Silent Witness

This is an examination of the influence of the plays of Euripides on the French tragedian Racine, gleaned from Racine's markings on the texts. In her study, Phillippo examines the way in which the creative processes linking the two writers may have worked. She concentrates on the largely unexplored evidence supplied by "non-verbal" aspects of the annotations: the markings of lines and passages by underlining, brackets, etc. Such markings suggest how Racine probably understood the Greek "originals", and reveal the qualities of the Greek dramatist to which the French writer appears to have responded.