Theatrical Competition, Age, and the Career Race: ‘Old Corneille’ Rivals Racine

In 1670, Corneille and Racine duelled on the Parisian stage by presenting, within a week of each other, their particular version of the emperor Titus’s farewell to his beloved Bérénice. While this episode of the playwrights’ careers is well known, scholars have tended to minimize the importance of the head-to-head showdown in the overall arc of Corneille and Racine’s relationship. This essay argues for understanding their theatrical confrontation as an inflection point for their rivalry and explores how the rhetoric of age factored into the framing of their competition leading up to the Bérénice battle. The playwrights repeatedly called attention to their age in differentiating themselves from one another and used age to justify their authority over their rival. In focusing on the role age played in shaping Corneille and Racine’s theatrical showdown, the analysis calls attention to the dynamic between growing old, competing, and staying relevant in the theatrical circles of seventeenth-century France.