That again!

I know for you hardcover is an accurate way to describe them. Thinking of French books in American/English publishing terms is just no more natural for me than for you to rely on translated french publishing/binding terms to describe a book.

If Pléiade had something like an "Essential French Baroque drama" volume I'd definitely own it, but the only dramatist I truly enjoy reading and returning to from that period is Molière, so it's the only one I have in Pléiade. That reflects more my tastes/interests than any judgement on literary quality/importance. Like Shakespeare, it's also fairly useful to own Molière's Complete Works as a reference. How the Sun-King persona was created and sustained is one of the aspects of his reign I've read a lot about, and that made me go back to Molière (much the same way it made me return to Lully and his successors).

From Racine I only have Andromaque, Iphigénie and Phèdre. From Corneille, only Le Cid. "Reliés", but all bought for cheap at bouquinistes over the years.

I wouldn't recommend investing for Racine's Pléiade, not unless you have a particular interest in drama, or are one of those who really enjoy reading drama (I'm not keen on that myself.. to buy a Pléiade from a dramatist I need compelling reasons. Molière aside, I own only Eugène Ionesco and Alfred Jarry). As you won't want to buy a PB either and reading a play is quite fast, I'd say an online source might be the best for Racine.

If I could vouch for the quality of any of them, I'd in fact recommend you to try a CD captation (I own several, but none of a Racine play). But all of those will be from France and released by big and usually very conservative companies (even more if it's a full DVD captation), and I have very little idea how they approach Racine in France now. The first productions I've seen here as a teenager were still sedate, posing and pompous (and terribly boring and ridiculous. If you've seen Mouchkine's Molière, that bit where he tried to play tragedies and got thrown stuff by the audience depicts one of his atrocious attempts at producing a Racine play), as if the idea was to have time to ponder and admire each word and line. Now it's back to a focus on the hard-edged purity of the verses and the intensity of emotions. The common saying about Racine is that to play him all the costume, accessories and sets an actor needs beside his body is the text itself (even in his time Racine was the antithesis of Molière's/Lully's multi-media extravangazas, which is in part why he's a darling of modern theater). The trend of the last decades in Montréal is to take that quite literally, and to bring out the intense beauty of the text by having the actors declaim again Racine's verses really fast (lightning speed fast in very intense or violent scenes), almost harshly/violently - which requires a high-level of virtuosity. When the actors manage to do this while inhabiting the characters and without butchering the rythm of Alexandrins, it's one hell of an experience. But I don't quite know if the Europeans, especially the companies from the establishement, are back to that trend though. I'll try to ask a client of mine whose husband is one of our best stage actors, she'll probably know.