Medea

EURIPIDES
You dishonored my bed. There was no way
you could go on to lead a pleasant life,
to laugh at me—­not you, and not the princess;
nor could Creon, who arranged your marriage,
exile me and walk away unpunished.
So go ahead, call me a lion, call me
a Scylla, skulking in her Etruscan cave.
I’ve done what I had to do. I’ve jabbed your heart.
—Medea 1402–­9

Topics for Lecture or Discussion

1. Jason spouts sophistry to defend his decision to marry Creon’s
daughter. In his first entrance, he makes his clearly weak moral choice
look strong through a series of rhetorical moves. First, he claims that
Medea’s “own foolish words” (454) forced Creon to exile her. Quite bra-
zenly, Jason says that he always wanted Medea to stay, but that he has
come to offer money to help her when she must leave to go to a strange
land. To defend himself against Medea’s furious rebuttal, he admits that
he will have to conjure the right words: “It seems that I must have a way
with words / and, like a skillful captain, reef my sails / in order to escape
this gale that blows / without a break—­your endless, tired harangue”
(533–­36). Although he admits that Medea saved his life, he maintains
that he has given back to her more than he received. First of all, he took
her to Greece and civilization. Secondly, as a result of his exploits, she
has become famous throughout the land. Then, he arrives at an even
more outrageous claim when he argues that marrying the king’s daugh-
ter protects Medea and the children. It is not because his new bride is
young and beautiful; nor is it because he will curry favor with the king;
he, quite, selflessly, wants them all to “live well / and not be poor”
(575–­76). Jason argues that his decision is practical and po­liti­cal and
made for the best interests of everyone and he voices his disgust that
Medea could be upset simply because he leaves her bed for another. He
attacks women for thinking only of sex when they should consider the
most important aspects of their lives. Essentially, Jason blames Medea
for ruining his master plan and being exiled. Even so, Jason says, mag-
nanimously, that he is prepared to help her financially in the hard days
ahead as an exile. She is too emotional, he says, to see that he has actu-
ally acted in her and the children’s best interests.

16
 Medea  |  17

2. Medea dissembles in order to exact her revenge on Jason, his

new bride, and Creon. Creon’s fatal mistake is to grant Medea a day’s
reprieve before she must leave the country. In order to get that neces-
sary allowance, Medea falls on her knees as a supplicant and begs the
Corinthian king to let her stay just a little bit longer. Creon relents
and takes pity on her, rationalizing that Medea will not have enough
time to do any of the horrible things that Creon fears she might. Simi-
larly, Jason, even though he has reason to fear Medea’s wrath, accepts
her apology later and welcomes his two boys presenting a gold dress to
his prospective bride. Medea convinces both of these men that her
anger has subsided and that she plans to move forward in peace. If both
Creon and Jason did not feel guilt about what they had done to Medea,
then they would not as readily have reversed and eased their positions
against her. Medea exploits their guilt and plays the part of a helpless
and lonely woman in order to buy herself time to execute her revenge.
She plays on their weakness by playing the part of a weak and defense-
less woman. Her success doing this gives teeth to her steadfast convic-
tion as the wronged and vengeful party. In the scene with Creon, she
changes rapidly from devastated victim at the news of her exile, to des-
perate supplicant, to calculated plotter once she gets what she wants
from the men. Once Creon leaves after their first encounter, Medea
pronounces him a fool: “he could have thrown me out, destroyed my
plans; / instead he’s granted me a single day / to turn three enemies to
three dead bodies: the father, and the bride, and my own husband”
(380–­83). Her ability to play the part of victim and victimizer at the
same time adds resonance to the role and mystery to the perception of
her true character.
3. Medea commits monstrous acts yet remains a sympathetic figure
in the play. Medea has been wronged by her husband, and her subse-
quent banishment, stemming from her violent outbursts and threats
against the king and his daughter, amplifies her unjust fate. Banishment,
at that time, was almost worse than a death sentence. Medea would
have no home and protection from the state (Jason listed the privilege
of being Greek as one of the things that he had bestowed upon her). For
Medea, her situation is even worse because she cannot return to her
homeland. She killed her brother and had her father killed for the love
of Jason and to facilitate his escape. She literally has no place to go.
More importantly, she has been wronged by her husband and deserted
after she gave up her own family and her homeland for his promise of
undying love. That she refuses to be a discard once Jason spies a new
opportunity for advancement with the king’s daughter is cause for
respect. Her savage revenge, killing those who wronged her, inspires
awe. The Messenger’s graphic description of the fiery death of Creon’s
18 | Euripides

daughter, topped by the brief account of the king’s end, in which his
skin pulls away from his bones, perfectly illustrates the collateral dam-
age she is willing to inflict in order to destroy her husband. That she
goes further, still, and murders her own children to bring him to his
knees and assure that he will die childless, causes her pain as well.
That she can murder her own children, horrible as that seems, is a tes-
tament to the devastation that Jason wreaked upon her with his fateful
decision to abandon her.
4. Euripides inverts thematic conflicts of reason versus emotion,
male versus female, and private and domestic versus public and
po­liti­cal. All these oppositions seem to be in order, but the action of
the play actually reverses them. Medea, who acts emotionally, violently
so, throughout the play, plots a very logical and reasoned throughline
of revenge that dictates events in the play. Jason, on the other hand,
who speaks logically on the virtues of reason and the frailties of women,
is near speechless and certainly helpless at the end of the tragedy. At
root, the play is about betrayal and Medea’s inability to overcome that
sense of betrayal. Jason might argue that Medea sees things like a woman
and reacts emotionally like a woman instead of doing what makes the
most sense. Medea acts like a man, though, when she exacts her revenge
and though it is fueled by emotion, it is a reasoned and logical decision
that is rendered to inflict the most harm upon Jason. Jason, sophist
that he is, would turn the conflict into one with gendered perspectives.
The action of the play reduces all that to so much verbiage in the wake
of Medea’s violent actions. The absolute moral world of Medea, in
which a man must suffer for his crime of betrayal, creates a clear field
of right and wrong in which it is impossible to spy any gray line in
between.
5. The improbable ending in which Medea escapes via flying chariot,
a good example of deus ex machina, critiques the nature of tragedy
as a genre. Jason, after all, is the character brought low through his
own hubris and devastated completely by play’s end. But he is not the
tragic center of the play—­Medea is. We might expect Medea to take her
own life, not her children, at the end and realize that she cannot carry
through with the horrible ramifications of the double murders of her
small children. That she overcomes her objections and reservation
speaks to her resolve as well as Jason’s serious crimes against her. At
the end, Medea is headed for sanctuary in Athens. Significantly, the
geo­graph­i­cal link between the site of refuge in the play and the site of
theatrical per­for­mance in fifth-­century Athens inclines an audience to
consider the tragic hero, Medea, as hewing to principles of justice in
which she exacts revenge in proportion to how much she has been
wronged. The play is not the fall of a hero so much as an appreciation
 Medea  |  19

of steadfast principles. The audience might expect Medea to fall, but

­here Medea flies away, improbably but wonderfully, and the audience is
left to ponder what it has seen and what should have happened and what
might happen in the future. The truncated ending leaves the questions
of the play, specifically the price and necessity of revenge, very much still
in the air. Should Medea be allowed to escape or should she be made to
suffer by some divine, or at least authorial, punishment? The open ending
makes the audience decide for itself about the righ­teousness of Medea’s
decision and the justice that has been levied. Rather than a catastrophe
of character, with Jason as the protagonist, Euripides uses the character
of a woman and a barbarian as well to exploit the possibilities of a cata-
strophic event that ensnares everyone, onstage and off, in the mysteries
and challenges of judgment, action, and revenge.

Media Resources
1979. 66 min. DVD. Kultur, 2008. Story translated to ballet by Rus­sian
Soviet troupe.
Dir. Mark Cullingham (tv), Robert Whitehead (stage). Trans. Robinson Jeffers.
Perf. Zoe Caldwell, Judith Anderson, Mitch Ryan. Recorded stage produc-
tion at Eisenhower Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., on March
6, 1982. 87 min. DVD. Films for Humanities and Sciences, 1982.
Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Perf. Maria Callas. 1969. 110 min. DVD. In Ital-
ian. Ent. One Music, 2011.
Dir. Giuseppe Solazzo. Opera by Luigi Cherubini. 136 min. DVD. Kicco
Classics, 2004.
Dir. Lars von Trier. 1988. 75 min. DVD. In Danish with En­glish subtitles.
Facets, 2003.

Notable Productions
2015. Version by Rachel Cusk. Dir. Rupert Goold. Perf. Kate Fleetwood.
Almeida Theatre, London.
2008. Dir. Katarina Paliou. Perf. Paliou, Grigorius Parikareas. Theatre Arca-
dia. Conference Center Great Hall, University of Alexandria, Egypt.
2005. Dir. Peter Stein. Perf. Clio-­Danae Othoneou. Epidaurus Festival,
Greece.
2000. Dir. Deborah Warner. Perf. Fiona Shaw, Jonathan Cake. Abbey The-
atre, Dublin, Ireland.
1992. Dir. Jonathan Kent. Perf. Diana Rigg, Tim Oliver Woodward. Almeida
Theatre Company. Wyndham’s Theatre, London.
1973. Dir. Minos Volanakis. Perf. Irene Pappas, John P. Ryan. Circle in the
Square. Circle in the Square Theatre, New York.
1947. Dir. John Gielgud. Adapt. Robinson Jeffers. Perf. Judith Anderson,
John Gielgud. National and Royale Theatres, New York.
20 | Euripides

In-­Class Activities
1. Violent deaths always take place offstage in the Greek Theater. The
cries of the children, however, can be heard as Medea slaughters them.
Meanwhile, the Chorus is onstage. Look at this scene beginning with
Medea’s exit (1275) and ending with Jason’s entrance (1338). How might
the scene be staged for maximum dramatic effectiveness?
2. Consider the casting of par­tic­u­lar actors for the roles of Medea and
Jason. How do such specific choices influence the reception of the
play? Who might represent your ideal cast?
3. Read the first scene between Jason and Medea (448). How do you react
to their respective arguments? How might you interpret the exchange
differently if the actor playing Medea wore a mask and w
­ ere performed
by a man?

Paper Topics
1. Women had no power in fifth-­century Greece during the time of Aeschy-
lus, Sophocles, and Euripides. How do you account for the strength of
Medea? How might this character and play be thought of differently
today than when it was originally conceived?
2. How would you compare and contrast a heroine such as Antigone with
Medea?
3. How does the Chorus in Euripides function differently than in trage-
dies by Aeschylus or Sophocles?
4. How would you interpret the very last speech in the play by the Chorus?
5. How do the concluding lines of the Messenger Speech (1247–­54) define
the experience of tragedy in the play?
6. How does the use of deus ex machina at the end of Medea compare to
similar use in modern tele­v i­sion and cinema?
7. How might you compare the relationship and conflict between Medea
and Jason in Medea to that of Antigone and Kreon in Antigone?
8. Does the play rise above the kind of story often chronicled in today’s
tabloid news?

Theory and Criticism of Drama

Aristotle disapproves of the use of deus ex machina ­because the unraveling of
the plot does not arise from the plot itself but from something external (XV).
Consider his objection to the device in light of #5 in Topics for Lecture or Dis-
cussion. Is Euripides a more modern writer than, say, Sophocles?