Bérénice

Summary

Bérénice is a tragedy in five acts of rhymed alexandrines, first performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris in November 1670 and printed in 1671. Its plot grows from a single Latin sentence of Suetonius, which Racine placed at the head of his preface: Titus, who was thought to have promised marriage to Queen Berenice, sent her away from Rome at once, against his will and against hers (invitus invitam). Racine kept the action as bare as the sentence. There is no battle, no poison and no death; the play happens in one room, a cabinet lying between the emperor's apartments and the queen's, during the days just after the death of Vespasian has made Titus emperor. Three people are caught in the same knot. Berenice, queen of Palestine, has lived in Rome for years as Titus' acknowledged love and expects the end of mourning to bring a wedding. Antiochus, king of Commagene, Titus' friend and comrade at the siege of Jerusalem, has loved her in silence and resolves to confess it and leave. Titus has already decided that he must send her away: Rome, which has hated the name of king since the Tarquins, will not accept a foreign queen as empress, and he has learned on taking power that he belongs to the state. He cannot bring himself to tell her. In the third act he asks Antiochus to carry the message and escort her east, so the rival becomes the messenger, and Berenice, refusing to believe it, banishes him from her sight. The fourth act brings the lovers face to face. Titus, torn and weeping, insists; Berenice accuses him, speaks of the endless separation ahead, and leaves in despair, while the Senate and people wait for their emperor. In the fifth act each of the three comes to the edge of self-destruction. Berenice prepares to depart and has written words of farewell that alarm Titus; Titus declares that if she dies he will die too, rather than either keep her or betray Rome; Antiochus confesses his love and his own resolve to die. Berenice is the one who breaks the deadlock. Seeing that Titus truly loves her and will not yield, she chooses to live and to leave, asks the two kings to do the same, and offers their parting as an example of love that does not destroy itself. Antiochus ends the play with a single sigh. Racine's preface defends this spareness. A tragedy, he argues, needs no blood or corpses if its action is great, its characters heroic, its passions stirred and the whole marked by a majestic sadness; the art is to make something out of almost nothing. For students the play is an unusual tragedy of renunciation, in which the central act is a refusal, and a study in how verse, restraint and repetition can carry an entire drama.

Plot or Argument

• Act I: Antiochus decides to speak

  Antiochus tells his confidant Arsace that he will leave Rome rather than watch Berenice marry Titus, and that he will first confess the love he has hidden. Berenice hears him with surprise and some coldness, then turns to her confidante Phénice and describes the splendour of Vespasian's funeral rites and her confidence that Titus will now marry her.

• Act II: Titus and Paulin

  Titus questions his confidant Paulin about what Rome thinks; Paulin answers that Roman law and feeling will never accept a queen as empress, recalling earlier Romans who would not tolerate royal consorts. Titus admits he has already resolved to part from her. When Berenice comes, he begins, falters and leaves; she is bewildered and wonders whether he has learned of Antiochus' love.

• Act III: the rival as messenger

  Titus asks Antiochus to tell Berenice of his decision and to accompany her to the East. Antiochus, half hopeful and half ashamed, delivers the news. Berenice refuses to believe him, suspects his motive, and forbids him to appear before her again.

• Act IV: the confrontation

  Alone, Titus struggles with his resolve and with the memory of how Berenice consoled him. The two meet: she pleads and reproaches, he insists that he must reign and cannot reign with her, and she leaves in despair. Antiochus and Paulin press Titus to see her again, but messengers announce that the Senate and people await the emperor, and he goes to them.

• Act V: three resolves and one sigh

  Berenice prepares to leave Rome; words she has written frighten Titus, who tells her he will die rather than either keep her or let her perish. Antiochus confesses his rivalry and his own intent to die. Berenice, now certain of Titus' love, chooses to live and depart, asks both men to live, and the three separate; Antiochus has the last word, 'Hélas!'

Characters

• Titus, Roman emperor

  Newly emperor after Vespasian's death. He loves Berenice wholeheartedly and has come to believe that ruling Rome requires him to give her up; much of his suffering lies in delay and in his inability to say so to her face.

• Bérénice, queen of Palestine

  A Judaean princess living in Rome as Titus' beloved. Proud, ardent and quick to suspect, she passes from confidence through disbelief and fury to the play's final act of renunciation, which she chooses rather than suffers.

• Antiochus, king of Commagene

  Titus' loyal friend and fellow soldier at Jerusalem, who has loved Berenice in silence. His task of carrying the emperor's message to the woman he loves gives the play its painful irony.

• Paulin, Titus' confidant

  A Roman who speaks plainly for Roman custom and opinion and steadies Titus in his decision.

• Arsace, Antiochus' confidant

  Encourages Antiochus to hope when Titus' decision becomes known, and reports Berenice's movements in the last act.

• Phénice, Berenice's confidante

  Gently warns her mistress that Rome may not accept a queen and hears her hopes and fears.

• Rutile, a Roman

  Brings word that the tribunes, consuls and Senate are waiting for the emperor.

Lessons

• When the tragic act is a refusal

  Most tragedies end in death; Bérénice ends in three people walking away alive. Racine's preface argues that grandeur of action, not bloodshed, makes tragedy, and the play tests that claim by making renunciation itself the climax. Students can ask what kind of suffering is left when no one dies, and whether giving up a real good for a higher duty can be as costly and as dramatic as losing one's life.

  • Racine says the whole play is drawn from one sentence of Suetonius. What has he added, and what has he deliberately left out?
  • Is the ending happy, sad, or neither? Defend your answer from Act V.
  • Why might an audience in 1670 have wept at a play in which no one dies?

• Public office and private love

  Titus discovers on becoming emperor that he no longer belongs only to himself. Rome's law and long hatred of kings forbid a foreign queen, and Titus judges that to defy them would be to begin his reign by breaking faith with the people he must govern. The play does not treat this as easy or obviously right. It shows the price of office in the life of a man who would rather be free, and invites students to weigh the claims of vocation, law and love without collapsing one into another.

  • What reasons does Paulin give for Rome's refusal of a queen? Are they reasons of law, of custom or of prejudice, and does the difference matter?
  • Does Titus choose duty, or does he simply fear Rome's opinion? Find lines or actions on each side.
  • Can a ruler's private life be separated from his public trust? Give an example from history.

• The cost of delay and the borrowed messenger

  Titus' failure is not his decision but his evasion: he falters in Act II, sends Antiochus in Act III, and so wounds both his beloved and his friend. The play is a close study of how avoiding a hard conversation multiplies harm. Antiochus, too, is placed in a false position, since the message he carries serves his own hopes. Students can examine what honesty requires when the truth will hurt, and why the person responsible for a decision ought usually to deliver it.

  • Why can Titus not speak when Berenice first comes to him in Act II?
  • Was it fair of Titus to ask Antiochus to carry the news? What did it cost Antiochus?
  • Why does Berenice refuse to believe Antiochus? What does her reaction reveal about her?

• Berenice's choice to live

  In the final act all three characters speak of dying, and Racine leaves real doubt about what Berenice intends. Her decision to live and leave turns the play. She does not stop loving Titus; she acts once she is sure of his love and of his resolve, and asks the men to live as well. The scene allows careful discussion of despair and its refusal: the characters' threats are not glamorized, and the one who chooses life is given the play's moral authority.

  • What finally persuades Berenice to accept Titus' decision?
  • Why does she ask both Titus and Antiochus to live? What does she want their parting to show?
  • How does Racine make Berenice, rather than the emperor, the strongest figure at the end?

Context

The historical Berenice (born c. AD 28) was a daughter of Herod Agrippa I and sister of Agrippa II; in Acts 25-26 she sits beside her brother at Caesarea when Paul makes his defence. During the Jewish War she became attached to Titus, who captured Jerusalem in AD 70, and later lived with him in Rome, where the relationship was unpopular. Suetonius (Life of Titus 7) records that Titus dismissed her when he became emperor in AD 79, and Tacitus (Histories II.2) mentions rumours of his longing for her. Racine compresses years into a few days after Vespasian's death and presents his Antiochus as a king of Commagene who fought at Jerusalem. The play was written for a court and city that admired Roman grandeur, at the height of Louis XIV's reign.

Composition

Racine's play was first performed by the troupe of the Hôtel de Bourgogne on 21 November 1670, with Mlle de Champmeslé as Berenice; a week later Molière's company at the Palais-Royal staged Pierre Corneille's Tite et Bérénice on the same subject. An eighteenth-century story that Henriette d'Angleterre set both poets the subject is now generally doubted. Readers have also connected the play with the young Louis XIV's parting from Marie Mancini in 1659, a parallel that remains a reading, not an established intention. The play was published in 1671 with a preface answering critics.

Reception

Racine's version was the greater success, and its pathos was widely admired; it also drew criticism, notably from the abbé de Villars, for a plot thought too slight, and a parody appeared at the Italian theatre. The preface, with its claim that tragedy needs no blood and that invention consists in making something from nothing, became a classic statement of French classical dramaturgy. The play has remained in the repertory of the Comédie-Française, and modern critics, including Roland Barthes, have treated it as a pure instance of Racinian tragedy. It is included in Great Books of the Western World (2nd ed., 1990), volume 31.

Comparisons

• Phaedra

  Phèdre (1677) shows passion that cannot be governed and ends in poison, suicide and a son torn apart by his own horses; Bérénice shows passion governed at enormous cost and ends with all alive. Set side by side, the two plays mark the range of Racine's tragedy between catastrophe and renunciation.

• The Aeneid

  Aeneas leaving Dido for Rome's destiny in Aeneid IV is the classical model behind Titus leaving Berenice. Virgil's Dido curses and kills herself; Racine's queen refuses that end and chooses to depart, so the comparison throws her final decision into relief.

• Antony and Cleopatra

  Shakespeare's Antony chooses an Eastern queen over Rome and loses both; Titus chooses Rome over an Eastern queen and keeps his empire at the price of his happiness. Shakespeare spreads his story across the Mediterranean, while Racine confines his to a single room.

• The Histories

  Tacitus records, early in Histories II, gossip that Titus' journey back from Greece was hastened by longing for Queen Berenice, and describes the siege of Jerusalem in Book V, the war in which Racine's Titus and Antiochus fought side by side.

Quotes

Medical Lens

Bérénice is not a medical work, but its last act turns on contemplated suicide: Berenice's farewell writing alarms Titus, Titus says he will die if she does, and Antiochus confesses he has resolved to die. The play ends with all three choosing to live, which makes it a useful literary example of despair voiced and then refused, rather than romanticized. Any reading of the characters' states as clinical is interpretive. No public-domain English translation is attached in the library, so locators are given by act only.

• Act IV

  After the confrontation with Titus, Berenice leaves in despair, and her confidante and Antiochus fear for her life.

  Grief Suicide
• Act V

  Each of the three principal characters speaks of dying; Berenice's decision to live and depart resolves the play.

  Suicide Grief

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write Berenice's letter from the ship as she sails east, addressed to Titus, in which she explains why she chose to live and what she wants him to remember.

• Classroom

  Read Suetonius' one-sentence account of Titus and Berenice in translation, then in groups outline how you would turn it into a five-act play without adding any death. Compare your outlines with Racine's acts.

• Essay

  Racine claimed that tragedy needs no blood if its action is great. Using Bérénice and one other tragedy you know, write 700 words on whether he was right.

• Poetry

  Write twelve rhymed lines in which Antiochus expands his final 'Hélas!' into a speech, then explain why Racine chose to give him only one word.

Further Reading

• Preface to Bérénice (1671), Jean Racine

  Racine's defence of a tragedy without bloodshed and his account of the Suetonius source.

• Tite et Bérénice, Pierre Corneille

  The rival 'heroic comedy' on the same subject, staged a week after Racine's play in 1670.

• The Lives of the Caesars: Titus, Suetonius

  Chapter 7 contains the sentence on which the play is founded.

• Acts of the Apostles, chapters 25-26, Luke (traditional attribution)

  Berenice appears with her brother Agrippa II at Paul's hearing before Festus in Caesarea.

• Sur Racine, Roland Barthes

  A 1963 structuralist reading with a chapter on Bérénice; for advanced readers and teachers.