through my heart by this same child I’d seen!
(II.v.50–57)
This oneiric encounter sets the stage, so to speak, for the three confrontations between the reigning queen and the future king; at once the most important and most dramatic scenes in Athaliah, they function as three pillars supporting the edifice of the play. Each of these key scenes has been uniquely and elaborately conceived by Racine.
iv
By the time the action of the play commences Athaliah is already obsessed with this child, as a result of that disturbing dream, which has proved a recurrent one. Her first actual confrontation with the child occurs between Acts I and II, but though the audience never witnesses it, it is reported to us by two participants: first by Zachariah, the son of Jehoiada and Josabeth, and shortly afterward by Athaliah herself. (And, as is the case with many of the récits in Racine’s plays, it loses none of its significance or power by being merely recounted after the fact.)
Before we are vouchsafed Athaliah’s account of their encounter, its impact on her, barely hinted at in Zachariah’s narrative, is signalized by her extraordinary first appearance in the play, which finds her “almost as exhausted as Phèdre in her first appearance. Instead of a self-assured imperial presence, we discover a weary monarch” (Tobin, 153). To what are we to attribute her collapse? Not to her unceremonious dismissal from the temple by Jehoiada — in the opening scene of the play Abner cautions Jehoiada that Athaliah is resolved to brave his opposition and drive him from the temple:
I fear lest Athaliah (to speak plain),
Seeking to oust you from this sacred fane,
Effect her fell revenge on you at last
And shed the forced respect shown in the past.
(I.i.21–24)
Besides, by the time Athaliah appears, we have had Zachariah’s eyewitness testimony concerning what transpired in the temple:
Reaching the court reserved for men,
With head raised high she proudly bustled in
And, on the threshold, seemed prepared to invade
The Levites’ inner sanctum, undismayed.
(II.ii.20–23)
Then, far from being cowed by Jehoiada, though “his eyes flashed with a furious fire” (II.ii.25), or paying any heed to his attempt to ban her from the temple, “the Queen, letting a savage glance shoot out, / Opened her mouth, poised to blaspheme no doubt” (II.ii.30–31). It is only upon her noticing Joash that her effrontery falters:
The words froze on her lips, though, instantly;
Something had daunted her audacity.
Her frightened eyes grew transfixed as she gazed;
By Eliakim, above all, she seemed fazed.
(II.ii.34–37)
It is clear, then, that this temporary weakness on the part of a queen who is nothing if not strong-willed, indeed brazen, and whom Mathan describes as “that enlightened, fearless queen, / So far above her sex’s timid mean” (III.iii.13–14), is solely to be accounted for by her having espied the very child of her nightmares assisting in the rites. Zachariah’s account of the scene continues:
The both of us stood watching that cruel queen;
Our hearts were stricken with the same affright.
The priests, though, quickly veiled us both from sight
And hurried us away.
(II.ii.39–42)
Here is Athaliah’s version, three scenes later, of this “apparition”:
I saw that child who threatens me at night,
Just as, in that dread dream, he met my sight.
I saw him: his same garments, his same gait,
His air, his eyes, in fact, his every trait.
He stood near the high priest, as plain as day;
But soon I saw them spirit him away.
(II.v.78–83)
This double flashback, presented from two vantage points, gives us an almost cinematic view of the event, as if caught by two cameras. No actual representation of this scene could offer the stereoscopic depth provided by this dual narrative. (See my Discussion for The Fratricides, where I argue this point more expansively in reference to Creon’s climactic récit in that play.)
v
The second encounter between Joash and Athaliah, certainly the focal scene of the play, its most original and audacious, has the broad scale, the momentous sense of occasion, of an epic confrontation between good and evil, virtue and corruption. Although no such scene occurs in the Bible, it has its precedents in such famously unequal — or at least apparently so — encounters as David’s with Goliath and Daniel’s with the den full of lions. (It also calls to mind the temptation of Christ in Saint Luke’s gospel.) One might well have misgivings on behalf of a child who is summoned into so daunting a presence as Athaliah’s, especially after having seen her quickly recover from the debilitated state in which she made her first entrance, resuming an implacable, overbearing demeanor which, apart from the momentary accession of pity Joash will engender in her breast later in this scene, she will preserve to the end, becoming ever more brazen, even when she must finally acknowledge defeat. But Joash (like David and Daniel) proves a worthy antagonist for his adversary, their well-matched sparring skills signaled by the prominent use of stichomythia, which by its nature implies a balanced give and take:
athaliah
Have you no better pastimes to enjoy?
I pity the sad state of such a boy.
Come to my palace; see the splendors there.
joash
And in God’s blessed bounty cease to share?
athaliah
I won’t make you abandon Him, you know.
joash
You do not pray to Him.
athaliah
You may do so.
joash
Another god, though, I’d see worshipped there?
athaliah
I serve my god, as you do yours: that’s fair.
Each one is a most puissant deity.
joash
