Andromache Book

Andromaque merits at the same time both five stars and one star. It is a five-star play because it is highly representative of Jean Racine who created a model that was followed for two hundred years afterward throughout Europe. Shakespeare was throughout this period generally thought to be a greater playwright but no one understand how to follow in his footsteps. Racine who combined the display of the implacable working of fate from Greek drama with the courtly language of Medieval Romance provided a model that was much easier to follow. One should read Andromaque then because it offers a great example of the classical movement which dominated European theatre for such a long period of time.

Andromaque rates one star because it is to the modern reader hopelessly artificial and improbable. The characters seem dimwitted by modern standards being guided only by their feelings of love, honour and duty. They are guileless, impractical idiots who inevitably walk into every trap that cruel fate sets for them. They are truly unbearable when you see them on stage.

Nonetheless, every serious lover of books should occasionally read such infuriating works because it is necessary to do so to understand the path that literature has followed from the beginning to the present day. Racine was a dominant force in Western Europe theatre between the mid-seventeenth century and the mid-nineteenth century when Ibsen's realistic plays revolutionized drama. Devoting an hour to reading one of Racine's plays would certainly contribute greatly to anyone's understanding of the history of European literature.