The Work
Esther was first performed on January 26, 1689, at the Maison Royale de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr - the educational institution founded by Madame de Maintenon for the daughters of impoverished noble families, under the patronage of Louis XIV. The play was the first of two biblical dramas Racine wrote for this institution; the second, Athalie, followed in 1691.
The play is in three acts and approximately 1,200 lines of alexandrine verse (considerably shorter than Racine's classical tragedies), following the unities of time, place, and action. It includes a chorus of young Israelite women whose odes draw extensively on the Psalms and constitute some of the finest sacred choral poetry in the French dramatic tradition. It was performed by the young women of Saint-Cyr themselves - young noblewomen playing the roles of Esther and her companions - before an audience of courtiers invited to Saint-Cyr.
The play received three private performances before the King and his court in 1689, to enormous enthusiasm. It was not staged publicly until after Racine's death in 1699.
Biblical Engagement
Esther 4:16 ('Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish') is the turning point of the Book of Esther and the theological and dramatic center of Racine's play. Esther's resolution - to approach the king unsummoned, at risk of death, on behalf of her people - is the act of courageous intercession that the play dramatizes. Her 'if I perish, I perish' is among the most celebrated expressions of willing self-sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible, and Racine renders it in French verse with appropriate solemnity.
Racine's dramatization draws not only on the canonical Book of Esther but on the deuterocanonical Additions to Esther (known as 'Greek Esther' in the Septuagint, and as the 'Additions' in modern critical editions). Specifically, he draws extensively on the prayer of Esther before she approaches Ahasuerus (Addition C, Esther 14:1-19 in the Greek), in which she prays in sackcloth and ashes for divine protection. This prayer - not present in the Hebrew canonical text - gives Racine the material for what many critics consider the most beautiful scene in the play: Esther's long solo prayer before her approach to the throne.
Esther 7:3 ('Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request') is the climactic intercession scene in Racine's Act 2: Esther revealing her Jewish identity to Ahasuerus and pleading for the lives of her people. Racine dramatizes this scene with his characteristic economy: the brief biblical account is expanded through psychological depth - Esther's fear, Ahasuerus's gradual movement from formality to tenderness - while preserving the dignity and simplicity of the biblical original.
Psalm 46:1 ('God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble') is the theological affirmation behind the choral odes that frame the play's acts. The chorus of Israelite women sings from the position of the exiled and threatened people, drawing on the Psalms of lament and trust to provide theological commentary on Esther's individual act of courage. The movement from the Psalms of lament (Psalm 137's 'by the waters of Babylon') to the Psalms of trust (Psalm 46) mirrors the dramatic movement from Haman's threat to Esther's victory.
Racine also draws on the choral tradition of the Greek tragedy (the chorus of Israelite maidens corresponds to the Greek tragic chorus) to create a specifically biblical theatrical form. The chorus responds to the action, provides theological reflection, and embodies the community whose fate depends on Esther's intercession. Its odes adapt the meters and imagery of the biblical Psalms to the alexandrine verse of classical French poetry - a translation not only linguistic but cultural, domesticating the Hebrew lyric tradition within the conventions of Louis XIV's court culture.
Political Allegory
The play's political allegory was immediately recognized by contemporary audiences and has been extensively discussed. Esther is Madame de Maintenon - the king's morganatic wife, a converted Huguenot, who exercised enormous influence over Louis XIV's religious policies. Ahasuerus is Louis XIV. Haman is the Marquis de Louvois (or, in another reading, various ministers who had influenced the persecutions of the Jansenists or the Huguenots). The persecuted Israelites are the French Protestants (Huguenots) whose civil rights had been revoked by the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685, or (in a different reading) the Jansenists and the convent of Port-Royal.
Madame de Maintenon herself chose the Book of Esther as the subject for the play - a choice that suggests she identified with Esther's position as a woman of obscure origins who has come to hold the ear of an absolute monarch and who might use that position to intercede for the persecuted. Whether the allegory represents a sincere political hope (that Maintenon might intercede with Louis for the Huguenots) or a flattery of Maintenon's self-image, or something more complex, has been debated by historians.
Racine himself was a Jansenist - Port-Royal was his spiritual home - and the persecuted Israelites of his play could easily be read as the Jansenists whose movement was under increasing royal pressure. But Racine was also a court figure, deeply dependent on royal patronage, and the play is not a political protest but a celebration of providential intercession that could be read by Louis XIV as a compliment to both Maintenon and himself.
Author & Context
Jean Racine (1639-1699) had been silent as a playwright for twelve years when Madame de Maintenon commissioned Esther. His retirement from the secular theatre in 1677, following the failure of Phèdre, had been partly motivated by his Jansenist conscience (the Jansenists regarded the theatre as morally dangerous) and partly by professional disappointment. His acceptance of the Saint-Cyr commission represented a compromise: sacred subjects, performed in a closed educational setting by young noblewomen rather than professional actresses, did not violate the Jansenist scruples that had driven him from the commercial stage.
The Saint-Cyr context shaped every aspect of Esther: its shorter length (three acts rather than the usual five of the classical tragedy), its large chorus (which provided roles for the many young women of the institution), its pedagogical purpose (teaching sacred history and the values of piety and intercession), and its relative simplicity of dramatic structure (appropriate for young performers).
Racine brought to the commission the full resources of his classical training at Port-Royal. The choral odes demonstrate his mastery of the Psalms and his ability to translate Hebrew lyric poetry into French classical verse. The dramatic structure - built around a single central act of courage and intercession - is simpler than the classical tragedies but no less perfectly constructed.
Structure and Argument
Act 1 establishes the dramatic situation: Esther's secret identity as a Jew, her position in the Persian court, Haman's petition to Ahasuerus for permission to destroy the Jews throughout the empire, and Mordecai's request to Esther to intercede with the king. The act ends with Esther's prayer - expanded from the deuterocanonical Addition C - in which she commits herself to approaching the king at risk of death.
Act 2 presents the intercession itself: Esther's approach to Ahasuerus's throne, his reception of her, her invitation to the banquet, and her revelation of her Jewish identity and Haman's plot. This act contains the play's most emotionally intense scenes, rendered with Racine's characteristic concentration of psychological truth in compressed verse.
Act 3 presents the resolution: Haman's disgrace and execution, the reversal of the decree against the Jews, and the celebration of the Jewish victory. The final choral ode transforms the historical event into a theological affirmation of divine faithfulness.
Critical Reception
The immediate response at Saint-Cyr was enormously enthusiastic. Louis XIV attended the private performances and wept. The courtiers who witnessed the performances were moved by both the theatrical beauty and the theological depth. The subsequent reputation of the play has been somewhat overshadowed by Athalie, which most critics regard as the greater achievement; but Esther has maintained a significant place in the French dramatic canon and is regularly performed.
Theological Significance
The play's most significant theological contribution is its dramatization of intercessory prayer as a political act - the intervention of the person who has access to the powerful on behalf of the powerless. Esther's intercession models the theology of prayer that runs through the biblical tradition from Moses's intercession for Israel (Exodus 32:11-14) through Daniel's prayer for Jerusalem (Daniel 9) to Paul's intercession for his communities (Romans 1:9, Ephesians 1:16): the person who stands between God or the human sovereign and a threatened people, at personal risk, on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.
Racine's version of this theology is characteristically Jansenist: the human act of intercession is entirely dependent on divine grace (Esther cannot approach the king unless God wills it), and the outcome is entirely in God's hands (Esther can only pray and act; she cannot control the king's response). This combination of human courage and divine sovereignty is the theological grammar of the play.
Legacy
The play established a tradition of biblical drama at Saint-Cyr and influenced subsequent French religious theatre. It also established a template for the dramatization of the Book of Esther that has shaped subsequent theatrical and operatic treatments: George Frideric Handel's oratorio Esther (1718, revised 1732) directly drew on Racine's play for its dramatic structure and some of its text, making Racine's influence on the English choral tradition as well as the French dramatic tradition.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study the Book of Esther in both its canonical Hebrew form and its Greek expanded form (the Additions to Esther, found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles as additional chapters): Addition C (Mordecai's and Esther's prayers), Addition D (Esther's approach to the king), and the other additions that Racine drew on for the play's theological depth. Key psalms the chorus draws on include Psalm 46, 137, 89, and 113. The theology of intercession should be read alongside Exodus 32:11-14 (Moses before God), Daniel 9:1-19 (Daniel's prayer for Jerusalem), Romans 8:26-34 (the Spirit's intercession), and Hebrews 7:25 (Christ's eternal intercession).
Further Reading
- John Dove Hale, Racine and the Bible (1960) - the standard account of Racine's use of biblical sources across his sacred dramatic works, with detailed chapters on both Esther and Athalie. - Gilles Siouffi, introduction to the Livre de Poche edition of Esther et Athalie - a reliable modern critical introduction in French, with notes on the biblical sources and the political allegory. - Handel's Esther (1718, rev. 1732) - listening to Handel's oratorio alongside reading Racine's play illuminates how Racine's theatrical vision was absorbed and transformed by the English choral tradition; the structural parallels are extensive and revealing.