Jean Racine remains to this day the greatest of French poetic dramatists. This volume brings together three of his most important plays in an entirely new translation. C.H. Sisson captures the clarity, passion, and rhythm of Racine's language as he portrays characters wrestling with ambition, treachery, religion, and love.

Excerpt from Britannicus Result, on the one hand, was an estrangement with Moliere and, on the other, a separation from his old friends of Port Royal, who were utterly opposed, through their religious convictions, to the theater and those who wrote for it. His former instructors, who had toiled so faithfully to de velop his genius, could not hide their grief at his apostasy. Personal remonstrances, which wounded the young drama tist's sensitive spirit, were not lacking. Finally, some writings of Nicole were taken by him as a public attack on himself, and in answer to these he directed a sarcastic and unjust letter against the port-royalists, which made the alienation complete. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Jean Racine (1639-99) remains to this day the greatest of French poetic dramatists. Racine's tragedies portray characters wrestling with ambition, treachery, religion, and love.

This is the best translation into English of Andromache, Iphigenia, Phaedra and Athaliah.

The 'greatest hits' of French classical theatre, in vivid and acclaimed new Penguin translations by John Edmunds and with editorial apparatus by Joseph Harris. The plays in this volume - Cinna, The Misanthrope, Andromache and Phaedra - span only thirty-seven years, but make up the defining period of French theatre. In Corneille's Cinna (1640), absolute power is explored in ancient Rome, while Molière's The Misanthrope (1666), the only comedy in this collection, sees its anti-hero outcast for his refusal to conform to social conventions. Here also are two key plays by Racine: Andromache (1667), recounting the tragedy of Hector's widow after the Trojan War, and Phaedre (1677), showing a mother crossing the bounds of love with her son. This translation of Phaedra was originally broadcast on Radio Three with a cast including Prunella Scales and Timothy West, and was praised by playwright Harold Pinter. This is the first time it has been published. The edition also includes an introduction by Joseph Harris, genealogical tables, pronunciation guides, critiques and prefaces, as well as a chronology and suggested further reading. After a varied career as an actor, teacher, and BBC TV national newsreader, John Edmunds became the founder-director of Aberystwyth University's department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies. Joseph Harris is Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London and author of Hidden Agendas: Cross-Dressing in Seventeenth-Century France (2005).