Is there a reason why French seventeenth-century classical dramaturgy is widely considered a quintessentially ‘French’ phenomenon that remains largely unpopular outside the country itself? The origin and reception of a play are obviously governed both by specific national sociopolitical circumstances and by aesthetic conventions that, for their part, are subject to historical transformation. Vanhaesebrouck investigates this very question by analysing the production history of Jean Racine's Britannicus, based on eight exemplary (and all French) mises en scène that were produced from 1669 to 2004. Racine's first ‘Roman tragedy’ unfolds the typical conflict between passion and obligation: the future Roman emperor Nero has fallen in love with Junie, his stepbrother Britannicus's mistress. The latter – having the same right of succession to the throne – has agreed to abdicate in favour of his marriage with Junie, but young Nero turns out to be a tyrant: he forces Junie to renounce her lover and kills his rival.

Even if the issue of imperial hereditary succession in seventeenth-century France was based on the ‘salic law’ and its principle of ‘patrilineal primogeniture’, the matter of the sovereign's legitimacy is still highly topical: the touchstone for the king's legitimacy in Racine's tragedy as well as in the French monarchy was – following Kantorowicz's arguments – the moment when ‘the king's natural body annihilates the body politic. This is exactly where Nero's tragedy is situated’ (p. 101). Vanhaesebrouck clearly points out how Racine's dramaturgy oscillates between the poles of sociopolitical ritualization and its aesthetic transgression that lies at the core of the theatrical event of the time. This aspect is generally disregarded, as academic readings still predominantly consider Racine's œuvre as a literary accomplishment of the doctrine classique: a stylization that took its roots in the late seventeenth century in the wake of the glorification of Louis XIV's reign.

In a series of semiotic analyses the study outlines how epoch-making productions from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards continuously try to construct, deconstruct or reconstruct the so-called ‘authenticity’ of the play, a term that eventually designates the concurrent resurrection and updating of French cultural heritage on stage. Referring to Barthes's concept of ‘myth’ as a ‘a secondary semiotic system’ and the differentiation of ‘extra- and intra-systemic factors’ drawn from Luhmann's systems theory, Vanhaesebrouck retraces the main stages of the play's ultimate canonization. He reveals how each historical epoch generated its own Britannicus, which each time perfectly reflected the particular theatrical aesthetics of its day: Lekain (1757) and Talma (1799) constructed an ideal of a ‘theatre of illusion’ by introducing historical costumes and realistic acting. Mounet-Sully (1872) promoted psychological realism. Antoine (1911) deconstructed naturalism by casting female performers in the roles of Nero and Britannicus. Hermon (1968) represented the neo-avant-garde movement of the 1960s. Vitez (1981) displayed Brechtian aesthetics, and Brigitte Jaques-Wajeman (2004) ultimately reconstructed a contemporary transhistorical approach.

Regrettably, Vanhaesebrouck's terminology is somewhat misleading at times. The term ‘authenticity’ is for him more of a category to designate the audience's aesthetic experience, whereas any ‘theatricalization’ is said to create, somehow almost automatically, a ‘simulacrum’. Furthermore, the study's approach and methodology follow the tradition of national theatre historiography based on the enumeration of theatrical masterpieces. One might object here that the notion of historico-cultural ‘canonization’ may be partly generated by the very historiographic methodology applied here all too uncritically itself.