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The Complete Plays of Jean Racine - Volume 5: Britannicus (Paperback)
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The Complete Plays of Jean Racine - Volume 5: Britannicus (Paperback)
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This is the fifth volume of a projected translation into English of
all twelve of Jean Racine's plays. Geoffrey Alan Argent's
translations faithfully convey all the urgency and keen
psychological insight of Racine's dramas, and the coiled strength
of his verse, while breathing new vigor into the time-honored form
of the "heroic" couplet. Complementing this translation are the
Discussion and the Notes and Commentary-particularly detailed and
extensive for this volume, Britannicus being by far Racine's most
historically informed play. Also noteworthy is Argent's
reinstatement of an eighty-two-line scene, originally intended to
open Act III, that has never before appeared in an English
translation of this play. Britannicus, one of Racine's greatest
plays, dramatizes the crucial day when Nero-son of Agrippina and
stepson of the late emperor Claudius-overcomes his mother, his wife
Octavia, his tutors, and his vaunted "three virtuous years" in
order to announce his omnipotence. He callously murders his
innocent stepbrother, Britannicus, and effectively destroys
Britannicus's beloved, the virtuous Junia, as well. Racine may
claim, in his first preface, that this tragedy "does not concern
itself at all with affairs of the world at large," but nothing
could be further from the truth. The tragedy represented in
Britannicus is precisely that of the Roman Empire, for in Nero
Racine has created a character who embodies the most infamous
qualities of that empire - its cruelty, its depravity, and its
refined barbarity.
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