thing needful to be reduced to such a condition. No, Nero will undoubtedly readily find another inamorata — another victim, that is — on whom to lavish his “affections.”
By contrast, the bloodier, more definitively “deadly” ending of Bajazet leaves us with far less of a sense of despair because no one in that play is sufficiently more virtuous or more moral, let alone nobler, than anyone else, for us to identify any decisive moral defeat. Granted, it is debatable which is the bleaker prospect: a world without goodness or one where goodness is defeated by evil. (If Nazi Germany had triumphed in World War II, would our spirits be uplifted or further crushed by the thought that so many brave, noble souls had fought the good fight in vain?) Campbell (131–32) does, however, cite the view of one French critic who would seem to be a staunch proponent of the latter view, Jean Emelina (“Les tragédies de Racine et le mal” 107), for whom, “despite his aversion to ‘pessimistic’ interpretations of le tragique racinien, this play is different: ‘The most unbearable thing — and here the sense of the tragic is absolute — is when the evildoer continues to live on happily and with impunity. This is the case, quite uniquely, with Néron. [...] Britannicus is without doubt the bleakest of Racine’s tragedies.’ ” But if, on the other hand, we are not to label the ending of Britannicus as tragic, are not to feel such a commensurate heavyheartedness, then, apparently, however grim the outcome of a play, as long as we have seen the cruel and crushing defeat of those who were conspicuously undeserving of meeting such an end, we have no choice but to consider it a “happy ending.”
XV
Having explored the antipodal aspect of Nero’s relationship with Junia, we must investigate the question of what it is that “attracts” Nero to Junia, and I use “attracts” in its broadest sense in order to comprise both my thesis, that Nero wishes to “obtain” Junia, and the rival thesis, as I will contentiously call it, namely, that Nero falls in love with Junia. This is an extremely complicated question and one that intertwines almost inextricably with the crucial question Ronald W. Tobin poses in his Jean Racine Revisited (71): “Why did Néron have Junie kidnapped?” One thing we can categorically assert is that he could not have done so because he was in love with her at that point, since, if he had ever seen her before, it could not have been at all recently (when they first meet, he upbraids her for having dared to “hide yourself so long from Nero’s sight” [II.iii.14]), and, as he testifies to Narcissus, when he supposedly fell in love with Junia, it was at first sight. Thus, the “love thesis” is irrelevant in addressing Tobin’s question. Whatever other explanations we may discover for Nero’s abduction of Junia, I venture to say that my thesis, that Nero wished to demonstrate his omnipotence by “obtaining” Junia, sufficiently accounts for it.
Clearly, we are to understand by Tobin’s query that a satisfactory answer must not only address the reason(s) for Nero’s abduction of Junia per se but must also offer some explanation of what he intended to “do with her” once she arrived at the palace, for her abduction, in and of itself, could hardly serve any purpose worth the trouble of arranging it. Here, of course, those who hold the view that Nero, after one distant, nocturnal glimpse of her, instantly fell in love, would readily answer that, of course, he, in the very next instant, determined to marry her, overcoming whatever obstacles stood in the way. But, again, such a view begs the question, Why did he abduct her in the first place? Whatever his motives in doing so, whatever plans he must have had about Junia’s future, must have existed before he fell in love with her. Indeed, we shall find that all of Nero’s behavior, all of his actions with regard to Junia, both before and after her abduction, can be accounted for by his deliberate design of “obtaining” her, and, furthermore, that, while some of his actions could just as well be accounted for by Nero’s being in love with Junia as by his objective of “obtaining” her, none of them need to be so explained, and, in fact, most of those actions could sooner be accounted for by his hating her than by his loving her.
Tobin himself (71) adduces two interesting, pregnant answers to his own question: “As Agrippine has surmised, Néron’s act is at once an adolescent’s symbolic signal of freedom from the mother and a desire to replace one female presence with another.” In regard to the first, Agrippina would seem to shed some light on Nero’s longer-range plans when she thus challenges Burrhus: “Explain why Nero, now a ravisher, / Pursues Silanus’ sister, abducting her. / Is it his aim to taint with infamy / The shining blood that Junia shares with me?” (I.ii.101–4). If her metaphorically couched surmise is correct (and the metaphor, conveniently, can represent equally well the insult to Agrippina and the injury to Junia), then we can assume it had been Nero’s intention before ever seeing Junia to ravish her. In that case, it is reasonable to regard such an outcome as amply answering the objective I have posited of Nero’s intending to “obtain” Junia. QED. In regard to Tobin’s second explanation (replacing one female presence with another), in what sense could Junia’s presence represent a replacement for Agrippina’s, unless Nero planned to marry Junia? For then, indeed, would Agrippina’s worst fears be realized:
Now, with a rival they’ve confronted me!
If this disastrous knot can’t be undone,
My place usurped, I’m nothing and no one.
Till now, Octavia’s title has meant naught;
At court she is ignored, her aid unsought.
The favors I alone used to dispense
Won me men’s loyalty as recompense.
Now someone new has captured Caesar’s heart:
Mistress and wife, she’ll play a potent part.
All that I’ve worked for, Caesar’s majesty —
One glance from her will win it all from me.
(III.v.9–19)
And this scenario, in which it had been Nero’s intention before ever seeing Junia to marry her, answers, at least as satisfactorily, Nero’s putative objective. Again, QED.
Now, can we think of any further reasons why Nero would want to marry Junia (and thereby, or therefore, “obtain” her), apart from his being in love with her? Well, Nero himself has provided us with two, neither of which depends on his being in love with Junia. First, as he makes quite clear, he is heartily sick of Octavia:
Not that a remnant tenderness, in truth,
Attracts me to my wife or pleads her youth.
Long weary of the kind concern she shows,
I seldom deign to watch her weep her woes:
Too happy if a merciful divorce
Relieved me of a yoke imposed by force!
(II.ii.91–96)
Second, she has proved barren:
Heav’n, too, in secret, shows itself severe;
Four years she’s prayed, but heaven will not hear:
Octavia’s virtue leaves the Gods unmoved,
And with a barren bed she’s been reproved.
In vain the Empire asks an heir of me.
(II.ii.97–101)
What further incentives could any husband require to remarry? But, of course, Nero is not just any husband, and I would suggest that there may be another, darker reason for his wishing to marry Junia. I take my cue from several remarks of Racine’s in his second preface: “[Nero] could not bear Octavia, a princess of exemplary goodness and virtue” and “He had not yet killed his mother, his wife, his tutors; but he bore in him the seeds of all those crimes.... He hates these people one and all, and he hides his hate from them under false caresses.” Racine’s description of Octavia as “a princess of exemplary goodness and virtue” is striking, since it serves also as a perfect description of Junia and, indeed, of the crucial thematic role she plays in Britannicus. Racine alludes to Nero’s murder of Octavia, but he did not merely