Main Body
Act Four
FIRST SCENE.
THESEUS, OENONE.
THESEUS.
- Ah! what do I hear? A traitor, a reckless
- Prepared this outrage to his father’s honor!
- With what rigor, fate, you pursue me!
- O tenderness! O goodness too badly rewarded!
- Bold project! hateful thought!
- To achieve the goal of his dark loves,
- The insolent force borrowed help!
- I recognized the iron, the instrument of his rage,
- This iron with which I armed it for a nobler use.
- All the ties of blood could not hold him back!
- And Phèdre deferred having him punished!
- Phèdre’s silence spared the culprit!
ŒNONE.
- Phèdre rather spared a deplorable father:
- Ashamed of the design of a furious lover,
- And the arson he caught in his eyes,
- Phaedrus was dying, lord, and his murderous hand
- She put out the innocent light with her eyes.
- I saw raise my arm, I ran to save her.
- I alone in your love I knew how to preserve it.
- And complaining both of his trouble and your alarms,
- I served, in spite of myself, as an interpreter to his tears.
THESEUS.
- The treacherous! he couldn’t help but turn pale:
- As I approached me, I saw him quiver.
- I was astonished at his lack of joy;
- Her cold embraces froze my tenderness.
- But this guilty love by which he is devoured
- In Athens had he already declared himself?
ŒNONE.
- Lord, remember the queen’s complaints:
- A criminal love caused all his hatred.
THESEUS.
- And this fire in Trézène has therefore started again?
ŒNONE.
- I told you, lord, everything that happened.
- It is too much to leave the queen to her mortal pain,
- Suffer that I leave you and line up with her.
SCENE II.
THESEUS, HIPPOLYTE.
THESEUS.
- Ah! here it is. Great gods! to this noble bearing
- Which eye would not be deceived like mine?
- Must it be that on the forehead of an adulterous layman
- Shine with virtue the sacred character!
- And shouldn’t we at certain signs
- Recognize the hearts of treacherous humans!
HIPPOLYTE.
- May I ask you what a fatal cloud,
- Lord, could you trouble your august face?
- Don’t you dare to confide this secret to my faith?
THESEUS.
- Monster, whom thunder has spared for too long,
- The robbers whose land I have purged remain unclean,
- After the transport of a love full of horror
- Your fury carried your fury to your father’s bed,
- You dare present me with an enemy head!
- And don’t go looking, under an unknown sky,
- From countries where my name has not reached?
- Flee, traitor. Do not come here to defy my hatred,
- And tempt a wrath that I barely remember:
- It’s enough for me eternal reproach
- To have been able to bring to light such a criminal son,
- Without your death still, shameful in my memory,
- From my noble works come to defile the glory.
- Flee: and if you only want a sudden punishment
- Add to the scoundrels punished by this hand,
- Beware that ever the star that lights us up
- Do not see yourself in these places putting a reckless footing.
- Flee, I say; and without rushing back your steps,
- Your horrible appearance