[An American critic, playwright, and novelist, Matthews wrote extensively on world drama and served for a quarter century at Columbia University as professor of dramatic literature; he was the first to hold that title at an American University. Matthews was also a founding member and president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Because his criticism is deemed both witty and informative, he has been called "perhaps the last of the gentlemanly school of critics and essayists" in America. In the following excerpt, Matthews presents an overview of Racine's significance and the nature of his accomplishment, comparing Racine to Corneille in many areas,.]

Racine, who followed Corneille, as Euripides followed Sophocles, took over the form of tragedy which the elder poet had marked with his own image and superscription, altho the younger poet modified it in some slight measure to suit his own powers and his own preferences. Corneille had been over-lyric at times, altho he had been far less epic than many of his predecessors as a playwright; Racine was more rigorously dramatic. Accepting the limitation imposed by the rules of the Three Unities, which were in accord with his temperament, Racine condensed still further the themes he treated. He focussed the attention upon fewer figures; and he simplified again the action until English critics are wont to deem his plays bare and cold, altho in fact a fire of passion is ever glowing within them. He was an adept in construction; and his plots, narrow as they may be, are exquisitely proportioned, revealing the most consummate art in the conduct of the story. Always does he avoid scrupulously all digressions and underplots and parasitic episodes.

The extraordinary situations that Corneille had been delighted to discover in history, Racine rejected altogether, choosing rather to deal with what was normal and natural, the growth of a man's love for a woman who loved another or the consequences of a woman's mad passion for a youth who cared nothing for her. He handled like a master this common stuff of life, which is ever tragic enough in the sight of those who can understand it. In his plays, as indeed often in Corneille's also, the action is internal rather than external; and the moral debate within the heart of man is not always accompanied by mere physical action, visible to the heedless spectator. Racine did not seek to interest the audience in, what his characters were doing before its eyes but rather in what these characters were in themselves and in what they were feeling and suffering. He was an expert playwright as well as a master of psychologic analysis, and this is why he was able to accomplish the difficult feat of making his study of the inner secrets of the human soul effective on the stage. His story might be slight, but in his hands it was always sufficient to express a tensity of emotion and to command abundant sympathy.

In the tragedy of Andromaque spectator is made to see how Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, is about to abandon his promised bride, Hermione, daughter of Helen, because he is desperately enamoured of Andromache, widow of Hector. On behalf of the Grecian chiefs, Orestes, son of Agamemnon, comes to demand of Pyrrhus the sacrifice of the son of Hector and Andromache. Orestes loves Hermione, who loves the faithless Pyrrhus, who longs for Andromache, who is devoted to her husband's memory. To save her son Andromache weds Pyrrhus, resolved to slay herself as soon as the boy's safety is assured. In the agony of her jealousy, Hermione hints to Orestes that she will be his, if he will slay Pyrrhus before the wedding with Andromache. But when Pyrrhus is killed and Orestes comes to claim his reward, Hermione recoils with horror and reproaches him for his evil deed; and then she rushes forth to put an end to her own life upon the bier of the man she had loved in vain. The death-dealing blows are never given before the eyes of the spectators; and yet this artistic reticence results in no loss of interest, since the attention of the audience is directed, not to the mere doings of the characters but to the effect of these doings, first upon Hermione and then on Orestes.

His conscious possession of the power of arousing and retaining the interest of the playgoers of his own language in his minute discrimination between motive and emotions, may be one of the reasons why Racine was prone to choose a woman as the central figure in most of his plays; and here again is a point of resemblance to Euripides. He was led also to make use of love as the mainspring of his action, partly, perhaps, because the passion of man for woman had not often been considered by Corneille, and partly because this was of all the passions the one Racine himself best understood. A loving woman Racine would ever delineate with delicate appreciation and with illuminating insight. His touch was caressingly feminine; whereas the tone of Corneille was not only manly but even stalwartly masculine. Corneille, argumentative as he was at times and even declamatory, was forever striving to fortify the soul of man, while Racine with a softer suavity was seeking rather to reveal the heart of woman,—to lay it bare before us, palpitating at the very crisis of passion. As we gaze along the gallery of Racine's fascinating heroines, we observe that desire often conquers duty; but when we call the roll of Corneille's heroes, we behold men curbing their inclinations and strong to do what they ought.

Thus it may be that Racine was the nearer to nature, since it is often a strain upon the spectator to lift himself up to the level of Corneille's exaltation. Racine's language also was more familiar than Corneille's, easier, homelier, and therefore less open to the accusation of being stilted. Not only had Corneille a lyric fervor, but he was also a minter of maxims, an incomparable phrase-maker; Racine sought rather to be simple and never strove for sententiousness, which is not a feminine characteristic. On the other hand, the younger poet had a gift of pictorial evocation; and his verse had often an insinuating and serpentine grace. It was admirably adjusted to the organs of speech; it lent itself to delivery on the stage; and yet there were few purple patches in Racine's plays and scarcely a bravura passage existing for its own sake. The poetry was not something applied from the outside; it was the result rather of a perfect harmony between the sentiment and its expression. Racine's melodious verse is evidence that French is not so unpoetical a language as those have said who cannot feel its music or who dislike its nasal tone.

But even in Racine's hands the rhymed Alexandrine seems to us distended and monotonous. As a dramatic meter it is inferior to the dignified iambic of the Greeks and to our own varied blank verse; and even if rhyme is really needed in a language as unrhythmic as French, it cannot but appear artificial to those who happen to be unaccustomed to it. This impression of artificiality is deepened by Racine's enforced employment of the conventional vocabulary of gallantry to express sincere and genuine emotion. It was the misfortune of Corneille also, that he had to deal with the universal in terms of the particular; and that his plays, like Racine's, were conditioned by the sophisticated taste of the playgoers before whom they were performed. If we contrast the courtly audiences of Racine with the gathering of Athenian citizens to judge a drama of Sophocles, and with the spectators of all sorts thronging to applaud the plays of Shakespeare, we can see one reason why French tragedy lacks the depth and the sweep of the Greek, and why it has not the force and the variety of the English. French tragedy appeared, as Taine has told us, "when a noble and well-regulated monarchy, under Louis XIV., established the empire of decorum, the life of the court, the pomp and circumstance of society, and the elegant domestic phases of aristocracy"; and French tragedy could not but disappear "when the social rule of nobles and the manners of the antechamber were abolished by the Revolution."