ARTicles vol. 5 i.3a: Falling From Grace

In 1663 Jean Racine wrote two odes honoring Louis XIV: “On the Convalescence of the King” and “The Fame of the Muses.” These works earned him the privilege to witness the king’s awakening in his private chamber. Louis XIV granted the privilege to attend this solemn ceremony, a major ritual of his court, only to those he deemed worthy of his esteem, usually those with the bluest blood. In a world that rested on the approval of one man, Racine’s participation in this custom symbolized his success. Conforming to the King’s whims was essential to anyone who wished to advance in society. Pleasing the crown was more important to an artist’s career than winning the public and critics. Racine had both the talent and disposition of a courtier, and he rose quickly in the King’s favor. As he ascended the ranks of venerated artists, he witnessed the inner workings of Louis’ reign. Britannicus reflects what Racine observed at court, and the play functions as a double caveat to Louis XIV. Racine uses the Roman Emperor Nero’s fall from grace as a warning to Louis of the dangers of being swayed by bad advisors as well as the ebbing of morality as power is gained. The parallels between the world of Britannicus and the seventeenth-century French court are striking, particularly the similarities between Nero and Louis. Racine dramatizes the moment when Nero transforms into a monster. In his first preface to the play he wrote, “I always thought that the very name Nero conjures something worse than cruel.” The play does not propose that Louis XIV is a tyrant, only that he has the potential to become one. Racine suggests in Britannicus that Louis must make the decision not to follow the path Nero descends. Racine’s knowledge of Nero stemmed from his days as a student at the finest schools in France, where education focused on classic texts. Students composed prose and poetry in French and Latin, using ancient Roman and Greek works as models. To write Britannicus, Racine needed only to look back on the plays and histories he had read years earlier. In these Latin sources – Tacitus’ Annals, Seneca’s De Clementia, Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars – Racine found his dramatic material. The parallels between Nero and Louis XIV begin from the earliest days of their reigns. Both men ascended the throne in their youth – Nero at seventeen, Louis at four. The most striking similarity between the two, however, is that while both men were known as absolute monarchs, they held little power in the early days of their sovereignty. Nero ceded control to his mother Agrippina, and Louis to his mother, Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin, the prime minister. Nero owed his crown entirely to his mother. Machiavellian to the extreme, Agrippina lied, cheated, murdered, and slept her way to the highest echelons of Rome to install her son on the throne over others who held higher claims to it (including Britannicus). In the earliest days of his reign, Nero was emperor in name only; Agrippina ran the show. The first years of Nero’s rule, considered a high point in the Empire, succeeded due to her cunning. In Britannicus, Agrippina claims there was a time, “when the young Nero/ passed the court’s adoration onto me,/ when the whole burden of state fell upon me,/ when it was my order assembled the senate,/ and, hidden from view/ in its deliberations I was all powerful.” Nero, however, was not content to rule as a figurehead. Eventually he turned on his mother, assassinated her, and assumed abso-lute power. The relationship between Louis XIV and his mother, Anne of Austria, never reached this level of tumult. While she wielded enormous power over him, and thus over France, their relationship remained relatively amicable until her death. Anne, however, never exerted the same control as Agrippina. Primary responsibility fell to Cardinal Mazarin, who enjoyed a close relationship with the Queen. Mazarin exerted great influence over Louis, behaving like a surrogate father. In 1660 Venetian ambassador Giovanni Batista Nani claimed, “the young king looks up to his mother with the greatest respect and never distances himself from her authority and her advice … but all his affection seems to be devoted to the cardinal [Mazarin]. … There is a deep sympathy, a submission of minds and intellects.” Louis did not have to assume the burden of ruling until Mazarin’s death in 1661. With Mazarin and Anne running the country, Louis was free to chase sensuous pleasures – women and art. The king pursued both with gusto. A patron of the arts, Louis fancied himself an artist. As a young man he participated in numerous ballets, most famously the Ballet de la nuit in which he danced the part of the sun, immortalizing him as “the Sun King.” He pursued women with equal ardor, yet his paramours rarely left an impression on him. The exception was Mazarin’s niece, Marie Mancini, to whom he developed a deep attachment. After his marriage to Maria-Teresa of Spain was arranged, Marie was forced to leave court. Her departure created animosity between Louis and his mother; Anne insisted he forgo his mistress in favor of a political marriage. Racine echoed these aspects of Louis’ life in Britannicus, adjusting similarities into his chronicle of Nero’s fall. Nero also saw himself as an artist, developing a passion for numerous musical instruments. He often forced his court to attend concerts where he performed for hours. Racine dramatizes that Nero lives for, “throwing his voice away upon the stage,/ reciting hispoems he wants thought masterpieces,/ while soldiers are there to make sure the crowd/ will all the time bellow out its applause.” He too engaged in numerous love affairs. While his obsession with Junia in Britannicus is Racine’s invention, his appetite for women was not. He ignored his wife Octavia for a bevy of concubines, from slaves to noblewomen. Racine emphasized these parallels in Britannicus because Louis’ reign hung in a moral balance. After Mazarin’s death, a struggle emerged over who would gain the King’s ear. Nicholas Fouquet, superintendent of finances, expected to be made head of government. Apprehensive of Fouquet’s drive for power, Louis declared he would fill this function, transforming himself into an absolute monarch. He followed Mazarin’s credo, “do not let yourself be governed, be the master; never have either favorites or a prime minister, listen to, consult your council, but decide yourself: God, who has made you a king, will give you the necessary wisdom so long as your intentions are good.” Britannicus supports this philosophy, yet Racine was still wary of his King. Like Nero, he could commit depraved acts in the name of his country and think himself in the right. Racine’s play claims that Louis had the potential to become a tyrant and dramatizes the moral battle raging in his soul. Racine’s anxiety over Louis’ morality came from not only concern for France but also from a more personal place. Racine struggled with his own morality throughout his adult life; he believed that a moral life was religious, an immoral life, secular. This philosophy grew from his upbringing as a Jansenist at Port-Royal, a convent-village outside Paris. Jansenism was a branch of Catholicism that emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace, and predestination. It maintained a tragic theology – one must struggle in an evil world dominated by selfishness and greed without hope of victory. Acts were good if performed out of love for God and sinful if performed out of love for self. Aesthetic and sensual pleasures were taboo; theatre in particular revolted the Jansenists. Although the Vatican condemned Jansenism as heretical, pressuring Louis XIV to put a stop to it, this world view shaped Racine’s. Throughout his childhood and youth, Racine lived faithfully by these ideas. Once in Paris, however, he emancipated himself from the religion that had previously guided his life. His rise in status at the French court came at expense of his relationship with Port-Royal. His former teacher, Pierre Nicole, publicly stated that novelists and playwrights were the moral equivalent of a “public poisoner.” Racine claimed, “I keep getting [from Port-Royal] every day letter after letter, or, to put it better, excommunication after excommunication on account of my unlucky sonnet.” This “unlucky sonnet” references a poem he wrote for Mazarin which enraged the Jansenists, who had been persecuted by the Prime Minister. Even as his success in Paris grew, his years as a devout Jansenist never left him. He wrote, “My God, what a bitter war! There are two men within me: one that wishes that my heart, filled with love for Thee, should remain loyal to Thee. The other, rebelling against Thy will, turns me against Thy law. The former, spiritual and celestial, would that, constantly turned to heaven and affected by eternal values alone, I disregarded all else, while the latter drags me down to earth with its terrible weight. Alas, where can I find peace in this war with myself? I am all desire but, oh wretch that I am, I do not do the good that I love and do the evil I hate.” He eventually renounced the theatre and dedicated himself fully to religious devotion. This religious rebirth damaged his relationship with the King. Britannicus reflects characters morally at war with themselves or at the precipice of a fall from grace. Even as Racine engaged in numerous romantic liaisons and profited as a playwright, devotion to the flesh and the arts disturbed him. In Britannicus, he addressed this moral dichotomy as well as his political concerns. He created a Nero in the image of Louis XIV, who existed at the dawn of his despotism. Racine stated of Nero, “I have always thought of him as a monster. But here he is a budding monster.” Fearful of the monster in himself, fearful of the monster in the King, Racine hoped to prevent a descent into vice. When Britannicus premiered in 1669, Louis still had time to reign as a moral, if absolute monarch. Sarah Wallace is a first-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.

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