In comparing a passage from Racine’s Andromaque (1667) with three English versions, Higgins demonstrates how certain linguistic features, notably word order, caesura, rhyme and mute e heard as a schwa, contribute to the illocutionary force of the written/spoken text. Since the original version has major illocutionary potential, part of the translator’s task is to ensure that this is realized also in the translation and ways must be found to stimulate its effects in readers of English, a language which thematises and emphasizes mainly through intonation, unlike French, where grammatical devices tend to fulfil these functions.