Certain lines from the play, such as "la fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé", have become classics in the French language; but despite the celebrated musicality of the alexandrine, Racine never wrote poetry just for the sake of beauty of sound. In the character of Phèdre, he could combine the consuming desire inherited from her mother with the mortal fear of her father, Minos, judge of the dead in Hades. Despite its author's silence from 1677 to 1689, as time progressed "Phèdre" became one of the most famous of his plays. It is now one of the most frequently staged tragedies from the seventeenth century.