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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified 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.

• Act V

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