Aristophanis facetissimi Comoediae undecim. Comoediarum catalogum versa pagella indicabit. [bound with:] Gorris (Jean de) Scholia an nymou tinos syggraphe s, palaia te kai chr sima eis ta tou Nikandrou Th riaca (Paris, Guillaume Morel, 1557) [and:] Nikandrou Th riaca (Morel, 1557)

Bookseller Notes

A sixteenth-century edition of the works of Aristophanes, in a copy owned by celebrated seventeenth-century playwright Jean Racine (1639-1699). As Nathan Gross has shown, thanks to his training at Port-Royal and his enthusiasm for the original texts, Racine developed an excellent working knowledge of Greek. As a giant of the classical tradition, he was certainly familiar with Aristophanes; his Les Plaideurs is a reworking of Aristophanes' Sph kes (Wasps) albeit without the political dimension. Aristophanes 'inspired Racine to compose for the comic stage. He found, under the Greek writer's influence, that he could write for the Italians and for the French Htel de Bourgogne in a comic vein. Racine does not indicate that he read the Wasps with any previous idea of imitating it, nor that he intended at the time to write a comedy satirizing the law courts; to be sure, "quand je lus les Guepes d'Aristophane, je ne songeois guere que j'en dusse faire les Plaideurs"' (Gross, p. 210).As Paul Bonnefon wrote in his 1898 study of Racine's library, 'Il est galement certain que Racine possdait plusieurs exemplaires d'Aristophane'. He cites the present volume, affirming Renouard's suggestion that the signature on the title is consistent with Racine's own hand. Indeed, we have seen other examples from Racine's library in which he marks the title-pages of his books in this unobtrusive manner. The extensive annotations to Plutus, a large part of Nephelai (The Clouds), and a few pages of Ekklesiazousai (The Assemblywomen) form a kind of gloss behind a hand-ruled framework, and are primarily lexicographical, commenting on Greek meaning and usage, but also referring to other classical works. These have been confirmed by experts at Sotheby's as being in the hand of Racine's eldest son, Jean-Baptiste Racine (1678-1747). It therefore seems likely that the volume was owned by Racine, and inherited/annotated by his son. See Paul Bonnefon, 'La Bibliothque du Racine', Revue d'Histoire littraire de la France, 5.2 (1898) pp. 169-219, p. 190 (IV); Nathan Gross, 'Racine's Debt to Aristophanes', Comparative Literature, 17.3 (1965) pp. 209224.