Looking at Medea

by David Stuttard

  A final question concerns the issue of audience’s response towards Euripides’ treatment of otherness in this tetralogy. As Ismene Lada-Richards has plausibly argued, audience-reception of tragic suffering is a complex process attained in emotional as well as intellectual terms. The fundamental source for tragic emotion is Aristotle’s Poetics, where pity is said to be aroused by the undeserved suffering of the tragic hero (XIII 1453a4–5). The spectator’s empathy is thus dependent on the sufferer’s deservingness or undeservingness, as well as on the similarity of their situations, since, by attending a tragic performance revealing the fragility of human condition, the spectators fear for themselves (Poetics XIII 1453a5–6).

  Accordingly, the tragedies of 431 BC involve vulnerable women (Medea during the first part of that play and Danaë) and disabled persons (Philoctetes) living marginalized lives in exile and wretchedness. The vulnerability of their otherness expressed with stark poignancy arouses the audience’s sympathy and pity for their precariousness and for the injustice which they suffer. At the same time, their plight is likely to strike a chord in the spectators’ cognitive evaluation of the world, offering insight into the frailty of human nature.

  Nonetheless, it is also feasible that the very marginality of certain tragic characters representing the ‘other’ may give rise to an intellectual process, shaping an intensified awareness of the Athenian male citizen’s sense of self. For instance, the ramifications of Medea’s radical otherness as Eastern, sorceress and murderous mother, which are particularly underscored at the end of the play, would have evidently increased the gap between the Euripidean heroine and the average Athenian male spectator. This example may well be suggestive of the shifting and mixed reactions which Euripides perhaps wished to evoke through the open-endedness of this tragedy. The dramatist thus seems to create a primary channel of contact between himself and the audience through the communication of emotion as well as reasoned argument.12

  Euripides explored the notion of otherness throughout his dramatic career. Among several Euripidean figures portrayed as representing the ‘other’ are Andromache and Hecabe (who are both barbarian and slaves), the suppliants seeking protection in Heraclidae and Suppliant Women and the female Choruses of Trojan captives in Hecabe and Trojan Women. Even more characters from fragmentarily preserved tragedies, such as the exiled Hypsipyle (in Hypsipyle) and Melanippe (in Captive Melanippe) or the crippled and ragged Telephus and Bellerophon (in Telephus and Bellerophon respectively), could provide articulate parallels. Yet, Medea and its companion tragedies constitute an early, fine and eloquent example of Euripides’ systematic treatment within the same tetralogy of the vulnerability of otherness and its political and cultural ramifications.

  Notes

  1 I am grateful to David Stuttard for valuable comments. For the date of this production, information on the competing poets and the result of the dramatic contest, see the Alexandrian hypothesis on Medea by Aristophanes of Byzantium in Diggle (1981–94) I 90, ll. 40–43. Euripides’ victories amount to five in total, according to the Byzantine encyclopaedia, Suda (ε 3695 Adler). For the vast influence of Medea, see for instance Mastronarde (2002) 64–70, Hall, Macintosh and Taplin (2000), McDonald (1983) Ch. 1–2.

  2 Seminal works in this field include Cartledge (2002) with a rich bibliography, Loraux (1993) and Zeitlin (1996), both focusing on gender, Hall (1989) with regard to ethnicity; see also Cohen (2000) 3–12.

  3 For Medea’s alterity, see Sourvinou-Inwood (1997) 253–62 and Rehm (2002) 261–69; for her precarious position as a woman, see for instance Foley (2001) 257–68 and Knox (1989) 311–16.

  4 Hall (1989) 51–53. See also Page (1938) xviii–xxi, Griffiths (2006) Ch. 4.

  5 See Boedeker (1997), Luschnig (2007) Ch. 3, Zeitlin (1996) 348.

  6 For the reconstruction of the play, see Müller (2000) 83–124, Collard (2004) 3–8, Jouan (1966) 308–17. The cited passages from Philoctetes and Dictys follow the translation by Collard and Cropp (2008).

  7 For the reconstruction of the play, see Jouan and van Looy (1998–2003) II 73–92, Karamanou (2006) 134–39, 155–63 and Fig. 1, Collard and Cropp (2008) I 346–49, Karamanou (2002–2003).

  8 For the plot of Theristae, see Pechstein (1998) 284–86 and Krumeich, Pechstein and Seidensticker (1999) 476. For the otherness of satyrs, see for instance Padgett (2000) 43–48, Lissarrague (1990) 66.

  9 See Hall (1989) 6–13, 56–60, 160–65, 175–77, Zeitlin (1996) 2, Patterson (1981) Ch. 4, Davies (1978) 111–12, 118, 121.

  10 For the political overtones of these tragedies, see Mastronarde (2002) 304–5, McDermott (1989) 98–106, Olson (1991) 278–83, Scodel (2009) 50–55, Müller (1997) Ch.1, Adkins (1960) 191, n. 13.

  11 See Guthrie (1962–81) III 148–63, Kerferd (1981) Ch. 12, Pendrick (2002) 351–56 and for rhetorical sources, see Dover (1974) 279–83.

  12 See Lada (1993) 106–09, 122–125, Easterling (1996) 173–180, Lada (1996) 406–09.

  4

  Staging Medea

  Rosie Wyles

  Ancient Greek tragedies were written to be performed, and it is only through careful analysis of staging that a playwright’s talent for dramatic effect can be fully appreciated. Thinking about staging is not merely a question of imagining what the play looked like, when it was performed in the ancient theatre (though this is an important part of the process), it is also about understanding the stage actions, blocking, costuming/props, and scenery in relation to what had already happened on stage. (I use the term ‘on stage’ figuratively to mean ‘in performance’ – I am not implying that there was a raised stage in the fifth-century theatre. On this issue see below.)

  In this chapter, I will look at the staging of Medea in the context of the other productions which (to use Marvin Carlson’s image) ‘haunted’ the Athenian stage and informed the audience’s interpretation of this performance. By the time Euripides produced Medea in 431 BC, he already had twenty-four years’ experience of competing at the Dionysia – he first competed in 455 BC with a tetralogy, which included one tragedy (The Daughters of Pelias) related to the Medea myth. Furthermore, as the dramatic festival itself had been running for perhaps a hundred years, this offered Euripides a rich performance history to exploit in his tragedy.

  When Carlson explored the concept of the ‘haunted stage’, he was not thinking specifically about ancient theatre.1 But the idea that past productions can hover in the background of subsequent plays and be exploited for dramatic effect works, arguably, even better in the ancient theatre than it can on the modern stage. The cultural institution of the City (or Great) Dionysia, the annual dramatic festival in Athens, offered the ideal conditions for the development of a consciously exploited performance history.

  The continuity of performance space and audience ensured that allusions to past productions could be appreciated by the audience and exploited by both tragic and comic playwrights to create particular dramatic effects. The parodies of tragedy in comedy, especially those which play on a visual element of staging, depend on exactly this performance memory on the part of the audience. The continuity of performance space (the Theatre of Dionysus) could be used to reinforce the allusion to the former production as it does, for example, in Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmophoria (1060–1) when Echo, a parody of a tragic character from Euripides’ now fragmentary Andromeda, tries to prompt performance memory by saying that she had been in the same place the year before. Similarly tragedians could allude to earlier productions, even if less explicitly, to add another level of dramatic meaning to a performance. Euripides’ use (or abuse?) of allusions to Aeschylus in this respect has been well established.2 It is my suggestion, however, that the extent of performance history’s potential for creating dramatic meanings within tragedies in general has not been fully explored. Certainly in the case of Medea, a consideration of all the potential echoes of former productions created through the staging can invite new ways of thinking about the play.

  Before analysing the st
aging in Medea and the performance history, which might be significant to understanding the ancient production, it is worth establishing the basics of the performance space and the nature of the audience, both of which have been subjects of contention in scholarly debate. The iconic image of the curved stone theatre with a capacity for 17,000 spectators has been put under serious scrutiny in the last few decades.3 In fact, a plausible case has been made for the use of wooden benches, set around a trapezoid or rectilinear performance space in the fifth-century theatre. The estimated capacity of the theatre has also been reduced to somewhere between 4,000–7,000 or, less conservatively, between 10,000–15,000 spectators.

  Modern points of comparison can be helpful in imagining the scale of difference involved: it is roughly equivalent to the Royal Albert Hall (5,272 seats) in comparison to Wimbledon’s Centre Court (15,000 seats). While, of course, there is a significant difference to the envisaged experience of ancient theatre depending on which estimate is accepted, at the same time even the most conservative estimate considerably outnumbers any current theatre capacity in the UK – the Edinburgh Playhouse comes closest with just over 3,000 seats, but other major theatres have a capacity of about 1,000 seats. Nonetheless, whether there were 4,000 or 15,000 spectators (and, with no way to determine the precise numbers with certainty, as a working hypothesis I assume an audience of about 10,000), the experience was a collective one and on quite a different scale from a trip to the National Theatre today.

  The second point of contention is whether women were included in the audience.4 Again the nature of the evidence makes a conclusive argument impossible. I accept the model which envisages women (citizen women included) as part of the audience sitting at the back (separately from the men). This still allows for exploration of collective male identity through the plays (since men sitting together creates a comparable experience to being an all-male audience) but is also consistent with the general inclusivity of ancient festivals.

  A final point to consider is whether the performance space included a raised stage or not. On this issue, I follow the working assumption that, if there was a stage, it was low enough to enable actors to step down easily to interact with the chorus during performance.5 The less controversial assumptions are that the Theatre of Dionysus also included a building (skene) with a central door at the back (from at least 458 BC), a roof that could be used in performance, entrance/exit paths on either side of the building, portable painted scenery panels, the ekkyklema (rolling-out platform to display a tableau from inside the building) and the mechane (crane).

  Crying inside

  While the opening of Medea would hardly have surprised the audience, Euripides’ treatment of the entrance of the protagonist and the chorus is unusual and potentially shocking. The cries of a character from within the skene were not an innovation by Euripides, but Medea’s sung cries from backstage at lines 96ff are unusual since they go on for an extended period of time and also interfere with the parodos (choral entrance song). Often cries from within are used at the point of murder or suicide (indeed Euripides offers an example of this later in Medea, 1270f), but these cries from Medea fall into a different category. In fact, there are only two parallels in extant tragedy: Sophocles’ Ajax (333) and Euripides’ Bacchae (585). Bacchae is a much later play but Ajax can be dated to the 440s. The character Ajax, then, is potentially one of the ghosts, from the performance history of the theatre, evoked by this staging. The comparison is an important one since Medea, like Ajax, will demonstrate an almost unflinching conformity to the heroic code.

  The echo of this former production also brings out the exceptional situation in Medea in which the audience hear the voice of the protagonist before even seeing her on stage. In Ajax the dramatic scenario for the off-stage cries is rather different since the audience has already had a glimpse of Ajax in his interaction with Athena (91f), when the goddess calls him from the skene (here representing his tent) for Odysseus (and by extension the audience) to view him in his madness. As a result, his disembodied cries at line 333 cannot have had the same impact as Medea’s – since the audience have already seen Ajax on stage, their suspense will only be over whether he is still mad or not when they see him next, whereas in Medea the audience are still waiting to see the protagonist for the first time.

  The audience’s first engagement with Medea is through hearing her anapaests, first despairing and then threatening, sung from inside the skene. The use of the anapaestic metre together with her change in mood suggests her charged emotional state and builds tension, which adds to the suspense over her entrance. By the end of the fifth century, Aeschylus had the reputation, in comedy at least (Aristophanes’ Frogs 908–29), for creating tension by delaying the protagonist’s first words in a tragedy. Here Euripides uses precisely the opposite staging tactic to create suspense – as he allows the audience to hear the protagonist’s first words but not to see her on stage. The anticipation over what Aeschylus’ characters were going to say must have been great, but the apprehension created by these lyric outbursts from inside the house is arguably even greater for the audience of Medea (who are being tantalized with the emotionally-charged sung lines of a character whom they have not yet seen on stage).

  Here the allusion to Ajax is important, since in that play the audience have witnessed a mad man, as Athena calls him, appear on stage (91f). In Medea the memory of Ajax, evoked by the cries from within, invites the audience to consider the possibility that they will see Medea, too, raging on the stage. This possibility has already been raised by the nurse’s comment (just before the off-stage cries are heard):

  I saw her just a little while ago, staring at them full of hate, smouldering like a bull, as if they were to blame. I know well enough her fury will not cease until she’s found some victim, swooped and made her kill.

  The performance memory of Ajax (who, at lines 320f, is also described as a bull and, like Medea, refuses food) raging on stage makes the possibility that Medea might behave in this way all the more real. By taking the Sophoclean performance model and inverting the order (so that the protagonist appears for the first time only after the off-stage cries), Euripides is able to exploit the tension that the memory of the production of Ajax can create.

  Ajax is revealed to the audience (for the second time in the play) soon after his first off-stage cry (just twelve lines later); by contrast the audience of Medea have to wait through her exchange with the nurse and the parodos, 117 lines in total, for the protagonist to appear following her first off-stage cry. The staging of the parodos has an essential function in preparing for Medea’s arrival. Its content is, of course, important for heightening suspense over Medea’s state and whether she will appear. Even more crucially, however, its form (the way in which it is staged) establishes a sense of Medea’s world before she appears on stage.

  Creating chaos

  As Ioanna Karamanou outlines in her essay in this present collection, Medea was performed as the first play in a tetralogy with the (now lost) tragedies Philoctetes, Dictys, and satyr-play Theristai. In the opening of Medea, Euripides was creating the atmosphere of the playworld from scratch. Through his choice of staging for the parodos, he is able to create the sense of chaos in Medea’s world through a dramatic effect almost analogous to the literary concept of pathetic fallacy. The importance of the regularity of choral entrances to an ancient audience is made clear from the (apocryphal) anecdote about the apparently shocking effect of an Aeschylean parodos: ‘Some say that in the performance of the Eumenides, he [Aeschylus] gave the chorus [of Erinyes, or Furies] a scattered entry, which so stunned the audience that children fainted and women miscarried’ (Life of Aeschylus 9).

  Though this anecdote is drawn from later sources, it records what is taken to be a plausible attitude towards the chorus on the part of the fifth-century audience. They are stunned, literally struck out of their senses, not by the costuming or masks of the Erinyes (as we might have assumed given the descriptions of them in the play) b
ut by their scattered entry. Did this mean that Aeschylus allowed only a few to enter at a time? If so, it is difficult for us to understand what was so terrifying. The shock seems to be at the breaking of a convention of entering in ordered formation and so confounding an audience expectation. A similar surprise awaited the audience with the staging of Medea in which the first entrance of the protagonist would be a disembodied voice, and the chorus’ entrance song would take the unusual form of a dislocated dialogue.

  This playworld is characterized by the disturbance of the usual order of things. One of the ways in which Euripides conveys this is by disrupting a well-established form of entrance for the parodos. The appearance of a chorus at the sound of a cry or through general concern for the protagonist was conventional. In Medea, however, the chorus’ singing of the parodos is actually interrupted through interjections from the nurse (chanting) on stage and Medea (singing) from off-stage so that the usual choral ode becomes a three-way exchange. It is, however, an uneven ‘exchange’, in which there is a distinctive disjunction created through Medea’s interjections, which do not, in fact, correspond to the words of either the nurse or chorus.