He was " the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg ," in which "... imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates ", and yet he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.

* January 1 – Jean Racine's tragedy Phèdre is first performed.

* Phaedra is a loose archetype for a fictional namesake, Phèdre nó Delaunay in Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy novels.

Another one of Carey's protagonists, Phèdre is a virtuous and strong young woman who happens to be a masochistic courtesan.

Phèdre ( originally Phèdre et Hippolyte ) is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677.

Their discourse is interrupted by Phèdre, who distraughtly pleads for the rights of her infant son, explaining her coldness and personal despair.

After his long period in captivity, Theseus is surprised by his cold reception from his wife and son, each anxious to conceal their passions: Phèdre, consumed by guilt ; and Hippolytus, anxious to distance himself from his stepmother's advances, but unable to tell his father of his love for Aricia.

Fearing that she might be guilty for Hippolytus ' death, Phèdre determines to reveal the truth to her husband, until she is told of Hippolytus ' love for Aricia.

The character of Phèdre is one of the most remarkable in Racine's tragic oeuvre.

Although Phèdre is perhaps less often studied at high school level in France than Britannicus or Andromaque, it is still frequently performed, and the eponymous role has been played by actresses such as Sarah Bernhardt and Isabelle Huppert.

A tradition saying that he spared their sister, Aricia, whom he kept as slave, is followed in Jean Racine's Phèdre but is not supported by extant genuinely ancient sources.

Today it is one of Racine's more popular plays, after Phèdre, Andromaque and Britannicus.

" Risk ", Goldmann wrote in his classic study of Pascal's Pensées and Jean Racine's Phèdre, " is possibility of failure, hope of success, and the synthesis of the three in a faith which is a wager are the essential constituent elements of the human condition ".

Phèdre is born to Liliane de Souverain, a Servant of Naamah, and Pierre Cantrel, a merchant's spend-thrift son.

Due to poverty and Pierre Cantrel's unwillingness for his wife to continue in the Service of Naamah, Phèdre is sold to Cereus House of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers.

Phèdre grows up in Cereus House but is somewhat outcast, given her flaw that keeps her outside the canons of the Night Court.

At age thirteen, Phèdre first meets Melisande Shahrizai, who is one of the few people to identify her as an anguissette at first glance.

Phèdre accidentally reveals to Melisande that Delaunay is waiting for word from Quintilius Rousse.

Joscelin accompanies her to the marquist's, but before the marque can be finished, they are interrupted by a sailor, bearing a message from Admiral Quintilius Rousse to Delaunay ; he knows that Delaunay's house is being watched, and seeks to give the message to Phèdre instead.

During this exchange, the pirates get their crew back and a significant reward, however, the Serenissimans have ships hidden and are about to kill Phèdre right then and there.

In the character of Phèdre, he could combine the consuming desire inherited from her mother with the mortal fear of her father, Minos, judge of the dead in Hades.

" Contrary to Euripides, Racine has Phèdre dying on stage at the end of the play ; she thus has had time to learn of the death of Hippolyte.

* Phèdre, tragédie lyrique en 3 actes, music by Lemoyne, premiere 26 October 1786 au château de Fontainebleau ;

It takes Selig's best riders four days to catch up with Phèdre and Joscelin ; while Joscelin battles several of them, the young Harald the Beardless out of Gunter's steading attempts to recapture Phèdre ; she kills him with her dagger in order to escape.

Once back in Terre d ' Ange, Phèdre and Joscelin encounter the men of the Marquis le Garde, one of the Allies of Camlach ; she borrows names from Cereus House and tells them she is Suriah of Trefail, and that Joscelin is her cousin Jareth, refugees from a town that has been set upon by the Skaldi.

They take Joscelin and Phèdre all the way to the City of Elua ; in gratitude, Phèdre gifts them with the small grey pony that has come with her all the way from Skaldia.

After settling in, Phèdre and Joscelin travel to L ' Arène to find Taavi and Danele ; they return with Seth ben Yavin, a Yeshuite scholar who agrees to teach Phèdre the Yeshuite language, that she may find the secret to freeing Hyacinthe from his island.

These rules precluded many elements common in the baroque tragi-comedy: flying horses, chivalric battles, magical trips to foreign lands and the deus ex machina ; the mauling of Hippolyte by a monster in Phèdre could only take place offstage.

** Phèdre et Hippolyte ( tragedy ) 1677 ; this play, released at the same time as Racine's, enjoyed momentary success

During her husband's absence, Phèdre has become consumed by an illicit but overpowering passion for her stepson Hippolytus, which she has kept as a dark secret.

Her first role was at the age of 15 as Aricia in Schiller's translation of Racine's Phèdre, and in 1821, aged 17, she was received with so much enthusiasm as Pamina in Mozart's The Magic Flute that her future career in opera was assured.

On Kotzebue's recommendation she was engaged for the Vienna Court theatre in 1798, and here and in Munich and Hamburg she won great successes in tragic roles like Marie Stuart, Phèdre, Merope, Lady Macbeth, and Isabella in The Bride of Messina, which gave her the reputation of being " the German Siddons.

Phèdre becomes increasingly frustrated when she sees Alcuin working to solve this mystery and yet he will not tell her why.

Phèdre loses herself entirely to Melisande that night, and when Melisande uses flechettes on her, she gives her signale ( safeword ) for the first time.

She only believes him when he gives a password, which Phèdre believes to refer to a ring she saw Ysandre present to Delaunay.

Rousse's message in return makes no sense to Phèdre but, given that the soldier said Delaunay's house was being watched, she believes that her lord is in danger.

Once inside the City of Elua, Phèdre decides that the only person she can trust is her old friend Hyacinthe, whom she and Joscelin seek out immediately.

From Hyacinthe, Phèdre learns that she and Joscelin were tried and convicted in absentia for the murders of Delaunay, Alcuin, and the entire household.

As Eamonn can not stand Grainne having something he does not, he asks Phèdre why she continues to refuse him.

Phèdre announces that, for those who survive, she will throw open the doors of the Night Court and have a party like none of them have ever seen.

Phèdre manages to solve it but before she can answer, Hyacinthe uses the dromonde to get the answer, and upon saying it, must take the curse for the rest of his days.

Phèdre spends much of the next few weeks translating for Ysandre and others, as she is one of the few d ' Angeline who speak Cruithne or Skaldi, and the only one who can be wholly trusted.