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Phèdre and Hippolyte, Hôtel de Bourgogne, January 1, 1677 Phèdre and Hippolyte, Hôtel de Bourgogne, January 1, 1677
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Phèdre, Comédie-Française, April 18, 1689 Phèdre, Comédie-Française, April 18, 1689
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Phædra and Hippolitus, Queen's Theatre, Haymarket, April 21, 1707 Phædra and Hippolitus, Queen's Theatre, Haymarket, April 21, 1707
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4 Cartesian Design; or, Anatomies of the Theater
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Published:August 2013
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Abstract
This chapter concerns theater architecture after Descartes. In Cartesian theory, the physiology of perception (which Descartes calls “representation”) is connected with the physiology of emotion (which represents feeling by means of animal spirits in the blood vessels). Jean Racine's Phèdre stages this tension between ocular and sanguinary representation, but the play's precise theatrical meanings are determined by the anatomies of the theaters in which it is enacted. As they developed more ocular shapes and corneal proscenium arches, these theaters collectively traced the development of Cartesian theater architecture. Three theater designs are anatomized: Paris's Hôtel de Bourgogne, the original Comédie-Française (designed by François d'Orbay), and London's Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket (designed by John Vanbrugh and home to Phèdre's English première in an adaptation by Edmund Smith).
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