LA MORT DE MITRIDATE - University of Liverpool

La Mort de Mitridate
Bérénice
Since the play hinges on attempts to persuade Pharnace to change his mind, La
Calprenède obviously decided that a single scene with his father would not be
powerful enough for that. With love also being such a powerful drawing card, he
chose to provide Pharnace with a wife, thus doubling the appeals to Pharnace.
With only a name borrowed from one of Mithradates’ concubines, La Calprenède
created from nothing the most successful character in the play, the one who, he
tells us, had audiences weeping, and who has fared best critically over the
centuries. Comparisons with Corneille and Racine have been made, Bernardin
seeing in her ‘une noble et pure création digne de figurer à côté de celles de
Corneille’ (p.8), while Médan could declare: ‘ses incertitudes et ses douloureuses
hésitations nous offre comme l’ébauche inexpérimentée des âmes tourmentées et
endolories dont Racine dévoilera sur la scène des angoisses’ (p. 63). Unlike the
protagonist and antagonist, Bérénice is what she always was. Change is not in her
nature.
No character is thought of more highly than Bérénice. From Mitridate’s
enthusiasm for her ‘glorieux exemple’ (I.3.269) to his tribute to her in death:
‘Princesse vertueuse’ (V.2.1551), her vertu is universally acknowledged (ll. 266,
690, 1505). Although married to Pharnace, her values are those of Mitridate and
his wife and daughters, as proclaimed in any number of utterances: ‘J’estimois sa
vertu, mais non pas sa couronne’ (I.3.250), chiastically echoing Hypsicratée’s
earlier question to Mitridate: ‘Aimay-je vos grandeurs, ou bien vostre merite?’
(I.2.213). An ideal of womanhood: beautiful physically, morally and spiritually,
she is a French version of Goethe’s Ewig-weibliche, capable of inspiring man,
drawing Mitridate out of despair, for example, and renewing his spirit. Were it not
for the fact that she is also very human, her sévérité would class her alongside the
heroines of La Calprenède’s novels. But Bérénice is humanized by the fact that,
despite her principles, she still loves her husband. As firmly as she may proclaim:
‘J’ay sur mes passions un absolu pouvoir’ (I.3.247), she can still confess to what
she calls her ‘foiblesse’ (II.2.406), that of still loving Pharnace, ‘un mary qui [lui]
estoit si cher’ (I.3.223). Her renunciation of him is thus all the greater.
In the play’s central act, La Calprenède treats his audience to the first of the
scènes à faire. Plunging in without any preliminaries, Bérénice lets Pharnace
know how disappointed she is with him. Amazingly blunt, she sweeps aside all of
his attempts at excuses. Cold, indignant and angry, she ruthlessly cuts through his
casuistry. Frank, sarcastic, dismissive and accusatory, she has Pharnace
consistently on the defensive. And yet, she touchingly does still care for him and
about his future and halfway through the scene changes tack. Worried about ‘le
mal qui le menace’ (III.3.922) and fearing that he has set a course that will lead to
his ‘prochaine ruine’ (l. 925), she says: ‘J’apprehende pour toy la vengeance
divine: / Ceste peur, plus que tout, me faict venir icy’ (III.3.926-27). On her
knees, in tears, she assures him: ‘Ton honneur seulement faict naistre tous mes
vœux’ (l. 940). But, unable ultimately to move him, she turns her back on
Pharnace and, walking back into the palace, she opts for death rather than a love
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