RACINE'S ANDROMAQUE EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION And notes BY BENJAMIN W. WELLS PROFESSOR OF MODERN LANGUAGES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH BOSTON, U. S. A. D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS INTRODUCTION RACINE'S Andromaque has been, throughout the present century, by far the most popular of French classical tragedies; and in the two hundred and thirty years since its production Phèdre alone has counted more performances on the French stage. Therefore it demands attention for its intrinsic merits, but it claims the interest of the student also because it marks a turning-point in the development of French drama. I. TRAINING AND CHARACTER OF RACINE. The great fact that dominates Racine's intellectual and moral life is his relation to the group of protesting Jansenist Catholics who called themselves the Solitaries of Port-Royal, and counted among their number such master minds as Pascal, and among their sympathizers some of the choicest intellects of France as well as many men of humble birth but sturdy faith, the Puritan element that persisted within the established church of France, though not without persecution both from the hierarchy and the court. It was in such a family of the upper middle class that Jean Racine was born (Dec. 22, 1639). His primary education was at a school at Beauvais that was affiliated with the Port-Royalists, and thence he passed, in 1655, to l'École des Granges, under their immediate direction. Here his teachers were the noted Greek scholar Lancelot, the Latinist Nicole, noted also as a moral philosopher, and other worthy though less distinguished men, the most skilled pedagogues of their |