<i>Passing Judgment: The Politics and Poetics of Sovereignty in French Tragedy from Hardy to Racine</i> . By H <scp>élène</scp> E. B <scp>ilis</scp> . <i>Passing Judgment: The Politics and Poetics of Sovereignty in French Tragedy from Hardy to Racine</i> . By BilisHélène E.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. xx + 258 pp.

Many recent studies of French tragedy in the seventeenth century have explored the parallels between dramatic plots and contemporary political debates, especially the playwrights’ attitudes towards the emerging doctrine of absolutism. Hélène E. Bilis complements that approach by analysing tragedies where kings also function as judges, relating them to contemporary theoretical discussions about the proper portrayal of royalty. Her thought-provoking treatments of works by four significant playwrights (Alexandre Hardy, Pierre Corneille, Jean Rotrou, Jean Racine) often challenge conventional wisdom. The evolving doctrine of bienséance for royal characters in drama was primarily aesthetic: they should play a major role in the action, behave with dignity, and be personally involved in the cases where they act as supreme judge. But developments in real life also influenced the call to keep the operations of royal justice hidden: political theorists viewed the king as above the law and answering only to God, while many people were shocked by the perceived cruelty and arbitrariness of certain kings and chief ministers. These concerns motivated two of Corneille’s key opponents, Georges de Scudéry and Jean Chapelain, when they complained that the king in Le Cid was ineffectual, unjust, and even comic. The theorist François Hédelin, abbé d’Aubignac, would go further and demand that all kings in drama, regardless of country or time period, be presented with the same reverence as that accorded to the contemporary King of France; bad examples from history should be kept off the stage. Corneille was unprepared for the objections levelled against his portrayal of Dom Fernand, especially since his previous plays featuring weak or unjust monarchs were not faulted, and since he originally labelled Le Cid a tragicomedy — a genre in which concluding judgements could be bizarre, provided that they led to the required happy ending. But even Corneille recognized that some previous dramatic models for royal judging could no longer be tolerated: staging executions or public trials, especially those with a clearly unjust verdict, was condemned as violating the principles of edification and decorum. Bilis argues that changes in the way Corneille and Racine portray royal judges during their careers reflect reactions to negative criticisms; the playwrights may even have chosen their subjects in order to achieve a depiction of kingship that critics would deem acceptable. Corneille, far from holding a coherent political position, kept experimenting throughout his career with ways to reconcile his sympathy for both the heroic ideal and for supreme monarchical authority. Even royal clemency, discussed in Cinna and later plays, could have a dangerous side, since it relies on extra-legal means and reduces the forgiven parties to servitude. Racine chose to focus on conflict between generations, with the king/judge as father (sometimes an absent or dead one) and placed the (unjust) condemnation earlier in the play to focus on its consequences. His royal judges are fallible because their passions blind them to the truth, although they sometimes possess enough integrity to try to set things right at the end. But Racine also understood that the presentation of judges who misuse their authority could veer into comedy, as suggested in his writing of Les Plaideurs and Britannicus in quick succession. Rotrou’s tragedies, which regularly show kingdoms in crisis and rulers who are weak and ineffective, link chaos to moral and judicial breakdown, and suggest the need for a ruler whose absolute power is wielded and delegated properly.

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