Les Plaideurs and the Racinian Canon

When one confronts Les Plaideurs, produced in 1668, and Britannicus, Racine's fourth tragedy given the following year, numerous striking parallels emerge to suggest that Racine either approached the comic plot of the Wasps of Aristophanes, the source for his one comedy, and Tacitus' potentially tragic account of the death of Britannicus with some of the same themes, or that he reworked some themes from the comedy while writing Britannicus. We do not know exactly when either Les Plaideurs or Britannicus was written; it is not impossible, however, that the tragedy was conceived shortly after the successful production of Andromaque late in 1667. It would have been appropriate both for Racine to compose another work in the same vein and for the Hotel de Bourgogne to encourage him. If Racine began Britannicus, intending it for production in 1668, he must have soon put it aside, perhaps drawing up a prose sketch, like the one extant for an Iphigenie en Tauride,1 and composing some verses. Suddenly, the time may not have seemed ripe for another tragic drama. In the quarrel over Andromaque and general hostilities between the Moliere-Corneille camp and Racine and the HoItel de Bourgogne, perhaps a tragic drama might fail. Racine's career depended on his ability to follow up the success of Andromaque; he could not risk a failure in tragedy. Perhaps Racine decided to bide his time, amusing himself with a fascinating experiment to divertir et faire rire with themes that were intended to plaire et toucher. In

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