As Voltaire famously opined, Athaliah, Racine's last play, is
"perhaps the greatest masterwork of the human spirit." Its
formidable antagonists, Athaliah, queen of Judah, and Jehoiada,
high priest of the temple of Jerusalem, are engaged in a deadly
struggle for dominion: she, fiercely determined to maintain her
throne and exterminate the detested race of David; he, no less
fiercely determined to overthrow this heathen queen and enthrone
the orphan Joash, the scion of the house of David, whom Athaliah
believes she slew as an infant ten years earlier. This boy
represents the sole hope for the survival of the royal race from
which is to spring the Christ. But in this play, even God is more
about hate and retribution than about love and mercy.
This is the fourth volume of a projected translation into
English of all twelve of Jean Racine's plays--only the third time
such a project has been undertaken. For this new translation,
Geoffrey Alan Argent has rendered these plays in the verse form
that Racine might well have used had he been English: namely, the
"heroic" couplet. Argent has exploited the couplet's compressed
power and flexibility to produce a work of English literature, a
verse drama as gripping in English as Racine's is in French.
Complementing the translation are the illuminating Discussion,
intended as much to provoke discussion as to provide it, and the
extensive Notes and Commentary, which offer their own fresh and
thought-provoking insights.
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