Racine had composed at Uzes the Freres ennemis, which was played on his return to Paris in 1664, not without a certain success; Alexandre met with a great deal in 1665; the author had at first intrusted it to Moliere’s company, but he was not satisfied and gave his piece to the comedians of the Hotel de Dourgogne.  Moliere was displeased, and quarrelled with Racine, towards whom he had up to that time testified much good will.  The disagreement was not destined to disturb the equity of their judgments upon one another.  When Racine brought out Les Plaideurs, which was not successful at first, Moliere, as he left, said out loud, “The comedy is excellent, and they who deride it deserve to be derided.”  One of Racine’s friends, thinking to do him a pleasure, went to him in all haste to tell him of the failure of the Misanthrope at its first representation.  “The piece has fallen flat,” said he; “never was there anything so dull; you can believe what I say, for I was there.”  “You were there, and I was not,” replied Racine, “and yet I don’t believe it, because it is impossible that Moliere should have written a bad piece.  Go again, and pay more attention to it.”

Racine had just brought out Alexandre when he became connected with Boileau, who was three years his senior, and who had already published several of his satires.  “I have a surprising facility in writing my verses,” said the young tragic author ingenuously.  “I want to teach you to write them with difficulty,” answered Boileau, “and you have talent enough to learn before long.” Andromaque was the result of this novel effort, and was Racine’s real commencement.

He was henceforth irrevocably committed to the theatrical cause.  Nicole attacking Desmarets, who had turned prophet after the failure of his Clovis, alluded to the author’s comedies, and exclaimed with all the severity of Port-Royal, “A romance-writer and a scenic poet is a public poisoner not of bodies but of souls.”  Racine took these words to himself, and he wrote in defence of the dramatic art two letters so bitter, biting, and insulting towards Port-Royal and the protectors of his youth, that Boileau dissuaded him from publishing the second, and that remorse before long took possession of his soul, never to be entirely appeased.  He had just brought out Les Plaideurs, which had been requested of him by his friends and partly composed during the dinners they frequently had together.  “I put into it only a few barbarous law-terms which I might have picked up during a lawsuit and which neither I nor my judges ever really heard or understood.”  After the first failure of the piece, the king’s comedians one day risked playing it before him.  “Louis XIV. was struck by it, and did not think it a breach of his dignity or taste to utter shouts of laughter so loud that the courtiers were astounded.”  The delighted comedians, on leaving Versailles, returned