Main Body
Act Four
FIRST SCENE.
THESEUS, OENONE.
THESEUS.
- Ah! what do I hear? A traitor, a reckless
- Prepared this outrage to his father’s honor!
- With what rigor, fate, you pursue me!
- I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know where I am.
- O tenderness! O goodness too badly rewarded!
- Bold project! hateful thought!
- To achieve the goal of his dark loves,
- The insolent force borrowed help!
- I recognized the iron, the instrument of his rage,
- This iron with which I armed it for a nobler use.
- All the ties of blood could not hold him back!
- And Phèdre deferred having him punished!
- Phèdre’s silence spared the culprit!
ŒNONE.
- Phèdre rather spared a deplorable father:
- Ashamed of the design of a furious lover,
- And the arson he caught in his eyes,
- Phaedrus was dying, lord, and his murderous hand
- She put out the innocent light with her eyes.
- I saw raise my arm, I ran to save her.
- I alone in your love I knew how to preserve it.
- And complaining both of his trouble and your alarms,
- I served, in spite of myself, as an interpreter to his tears.
THESEUS.
- The treacherous! he couldn’t help but turn pale:
- As I approached me, I saw him quiver.
- I was astonished at his lack of joy;
- Her cold embraces froze my tenderness.
- But this guilty love by which he is devoured
- In Athens had he already declared himself?
ŒNONE.
- Lord, remember the queen’s complaints:
- A criminal love caused all his hatred.
THESEUS.
- And this fire in Trézène has therefore started again?
ŒNONE.
- I told you, lord, everything that happened.
- It is too much to leave the queen to her mortal pain,
- Suffer that I leave you and line up with her.
SCENE II.
THESEUS, HIPPOLYTE.
THESEUS.
- Ah! here it is. Great gods! to this noble bearing
- Which eye would not be deceived like mine?
- Must it be that on the forehead of an adulterous layman
- Shine with virtue the sacred character!
- And shouldn’t we at certain signs
- Recognize the hearts of treacherous humans!
HIPPOLYTE.
- May I ask you what a fatal cloud,
- Lord, could you trouble your august face?
- Don’t you dare to confide this secret to my faith?
THESEUS.
- Perfidious! do you dare to show yourself in front of me?
- Monster, whom thunder has spared for too long,
- The robbers whose land I have purged remain unclean,
- After the transport of a love full of horror
- Your fury carried your fury to your father’s bed,
- You dare present me with an enemy head!
- You appear in places full of your infamy!
- And don’t go looking, under an unknown sky,
- From countries where my name has not reached?
- Flee, traitor. Do not come here to defy my hatred,
- And tempt a wrath that I barely remember:
- It’s enough for me eternal reproach
- To have been able to bring to light such a criminal son,
- Without your death still, shameful in my memory,
- From my noble works come to defile the glory.
- Flee: and if you only want a sudden punishment
- Add to the scoundrels punished by this hand,
- Beware that ever the star that lights us up
- Do not see yourself in these places putting a reckless footing.
- Flee, I say; and without rushing back your steps,
- Your horrible appearance purges all my states.
- And you, Neptune, and you, so once my courage
- Infamous assassins cleaned your shore,
- Remember that, at the price of my happy efforts,
- You promised to grant my first wish.
- In the long rigors of a cruel prison
- I did not implore your immortal power;
- Miserly with the help I expect from your care,
- My wishes have reserved for you for greater needs:
- I implore you today. Avenge an unhappy father;
- I abandon this traitor to all your anger;
- Stifles his brazen desires in his blood:
- Theseus in your fury will know your kindness.
HIPPOLYTE.
- Of a criminal love Phèdre accuses Hippolyte!
- Such excess of horror makes my soul dumbfounded;
- So many unforeseen blows overwhelm me at the same time,
- Let them take away my speech, and stifle my voice.
THESEUS.
- Traitor, you claimed that in cowardly silence
- Phèdre would bury your brutal insolence:
- It was necessary, while fleeing, not to give up
- The iron which in his hands helps to condemn you;
- Or rather it was necessary, filling your perfidy,
- All of a sudden, to steal his speech and his life.
HIPPOLYTE.
- Of a lie so dark, justly irritated,
- I should make the truth speak here,
- Lord; but I am removing a secret that touches you.
- Approve the respect that closes my mouth,
- And without wanting to increase your troubles yourself,
- Examine my life, and consider who I am.
- Some crimes always precede great crimes;
- Whoever was able to cross the legitimate boundaries
- Can finally violate the most sacred rights:
- Like virtue, crime has its degrees;
- And we never saw the timid innocence
- Suddenly switch to the extreme license.
- One day alone does not make a virtuous mortal
- A perfidious assassin, an incestuous coward.
- Raised in the womb of a chaste heroine,
- I have not denied the origin of his blood.
- Pitthea, considered wise among all humans,
- Deigned to instruct me again when leaving his hands.
- I don’t want to paint myself too much;
- But if some virtue has fallen into my hands,
- Lord, I mostly believe I broke
- The hatred of crimes that people dare to impute to me.
- This is where Hippolytus is known in Greece.
- I pushed virtue to the point of harshness:
- We know the inflexible rigor of my sorrows.
- The day is not purer than the bottom of my heart.
- And we want Hippolytus, in love with a profane fire …
THESEUS.
- Yes, it’s that same pride, coward! who condemns you.
- I see the odious principle of your coldness:
- Phèdre alone charmed your shameless eyes;
- And for any other object your indifferent soul
- Disdained to burn with an innocent flame.
HIPPOLYTE.
- No, my father, this heart is too much for you to hide,
- Has not a chaste love scorned to burn.
- I confess my real offense to your feet:
- I love, I love, it is true, in spite of your defense.
- Aricia to his laws keeps my vows enslaved;
- Pallante’s daughter defeated your son:
- I love it ; and my soul, at your rebellious orders,
- Can neither sigh nor burn except for her.
THESEUS.
- You love it ! sky! But no, the artifice is rude:
- You pretend yourself a criminal to justify yourself.
HIPPOLYTE.
- Lord, for six months I have avoided him and I have loved him;
- I came, trembling, to tell it to yourself.
- What! nothing can get you out of your mistake!
- By what dreadful oath should you be reassured?
- That the earth, the sky, that all of nature …
THESEUS.
- Always scoundrels resort to perjury.
- Cease, cease, and spare me an unwelcome speech,
- If your false virtue has no other help.
HIPPOLYTE.
- It seems to you false and full of artifice:
- Phèdre in the depths of his heart does me more justice.
THESEUS.
- Ah, how your impudence excites my wrath!
HIPPOLYTE.
- What time in my exile, what place do you prescribe?
THESEUS.
- Were you beyond the pillars of Alcide,
- I would still believe myself too close to a perfidious man.
HIPPOLYTE.
- Charged with the awful crime you suspect me of,
- What friends will pity me when you abandon me?
THESEUS.
- Go find friends whose disastrous esteem
- Honor adultery, applaud incest;
- Traitors, ingrates, without honor and without law,
- Worthy to protect a villain like you.
HIPPOLYTE.
- You always talk to me about incest and adultery:
- I am silent. However Phaedrus comes out of a mother,
- Phaedrus is of a blood, lord, you know it too well,
- Of all these horrors more filled than mine.
THESEUS.
- What! your rage in my eyes loses all restraint?
- For the last time, get out of my sight;
- Come out, traitor: don’t wait for a furious father
- With reproach, tear you up from these places.
SCENE III.
THESEUS.
- Miserable, you run to your infallible doom!
- Neptune, by the river to the very gods terrible,
- Gave me his word, and go do it.
- A vengeful god follows you, you cannot avoid him.
- I loved you ; and I feel that, despite your offense,
- My bowels for you are troubled in advance.
- But to condemn you you have committed me too much:
- Never was a father, in fact, more outraged?
- Righteous gods who see the pain that overwhelms me,
- Have I been able to bring to light such a guilty child!
SCENE IV.
THESEUS, PHÈDRE.
PHAEDRA.
- Lord, I come to you, full of just dread;
- Your dreadful voice has reached me:
- I fear a swift effect followed the threat.
- If there is still time, spare your race,
- Respect your blood; I dare to ask you:
- Save me from the horror of hearing him scream;
- Do not prepare for me eternal pain
- For having spread it in the paternal hand.
THESEUS.
- No, madame, my hand has not soaked in my blood;
- But the ingrate, however, has not escaped me:
- An immortal hand of her doom is loaded,
- Neptune owes it to me; and you will be avenged.
PHAEDRA.
- Neptune owes it to you! What! your angry wishes …
THESEUS.
- What! are you already worried that they will be listened to?
- Rather, join my legitimate wishes:
- In all their darkness, trace to me his crimes,
- Warm up my transports too slow, too restrained.
- All his crimes are not yet known to you:
- His fury against you is poured out in insults;
- Your mouth, he said, is full of deceptions;
- He maintains that Aricie has his heart, has his faith,
- Let him love her.
PHAEDRA.
- What, lord!
THESEUS.
- He said it in front of me:
- But I know how to reject a frivolous artifice.
- Let us hope for speedy justice from Neptune:
- I myself still go to the foot of its altars
- Urge him to fulfill his immortal oaths.
SCENE V.
PHAEDRUS.
- He is leaving. What news hit my ear!
- What a badly stifled fire in my heart is awakening!
- What love at first sight, O heaven! and what a disastrous advice!
- I flew entirely to the aid of his son;
- And tearing me from the arms of a terrified Oenone,
- I gave in to the remorse of which I was tormented.
- Who even knows where this repentance was going to take me?
- Perhaps to accuse myself I could have consented;
- Maybe if my voice hadn’t been cut off,
- The awful truth would have escaped me.
- Hippolyte is sensitive, and feels nothing for me!
- Aricie has his heart! Aricie has his faith!
- Ah! gods ! When to my wishes the inexorable ungrateful
- Armed himself with an eye so proud, with a forehead so formidable,
- I thought that with love his heart always closed
- Was against all my cock also armed:
- Another, however, weakened its audacity;
- Before his cruel eyes another found favor.
- Perhaps he has an easy heart to be moved:
- I am the only object he cannot suffer.
- And I would take care of defending it!
SCENE VI.
PHAEDRUS, OENONE.
PHAEDRA.
- Dear Oenone, do you know what I have just learned?
ŒNONE.
- No ; but I come trembling, not to lie to you
- I have turned pale at the design which brought you out;
- I feared a fatal fury to yourself.
PHAEDRA.
- Oenone, who would have believed it? I had a rival!
ŒNONE.
- How? ‘Or’ What !
PHAEDRA.
- Hippolyte loves; and I cannot doubt it.
- This fierce enemy that could not be tamed,
- What offended respect, what annoyed complaint,
- This tiger, that I never approached without fear,
- Subdued, tamed, recognizes a winner:
- Aricie has found the way to her heart.
ŒNONE.
- Aricie?
PHAEDRA.
- Ah! pain not yet experienced!
- What new torment I have reserved for myself!
- All that I suffered, my fears, my transports,
- The fury of my fires, the horror of my remorse,
- And with a cruel refusal the unbearable insult,
- Was only a faint test of the torment I endured.
- They love each other ! By what charm have they deceived my eyes?
- How did they see each other? since when ? in which places?
- You knew it: why did you let me seduce?
- Could you not instruct me with their furtive ardor?
- Have we often seen them talking to each other, looking for each other?
- In the depths of the forests were they going to hide?
- Alas! they saw each other with full license:
- The sky of their sighs approved of innocence;
- They followed their amorous inclination without remorse;
- Every day rose clear and serene for them!
- And I, sad scum of all nature,
- I hid myself in daylight, I fled from the light;
- Death is the only god I dared to implore.
- I waited for the moment when I was going to breathe out;
- Feeding me gall, watered tears,
- Still, in my misfortune observed too closely,
- I dared not drown myself at leisure in my tears.
- I tasted this fatal pleasure with trembling;
- And under a serene brow disguising my alarms,
- I often had to deprive me of my tears.
ŒNONE.
- What fruit will they receive from their vain love?
- They won’t see each other anymore.
PHAEDRA.
- They will always love each other!
- As I speak, ah, deadly thought!
- They brave the fury of a foolish lover!
- Despite this same exile that will drive them away,
- They take a thousand oaths not to leave each other …
- No, I cannot endure a happiness which outrages me;
- Oenone, have pity on my jealous rage.
- We must lose Aricie; it takes my husband
- Against hateful blood to awaken wrath:
- Let him not limit himself to light sentences;
- The crime of the sister passes that of the brothers.
- In my jealous transports I want to implore him.
- What do I do ? where does my reason go astray?
- Me jealous! and Theseus is the one I implore!
- My husband is alive, and I am still burning!
- For who ? what is the heart where my vows claim?
- Every word on my forehead makes my hair stand on end.
- My crimes have now filled the measure:
- I breathe incest and fraud at the same time;
- My homicide hands, quick to avenge myself,
- Into the innocent blood burn to plunge.
- Wretched ! and I saw ! and I support the view
- From that sacred Sun from which I came!
- My ancestor is the father and master of the gods;
- The sky, the whole universe is full of my ancestors:
- Where to hide? Let’s flee into the hellish night.
- But what am I saying? my father holds the fatal urn there;
- Fate, they say, put her in his severe hands:
- Minos judges all pale humans in hell.
- Ah! how his terrified shadow will tremble,
- When he sees his daughter presented to him,
- Forced to admit so many various crimes,
- And perhaps unknown crimes in the underworld!
- What will you say, father, to this horrible spectacle?
- I think I see the terrible urn fall from your hand;
- I think I see you looking for a new torture,
- You yourself become the executioner of your blood …
- Forgive: a cruel god has lost your family;
- Recognize his revenge on the fury of your daughter.
- Alas! of the terrible crime whose shame follows me
- Never has my sad heart gathered the fruit:
- Until the last continued sigh of misfortunes,
- I restore a painful life in torments.
ŒNONE.
- Hey! repel, madame, an unjust terror!
- Look differently at an excusable mistake.
- You like ; you cannot conquer your destiny:
- By a fatal charm you were carried away.
- So is this an incredible wonder among us?
- Has love only triumphed over you yet?
- Weakness to humans is all too natural:
- Mortal, suffer the fate of a mortal.
- You complain about a long imposed yoke:
- The very gods, the inhabitants of Olympian gods,
- Who terrify crimes with such a terrible noise,
- Sometimes burned with illegitimate fires.
PHAEDRA.
- What do I hear! what advice do they dare give me?
- So until the end you want to poison me,
- Unhappy! this is how you lost me;
- On the day that I was fleeing it was you who gave me back.
- Your prayers made me forget my duty;
- I was avoiding Hippolyte, and you showed it to me.
- What were you doing? why your impious mouth
- Did she, by accusing him, dare to blacken her life?
- He may die of it, and of a foolish father
- The sacrilege may have been granted.
- I don’t listen to you anymore. Go away, execrable monster;
- Go, leave me the care of my deplorable fate.
- May the just heaven worthily pay you!
- And may your torment forever scare
- All those who, like you, by cowardly addresses,
- Unhappy princes feed weaknesses,
- Lead them to the inclination to which their heart is inclined,
- And their crime dares to level the way!
- Despicable flatterers, the most fatal present
- What can heavenly wrath do to kings!
ŒNONE , alone.
- Oh gods! to serve her I have done everything, left everything;
- And I get this award! I have deserved it.
- In what raptures, to your fate bound,