In two of his most celebrated plays, Britannicus and Bérénice, Racine depicts the tragedies of characters trapped by the ideals, desires, and cruelties of ancient Rome. This international collection of essays deploys cutting-edge research to illuminate the plays and their contexts.

Notes on Contributors Introduction: Racine’s Imagined Rome  Nicholas Hammond and Paul Hammond Part 1: Defining Tragedy 1 Britannicus et Bérénice : tragédies aristotéliciennes ?  Tristan Alonge 2 Britannicus, the Tragic Family, and the Problem of the Hero  John D. Lyons 3 Stones Wrapped in String: The Paths Not Taken in Racine’s Bérénice  Paul Hammond Part 2: Sound, Metatheatre, and Theatrical Space 4 ‘Mille bruits’: Listening to Britannicus  Nicholas Hammond 5 Noises Off? Bérénice’s Echo Chamber  Joseph Harris 6 Le public fragmenté de Titus : la métaphore théâtrale dans Bérénice  Delphine Calle 7 Bérénice: Disoriented in Rome  John D. Lyons 8 Staging Britannicus and Bérénice: Problems in Spatial Dynamics  Michael Hawcroft Part 3: Ambiguity, Concealment, and Duplicity 9 Naissance des monstres : Le mal et ses doubles dans Britannicus  Tony Gheeraert 10 Mendacity in Racine’s Britannicus  Emilia Wilton-Godberfforde 11 ‘D’un voile d’amitié j’ai couvert mon amour’: Homoerotic Subtexts in Bérénice  Paul Scott Part 4: Racine and His Rivals 12 Bérénice: Racine between Corneille and Barthes  Michael Moriarty 13 La Bataille des Bérénice : une concurrence repensée  Hélène Bilis 14 Pradon and the ‘Parodie de Bérénice’  Jan Clarke Part 5: Sources and Translations 15 Painting and Silence: Racine and His Classical Sources for Britannicus and Bérénice  Susan Reynolds 16 ‘If Neither Faith nor Tears nor Means Can Move’: Translating Emotion from Racine’s Bérénice (1670) to Otway’s Titus and Berenice (1676)  Suzanne Jones 17 The Place of Breath in Alan Hollinghurst’s Berenice  Denis Flannery Bibliography Index