Among the innovations he brought to the seventeenth-century theatre, Racine was, we are told, the first to place a child on the stage. This novelty transforms the world of Classical dramaturgy into a compelling scenario of horror and sacrifice; for this child, led out into the public's embrace, is brought forth upon the scene of Classicism as its victim. Racine puts children on his stage to immolate them, or at least to keep the threat of immolation suspended over their heads. The impact of this threatened slaying informs a complex vortex of dramatic, social, and psycho-sexual tensions around which swirls, in ever more opaque waves of poetic horror, the tragic message of Racinian theater. For while this child is offered up as a propitiatory victim to satisfy the anger/love of the gods, to slake the unquenchable bloodlust of his own parents and family, the tragic “frisson” of his impending immolation also functions as a lure ensnaring and appeasing the desire for theater – for a theater of cruelty and beauty, of terror and release – of the audience.