The Women of Troy and Helen by Euripides

Welcome to another episode of Shakespeare fan talking nonsense about ancient Greek drama. 

1/ The Women of Troy is rather static and I personally don’t find it a very satisfying play—the dramaturgy is so unlike what I’m used to—but it does show Euripides’s tremendous sympathy for the suffering of Trojan women. 

“HECABE: […] My heart would burst, 

My sick head beats and burns, 

Till passion pleads to ease its pain 

In restless rocking, like a boat 

That sways and turns, 

Keeping sad time to my funereal song. 

For those whom Fate has cursed 

Music itself sings but one note – 

Unending miseries, torment and wrong!” 

(translated by Philip Vellacott)

The play is filled with images of horror—the Greeks kill Trojan men and enslave the women. 

“CHORUS I: […] As we sat there indoors, 

Thinking of slavery with bitter tears, 

Your cry of agony came to us, and we all 

Shuddered with nameless fears.” 

The entire play is about the women reacting to what has happened to Troy and what’s going to happen to them. 

“HECABE: […] The father of them all, Priam, 

Is gone. No message taught me to weep seemly tears; 

Myself, with these same eyes, I saw him hacked to death

At his own altar; and his city laid in dust. 

My virgin daughters, whom I cherished as choice gifts 

For husbands worthy of them, were torn from my arms, 

Given to our enemies. There is no hope that they

Ever again will see their mother, nor I them.

Now comes the last, the crowning agony; that I 

In my own age shall go to Hellas as a slave.” 

Apart from the Chorus, Hecabe is the main voice for the anguish and suffering of the Trojan women; we also hear the voices of Cassandra (Hecabe’s daughter) and Andromache (Hecabe’s daughter-in-law).

The interesting part is that Hecabe has no compassion, no mercy for Helen—she is filled with hate.  

“HECABE [also kneeling]: Think of your fellow-soldiers whom this woman killed. 

I beg you not to fail them, and their children, now.

[…] 

HECABE: Menelaus, let her not sail on the same ship with you!”

She seems to concentrate in Helen all her hatred for the Greeks. 

2/ Helen is quite a strange play to read after The Women of Troy.

After The Women of Troy (first performed in 415 BC), a play about the suffering and destruction of Troy because of Helen, Euripides gave the audience Helen (412 BC), the premise of which is that Helen never went to Troy with Paris—the gods took her away, wrapped in a cloud, and placed her in Egypt and gave Paris a phantom lookalike, “an airy delusion”. 

“MESSENGER: What? All our sweat and blood – spent for a ghost?” 

(translated by Philip Vellacott)

Held in Egypt, she doesn’t know what has happened to her husband Menelaus. 

“HELEN: What bitter fate has my husband found 

Does he live to see the sun 

Charioting the sky, 

And the journeys of stars and moon? 

Or has his soul begun 

Its endless, lifeless exile under ground?” 

The most interesting moment in the play is probably the reunion of Helen and Menelaus. 

“MENELAUS: Who are you? Whose face am I looking at? 

HELEN: But who are you? We are both in the same perplexity.”

Reminds me of the sense of wonder in the reunion scene in Twelfth Night, but of course this is stranger. 

“HELEN: And I, accursed, unhappy, not untrue, 

Exiled perforce, guiltless of broken vows, 

Was robbed of city, home, my husband, and my peace!”

All this pain, all this destruction, for what? For the whims of the gods. 

To quote King Lear: 

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods 

They kill us for their sport.” 

The rest of the play is about Helen and Menelaus planning their escape, tricking the King of Egypt (who wants to marry Helen), and getting away. Even though Dioscori, now a god, appears to stop King Theoclymenus from pursuing Helen, and the play ends with the Chorus saying “The gods reveal themselves in many forms/ Bring many matters to surprising ends”, I can’t help thinking that Euripides doesn’t seem to particularly like the gods. 

It is a strange play, fascinating. It is especially fascinating as Euripides creates a very different image of Helen: pure, faithful, and intelligent.