Maintenon discountenanced the resumption of _Esther_ after the first
series of performances was concluded, and she entirely withheld from
public representation the second play, _Athalie_, written by Racine in
the following year for the same purpose. Subsequently Mme. de
Maintenon banished dramatic performances altogether from St. Cyr; she
concluded it was better to train the _reason_[1] by the _solid_[1]
truths of philosophy than the imagination by the unrealities of
dramatic literature.


4. THE PLAY OF "ESTHER."

The subject of _Esther_ is admirably chosen for the purpose Racine had
in view. The story of Esther, owing mainly to the noble character of
the queen, is as touching as it is lofty. The poet found it entirely
in the Bible, which should be read side by side with the play from
beginning to end. Several inspirations, notably that of the beautiful
prayer in the first act, are drawn from the "Rest of the Book of
Esther," i.e., those chapters which being found only in the Greek, and
neither in the Hebrew nor in the Chaldee MSS., are relegated to the
Apocrypha.

Racine follows the theory of the Abbé de Saci, and takes the Ahasuerus
of Scripture to be the Darius of secular history. Modern criticism,
however, inclines to see in him neither Darius, nor, as has been
proposed on the authority of the "Rest of the Book of Esther" (xii. 2),
Artaxerxes Longimanus, but Xerxes, the immediate successor of Darius.

The idea of a Chorus is borrowed from the Greeks, as Racine expressly
declared in his preface. In this play, as in Greek tragedy, the Chorus