SOURCE: Todd, Bonnie E. “Racine's Use of Typology in Athalie.” CLA Journal 40, no. 1 (September 1996): 72-81.

[In the following essay, Todd analyzes the various components of Athalie from a typological point of view, that is, by looking at the use of figurative elements, in order to reveal Racine's unique use of dramatic irony.]

Racine's critics have generally divided themselves into two camps in their interpretations of his Biblical play Athalie. Some of the best-known critics, Jean Orcibal for one and Raymond Picard for another, have interpreted the play through citing its topical allusions. In his critique on Athalie, Picard indicates parallels between the characters in the play and members of the court of Louis XIV.¹ Picard makes a good case for his interpretation, yet it does little to explain the immense appeal that the play held for its patron, Madame de Maintenon, the actresses and audience (that is, the girls of Saint-Cyr and the court), and for succeeding generations, including our own. Nor does this revelation of topical allusions reveal anything about Racine's dramatic genius, in particular about his gift for dramatic irony.

Racine's contemporaries, as well as the critics of the last three centuries, have all noted the obvious influence of Christianity, of Port-Royal in particular, on both Biblical plays, on Esther as well as on Athalie. No critic, however, has pusued this tack while keeping in view Racine's Jansenist education in the typological interpretation of the Old Testament, i.e., that characters and events of the Old Testament prefigured those of the New Testament. A few critics have suggested the possibility of a typological interpretation of the play, but none has developed his ideas nor remarked on the role which typology plays in Racine's dramatic genius.

E. E. Williams suggests a typological interpretation of Athalie when he states that Joad is prepared to sacrifice Joas just as Abraham would have sacrificed Isaac.² If Williams had pursued this idea by comparing these two Old Testament stories to the New Testament's account of God's sacrifice of Jesus, the critic's interpretation would have been a typological one. A. F. B. Clark states that Racine was probably attracted to the Biblical story in part because it seems to symbolize “the glorious destiny of the true Church.”³ Clark discovered what Sainte-Beuve had already noticed, that Joas is Christ,⁴ but neither Clark nor Sainte-Beuve goes on to analyze the play in order to prove his contention.

Jules Lemaître goes even further when he states, “Ce qui s'agite dans ce drame, ce sont les destinées mémes du Christianisme. Songez un peu que Joas est l'aïeul du Christ.”⁵ Lemaître, without reference to Jansenist tradition, has gotten to the heart of the matter. But he, like J. D. Hubert, who wrote in 1956 that the temple of Racine's play prefigures the Church and that Eliacin prefigures Christ,⁶ does not pursue the matter further. Gabriel Spillebout recognizes typology in the play when he states, “Il est, en effet, constant dans la tradition des Pères de l'Église de voir dans certains personnages de l'Ancien Testament des ‘figures’ de Jésus-Christ, dans certains faits de l'histoire d'Israël des ‘figures’ des mystères de la loi nouvelle.”⁷ Spillebout, however, like the others, is satisfied not to pursue the matter further.

It seems that Saint Augustine first recommended the typological interpretation of the Bible as a means of linking the Old Testament.⁸ During the Renaissance it became quite popular to save the souls of Christ's predecessors by “Christianizing” them through their roles as “types” of New Testament characters. Sir Walter Raleigh even made a case for his favorite pagans by demonstrating how, in one way or another, their lives prefigured events of the New Testament.⁹ This manner of interpretation of the Bible had a large following in Europe during the seventeenth century. The Jansenists of Port-Royal were well familiar with it. The Douay Bible, published in 1609, comments on typological interpretations as does the Sacy Bible. The year of the first presentation of Esther, 1689, was the year following the first edition of the translation of the Book of Esther, published by the theologians of Port-Royal with commentary by Sacy. In the preface of the Bible, Sacy says that Esther was imbued with “la grâce” and goes on in Augustinian fashion to defend other Old Testament personages, including those chosen by Racine for his two Biblical plays, as types of those found in the New Testament.

Certainly Racine, like Pascal, who said, “L'ancienne loi était figurative,”¹⁰ was well-schooled in the figurative or typological interpretations of the Bible. Less obvious in the first of his Biblical plays, Esther, typology plays a major role in Athalie, and critics have been surprisingly lax in exploring the play from this point of view. Although some have alluded to the possibility, none has published a systematic study of either play in order to draw attention to Racine's use of typology, which seems to be the major impulse behind the effort as well as an important explanation of Athalie's dramatic appeal. It is the purpose of this paper to analyse the various components of the play from a typological point of view and to reveal thereby Racine's unique use of dramatic irony.

In Athalie Racine recapitulates the life of Christ by staging an episode in the life of his ancestor Joas, who, as the spectator is frequently reminded, also came from the House of David. The time of the play is the day Joas is to be proclaimed King of Juda, and the place is the temple of Jerusalem. Because the day is also a festival day, Jews are coming into the temple to present gifts to the “Dieu de l'Univers” (41). The allusion is ironic since Joas, the future king, is hiding in the temple; it seems therefore to the spectator, especially to those familiar with the story, that the praise and gifts are being offered to him and that he is the Lord of the Universe in the flesh. Abner ironically remarks, “… de Jezabel la fille sanguinaire / ne vienne attaquer Dieu jusqu'en son sanctuaire” (43-44). His remark is ironic because Abner does not know that Joas is hidden in the temple, and it is not God that Athalie fears so much and wants to attack but the young threat to her throne and temporal power.

Josabet encourages the chorus to praise the god that they have come to seek: “Chantez, louez le Dieu que vous venez chercher” (56). Since the scene is set in the temple, her remark can be accepted at face value, but since the spectator knows, or at least strongly suspects, that Joas is hidden there, Josabet seems to be encouraging the chorus to praise Joas, this God in the flesh. Lest there be any doubt as to the playwright's intention to “type” cast his characters, the chorus tells us that God's empire has preceded his birth, a direct reference to the typological interpretation of the Old Testament.

In act 2 when Athalie asks Joas from whence he comes, he replies, “Ce temple est mon pays” (77). Since Joas was indeed reared there, the spectator can accept this remark literally, all the while knowing that Athalie will interpret his words symbolically to mean that he devotes his life to religion, that he has forsaken the temporal. Double entendres of this kind abound in the play and contribute to its dramatic irony. Joas explains, for example, that he was found among wolves ready to devour him. He intends for Athalie to take his truth as literal, that he, like other mythological babies, was abandoned in the wild. In this instance, however, the truth is not literal but rather a symbolic one, and Athalie herself was the wolf ready to devour him. The fact that Joas addresses these words directly to Athalie makes the scene all the more dramatically intense, the irony all the more piercing.

Characters in the play, particularly Abner, Joad and Josabet, frequently allude to the coming of the Messiah and situate their king in the line of David, which Racine's spectators know culminates in Christ. While maintaining the historic perspective of the Old Testament, Racine plays on their knowledge of the New Testament. The spectator recognizes all the allusions from a double perspective, and this recognition, this foreknowledge, constitutes the dramatic irony. Joas, for example, compares children to the birds that God protects with a paternal care. Although he does not actually call God his father, the word “paternal” (78) evokes the familiar New Testament image. Racine even borrows dailogue from the Gospel according to Matthew: “Abner a le coeur noble, et … il rend à la fois / Ce qu'il doit à son Dieu, ce qu'il doit à ses Rois” (67).

Athalie has interrupted the line of David by taking over the throne of Israel, and it is the intention of Joad and Josabet to protect Joas until the time comes for him to take his rightful place as king. When Joad implores Abner to help him in his enterprise, he refers to the “blood” of the “line” (45) of the kings of David and speaks of the advent of Joas as if he were a type of messiah, as indeed he is. The coming of Joas to the throne is compared to the return of God; he is not simply a king, but a Christ figure.

Racine stirs the emotions of his young actresses and his Christian spectators by alluding to the event in a terminology reminiscent of New Testament references to Christ. Abner frequently refers to Joas as the “King, son of David” but laments for the sake of dramatic irony that the unique hope would have been in the son of Athalie, who is supposed to be dead. He announces, “Les temps sont accomplis” (49), and he compares the arrival of the young king on the throne to the triumph of God. An allusion to the fact that Joas' mind was beyond his years recalls the story of the young Jesus in the temple as told in the second chapter of Luke.

At the first of the play, Abner warns Joad of the wickedness and predictable revenge of Queen Athalie, who fears the power of Joad and his wife, Josabet, who are priest and priestess, respectively, in both religion and politics. Athalie fears for her throne and suspects that Joad and his wife are hiding the future king in the temple, as of course they are. In the second chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, Herod reacts to the birth of Christ in much the same way. Like Athalie, Herod fears the coming of a temporal king who will replace him. Athalie, too, fears the realization of the prediction that a king will come out of the House of David; she fears for her throne, but more than that she fears “l'implacable vengeance” (84) of God. The audience knows her fears are well-founded.

Perhaps the most striking example of the use of typology in the play is found in act 2 when Athalie says,

Ce Dieu, depuis longtemps votre unique refuge,
Que deviendra l'effet de ses prédictions?
Qu'il vous donne ce roi promis aux nations,
Cet enfant de David, votre espoir, votre attente.

(84)

As the spectator knows, the King promised the nations the child of David; the Biblical hope and expectation, therefore, is not Joas but rather Christ. In the context of the play, however, it seems to be Joas. The chorus magnifies this aspect by saying, “Quel astre à nos yeux vient de luire? / Quel sera quelque jour cet Enfant merveilleux?” (86). And as the climax of the play approaches, Joad says, “Que la terre enfante son Sauveur” (110). Since Racine uses such anachronistic dialogue fairly often in order to evoke in the mind of the spectator the birth if Christ, it is particularly strange that the Académie, according to a footnote in the Classique Larousse edition, singled out for criticism another line as anachronistic: “Il se donne luimême” (59), which seems rather innocuous under the circumstances.

When Joad reveals to Joas his true identity and the priests crown him, Joad calls him “Un roi que Dieu luimême a nourri dans son Temple” (122), “Ce roi que le Ciel vous redonne aujourd‘hui” (122). He advises, “Songez qu'en cet Enfant tout Israël réside” (121). Joas is for him the “unique espérance” (121). After his coronation Zacharie remarks, “On voit encor la marque du couteau” (131), recalling the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke as well as the twentieth chapter of John, where the apostle Thomas speaks of Christ's wounds. Zacharie, of course, is referring to the knife scars left by Athalie's attack on Joas when he was a baby, yet another evocation of the New Testament's account of the threat to Jesus and other male babies of his generation.

Raymond Picard reproches Racine for having created in Mathan a one-dimensional character, lacking in psychological innuendo, but that is precisely what Racine intended to create. Just as Joas can do no wrong, Mathan represents evil incarnate. He is Satan. The enemy of Joas must be worthy of him. If Mathan were merely a weak sycophant, there would be nothing to fear; Joas could easily vanquish him, but Mathan is a formidable enemy. In act 3 when he recounts his quarrel with Joad, his expulsion from the temple, his career at court, and his flatteries of the queen, Mathan brings to mind the fall of the angel Lucifer. As Mathan begins the identity of Joas in this act, he questions Josabet and leads the spectator to expect a confrontation of cosmic proportions, a confrontation between good and evil. Joad calls Mathan “Monstre d'impiété” (101), and Mathan warns, “Avant la fin du jour … on verra qui de nous …” (102).

Athalie complements Mathan's role. Suspecting more and more that the child Eliacin is Joas, the predicted usurper of her throne, Athalie, like Satan in Luke's fourth chapter, resorts to temptations. She tempts the child by offering him the pleasures of the palace, even the crown as her heir if he will leave the temple: “Laissez là cet habit, quittez ce vil métier / Je veux vous faire part de toutes mes richesses” (82). Ironically, she offers to treat him as her own son: “Je prétends vous traiter comme mon propre fils” (82), she says, and Joas replies, “Quel Père je quitterais!” (82). Athalie can think Joas is speaking of his earthly father, his guardian Joad, but the spectator recognizes God in his allusion to the paternal figure. The temptation to give up his divine mission in exchange for earthly riches reminds the spectator of Satan's temptation of Christ.

The coronation of Joas corresponds to the crucifixion of Christ. At the moment in which Joas is supposed to die, he is crowned, thus transforming defeat into victory. This dramatic situation evokes Christ's death, which for Racine's Christian audience was transcended by his resurrection. Zacharie says that Joas was “racheté de tombeau” (131) and refers to the young king as the resuscitated King, son of David. Joas, of course, has been neither entombed nor resuscitated as he only came near death, but did not die. The dialogue, however, is reminiscent of New Testament descriptions of Christ's experience.

There is also the possibility of comparing Zacharie, the son of Joad and Josabet, to the New Testament character of John the Baptist. In the first chapter of Luke, we learn that the parents of John the Baptist first named him Zacharius, and it was he who is charged with the mission of preparing the way for Christ, just as Zacharie in the play protects and praises the young Joas.

The fact that Joad is not the real father but only the guardian of the young Joas prefigures the relationship of Jesus to Joseph and is dramatically titillating since the situation of the orphan of obscure origin, more decipherable for the spectators than for the characters, comprises dramatic irony in its most classic form.

The drama, like that of Oedipus, depends on the spectator's knowing something that the characters do not know but perhaps suspect. This something on which so much depends must be very important to the spectator, closer to home than was the Old Testament story of Joas to Racine's audience and actresses. Racine, therefore, used typology to dramatic ends.

Like Oedipus, Moses, and Jesus, the baby Joas is condemned to death by an adult who fears the child's future ambitions because of prediction. These four babies are all saved and reared by benevolent guardians and in time grow up to accomplish just what was predicted. The dramatic appeal of their stories depends heavily upon their familiarity; the spectator must know or sense the outcome ahead of time while the play is in progress. The story of Joas, however, has never enjoyed the popularity of the other stories. Furthermore, it would take an imaginative mind like that of Saint Augustine or of Racine to imbue the child Joas as portrayed in the Second Book of Kings with the charisma of Oedipus, Moses, or Jesus. Racine therefore uses his Jansenist background in the typological interpretation of the Old Testament to dramatic ends. The spectator may not be familiar with the story of Joas, certainly not as familiar as with the story of Christ, nor would the story of Joas appeal as much as would the story of Christ to Racine's audience, so the playwright made the story familiar by recapitulating episodes of the life of Christ and by borrowing language from the New Testament. It is this dual identity of the main character that affords the dramatic irony of the play.

It seems that Racine only thought of this dramatic device near the end of his life and then perhaps thanks to Madame de Maintenon. Fearing for the virture of her girls at Saint-Cyr after their realistic portrayal of Andromaque, she wrote the playwright that they had so well played the tragedy that they would never do so again, “ni aucune de vos pièces.”¹¹ In trying to find something to suit Madame de Maintenon, Racine made use of his training at Port-Royal and found thereby a means of reconciling two dominant interests of his life: religion and theatre. Obviously, the subject matter of Athalie is not Greek, but because the play retells a story that is part of a country's religious and cultural heritage, Athalie (and Esther to some extent) is more in the tradition of Greek drama than Racine's more direct imitations, such as Andromaque and Phèdre. As for his form, the playwright's use of dramatic irony is on a level equivalent to that of Oedipus Rex, and he seems to be the only playwright to use this particular typological form of dramatic irony.

Notes

1. Raymond Picard, La Carrière de Jean Racine (Paris: Gallimard, 1956) 1163.

2. Jean Orcibal, La Genèse d'Esther et d'Athalie (Paris: J. Vrin, 1950) 94.

3. A. F. B. Clark, Jean Racine (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1939) 45.

4. Charles-Augustin Saint-Beuve, Port-Royal (Paris: Gallimard, 1956) 1163.

5. Jean Racine, Athalie, ed. Jean Boris (Paris: Nouveaux Classiques Larousse, 1964) 160. All references to the play are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text by page number(s) only.

6. J. D. Hubert, Essai d'Exégèse racinienne (Paris: Gallimard, 1956) 242.

7. Gabriel Spillebout, Le Vocabulaire biblique dans les Tragédies sacrées de Racine (Geneva: Droz, 1968) 193.

8. Erich Auerbach, Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (New York: Meridian, 1959) 32-44.

9. Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1970) 24-101.

10. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (Paris: Lefèvre, 1841) 294.

11. Kosta Loukovitch, L'Evolution de la Tragédie religieuse classique en France (Paris: Droz, 1933) 414-15.