I consider Racine the greatest French playwright (sorry, Molière fans), and I consider Phèdre and Britannicus his two greatest plays. My quarrel here, and hence my low rating of 2½**, is with the translation – specifically, Richard Wilbur's use of heroic couplets which, despite some add-on enjambment, still make Racine sound too much like John Dryden.

Nothing against Dryden, mind you, but I think Wilbur would have been better advised to go with blank verse for a playwright who engages in tragic set-pieces. I'm going to get on to Wilbur's Molière translations, though, where heroic couplets (assuming that's what Wilbur used for Molière) might give a sing-song effect more appropriate to comic satire. ( )

This full cast recording of Racine´s play used the public domain translation by Robert Bruce Boswell which, as I mentioned in my review of the Kindle edition, wasn't very good.

I also found that a few of the "players" had difficulty matching the text to the meaning (pausing at the end of a line of text when the pause was inappropriate, for example). ( )

Read & listened to the LibriVox recording 4 December 2016
My rating reflects the translation by Robert Bruce Boswell more than Racine's tragedy. The play I liked enough that I have requested the Richard Wilbur version from the library. ( )

Greek families! Histrionics, rash reaction instead of considered response, inability to control emotion. Tragedy.

THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN CURTAILED IN PROTEST AT GOODREADS' CENSORSHIP POLICY

See the complete review here:

http://arbieroo.booklikes.com/post/334827/post

Bonus GR only bit: So if Goodreads was ever a family, it's now clear that it was one that escaped from a Greek Tragedy. It's fairly obvious that all the things in the first sentence of this review can be applied to the GR family - the only questions now is how many corpses are going to pile up as the Tragedy unfolds and whether we can summon a Diety to resolve the conflict for the future...no sign of Athena yet, more's the pity. ( )

What a powerful tragedy about forbidden love! And what a difference reading this Richard Wilbur translation made in my enjoyment (I had read/listened to the public domain translation a few weeks ago).

And Phaedra makes such a contrast to whiny Gwenevere in The Mists of Avalon (which I recently finished); like Gwenevere she knows her love to be impossible but she doesn't blame either the man (Hippolytes) or her husband (Theseus). And even in her jealous rage, she doesn't really blame Aricia either. ( )