This book fills a lacuna in the scholarship on seventeenth-century French tragedy, while offering a fresh perspective on the renowned tragedians of the age, such as Corneille and Racine. Bilis seeks to better understand the phenomenon of the royal judge as an ever-changing character type in drama, while investigating the relationship between this fictional character's portrayal and contemporary political theories of absolute power. This brief monograph is packed with insight into French theater of the classical period. These plays have long been part of the literary canon in French, with Corneille and Racine holding strong positions as the preeminent tragedians of the period. In examining their tragedies, as well as those of Hardy and Rotrou, Bilis demonstrates how much valuable discussion remains about these masterpieces, and how these tragedies continue to prove their literary value. As Bilis concludes, staging royalty influenced Corneille, Racine, and Rotrou to restructure their plots over the course of their careers, which ultimately contributed to their artistic success (202).

The book is divided into six chapters that analyze the role of the royal judge from a variety of perspectives. Chapter 1 aims to provide new insight into the “quarrel of Le Cid” by viewing this infamous debate through the lens of how public trials and royal judgments are staged. Chapter 2 digresses historically to Alexandre Hardy, a playwright whose tragedy Scédase ou l'hospitalité violée was published twenty years before Le Cid, and the quarrel that ensued. Here Bilis takes a step back to provide a more comprehensive vision of the image of kingship, one that Le Cid's critics were rejecting. Chapter 3 adopts a broader view of the tragic genre to illustrate the overlapping and sharing that often takes place between tragedy and comedy. In chapter 4, the author takes the opposite approach by zooming in on Corneille and this tragedian's struggle with portraying the royal judge and maintaining the king's dignity, both on- and offstage. Chapter 5 analyzes the apparent shift in Corneille's staging of royal judgment, from employing this theatrical device strictly as a denouement to recasting the royal judge in a more complex role as “clement prince.” In this chapter, Bilis also argues for a more sophisticated understanding of Jean Rotrou's tragedies as demonstrating a world of tension between law and chaos. The final chapter offers a new perspective on Racine's tragedies, Phèdre and Mithridate, by demonstrating how the tragedian enhances the royal judgment scene from simple denouement to a critical element of the plot.

Throughout the book, Bilis investigates how the rise of monarchial power in seventeenth-century France caused a response in theater—more specifically, how portraying the character of the royal judge posed a challenge to playwrights, because it was essential to maintain this character type's dignity. The issue was more than just a theoretical concern, since two kings (Henry III and IV) had been assassinated in the recent past. Bilis first situates this problem in the history of tragedy to show not only the development of the type but also the continuous adjustments by tragedians. Beginning with the turbulent context of early seventeenth-century French politics, the author points out the stark contrast between the reenactment of violent punishment in humanist tragedy (late sixteenth century) and the transition to less graphic displays of royal judgments (20, 47, 51). This judgment typically centers on a trial scene, at first a static convention, but developing into “the only basis for the survival of a nobleman-hero” (132).

Furthermore, Bilis analyzes the royal judge to cast light on bienséance and the rules of tragedy. She reminds us that the royal decision is a performance (11). Bilis contests other studies that assume the royal judge disappears in tragedy, proving the role is fulfilled by anyone to whom the other characters look for a legal decision. This conclusion is supported by a close reading of Rotrou's Crisante (154). Bilis concludes that these tragedians are doomed to failure in their endeavor to stage a completely dignified king. Yet this failure leads to their great artistic success (203). Finally, this character type neither subverts nor reinforces power; it reproduces the values of the dominant class (202). This book is an excellent addition to scholarship on both humanist and classical French theater.