Phèdre

Fire is the most prevalent symbol for love used throughout the play. In Act I, Phaedra tells Oenone that she felt her body “freeze and burn” (186) with love; Hippolytus later tells Phaedra, “Your soul is ever burning with your love” (196), and Oenone cautions her about feeding “a flame / That ought to be put out” (200). Racine also turns the cliché image of love’s fires into something more, tying it to issues of fate and agency: Phaedra traces her fateful forbidden love to the fact that she is descended from the god of the sun, the great heavenly fire. Indeed, there are on multiple occasions celestial resonances behind Phaedra’s references to the fires of her love, as when she exclaims:

What news has beaten on my ears!

What half-extinguished fire within my breast

Revives! What thunderbolt (212)!

Finally, Phaedra’s death is also described in similar terms, as a “burning” that gives way at last to “unimagined cold” (225). Thus, Phaedra’s love comes full circle, ending with the same sensation that started it.