W.H. Auden in 1941 set a syllabus for an English Literature module that required an absolutely ludicrous amount of reading spanning a considerable cross section of the entirety of Modern English prose plus several Wagner operas. At some point, I read an article about this and decided that, while I certainly had no intention of trying to do all this in half an academic year, there was no harm in ticking these texts off the to-do list piecemeal. Phèdre is the first of them that I’ve gotten around to nearly four years after I had the idea.

Phèdre is a Greek-style tragedy written by a French playwright in the 17th century. Once I got into the swing of it I enjoyed it and found the ending really quite gripping. Something I read about it elsewhere that really rang true is how impressively it avoids contrived drama requiring a misunderstanding or a coincidence. There’s no “Oh if only he’d gotten there in time” or “If only she’d had a chance to explain”. Every character seems to be really true to themselves and the drama arises simply by the manner in which the various characters interact with each other without a need for the playwright to throw an obvious spanner in the works. Short, concise, well-constructed. Great play.