[4] Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve deemed it comparable to Oedipus Rex in beauty, with "the true God added.

"[5] August Wilhelm Schlegel thought Athalie to be "animated by divine breath";[4] other critics have regarded the poetics of drama in the play to be superior to those of Aristotle.

Athalie, widow of the king of Judah, rules the country and believes she has eliminated all the rest of the royal family.

[citation needed] Represented on the public scene after the death of Madame de Maintenon, it was never part of the most popular plays of Racine, though Voltaire saw it as "perhaps the masterpiece of mankind" and Flaubert's character Monsieur Homais, the pharmacist, in Madame Bovary calls it the most "immortal masterpiece of the French stage," and names one of his daughters Athalie.

[5] The oratorio Athalia by George Frideric Handel, with libretto by Samuel Humphreys, was based on Athalie.