The Complete Plays of Jean Racine - Jean Racine

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bent on perpetuating the slaughter. Athaliah instructs Mathan to “have all my Tyrian troops prepare to arm” (II.vi.16), and, later, he reports her confident hopes: “We’re ready with our falchions and our fire; / Their temple’s ruin nothing can prevent” (III.iii.40–41). For his part, Jehoiada invokes God to sanction the acts of violence he enjoins his priests and Levites to perform: “With terror God will blight the enemy; / In your foes’ faithless blood bathe fearlessly” (IV.iii.55–56). He even urges them to follow the example of their forbears, those Levites who “shed blamelessly the blood of their next kin / And consecrated their brave hands therein” (IV.iii.61–62). Clearly, he believes that his is a God who will not condone any conscientious objections.

       But, providentially (if not miraculously), there appears on the scene a child who may put an end to this generations-long vendetta. In the very opening scene, Abner alludes to this promised descendent of David and Solomon:

      We hoped that from their blessed race would spring

      A line of kings too long for reckoning;

      That over every tribe and every nation

      One of them would establish domination,

      Eliminate all discord, wipe out war:

      One whom the kings of earth would bow before.

      (I.i.131–36)

       It is this child on whom the play will focus and on whom all the other characters’ thoughts are already bent. For Jehoiada he represents the hopes of his race, and he describes him in the most laudatory terms:

      With all our Hebrew princes’ strengths he’s blest,

      And shows more wisdom than his years suggest.

      (I.ii.11–12)

      Joash will move them by his noble grace,

      Whence shines anew the splendor of his race.

      (I.ii.109–10)

      To Josabeth he represents not merely a savior, but a son, on whom she can lavish her inexhaustible maternal feelings. The role she played in rescuing him from near death makes him almost dearer to her than her own children; certainly, he offers fuller scope for her maternal anxieties: “Alas! the perils I once saved him from! / Alas! the perils that are yet to come!” (I.ii.21–22). She can even worry that her loving him too much may itself prove a peril:

      Fearing I loved this child more than I should,

      I’ve kept away from him as best I could,

      Lest, seeing him, my injudicious woe

      Might let my secret, with my tears, o’erflow.

      (I.ii.27–30)

      The chorus, too, take an active interest in this remarkable child; the first half of their lengthy Act II ode is devoted to registering their wonder and singing his praises:

      What star have we just seen arise?

      What will he be one day, this wise and wondrous child?

      By worldly show he’s not beguiled,

      He’s proof against pride’s lures and lies,

      Nor can his candor be defiled.

      (II.ix.1–5)

      But see this dauntless boy proclaim

      The Lord is God, the Lord is One,

      And bring this Jezebel to shame,

      Just as Elijah might have done.

      (II.ix.8–11)

      Even for Abner, who, ignorant of Eliakim’s true identity, believes Joash was murdered years ago, the idea of this boy has remained with him as a painfully vanished hope, but one to which he still clings:

      His death, while yet a babe, the Queen contrived.

      Can the dead, after eight years, be revived?

      Ah! if the Queen, in her blind rage, had erred;

      If, of that kingly blood, one drop was spared...

      (I.i.141–44)

      But it is Athaliah on whom he makes the most striking impression, even appearing to her in the aforementioned dream, before she has actually set eyes on the boy whom, as an infant, she left for dead:

       Midst my dismay there met my sight

      A young child clad in garments gleaming white,

      Such as the Hebrew priests are wont to wear.

      The sight of him relieved my crippling care.

      But as I stood, reclaimed from misery,

      Admiring his sweet, shy nobility,

      I suddenly felt a blade, treacherously keen,

      Thrust through my heart by this same child I’d seen!

      (II.v.50–57)

       This oneiric encounter sets the stage, so to speak, for the three confrontations between the reigning queen and the future king; at once the most important and most dramatic scenes in Athaliah, they function as three pillars supporting the edifice of the play. Each of these key scenes has been uniquely and elaborately conceived by Racine.

      iv

      By the time the action of the play commences Athaliah is already obsessed with this child, as a result of that disturbing dream, which has proved a recurrent one. Her first actual confrontation with the child occurs between Acts I and II, but though the audience never witnesses it, it is reported to us by two participants: first by Zachariah, the son of Jehoiada and Josabeth, and shortly afterward by Athaliah herself. (And, as is the case with many of the récits in Racine’s plays, it loses none of its significance or power by being merely recounted after the fact.)

       Before we are vouchsafed Athaliah’s account of their encounter, its impact on her, barely hinted at in Zachariah’s narrative, is signalized by her extraordinary first appearance in the play, which finds her “almost as exhausted as Phèdre in her first appearance. Instead of a self-assured imperial presence, we discover a weary monarch” (Tobin, 153). To what are we to attribute her collapse? Not to her unceremonious dismissal from the temple by Jehoiada — in the opening scene of the play Abner cautions Jehoiada that Athaliah is resolved to brave his opposition and drive him from the temple:

      I fear lest Athaliah (to speak plain),

      Seeking to oust you from this sacred fane,

      Effect her fell revenge on you at last

      And shed the forced respect shown in the past.

      (I.i.21–24)

      Besides, by the time Athaliah appears, we have had Zachariah’s eyewitness testimony concerning what transpired in the temple:

       Reaching the court reserved for men,

      With head raised high she proudly bustled in

      And, on the threshold, seemed prepared to invade

      The Levites’ inner sanctum, undismayed.

      (II.ii.20–23)

      Then, far from being cowed by Jehoiada, though “his eyes flashed with a furious fire” (II.ii.25), or paying any heed to his attempt to ban her from the temple, “the Queen, letting a savage glance shoot out, / Opened her mouth, poised to blaspheme no doubt” (II.ii.30–31). It is only upon her noticing Joash that her effrontery falters:

      The words froze on her lips, though, instantly;

      Something had daunted her audacity.

      Her frightened

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