SOURCE: "Racine," in Last Periods of Shakespeare, Racine, Ibsen, Wayne State University Press, 1961, pp. 61-88.

In the following excerpt from the text of a lecture delivered in 1959, Muir focuses upon the final two dramas of Racine, Esther and Athaliah, finding the latter in particular a reflection of Racine's effort to, in effect, repudiate the libertinism of his middle years and return to the Christian practice of his youth.

Between 1664 and 1676, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-seven, a space of twelve years, Racine wrote ten plays. During this next twelve years, between the ages of thirty-seven and forty-nine, he wrote nothing for the stage. Then, in his last period, he was persuaded to write the two Biblical plays, Esther and Athalie. Any critic of Racine's work is confronted with the twelve years' silence following the twelve years of continuous dramatic activity. However we explain his long retirement from...