions will be canvassed again by Jehoiada and his wife, Josabeth, in the next scene and in III.vi. 11. The “impious stranger” is Athaliah. At this point it might be advisable for the reader to peruse the fourth paragraph of Racine’s preface for his fairly lucid account of what has transpired before the action of the play commences.

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12. Abner being, like Mathan, a character entirely of Racine’s invention, there is no mention of these exploits (as performed by him or anyone else) in the Bible. There is an Abner mentioned twice in the Bible, but he is the captain of Saul’s host (1 Samuel 14:50, 26:5). 13. These verses, as Forestier (1734) points out, are a paraphrase of Isaiah 1:11. This is merely one example among many (too many for me to cite each source) of Racine’s adopting or adapting verses from the Bible. Jehoi­ada’s discourse, particularly, abounds in such biblical borrowings (Racine claims in his preface that he has “taken the precaution of placing in his mouth only expressions drawn from the prophets themselves”), which heighten its eloquence, even lending it, when appropriate, a quasiprophetic exaltation. 14. Judah and Benjamin are the names of the two tribes that made up the Kingdom of Judah; the other ten tribes, who, Racine tells us in his preface, “apart from a very small number of persons, were either idolatrous or schismatic,” made up the Kingdom of Israel. 15. See Racine’s preface: “the field he’d killed to gain” is Naboth’s vineyard. 16. The incident alluded to is described in 1 Kings 18:17–40. Elijah, provoked to vindicate his God to King Ahab, challenged the priests of Baal to offer up sacrifices to their deity. When it transpired that “there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded,” Elijah offered his sacrifice to the Lord. “Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice.” Whereupon all four hundred and fifty “prophets of Baal” were not only “put to shame,” but were hunted down and slain at Elijah’s command. 17. In the Bible, this incident immediately precedes the one described in the prior note. “And Elijah the Tishbite . . . said unto Ahab . . . there shall not be dew or rain these years, but according to my word” (1 Kings 17:1). “And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth” (1 Kings 18:1). 18. This is a particularly charming and touching biblical episode, in which Elisha brings a dead child back to life. “And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and he stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm. Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes” (2 Kings 4:34 –35). This episode, especially as elaborated in the biblical account, presents quite a contrast to the rest of Jehoiada’s litany. As Martin Turnell observes, “What is remarkable is that God’s miracles are nearly all violent acts of punishment or vengeance and reflect in a striking manner

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the general atmosphere of the play. . . . The only miracles which are not destructive are those of Elisha bringing the dead back to life. They occupy precisely one line” (Turnell, 307). 19. The opening line of this speech (“With miracles was ever age so filled?”) and its last four lines set up in the audience’s mind false expectations of the renewal of such miracles — ​false, inasmuch as the play’s triumphant denouement is brought about by a sequence of events distinctly less supernatural than the incidents Jehoiada adduces. That conspicuous discrepancy, the marked avoidance of anything hinting at the direct involvement of a supernatural agency — ​Athaliah’s recurrent dream precedes the action of the play, and Jehoiada’s prophetic utterance has no bearing on that action — ​ultimately places this play within the same secular context as the rest of Racine’s oeuvre, notwithstanding its elaborate religious trappings, which suggest that a “sacred drama” is unfolding. According to Turnell, “In the main the drama consists of a head-on collision between a ruthless secular tyrant and an equally or an even more ruthless religious leader who eventually outwits the tyrant by what appears to be a purely human as distinct from a God-inspired ruse” (Turnell, 302). 20. Solomon was David’s son. 21. This arboreal imagery recurs significantly in the next scene (I.ii.119 –22), and the botanical metaphors continue in the choral odes ending Act II (II.ix.28 –31) and Act IV (IV.vi.28 –29). See note 37 below. 22. Again Abner evinces a sixth sense in regard to circumstances of which he is ignorant (see note 8 above), and his conjecture is pointed enough to suggest to the audience the likelihood that “of that kingly blood, one drop was spared.” 23. “Illustrious” in that she is the daughter of the late King Jehoram and thus a princess. However, since Josabeth is Jehoram’s daughter by a different mother from Athaliah, Athaliah’s son Ahaziah is only Josabeth’s half brother. 24. Athaliah is the widow of Josabeth’s father, Jehoram. See previous note. 25. This encomium prepares us for the almost disconcerting precocity the child demonstrates later in the play, notably in his confrontation with Athaliah herself, a precocity Racine takes pains in his preface to render plausible, both on scholarly grounds, citing the Greek text of Chronicles, “which has authorized me to make this prince nine or ten years old,” and by the example he diplomatically adduces of the similarly precocious Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV’s grandson. 26. It is “hardly plausible,” as Picard (1165) notes, that Josabeth, having lived in relative propinquity with this boy for eight years, not to mention her being Jehoiada’s wife, should be unaware of something that must necessarily shape this child’s whole existence. This is one of the clumsier

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ploys on Racine’s part to provide the audience with the information it needs to follow the story, though he tries to account for Josabeth’s ignorance by having her later declare, “I’ve kept away from him as best I could” (line 28), offering in the next couplet a somewhat tenuous, if poignant, explanation for thus distancing herself. 27. Josabeth’s typically reasonable, pragmatic query will be answered at the end of the play, when, to accomplish “this great work,” zeal will have to be reinforced by the weapons in David’s armory. 28. Practically every critic and scholar writing about Athaliah has addressed the implications of this very question in an attempt to assess the role of God in this play. Typical of the broad spectrum of opinions on this issue are the strikingly divergent views of Raymond Picard and Georges Forestier. Picard (869) categorically asserts that “the characters are nothing but the puppets of God,” a viewpoint Athaliah seems to subscribe to at the end of the play, as revealed in her bitter accusation: “Pitiless God, ’twas You brought this about” (V.vi.30). Forestier (1719) posits an “astonishing dialectic, all through Athaliah, of the presence and the absence of God” that “implies that God is not the only protagonist of the drama, inspiring some and ruining others, as if men were simply puppets in his hands.” Divergent as Picard’s and Forestier’s views may be, the latter’s stands somewhere about midway between Picard’s and my own. 29. Jezreel, near Samaria, is where Naboth’s vineyard was located. It was Jezebel’s and Ahab’s murder of Naboth and their subsequent seizure of this vineyard that precipitated God’s curse on them and their progeny. 30. See the fourth paragraph of Racine’s preface. 31. This question is a focal one, not only for this play, but also for Iphigenia and, especially, for The Fratricides. See note 31 for Act V. 32. Athaliah has already been alluded to as a formidable, dangerous monarch; here she is painted as a brutal, bloodthirsty, ruthless murderer, and, worse yet, of her own grandchildren. Thus, we look forward to her appearance with some trepidation, but our expectations will be overturned, for our first view of Athaliah will be that of a weak and shattered woman (II.iii). That momentary manifestation of weakness, however, will quickly be followed by a resumption of her peremptory demeanor, making us tremble for Joash when he is subjected to her interrogation. But, once more, our fears will turn out to have been misplaced, since the boy will prove even more daunting than she. 33. The altruistic prayer Josabeth offers up is very similar to those of Atalide (Bajazet I.iv.84 – 87) and Iphigenia (Iphigenia V.ii.99 –101). 34. Forestier (1736) traces this principle back from Ezekiel 18 through 2 Chronicles 25 and 2 Kings 14 to Deuteronomy 24:16: “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.” Cf. IV.vi.37.

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35. Jehoram and Ahaziah, Joash’s grandfather and father, respectively. See the fourth paragraph of Racine’s preface. 36. In his preface, Racine writes: “Scripture expressly declares that God did not wipe out all of Jehoram’s family, wishing to conserve for David the lamp He had promised him.” 37. This vague but foreboding speculation is rendered more substantial by Jehoiada’s prophetic utterances later in the play (III.vii.45 –46) and by Athaliah’s more explicit prediction just before she is dragged off to her death (V.vi.39 –46). One might note, incidentally, that the word “fruit” appears six times in this play, the word “fruits” twice. The usual connotation for Racine (typical, in this respect, of the French neoclassical school’s eschewal of the grossly physical) of either word is product, result, or effect (or, in a negative, adjectival grammatical context, fruitless, just as in English). In this play, in addition to several instances of such usage, there are three occasions when Racine uses the term in a more literal sense: here, in Jehoiada’s simile; in Abner’s play-opening speech (“Bearing the first fruits of their husbandry” [I.i.10]); and in the chorus’s act-closing ode (“The fruits He ripens on the trees” [I.iv.14]). There is one further, semifigurative use of the word, in Act IV, when Jehoiada is reminding Josabeth of Abraham’s (aborted) sacrifice of his son Isaac, “ce fruit de sa vieillesse” (that fruit of his old age) (IV.v.20). Also, see note 21 above. 38. Cf. Jehoiada’s gentle remonstrance in the previous scene (I.ii.101– 2). Throughout the play we will see that the tender, timorous Josabeth always inclines toward tears, not trust. 39. Following the example he had set in Esther, Racine composed expansive odes for Athaliah, to be sung by the schoolgirls of Saint-Cyr, where the work had its premiere. These choral effusions conclude each of the first four acts and comment, like a Greek chorus, on the events that have just taken place onstage. It should be noted, however, that there the resemblance with the choruses of ancient Greek drama ends, for in those plays, the chorus, in addition to commenting on past and present events, interacts with the principals, whether through their leader, as in Sophocles’ Theban plays, or as a group, as in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. There, they not only moralize and philosophize, now praising the gods, now bewailing man’s fate, but also, like a many-voiced confidant, offer consolation and advice to their betters, sometimes even going so far as to warn or rebuke them. Since Racine had determined that the chorus’s contributions in Athaliah should be sung throughout — ​all the other parts, of course, being to be spoken — ​he had little choice but to relegate the choral contributions to the end of each act, cutting off all contact between chorus and principals, and thus depriving the chorus of any dramatic function in the action, a function fulfilled so thrillingly, so memorably, and with such uniquely epic power, by the Greek choruses. Although there is a bit of internal drama in

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the chorus that closes Act III (a brief skirmish in “sacred stichomythia,” as I term it in note 37 for Act III), for the most part, these choral songs, as Racine refers to them in his preface, are much closer to his own religious odes (the Cantiques spirituels) than to the monumentally dramatic contributions of the chorus in Greek drama. Composed of sequences of stanzas of variegated lengths and rhyme schemes, they employ a more figurative, lofty, and rhapsodic style than one finds in the rest of the play (with the exception of Jehoiada’s trance-induced prophetic utterances in Act III). 40. The Hebrews’ escape from Egypt is recounted in Exodus 12 –13; the episode of the manna that rained down from heaven and fed them in the desert appears in Exodus 16. 41. The parting of the Red Sea at Moses’s command and the fugitives’ passage across it is recounted in Exodus 14. The incident of God’s instructing Moses to strike a rock to bring forth water for his thirsty and rebellious people appears in Exodus 17.

act ii 1. Josabeth’s interruption of the girls’ choral song makes it clear there is no time lapse between the first and second acts; likewise, each of the last three acts follows its predecessor without a pause. These lengthy choral odes do nonetheless suggest — ​especially if sung, as originally intended — ​the passage of time. (Or, perhaps, in their spaciousness, a sense of timelessness?) 2. Racine resorts here to zeugma (from the Greek for “yoke”), a rhetorical device usually yoking two disparate nouns with one governing verb, of which Alexander Pope was a past master (e.g., “Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade” from The Rape of the Lock [Canto II, line 107]). 3. Zachariah’s broken phrases, his reluctance even to speak Athaliah’s name, suggest, even before her entrance, how redoubtable a personage she must be. Compare the first scene of Act III: as soon as Mathan identifies himself to the chorus of girls, they run off, horrified. 4. If we bear in mind that Eliakim has been kept carefully hidden for eight years, having narrowly escaped being slaughtered by Athaliah, and that Josabeth is obsessively fearful for his safety (as we shall see in III.vi), we can understand how positively horrifying this news of Athaliah’s having laid eyes on the boy must be for Josabeth, who might, reasonably enough, conclude that Athaliah has recognized him. (Indeed, at the very end of the play, Athaliah does finally recognize — ​alas! too late for her — ​her grandson: “I see, too, Ahaziah’s form and face:  / They bear the marks of his detested race” [V.vi.27–28].) And in Josabeth’s next speech (lines 44 –45), her habitual anxiety prompts her to imagine, however unreasonably, that Athaliah entered the temple with the express purpose of abducting him.

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5. Abner’s dual position as an officer of the royal army of Judah, owing allegiance to Athaliah, and as a devout Jew, is a delicate one; thus, his attempt to act as an apologist for the brusque, unapologetic Jehoiada must be carried out with the utmost tact. But, as Athaliah herself acknowledges: “The noble-hearted Abner knows what’s due / To his own God — ​and to his sovereign too” (II.iv.22 –23). 6. Athaliah and her god are vindicated, in her view, by her many conquests. “Might makes right,” a tenet voiced by Jehoiada as well as by Athaliah, will prove a recurrent theme in this play. 7. The seas in question are the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, an exaggeration on Athaliah’s part, since her kingdom does not extend to the Mediterranean; but, as Forestier (1738) remarks, “the equivocal character of the verb ‘respect’ authorizes this poetic exaggeration.” 8. Syria’s king is Hazael; Racine posits an alliance between him and Athaliah that is undocumented in the Bible. 9. See the fourth paragraph of Racine’s preface. 10. Samaria was the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, which was ruled by Jehu. The “neighboring power” referred to in the next line is Syria. 11. This paradoxical remark occurs in Racine’s original. 12. While this dream is an invention of Racine’s, its gruesome images are adapted from the Bible (2 Kings 9:10, 9:30 –37). Of Jezebel’s interment we read: “And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands” (2 Kings 9:35). 13. The “pontiff [high priest] of Baal” is Mathan. Athaliah’s apology is misapplied: Mathan is in no position to condemn a momentary apostasy; his own religious misconduct (as described in his lengthy self-revelation in III.iii) includes both his earlier, more serious (as a Jewish priest) apostasy and his mockery of the god whom he now ostensibly serves. 14. The diabolical Mathan is quite willing to “play the Lord’s advocate” when it suits his purpose. 15. One should bear in mind that the ruthless, bloodthirsty barbarity Abner accuses him of here and in his next speech is also characteristic of the followers of Abner’s God — ​whom Mathan once served — ​and, indeed, of Abner’s God Himself, as the play represents Him. 16. It is an intriguing coincidence that this line features the same phrase, “monstre naissant” (budding monster), that Racine employed in his preface to Britannicus to describe Nero. (How telling a coincidence it may be seen to be is a point I raise in Section VIII of the Discussion.) 17. Tyre, an ancient seaport of Phoenicia, was the homeland of Jezebel, Athaliah’s mother. 18. This is the “cover story” that Jehoiada and Josabeth invented to account for their adopting this orphan and to conceal his identity even

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from the boy himself. Their story serves at the same time as an allegory, with the wolves standing for Athaliah and her henchmen. 19. Abner tries to defuse the tense atmosphere of this crucial interrogation, to lighten the mood, with this attempt at what Picard (1167) labels “badinage” (banter or teasing). He suggests, with mild mockery, that the murderous thrust aimed at her by the child in her dream may have represented nothing more threatening than an accession of pity, a sensation so new, so unknown to her, that it might well register as a “fatal blow” — ​in other words, that the poniard brandished by this boy was poignant in the received sense, not the etymological. 20. Forestier (1739) observes, in reference to Joash’s earlier reply (lines 30 –34), the one that awakened Athaliah’s pity, that “to lend Joash’s words an artless purity which will disarm the terrible Athaliah, Racine was inspired by the Psalms,” but these words, issuing from the mouth of a boy of ten, far from evincing “an artless purity,” have a disturbingly bellicose and vindictive ring, which might justify one in describing Joash himself as “terrible.” 21. Taking this exchange (lines 68 –71) out of context, one would conclude that the first speaker demonstrates a laudable ecumenical tolerance, the second a ferocious fanaticism distinctly distasteful to an enlightened modern audience. (Of course, Athaliah’s sententious remark is probably more sanctimonious than sincere.) Roland Barthes observes of Athaliah, “She can govern, impose peace, if necessary be generous, permit enemy gods to exist. . . . Her political breadth of vision contrasts with the fanaticism of the priestly party, of which the little King is entirely the product and the instrument” (Barthes, 135). 22. This reaction is somewhat surprising, in view of the boy’s palpable hostility and frank insults, but it may be just this aggressive, belligerent attitude that appeals to Athaliah: he shows himself to be a boy after her own heart. Or it may be that she swallows her indignation in order to further her ulterior design of enticing this potentially dangerous child away from his protectors and into her power. 23. The father is Ahab, the brother, Jehoram (not to be confused with Jehoram, her husband), but Forestier (1740) notes that “Racine includes in the massacre Ahab, Athaliah’s father, who, however, had died earlier in battle from a stray arrow, and he omits to mention the death of her son Ahaziah, assassinated by Jehu at the same time as her brother Jehoram, which was indeed the immediate cause of her vengeance. Probably we should read here ‘both my son and my brother.’ ” 24. Samuel, the last judge of Israel, anointed its first two kings, David and David’s son Solomon. 25. “David’s city” is Jerusalem; the “famous mount” is Sion (or Zion), synonymous with Jerusalem.

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act iii 1. The reaction of the girls at Mathan’s appearance bears out Athaliah’s earlier remark to Josabeth: “The freedom that I’ve given you you use / To infect these children with your venomous views. / Their fury and their fear you cultivate” (II.vii. 89 –91). See note 3 for Act II. 2. This is an interesting question. Picard (1168) believes that “the political designs of the wicked are upset by the intervention of God.” Jehoiada’s earlier invocation to God (I.ii.127–30) leaves open the question of what causes a tyrant’s downfall: if “imprudence” and “wicked ways” are “sure portents of a tyrant’s final days,” God’s intervention may not be necessary. The denouement of the play seems to confirm that Athaliah’s imprudence, coupled with her vindictiveness, fear, and greed, have brought about her ruin. We should bear in mind that it is her dream (II.v.33 –57) that causes her “deep malaise” and prompts her desperate visit to the temple (“To the Jews’ temple I was, by instinct, led: / I thought I’d try to appease their God instead” [II.v.70 –71]), a visit that deranges her mind even more, and that this derangement culminates in her final, fatal visit to the temple. But does this dream provide evidence of her own prophetic gift, or is it a stratagem of God’s to undo her? See Section II of the Discussion for my investigation of that question. 3. This confirms the fears Abner shared with Jehoiada at the opening of the play (I.i.21–24, 57– 60). 4. Later in this scene (lines 100 –107) Mathan will confess to being visited by remorse himself, a remorse far more troubling than any that Athaliah feels. 5. The hints Mathan dropped in the last act that this child was being groomed to replace Athaliah are now shown, in light of this avowal, to have been, not astute surmises, but fabrications intended to foment the Queen’s paranoia and hostility, however correct the audience knew them to be. 6. Athaliah’s desperate need to put an end to her fears by appropriating Joash would here seem to be confirmed as the ulterior motive for her seemingly kindly invitations to the boy in the previous act (II.vii.78 – 83), suggesting at the same time a grim interpretation of her assurance that “you shall be treated there like my own boy,” since she has brutally slain her own grandchildren, of whom Joash, unbeknownst to her, is the sole surviving one. 7. Ishmael was Abraham’s son by his servant, later his second wife, Hagar, both of whom he later cast out at the instigation of his first wife, Sarah, who had meanwhile given birth to Isaac, from whom were to spring “the chosen people.” God promised Ishmael, however, that He would “make him a great nation” (Genesis 21:18), which is generally understood to mean the Arab races.

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8. Mathan’s apostasy was prompted by worldly, not spiritual, considerations; indeed, he cannot free himself from his old beliefs, his deeprooted Jewish faith, whence, however, he derives no succor or sustenance, only bitterness and remorse. 9. It is astonishing that Mathan (not to mention Racine) understands so well the nature of his neurotic complex: that his guilt, operating on him so strongly, “redoubles and feeds” (as the original puts it) his anger. Like Eriphyle in Iphigenia, a character also wholly of Racine’s creation, Mathan is one of Racine’s most complex and tormented creatures, as interesting, from a psychological point of view, as Athaliah. 10. Again, Mathan has inadvertently hit upon the truth, although his innuendoes are more in the nature of taunts than accusations. 11. One wonders how there could have been sufficient time for any rumor, muffled or otherwise, to have been spread about. 12. We have already seen Mathan adopt a pious demeanor to further his own ends (II.v.101); here, he attempts to exploit Josabeth’s sincere piety to intimidate her into fatally divulging Joash’s true identity. 13. Dathan and Abiram were among those who rebelled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, aggrieved at having been brought there from “a land that floweth with milk and honey” and at Moses’s self-proclaimed authority over them. Moses, acting on God’s orders, made an unprecedented example of them: “And it came to pass . . . that the ground clave asunder that was under them. . . . They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them” (Numbers 16:31, 33). Doeg, having denounced to King Saul the priests who were harboring David, was ordered by the king to slay them, “and Doeg the Edomite turned, and he fell upon the priests, and slew on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod” (1  Samuel 22:18). In Psalm 52 David addresses Doeg in terms that could just as well apply to Mathan: “Thy tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righteousness” and goes on to prophesy a grim chastisement: “God shall likewise destroy thee for ever, he shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living” (Psalm 52:2 –3, 5). Ahithophel was an advisor to David; turning against him later, he joined David’s rebellious son Absalom and offered to kill his father: “And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak handed, and will make him afraid . . . and I will smite the king only. . . . And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died” (2 Samuel 17:2, 23). We can see how apt was Racine’s selection of these four biblical characters: they mirror Mathan’s apostasy, his envy, his mendacity, his corruption, his evil nature,

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his ruthless homicidal bent (cf. his boast to Nabal that “shedding blameless blood was my delight” [III.iii.88]), and his malevolent counsel. Ominously for Mathan, each of the four meets with an egregiously horrific end. 14. Jehoiada’s scathing denunciation has a telling effect on Mathan. Mathan, formerly a priest of the Hebrew faith, and already racked by guilt and remorse, is susceptible to the full implications of Jehoiada’s consignment of him to “that treacherous tribe.” Nowhere else in Racine does one find such a stage direction as “troubled” (which he added to the later editions). Before our very eyes this formidable figure seems to implode; he becomes distracted and so helpless that he has to be led off by Nabal. It is as if we have witnessed him go “alive down into the pit” (see prior note). This is a brilliant coup de théâtre, a chilling last look at such a psychologically fascinating character (see note 9 above). He never appears again and is referred to only once, in the condignly perfunctory, belittling report of his death: “Mathan is slain” (V.vi.24). 15. A ravine east of Jerusalem, leading to the Mount of Olives. 16. Absalom. See note 13 above. 17. A thematically crucial line: while Jehoiada repeatedly insists that the pious must place their faith in God, the play is weighted heavily toward the necessity of “human agency” as opposed to a passive reliance on “His sacred schemes.” 18. In his preface, Racine writes: “Since the temple of Solomon was built, it was no longer permitted to perform sacrifices anywhere else, and all those other altars to God that were set up in the mountains — ​referred to in Scripture for that reason as the high places — ​were no longer at all acceptable to Him.” 19. See note 17 above. 20. The Levites. 21. Racine’s own note cites the source for this reference: Judges 4. Sisera, general of the Canaanite army, in flight from the victorious Israelites, was invited by Jael, an Israelite woman, into her tent, under the guise of concealing him from his pursuers; after covering him with a mantle, “Jael Heber’s wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died” ( Judges 4:21). (Speaking, presumably, for her sisters, this young girl, thwarted in her rather ferocious desire to drive a spike through the head of her enemy, but, as suggested in line 19, willing and eager to sacrifice her life for the cause, seems like a forerunner of our present-day female suicide bombers.) 22. Jehoiada predicts that the temple “will evermore abide,” but in his very next speech, when he falls into a prophetic trance, a seer now, he envisages its destruction (line 55). 23. In his preface, Racine writes: “This scene, which is in the nature of an interlude, lends itself quite naturally to musical accompaniment, in

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accordance with that custom among several prophets of entering into their holy trances to the sound of musical instruments.” 24. In his preface, Racine makes this mild disclaimer: “One will perhaps think me somewhat audacious for having dared to place on the stage a prophet inspired by God, and who predicts the future. But I have taken the precaution of placing in his mouth only expressions drawn from the prophets themselves.” This “precaution” results in Jehoiada’s words taking on an even loftier tone, an even more oracular weight, than usual. 25. Jacob was the son of Isaac (see note 7 above) and the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. 26. Racine’s own note identifies Jehoiada’s allegorical allusion as Joash. (Cf. I.ii.119 –22.) In his preface, he elaborates: “I conceive, then, that he [ Jehoiada] sees with his mind’s eye the baleful change in Joash, who, after having reigned in utmost piety for thirty years, gave himself up to the evil counsels of flatterers, and defiled himself by the murder of Zachariah, son and successor to the high priest. This murder, committed within the temple, was one of the principal causes of God’s anger against the Jews, and of all the misfortunes that befell them subsequently. It is even claimed that since that day the responses of God in the sanctuary ceased entirely. This is what has authorized me to have Jehoiada prophesy all that ensued: both the destruction of the temple and the ruin of Jerusalem.” 27. Zachariah (Racine’s note). See prior note. 28. The Babylonian Captivity (Racine’s note), the period of the exile of the Jews in Babylonia, 597–538 b.c. 29. The “cedars of Lebanon” supplied the timber for the construction of Solomon’s temple: “And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops and open flowers: all was cedar; there was no stone seen” (1 Kings 6:18). 30. The “new Jerusalem” is the (Christian) Church (Racine’s note). 31. The Gentiles (Racine’s note). 32. Racine’s preface continues, after the passage cited in note 26 above: “But as the prophets usually conjoin to their minatory utterances some consoling words, and since, furthermore, we are dealing with the enthronement of one of the ancestors of the Messiah, I have taken occasion to afford a preview of the advent of this great comforter, for whom all the righteous men of old pined.” 33. Jehoiada’s abrupt resumption of his businesslike demeanor signals that he has “awakened” from his trance and retains no memory of his prophetic visions. 34. Racine’s remarks in his preface explain this somewhat surprising fitting out of the Levites and priests with the swords and spears from David’s “awesome armory”: “I have followed the explanation of several very expert commentators, who prove, from the text of Holy Scripture itself, that all the soldiers whom Jehoiada . . . outfitted with the arms consecrated to God by David, were so many priests and Levites. . . . Indeed,

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these exegetes say, everything had to be holy in so holy an enterprise, and no profane person could be involved in it.” In the next scene (III.viii.5 – 8), the chorus express their incredulity at this development. 35. See prior note. 36. This is another key question posed by this play. 37. This striking exchange between two Voices from the Chorus (lines 30 –41) is a sort of sacred stichomythia, a verbal combat on a cosmic scale. 38. What is betokened by the movement, suggested in the previous exchange, from despair to triumph, from “a sad fall” to “glorious immortality,” is, in fact, “this awful mystery,” namely, the birth and sacrifice of Christ. 39. The final stanza of this choral ode is a variant of the rondeau form, where a line (or lines) is repeated verbatim several times in the stanza. Here, Racine’s stanza (which I have duplicated) consists of seven lines with alternating rhymes, the seventh line being an exact repetition of the first.

act iv 1. The veils presumably conceal the book and the coronet that Josabeth, in her first speech, instructs Joash to place on the table. 2. The royal diadem is David’s crown, which Jehoiada bade Josabeth prepare in the prior act (III.vii.79 – 80). 3. The French has “ours” (bears), which seems to confuse the issue, as Joash earlier identified the predators as wolves. See II.vii.25 –26 and note 18 for Act II. Josabeth mentions bears in another context (III.vi.22) and adds lions to the menagerie. 4. This is a reference to the poignant biblical tale of Jephthah, who vows that if God grants him victory over the Ammonites, he will sacrifice whoever comes out of his house to greet him upon his return from the victorious battle; that person turns out to be his daughter, his only child, who, like Joash (and Racine’s Iphigenia, one might add), believing that a child “must yield all to his sire,” meekly submits to the terms of the vow, only asking to be left “alone for two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. . . . And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man” ( Judges 11:37, 39). 5. There are numerous instances of Racine’s employing mercantile terms, relating to debt and repayment, in treating moral issues, even questions of life and death (e.g., Ulysses’ taunt: “Then Agamemnon proves too miserly / To spend the blood that buys our victory” [Iphigenia, I.iii.41–42] and Orestes’ remark: “Thanks to this counsel, Sire, severe but wise, / Our

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lasting peace this poor boy’s blood now buys” [Andromache II.iv.11–12]). See III.iv.23 –24 for another example from the present play. 6. Deut. 17 (Racine’s note). Joash’s reply is a loose précis of verses 17–20; verse 17 reads almost like a biblical zeugma (see note 2 for Act II), of which Racine discreetly has Joash omit the lubricious first half: “Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.” 7. Again, a disquieting, precocious ruthlessness manifests itself in this imprecation. And its mercilessly judgmental quality impresses us all the more when we consider that not only does Joash express a grim satisfaction in two particularly horrific deaths (as recounted in the fourth paragraph of Racine’s preface), but — ​even more chilling — ​the two unfortunate victims are, albeit unbeknownst to him, his own grandfather, Jehoram, who turned to heathen worship when he married Athaliah, and his own father, Ahaziah, who followed in their footsteps. But we should not expect his relentless righteousness to be at all mitigated, even when, later, he becomes aware of their relationship to him, since Jehoiada has probably already instilled in him a high regard for, even an envy of, the “noble deed” of “those famed Levites who . . . shed blamelessly the blood of their next kin / And consecrated their brave hands therein” (IV.iii.63, 58, 61– 62). See note 14 below. 8. Athaliah is, of course, Joash’s grandmother, not his mother, but she is the “furious mother” of Ahaziah, whose murder (and the murder of her mother and of all of Ahab’s progeny) at the hands of Jehu she swore to avenge by the slaughter of all of David’s descendents. See the fourth paragraph of Racine’s preface. 9. In Racine’s preface, he notes that the priests and the Levites “were divided into diverse classes so that they could serve by turns in the temple, from one Sabbath to the next.” 10. See note 14 for Act I. 11. Since Athaliah will be lured to the temple from the safekeeping of her palace by a ploy of Jehoiada’s, her overthrow will be effected in the temple, not in her palace. 12. Jehoiada himself is “Aaron’s heir,” by virtue of which he has inherited Aaron’s position as high priest. 13. See note 17 for Act II. 14. This is a reference to the stern retribution visited, at Moses’s bidding, on those who, during their sojourn in the desert, had given themselves over in his absence to debauchery and to the worship of heathen gods. He ordered the Levites, who had remained faithful, to “slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. . . . And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. For Moses

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had said, Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, even every man upon his son [i.e., by killing him], and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day” (Exodus 32:27–29). The description of this slaughter as a “noble deed” (line 63) to be emulated calls into question the moral values of a priest who could so regard it, and prompts us to ask the same question Abner posed earlier about Mathan: “What sort of priest do such remarks reveal?” (II.v.115). 15. The cynical blandishments Jehoiada warns Joash against are precisely those used by Narcissus, Nero’s evil counselor, to corrupt his charge (Britannicus IV.iv), just as Jehoiada’s concluding homily (lines 95 –98) recalls the lecture Burrhus, Nero’s virtuous advisor, delivers to him (Britannicus IV.iii). 16. The “wisest king” is, of course, Solomon, of whom the Bible tells us: “For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father” (1 Kings 11:4). 17. Jehoiada’s prophetic vision in the previous act allows us to register fully the irony, at once poignant and horrific, of the embrace between these two young cousins, one of whom will later have the other stoned to death. “And they . . . stoned him with stones at the commandment of the king in the court of the house of the Lord. Thus Joash the king remembered not the kindness which Jehoiada his father had done to him, but slew his son” (2 Chronicles 24:21–22). 18. Cf. Josabeth’s earlier invocation: “Remember David, Lord, Who see my fears” (II.ii.47). Here, Josabeth’s overwrought, susceptible state of mind immediately allows her to succumb to despair, predictably provoking Jehoiada to castigate her. 19. The general drift of this lengthy sentence (lines 15 –23) is: if God does have in mind to deprive us of Joash, should this sacred spot not prompt you to recall (and follow) the example of Abraham (“our first sire”), who acceded to the will of God and was ready to sacrifice his beloved child (Isaac, his only “legitimate” son), the fruit of his old age and the sole hope for the survival of the Chosen People? Racine writes in his preface: “It was a well-established traditional belief that the mount on which the temple was erected was the very mount where Abraham had once offered up his son Isaac as a sacrifice.” In the biblical tale, an angel of the Lord stays Abraham’s hand at the last moment, and Abraham, noticing “a ram caught in a thicket by his horns” (Genesis 22:13), offers up the ram for a burnt offering in place of his son. 20. Racine’s line translates literally as, Are You no longer the God of vengeance? For my version I have borrowed a clause from the biblical utterance (famously used by Tolstoy as the epigraph to Anna Karenina): “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19).

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21. In her first strophe, the First Solo Voice pleaded for the God of vengeance to make His presence known, to smite the oppressors of the faithful (lines 6 –9); the Second Solo Voice then pleaded for the God of mercy to intercede on behalf of the imperiled Jews (lines 10 –13). Now, in desperation, the First Solo Voice seems to be suggesting, somewhat blasphemously, that God’s own imperium might be at risk if He does not respond to their supplications. 22. The French reads: “Que ni lui ni son Christ . . .” (That neither He nor His Christ . . .). In Greek, Christ means “the anointed.” As Forestier (1747) remarks: “The general tenor of this stanza being inspired by the Psalms, Christ here refers at once to Joash, to all of God’s elect, and inevitably, for a Christian public, to Jesus Christ.” 23. This is the culmination of the botanical imagery that has appeared in the play. See note 21 for Act I. 24. See note 6 above. 25. Cf. I.ii.71–76,103 –4 and see note 34 for Act I. 26. To emphasize the unbroken flow of one act into the next, Racine, for the first and only time, rhymes the first line of one act with a line from the end of the prior act, neither line rhyming with any proximate line in its respective act. (In the French original, the last three line-ending words of Act IV are nous, salutaire, and sanctuaire; the first line-ending word of Act V is vous, the vous thus rhyming with the nous. In my version, which resorts to a somewhat different rhyme scheme for the conclusion of Act IV, it is the last line of that act that rhymes with the first line of Act V: that is, resort and report.) To make the transition even more seamless, Racine explicitly indicates that the penultimate speech of Act IV (lines 41–42), allotted to “A Girl of the Chorus,” is to be delivered “without singing,” an instruction that presumably also applies to Salomith’s concluding stanza (lines 43 –48), so that she ends this act and begins the next in her speaking voice.

act v 1. See note 26 for Act IV. 2. Jehoiada has taken the precaution of displaying Joash’s knifeinflicted scars and producing his long-concealed nurse to substantiate a revelation otherwise scarcely credible. Cf. V.v.16, 19 –20. 3. This “signal shout” is taken directly from the Bible. The story of the ambush of Athaliah is told in 2 Kings 11 and repeated almost verbatim in 2 Chronicles 23. In the biblical version, Athaliah, hearing these shouts of “God save the King” emanating from the temple, rushes there to investigate and is overpowered and sent out to be put to death. Racine removes this fortuitous element from her appearance in the temple, pointing up

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his moral by making her advent a product of her fear, vindictiveness, and greed. 4. Cf. I.ii.81. 5. These two miraculous occurrences are recounted in the Book of Joshua. In the first episode, the Ark “compassed the city [ Jericho] after the same manner seven times . . . and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city . . . and they took the city” ( Joshua 6:15, 20). In the second (which antecedes the first in the Bible), Joshua assures his people that “it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord . . . shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand upon an heap” ( Joshua 3:13). And so indeed it befalls: “And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan” ( Joshua 3:17). 6. The Levites faithfully follow Jehoiada’s injunction to “hide their arms,” so that Athaliah, entering the temple, will feel unthreatened. 7. Abner’s “ceaseless suffering” was portrayed in the opening scene of the play, and his torment and despair will not be alleviated until the climax of the play, when he and Athaliah (the only ones still ignorant of Joash’s survival) express, in the same line, their astonishment that Joash is alive (V.v.19). 8. Abner’s description of her demeanor as “distracted” (“d’un air égaré” — ​with a distracted air) is belied by her perfectly cogent and stern ultimatum, but is clearly intended to remind us that confusion and imprudence are “sure portents of a tyrant’s final days” (I.ii.130), a recurrent theme of the play. 9. According to Forestier (1748), “The two cherubim were figures of angels, carved in olive wood and gilded, which extended their wings above the Ark.” 10. The story of Moses’s mother setting her infant son afloat on the Nile in a waterproofed basket instead of casting him into the river, as the pharaoh had ordered, and of the child’s being found by the pharaoh’s daughter, who then adopts him, is told in Exodus 1–2. 11. Ironically, Abner, in attempting to persuade Jehoiada to agree to Athaliah’s terms, has recourse to a line of reasoning parallel to the one Jehoiada employed with Josabeth earlier (IV.v.15 –23), each trying to convince his interlocutor to leave the fate of Joash in the hands of God, Abner citing the example of the infant Moses, Jehoiada, that of Isaac. 12. An allusion to Athaliah’s momentary accession of pity in the “interrogation scene,” at which both Abner and Josabeth were present (II.vii.35 –38).

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13. See note 18 for Act III. 14. In this striking instance of dramatic irony, Abner once again unknowingly stumbles on the truth. See notes 8 and 22 for Act I. 15. Again, from Racine’s preface: “And this area [the interior of the temple, or ‘the holy place’] was itself distinguished from the Holy of Holies, where the Ark was housed, and where only the high priest had the right to enter once a year.” 16. This passage (lines 90 –95) has drawn attention to itself on account of Jehoiada’s artful equivocation: speaking figuratively of Joash as “David’s treasure,” he relies on Abner (who is to report to Athaliah) to take him literally and thereby to lure the covetous queen to the temple. Turnell cites Pierre Guéguen’s description of Athaliah as “la plus terrible de ses tragédies, où Dieu même est attiré dans la disgrâce par un piège tendu en son nom” (the most terrible of his tragedies, in which God himself is drawn into the disgrace by a trap set in his name) (Turnell, 301). Racine himself, as his laconic manuscript notes reveal (Forestier, 1086), had some concerns that Jehoiada’s doublespeak, as issuing from a priest, might be found offensive or even blasphemous. According to Barthes, “Racine justified Jehoiada’s deception by referring to the ruses of Jesus and Saint Lawrence, which did not keep Voltaire from being outraged” (Barthes, 133n). 17. Cf. Act III.vii.22 –24. 18. Racine’s use of “ta proie” (your prey), with its implication that God is some sort of predator, strikes a note that, in the context of the whole play, is, significantly, hardly discordant. 19. However busy issuing his instructions, Jehoiada does not forget to admonish Josabeth, once again, to curb her lachrymose tendencies. See note 18 for Act IV. 20. Forestier (1079) identifies this “exterminating angel” (who, be it said, does precious little exterminating here) as “the destroyer” who is sent to slay all the firstborn of Egypt, but is instructed to spare the Jewish households “when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts,” which the Jews have been instructed to smear there (Exodus 12:23). 21. Although neither the Picard nor the Forestier edition mentions Joash’s nurse in the roster of participants in this scene (they do, however, list her in the cast of characters), I have taken the liberty of including her, since she is produced by Jehoiada as a silent witness to the truth of his allegations to Athaliah, as lines 19 –20 clearly indicate. 22. Such hopes will continue to appear unjustified, since by the end of the play there will have been no manifestation of “God’s support,” except insofar as He may have inspired Jehoiada’s elaborate hoax (a hoax that almost justifies Athaliah’s choice epithets in the second line of this speech). 23. Jehoiada again takes care to corroborate his allegations with the evidence of Joash’s scars and the testimony of his nurse (lines 19 –20). See note 2 above.

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24. The “vile phantom” is, presumably, Joash, the child who haunted her dreams and who appeared to her, like some waking nightmare, in the temple (II.v.50 –57, 76 – 83); now he must seem to her a ghost risen from the grave. 25. Abner must have been on the point of swearing, with utter truthfulness, that he knew nothing of Jehoiada’s scheme to entrap Athaliah. Abner’s earnest protestation convinces us how wise Jehoiada was not to take Abner into his confidence regarding the snare he was setting (in other words, to dupe him as well as Athaliah): Abner’s stolid integrity and staunch loyalty to his monarch might have prevented him from agreeing to the deception or, worse, prompted him to warn Athaliah; but even if he had agreed, there would have been the risk of his not being able to prevaricate convincingly. So Jehoiada must have reasoned, when, to the urging of his wife (“For David’s blood you see his tenderness: / Why don’t you speak?”) he replied, “ ’Tis not yet time” (V.ii.68 – 69). 26. Gideon instilled the Midianites, who greatly outnumbered his own forces, with panic and affright by having his band of three hundred men surround their camp at night (as God had instructed) and at his signal suddenly blow their trumpets, smash pitchers with lamps inside them (perhaps like primitive Molotov cocktails), and yell out, “The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.” In the ensuing chaos, “all the host ran, and cried, and fled . . . and the Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host” ( Judges 7:16 –22). 27. Here is the biblical account of Mathan’s death (the sole reference to Mathan in the Bible): “And all the people of the land went into the house of Baal, and brake it down; his altars and his images brake they in pieces thoroughly, and slew Mattan [sic] the priest of Baal before the altars” (2 Kings 11:18; repeated in slightly abbreviated form in 2 Chronicles 23:17). “Mathan is slain” is a fittingly deflating dismissal of a character so swollen with pride and ambition. See note 5 for Act I and note 14 for Act III. 28. Athaliah is too sure of herself to lay any blame at her own door, preferring to believe that she was manipulated by a “pitiless God.” In the complete absence of any palpable or explicit intervention on the part of God in these proceedings, it is Athaliah, then, who, ironically, affirms God’s power and, by acknowledging His agency in effecting her ruin, exhibits a remarkable faith, one based — ​as true faith, by definition, must be — ​on little or no empirical evidence. 29. Thereby fulfilling the prophetic vision of her dream (II.v.56 –57). 30. It is worthy of remark that both Jehoiada and Athaliah, the righteous Hebrew and the ruthless heathen, are both endowed with the gift of prophecy. Both, too, are susceptible to very vivid visions. Athaliah has been visited in her dreams, not only by the apparition of her mother Jezebel (“as  on her death day, in full finery” [II.v.35], and immediately

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thereafter in the horrific state in which she was left after being thrown from a window, trampled by horses, and torn apart by dogs), but also by a vision of Joash (whom she had never seen since he was an infant), which her subsequent view of him days later confirms was accurate down to the last detail: “his same garments, his same gait, / His air, his eyes, in fact, his every trait” (II.v.80 – 81). And, what is even more remarkable, the prediction Athaliah launches into here is essentially the same one to which Jehoiada gave utterance earlier, in his unconscious, entranced state, when he was vouchsafed the vision of his own son, Zachariah, lying dead on holy ground, slain at Joash’s command (III.vii.45 –46). Such a striking correspondence only serves to confirm how much these two formidable antagonists have in common. 31. By Joash’s succumbing to “his forebears’ influence,” Josabeth’s worst fears will be realized, namely, that he will be “condemned to pay / For crimes committed ere his natal day” (I.ii.73 –74), but not in the sense she had in mind: for he will inherit from his parents, his grandparents, his great-grandparents, even from his ancestors (e.g., Solomon), the proclivity toward crime that led to their downfall and that will bring about his own. Joash’s deplorable end is reported in 2 Chronicles 24:24 –25: “For the army of the Syrians came with a small company of men, and the Lord delivered a very great host into their hand, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers. So they executed judgment against Joash. And when they were departed from him (for they left him in great diseases), his own servants conspired against him for the blood of the sons [sic] of Jehoiada the priest, and slew him on his bed, and he died: and they buried him in the city of David, but they buried him not in the sepulchres of the kings.” 32. Joash will, in fact, profane the altar by ordering that Zachariah be stoned to death “in the court of the house of the Lord” (2 Chronicles 24:21). 33. The penultimate speech in Athaliah reinforces the violence — ​and the grim delight in it — ​that has pervaded the play. About Jehoiada’s Act I recital (I.i.111–24) of “the spate / Of prodigies that God’s poured forth of late” (I.i.109 –10), Turnell writes: “The most striking thing is not so much the list of disasters overtaking the wicked as the relish with which Joad recalls them: the satisfaction of ‘Dieu trouvé fidèle en toutes ses menaces’ [I.i.112], the way in which he positively gloats over the sight of Jezebel being ripped to pieces by the ferocious dogs. It looks forward to the way in which Joad will play his cards and have Athaliah slaughtered like an animal” (Turnell, 307– 8). 34. The last couplet of the play (a tercet in my version) evokes a God who is, on the one hand, a stern and vengeful judge, and, on the other, a compassionate and comforting father. However, since God does not manifest Himself in either capacity in this play, we must look to His

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representative, Jehoiada, the high priest, to embody those God-like qualities, and, indeed, his character does seem to comprise both the punitive and the paternal. But a closer look at the paternal aspect of his personality may call into question the strength of his fatherly feelings. When, in Act  I, Josabeth questions him about the boy, he replies: “He thinks he was cast off in infancy, / A child I raised in fatherly charity” (I.ii.19 –20). That “cover story,” in which Joash is rescued from “cruel wolves who’d marked me for their prey” (II.vii.26), is very touching, but very misleading. If one asks oneself whether Jehoiada would have felt any compassion for the orphan or demonstrated any solicitude for him, had the boy not been the “precious vestige of blest David’s line” (I.ii.92), there is little in the play to suggest an affirmative answer. (About his Rhadamanthine righteousness, Mathan — ​however expediently — ​observes: “But were it his own son whom we accuse, / He would not spare a criminal” [II.v.97– 98].) Whereas Josabeth, even though “fearing I loved this child more than I should” (I.ii.27), continually demonstrates her love and concern for this boy, Jehoiada is far more circumspect in his own relations with the child and chides his wife for her dangerous displays of affection toward him and her irrepressible fears for his safety. (Of course, one should bear in mind as well that Josabeth is the boy’s aunt, while Jehoiada is not related to him.) Even when Jehoiada evinces, momentarily and apologetically, some tenderness (“Forgive these tears / Which flow for your sake from my too just fears” [IV.iii.81– 82]), those “too just fears,” one suspects, are on behalf of “the saintly David’s seed” (V.v.15), not on behalf of a helpless orphan. Early in the play he prays that if this boy should “disgrace / David’s ideals and betray his race, / Let him be as the fruit that, ere ripe, dies, / Or, shaken by harsh winds, all shriveled lies” (I.ii.119 –22). Although in his prophetic trance (III.vii.45 –46) he was vouchsafed a vision of his own son’s murder at the hands of Joash, he retains no memory of it. But if he did, and believed it to be the truth, one wonders what his course of action would be. There is a parallel situation in Racine’s first play, The Fratricides: Creon has lost one son (Meneceus) and holds the other (Haemon) responsible. Creon, ruthless, cynical, and motivated by self-interest though he be, poses this sardonic but sane rhetorical question to his nephew Eteocles: “[Shall  I] assassinate a son to make it clear / That my paternal feelings are sincere?” (The Fratricides III.iv.61– 62). Were Jehoiada to pose that question to himself, can one entertain any doubt about what his answer would be?

selected bibliography

I include in the secondary-sources section only those few works to which I refer in the Discussion or 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 Barthes, Roland. On Racine. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1963. Dean, Winton. Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques. London: Oxford University Press, 1959. Lapp, John C. Aspects of Racinian Tragedy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955. Tobin, Ronald W. Jean Racine Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1999. Turnell, Martin. Jean Racine Dramatist. New York: New Directions Books, 1972.

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 iambic pentameter couplets, of all twelve of seventeenth-century French playwright Jean Racine’s plays” — Provided by publisher. isbn 978-0-271-05248-9 (v. 4 : 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 © 2012 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.