Jean Racine

Jean Racine was a French dramatist regarded as a central figure of seventeenth-century classical tragedy. Orphaned young, he was educated at the Jansenist schools of Port-Royal, then in Paris. After early poems and an interlude at Uzès seeking a church benefice, he turned to the theatre, writing tragedies including Andromaque, Britannicus, Bérénice, Bajazet, Mithridate, Iphigénie and Phèdre, drawn largely from Greek, Roman and biblical sources. In 1677 he and Nicolas Boileau were appointed royal historiographers to Louis XIV, and he largely withdrew from public theatre. Late in life he wrote the biblical dramas Esther and Athalie. He died in Paris in 1699.