In order to understand Racine's art it is essential to know the three unities drawn from Aristotle: unity of place, unity of time, and unity of action. Unity of place means that the story must take place at a single location, cannot shift from one spot to another. Unity of action forbids subordinate plots and digressions. Unity of time requires that the whole tragedy reach its denouement in twenty-four hours. Unity of time is particularly important for Racine, since it gives his works their indelible character. Unlike Corneille, who chafed under the restriction, Racine adapted to it quite readily by the simple process of reducing the conflict to its essentials, by stripping it of almost all incident; in other words, he filled his plays with psychological conflicts. He further reduced the trappings of his works by starting the action in medias res. When the curtain rises, the crisis has long been brewing and, as the subsequent scenes will show, the catastrophe is about to descend.
As a result, Racine's exposition is unusually complex, since he must provide the audience with a vast amount of information. The first scene barely broaches the subject. We get some indication of Hippolytus' personality, his problems, his rank. Phaedra, the main character, does not even appear. She is described tantalizingly in terms of her tainted heredity—the "daughter of Minos" and of that Pasiphäe, who conceived a monstrous passion for a bull. This evocation of mythological background is our clue to the real Phaedra, but the only one: the "facts" of both her illness and her dislike of Hippolytus are misleading.
Racine's dramatic skill successfully overcomes the potential monotony of this lengthy explanation. The ending of the scene (each scene in classical French drama ends when a character arrives or departs) is a case in point. The silent and enigmatic entrance of Oenone, Phaedra's nurse, can be highly dramatic. Jean-Louis Barrault, the famous actor and director, suggests the following stage business.
Oenone appears . . . her veils, like a bird flapping its wings, bump right and left against the walls of the distant corridor. She runs. . . . Theramene, noticing Oenone, has stopped short. Hippolytus noticing Theramene's stop has turned around. . . . The bird of disaster is in front of them.
The poetry is discreetly orchestrated by the music of the line. Racine is also justly celebrated as one of the most melodious writers in the French language. Of course, the reader using a translation must take this quality largely on faith. As one example, however, the line "la fille de Minos et de Pasiphae" is famous for the haunting and sinister effect created by the repeated long i vowel and the reiterated sibilant f's and s's.
