Jean Baptiste Racine

First performed in Paris in 1677, Jean Racine's "Phaedra" is the tenth of twelve plays by the author and his last to be based on Greek mythology. Racine, the famed French dramatist and master of dodecasyllabic alexandrine, the 12-syllable poetic meter, was a contemporary of Molière and Corneille. This classic story concerns its titular character, who though married to Theseus, the King of Athens, falls in love with Hippolytus, Theseus' son from his...