|
Jean Racine - Esther
9 un roi, Louis XIV.
13 à sa porte, St. Cyr being in the vicinity of Versailles, the king's residence.
15 cet ouvrage, the founding of this institution.
24 Louis XIV. supported foreign missions in the East and in the Nouveau Monde.
31-32 Allusion is here made to the Augsburg League (1687), in which Austria joined Sweden, Saxony,
etc., for the purpose of opposing Louis XIV. Its leading spirit was the protestant William of Orange.
36 The pope Innocent III. was accused by Louis XIV. of aiding the anti-Roman designs of William of
Orange,
48 Allusion to the taking of Philippsburg, Mannheim and Frankenthal, in the preceding year.
49 un fils. The Grand Dauphin had conducted the above campaign, with the great engineer Vauban.
NOTES TO PLAY.
2 Beni soit is the usual form. The retained que is therefore emphatic. - Voeux very
frequent in poetry for prieres, for metrical reasons. The whole expression is elliptical: qui te
rend [a moi en reponse] a etc.
3 Cf. Book of Esther, ii. 5, for the descent of Mordecai, and consequently of Esther herself, his brother's
daughter.
4 For tense of fus, see App. II., ii. B. b.
5 d'un meme is stronger than du meme. Cf. l. 263.
8 Note the mode of emphasizing pronouns, Cf. ll. 23, 443, and contrast ll. 47, 429.
9 je te fais chercher, see App. III. Note the present tense.
10 donc, emphatic, untranslatable here. Observe the order quel climat, quel desert, and
the reason for it.
11 eploree, quite different from deploree, is an adjective, meaning "weeping," "tearful." Cf.
Alfred de Musset:
Plantez un saule an cimetiere;
J'aime son feuillage eplore . . .
13 When ne . . . que = "only," que precedes the word specially qualified by the adverb in English.
Here the sense makes "only" qualify attendais rather than la fin. For similar construction
see l. 373.
15 Note: abuser quelqu'un, "to deceive a person."
abuser de, "to use improperly."
injurier, "to abuse" or "insult."
16 Suse, "Shushan the palace" of the Bible, on the river Eulaeus, was the winter residence of the first
|
