In fact, Phaedra has been suffering for a very long time because she loves her stepson, Hippolytus.

Oenone: You are in love?

Phaedra: Love’ furies rage in me.

Oenone: For Whom?

Phaedra: Prepare to hear the crowning woe. I love… I tremble, shudder at the name; I love…

(Oenone leans forward)

Phaedra: You know that prince whom I myself so long oppressed, son of the Amazon?

Oenone: Hippolytus?

Phaedra: You have pronounced his name.

It is a merciful incestuous love that harasses Phaedra. Because they receive the news of Theseus’ death, Oenone suggests Phaedra to confess to Hippolytus her love for him and support his claim to the throne. However, Hippolytus is shocked that she does not hates him and “cannot bear Phardra’s gaze”, and also he loves Aricia, the princess of Athen. So, Phaedra much more very disappointed and depressed than before.

Ah, cruel, you have understood only too well. I have revealed enough. Know Phaedra then, and all her wild desires. I burn you with love. Yet, even as I speak, do not imagine I feel innocent, nor think that my complacency has fed the poison of the love that clouds my mind.

It is difficult to Phaedra to affront danger and shame of telling the truth. Before it, she tries anything she can do to forget the love of Hippolytus, even bans him to see her, and it causes that Hippolytus thinks Phaedra hates him. “I shunned him everywhere. O crowning woe! I found him mirrored in his father’s face!” She cannot forget him. Everything is merciful misunderstanding.

The hapless victim of heaven’s vengeances, I loathe myself more than you ever will. The gods are witness, they who in my breast have lit the fire fatal to all my line. Those gods whose cruel glory it has been to lead astray a feeble mortal’s heart.

Phaedra believes herself fated in this way – she was born in the ill-fated family. Her sister was cursed by Venus to fall in love and copulate with a bull, giving rise to the legendary bull hybrid the Minotaur. Phaedra meets Theseus when he arrives on the Minoan scene to kill her monstrous nephew. Her marriage begins with wrong love. She thinks that she is cursed by Venus too, and it is her destiny. She marries the one who kills his nephew, and then falls in love with stepson. She is passionate in love but in vain, and morally concious, terribly ashamed of herself. Now she is emotionally weak.

I pined, I drooped, in torments and in tears. Your eyes alone could see that it is so, if for a moment they could look at me. Nay, this confession to you, ah! The shame, think you I made it of my own free will? I meant to beg you, trembling, not to hate my helpless children, whom I dared not fail. My foolish heart, alas, too full of you, could talk to you of nothing but yourself. Take vegeance. Punish me for loving you. Come, prove yourself your fther’s worthy son and of a vivious monster rid the world.

Her mind drops to the end of the world. She confesses the ill-fated love without happy ending. The only thing she gains is shame. She rather dies than being guilty. Being punished in order to decrease her crime. Although it is shameful, she dare to choose the worst way – confess the incestuous love, and is willing to bear the result of telling it, not escape. She is ill sick in her mind, but she faces her misfortune with courage. She represents the virtue in the miserable situation.