Oedipus by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee

1/ This is a retelling of Sophocles’s play but, you know what, I see Shakespeare’s stamp all over it. 

“ALCANDER Methinks we stand on ruins; nature shakes

About us; and the universal frame

So loose, that it but wants another push,

To leap from off its hinges.

DIOCLES No sun to cheer us; but a bloody globe,

That rolls above, a bald and beamless fire,

His face o’er-grown with scurf: The sun’s sick, too;

Shortly he’ll be an earth.

PYRACMON Therefore the seasons

Lie all confused; and, by the heavens neglected,

Forget themselves: Blind winter meets the summer

In his mid-way, and, seeing not his livery,

Has driven him headlong back; and the raw damps,

With flaggy wings, fly heavily about,

Scattering their pestilential colds and rheums

Through all the lazy air.” 

(Act 1) 

Does that not make you think of those passages about strange weathers and omens in Julius Caesar? And Macbeth? 

“CASCA Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth 

Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero, 

I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds 

Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen 

Th’ ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, 

To be exalted with the threat’ning clouds; 

But never till tonight, never till now, 

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire. 

Either there is a civil strife in heaven, 

Or else the world, too saucy with the gods, 

Incenses them to send destruction.” 

(Julius Caesar, Act 1 scene 3) 

And: 

“LENNOX The night has been unruly. Where we lay, 

Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say, 

Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death, 

And prophesying with accents terrible 

Of dire combustion and confused events 

New hatched to th’ woeful time: the obscure bird 

Clamored the livelong night. Some say, the earth 

Was feverous and did shake.” 

(Macbeth, Act 2 scene 3)

In Sophocles’s play, a plague has been unleashed on the people of Thebes as a punishment for Oedipus’s sins. Here the author (is this Lee or Dryden?) pushes further, depicting the world as ending, as on the verge of an apocalypse. This is clearly Shakespeare’s influence. 

“HAEMON Sure ‘tis the end of all things! fate has torn

The lock of time off, and his head is now

The ghastly ball of round eternity!

Call you these peals of thunder, but the yawn

Of bellowing clouds? By Jove, they seem to me

The world’s last groans; and those vast sheets of flame

Are its last blaze. The tapers of the gods,

The sun and moon, run down like waxen-globes;

The shooting stars end all in purple jellies,

And chaos is at hand.

[…] PYRACMON Clusters of golden stars hang o’er their heads,

And seem so crowded, that they burst upon them:

All dart at once their baleful influence,

In leaking fire.” 

(Act 2) 

I like that. 

As this play is a collaboration, I don’t know if it’s Dryden or Nathaniel Lee who wrote all those passages (they don’t sound particularly like Dryden, but I’m new and unsure), but note the similar image here:  

“ANTONY Die? Rather let me perish! Loosened Nature 

Leap from its hinges; sink the props of Heaven, 

And fall the skies to crush the nether world! 

My eyes, my soul, my all!—” 

(Dryden’s All for Love, Act 2) 

“ALCANDER Methinks we stand on ruins; nature shakes

About us; and the universal frame

So loose, that it but wants another push,

To leap from off its hinges.” 

(Oedipus, Act 1) 

And another: 

“OEDIPUS […] Yes, cruel gods,

Though vultures, eagles, dragons tear my heart,

I'll snatch celestial flames, fire all your dwellings,

Melt down your golden roofs, and make your doors

Of crystal fly from off their diamond hinges;

Drive you all out from your ambrosial hives,

To swarm like bees about the field of heaven…” 

(Act 5) 

2/ But that’s not all. Dryden and Lee change the character of Creon, giving him “an ill-shaped body” with a “mountain back” and “distorted legs”, and turning him into a villain who wants to usurp the throne. What is this, if not Shakespeare’s Richard III?

There are other similarities: the play has a few scenes of the crowd being stupid and easily swayed, reminiscent of Coriolanus; there’s a sleepwalking scene, evoking Macbeth, etc. 

3/ As we all know the story of Oedipus, there are a few lines clearly written for a laugh.

“OEDIPUS […] So well I love, words cannot speak how well.

No pious son e’er loved his mother more,

Than I my dear Jocasta.” 

(Act 1)

That’s a wink-wink at the audience.  

“JOCASTA […] All I can wish for now, is your consent

To make my brother happy.

OEDIPUS How, Jocasta?

JOCASTA By marriage with his niece, Eurydice.

OEDIPUS Uncle and niece! they are too near, my love;

’Tis too like incest…” 

(ibid.)

4/ As Dryden and Lee retell the Oedipus myth, they make a few changes. I don’t particularly mind that they create the character of Eurydice as a daughter of Laius and Locasta, which creates a red herring and adds tension; I also don’t mind that Creon is now a villain aiming for the throne; but it’s rather ridiculous that Eurydice as a child is promised to her uncle Creon and he loves (or lusts for) her—is the Oedipus myth not weird enough? Does it not have enough incest? I know 17th century plays are generally much longer than ancient Greek plays, but Sophocles’s play, which I just now reread in H. D. F. Kitto’s translation, is perfect in its simplicity—Lee and Dryden complicate the plot and turn it into a hodgepodge of nonsense.  

The entire of Sophocles’s play is the finding of the truth and it’s about a few hours—Lee and Dryden extend it, drag it out and (in my opinion) reduce the dramatic impact—they also lift from Seneca’s version the stupid scene of the ghost of Laius appearing and accusing Oedipus. They then double the stupidity by bringing back the ghost at the end of the play, and create a bloody finale—for both the main plot and the subplot. The play is clearly made to appeal to the audience’s strong taste for spectacle, visual effects, and excessive violence. It’s almost as ridiculous as Seneca’s version. 

The thing is, Sophocles’s play is about fate and human agency, and also about the cost of pursuing the truth or the pain of learning the truth. I’m not quite sure what Dryden and Lee’s play is about. And yet it’s apparently a huge success onstage at the time (which I suppose reflects rather badly on the audience). 

Now I’m curious about Corneille’s version (which Dryden knew).

The Odyssey: “Tell us this tale, goddess, child of Zeus; start anywhere in it!”

1/ The Odyssey is one of the foundational works of Western literature, and yet I knew so little about it and still had my surprises. Of course, I knew about the Wooden Horse at Troy (who doesn’t?), about Kirke (better known as Circe) turning Odysseus’s men into pigs, about Kalypso and the promise of immortality, about Penelope and her weaving trick, etc. but I didn’t know about the structure of the Odyssey. It’s natural, is it not, to assume that an epic poem from around the 8th century BC would start at the beginning and tell the story chronologically to the end? So I naively thought. But no, the Odyssey begins in medias res—actually towards the end—and we don’t see Odysseus till Book 5 (out of 24). Odysseus’s adventures are told by different people—by Odysseus himself in Books 9–12. 

I switched back and forth between Peter Green and Robert Fitzgerald before deciding to stick to Green. 

Let’s compare. This is Fitzgerald: 

“When primal Dawn spread on the eastern sky

her fingers of pink light, Odysseus’ true son

stood up, drew on his tunic and his mantle,

slung on a sword-belt and a new-edged sword,

tied his smooth feet into good rawhide sandals,

and left his room, a god’s brilliance upon him.

He found the criers with clarion voices and told them

to muster the unshorn Akhaians in full assembly.

The call sang out, and the men came streaming in;

and when they filled the assembly ground, he entered,

spear in hand, with two quick hounds at heel;

Athena lavished on him a sunlit grace

that held the eye of the multitude. Old men

made way for him as he took his father’s chair.” 

(Book 2) 

The same passage, by Green: 

“When Dawn appeared, early risen and rosy-fingered, 

Odysseus’ dear son got up from the bed he’d slept in, 

put on his clothes, slung a sharp sword from one shoulder, 

tied on a pair of fine sandals under his sleek feet, 

and sallied forth from his chamber, in appearance like a god. 

At once he issued orders to the clear-voiced heralds 

to call to assembly the long-haired Achaians. They made 

the proclamations he ordered, and quickly the people gathered. 

When they were met together in a single body 

Telemachos now joined them, a bronze spear in one hand, 

not alone, but accompanied by a pair of hunting dogs, 

and wondrous the grace that Athene now shed on him, 

so that the whole crowd watched him as he approached: 

he sat in his father’s seat, and the elders made way for him.” 

Fitzgerald: 

“Under the opening fingers of the dawn

Alkínoös, the sacred prince, arose,

and then arose Odysseus, raider of cities.

As the king willed, they went down by the shipways

to the assembly ground of the Phaiákians.

Side by side the two men took their ease there

on smooth stone benches. Meanwhile Pallas Athena

roamed through the byways of the town, contriving

Odysseus’ voyage home…”  

(Book 8) 

Green: 

“When Dawn appeared, early risen and rosy-fingered, 

Alkinoos, princely in power, arose from his slumber, 

and Odysseus, the Zeus-born sacker of cities, rose too. 

Alkinoos, princely in power, now led the way to 

the Phaiakians’ assembly place, built for them near their ships: 

On arrival there they sat down on the polished stones

side by side, while Pallas Athene went through the city 

in the likeness of the herald of sagacious Alkinoos, 

working on the return of great-hearted Odysseus…” 

Fitzgerald sounds better, Green can sometimes be rather dry and stilted, but it seems to me that Green retains better the repetition of Homer’s style. For instance, the image of Dawn, “early risen and rosy-fingered”, is said over and over again throughout the story, not only by the narrator but by different characters. 

Green also provides better notes (especially for an ignoramus like me). 

2/ I have enjoyed the Odyssey from the beginning, but my mistake at the start was comparing it to the Athenian tragedians and Shakespeare, wanting more poetry, finding some parts of the narration mundane and some passages prosaic. Then I realised it’s better to compare it to Don Quixote—to see the Odyssey as gradually leading to Don Quixote (and other novels). In many ways, the Odyssey is a precursor to the picaresque novel: a character travels from place to place and has adventures and meets different groups of people; he may tell strangers his own story or they may tell theirs, creating stories within the story. In this sense, Homer feels closer to Cervantes than to Shakespeare, or even Sophocles.

3/ I’m going backwards, reading the Odyssey after the tragedies of the 5th century BC. It turns out to be a good idea, as Homer tells the myths in snatches and only gives those mythological characters cameos—after all, Homer’s first audience was acquainted with them—but luckily I have seen them in close-up in the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (not to mention Seneca). Odysseus’s encounter with Aias (also known as Ajax) in the Underworld and the latter’s cold reaction would have been lost on me if I hadn’t read Sophocles’s play, but I have, and it’s a great scene.

Especially interesting is when I see the tragedies depart from Homer: Homer’s story about Oedipus for instance has quite a different ending from that of Sophocles’s play (I myself prefer Sophocles’s version). 

(On a side note, before getting into ancient Greek literature, I somehow always imagined Homer and the playwrights being around the same time, or not very far apart. The gap between Homer’s epics and Greek tragedy is about the same as between Gulliver’s Travels or Robison Crusoe and now). 

Let’s hope I have some more interesting things to say later on. 

“Seneca cannot be too heavy”: some thoughts on Seneca’s horror plays

Seneca (ca 4 BC – AD 65) was influenced by the ancient Greeks, and he himself influenced Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. For someone like me, he is unavoidable, so last month I read his Phaedra, and now read some more. 

The verdict? I love Shakespeare; I love the ancient Greeks; I don’t like Seneca. 

1/ Medea, adapted from Euripides’s play, is a closet drama, meaning that it’s meant to be read rather than seen onstage. And you can tell it wouldn’t work very well onstage, unless heavily edited: there are too many long speeches, some extremely long; much of the play doesn’t feel particularly dramatic. But I didn’t find it enjoyable to read either (though perhaps Emily Wilson is partly to blame). Compared to the Euripides play, it is more violent and sensationalist; Seneca’s Medea is more brutal, less conflicted, killing her own children in front of their father; Jason appears less despicable; the nurse and the chorus don’t seem to have much sympathy for Medea; the play as a whole is cruder. 

Elizabethan playwrights probably enjoyed the savagery and violence though. 

The interesting thing about reading Seneca is that I realise even though the Athenian playwrights deal with horrific, disturbing subjects, their plays are not just violent and sensational. They’re a lot subtler, more sophisticated and profound than Seneca and the revenge plays of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans—Hamlet, or Shakespeare in general, is obviously an exception, but Titus Andronicus is also a crude, ridiculous play, nothing like Shakespeare’s mature plays. 

I didn’t even like Euripides’s Medea, compared to his other plays, but it’s subtler and more nuanced than Seneca’s version. 

2/ Oedipus is adapted from Oedipus the King by Sophocles (also known as Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannus). Coleridge thinks the Sophocles play is one of the three best plots in the world (the others are Tom Jones by Fielding—I agree!—and The Alchemist by Ben Jonson). I doubt anyone would say that about the Seneca play.

The brilliance of the Sophocles play is in the way the plot unfolds, the way the characters gradually discover the horrible truth—Jocasta is to know before Oedipus—the tension arises because of something that has already happened, not something that is happening. The myth—a man kills his father and marries his mother—is sensational and disturbing, but Sophocles seems to be more interested in questions about fate and human agency. At the same time, he develops the character of Oedipus so that you can see why Oedipus is in the position he’s in: because he is imperious and even hot-tempered, he killed a man on the road, who turns out to be his father Laius; because he is intelligent and resourceful, he defeated the Sphinx and got awarded the queen of Thebes, who happened to be his mother. 

You don’t get any of that in the Seneca play. The plot is awkward; they summon back the spirit of the dead Laius and he names the killer (how stupid is this?); Seneca seems to delight in gory detail (do we need all that gory description of the sacrifice? why does he expand and exaggerate Oedipus’s blinding?); the chorus, for some reason, sings a few times about Bacchus and the horrific death of Pentheus, adding to the gruesome quality of the play; Seneca also changes Jocasta’s death, making it melodramatic and also reducing the nobility of her character as we see in the Sophocles play; I don’t mind that Jocasta dies onstage, but don’t like that she dies in front of Oedipus—no, worse than that, it is ambiguous and suggests that Oedipus might help kill Jocasta; the whole thing is just sordid. 

And that’s just the impression I’ve got from reading Seneca: it’s hard to explain, but his characters just don’t have the nobility we see in the Greek plays; even in the case of Phaedra, both Euripides’s Phaedra and Racine’s Phèdre have a nobility that Seneca’s character lacks. 

I read Oedipus in E. F. Watling’s translation, which felt more poetic than Emily Wilson’s translation of the same play and Medea. 

(On a side note: I wrote in my blog post about Shakespeare and the Greeks that Shakespeare didn’t depict tension that arises because of something that already happened, as we see in Oedipus the King. That is not entirely true, or rather, Shakespeare doesn’t write an entire play about that, but he does do it in the final scenes of Othello—tension arises as Emilia and then Othello realises what he has done, and what Iago has done). 

3/ Thyestes is another fabula crepidata, which is a Latin play with Greek subjects. There are however no extant Greek plays about the myth, so nothing to which to compare Seneca’s play. 

To be honest, there are interesting passages in the play. 

“MINISTER You do not fear your people’s disapproval?

ATREUS Of the advantages of monarchy

The greatest is that subjects are compelled

Not only to endure but to approve

Their master’s actions.

MINISTER                        Men compelled by fear

To praise, may be by fear compelled to hate.

He who desires to win sincere approval

Will seek it in the heart, not on the tongue.

ATREUS A moderate man may win sincere approval;

It takes a strong man to enforce feigned praise.

Men must be made to want what they dislike.

MINISTER Let the king want what’s right, who will oppose him?

ATREUS The king who binds himself to want what’s right Sits on a shaky throne.” 

(Act 2) 

(translated by E. F. Watling) 

Now that is Seneca the philosopher, Seneca the statesman, Seneca the emperor’s advisor. 

In terms of language and imagery, there are many striking passages: 

“FURY […] Nor shall the heavens

Be unaffected by your evil deeds:

What right have stars to twinkle in the sky?

Why need their lights still ornament the world?

Let night be black, let there be no more day.

Let havoc rule this house; call blood and strife

And death; let every corner of this place

Be filled with the revenge of Tantalus!...” 

(Act 1) 

Or: 

“ATREUS It is. My heart is shaken with a storm

Of passion that confounds it to its centre.

I am compelled, although I know not whither,

I am compelled by forces.… Hear! the earth

Groans from its depths; the sky is clear, but thunder

Rumbles, and from the house there came a crash

As if the roof were falling; and our gods,

Shaken, have turned their backs on us. So be it!

Let a black deed be done, which gods above

Will fear to see.” 

(Act 2) 

Reading these plays, especially Thyestes, I can see the influence of Seneca on Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights: the 5-act division, the use of (bombastic) rhetoric, the fascination with evil and taste for extreme violence. All the lurid, gruesome scenes I have seen in 16th-17th century English revenge plays—a character bites off his own tongue and spits it out, a villain kisses and gets killed by a poisoned skull, someone appears onstage with a bloody heart on a dagger, and so on—all seem to trace back to the spectacle of violence and gory detail in Seneca. The pie in Titus Andronicus is a direct reference to Thyestes and—look at all the horrible murders in that play—I can see why someone would say it looks like an attempt to out-Seneca Seneca.

However, as I wrote back then, there’s nothing to the revenge plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries—nothing but spectacle—and very often those plays leave a bad taste in my mouth afterwards because the characters are all monstrous and bestial, and the same could be said about Seneca’s plays. Out of the four I’ve read, Thyestes is the most horrific—Atreus takes revenge on his own brother Thyestes by roasting Thyestes’s children and feeding them to him—it is repulsive. 

I think I’ve got enough of Seneca. 

The Frogs by Aristophanes

1/ Could anyone love ancient Greek drama and not love The Frogs? 

The premise is this: Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles are all dead; the Athenian stage is now devoid of talent (“I defy you to find a genuine poet among the whole lot of them: one who can coin a memorable line,” Dionysus says to Heracles); so the god of drama, Dionysus, decides to go to the underworld to bring back one of the dramatists. 

The first half of the play is the journey of Dionysus, in disguise as Heracles, to Hades. The second half is the battle between the traditional Aeschylus and the innovative Euripides. 

When Aristophanes wrote the play, Aeschylus had been dead for some time (456 or 455 BC), Euripides had recently died (ca 406 BC), but Sophocles was still alive; Sophocles died before the play was performed in 405 BC but Aristophanes didn’t have enough time to rewrite the whole play and incorporate him into it, so he only rewrote some lines to allude to Sophocles’s departure to the underworld. 

If you’re familiar with ancient Greek drama, The Frogs is invaluable because it offers insights into contemporary reception of these dramatists—the three tragedians who survive are indeed the three greatest—it’s also fascinating as one of the earliest pieces of literary criticism, long before Aristotle’s Poetics. As its own thing, it’s also a very funny play. Some of the jokes are over my head, naturally—there are local references, some of the plays mentioned don’t survive, and above all, I cannot read ancient Greek and missed all the jokes about metre and language—but I have read enough to see the contrast between Aeschylus and Euripides and it’s still a very funny play. 

Like Shakespeare, Aristophanes mixes the high and the low, the serious and the ridiculous. 

I read the translation by David Barrett, revised by Shomit Dutta. 

2/ Dionysus goes to Hades with his slave Xanthias. 

“CHARON I don’t take slaves. Not unless they fought in the sea-battle.

XANTHIAS I was exempted on medical grounds: eye trouble.” 

The relationship between the two is hilarious. 

“DIONYSUS I feel faint. Give me a sponge.

[XANTHIAS extracts a sponge from one of the bags.]

Press it on my heart, there’s a good chap.

XANTHIAS There you go.

DIONYSUS No, here. That’s it.

XANTHIAS The heart’s slipped a bit, hasn’t it?

DIONYSUS What? Oh, yes – the sudden shock. It’s taken refuge in my… lower intestine.” 

The introduction by Shomit Dutta also makes me think about the question of actors. As the playwrights were allowed first 2 actors, then increased to 3 by Sophocles, and the chorus, the actors had to do quite a lot of doubling. In The Frogs, the main actor would play Dionysus, who I think was onstage the entire time; the second actor would play Xanthias and Euripides or Aeschylus. 

3/ Why is the play called The Frogs? I have no idea. But there’s a chorus of frogs when Dionysus is on the way to see the dead playwrights. 

“FROGS

Brekekekex, koax, koax,

Brekekekex, koax, koax!

Oh we are the musical Frogs!

We live in the marshes and bogs!

Sweet, sweet is the hymn

We sing as we swim,

And our voices are known

For their beautiful tone…”

4/ Even though Aristophanes’s Aeschylus and Euripides are probably not much like the actual Aeschylus and Euripides, the same way Aristophanes’s Socrates is not much like the real Socrates, the duel between the two characters is amusing. 

“EURIPIDES But is a cock suitable material for a tragedy?

AESCHYLUS And you, you blasphemer, what did you put into your plays?”

Euripides is, as always, accused of bringing all sorts of characters into his plays. 

“AESCHYLUS […] No one can say I ever put a lustful woman into a play.

EURIPIDES How could you? You’ve never even met one.

AESCHYLUS And thank heaven for that…” 

5/ The Penguin edition of Alcestis and Other Plays (translated by John Davie) has an excellent introduction by Richard Rutherford, in which he compares the three Greek tragedians. 

“Whereas Aeschylus’ characters (the Prometheus apart) are above all members of a family or of a larger community, Sophocles tends to focus on individuals set apart from their society or at odds with those who care for them: Ajax, Antigone, Electra, Philoctetes, the aged Oedipus. With him, more than with the other two tragedians, it makes sense to speak of tragic heroes and heroines. […] The role of the chorus is somewhat reduced, though some of the odes which reflect on human achievement and its smallness in relation to the timeless power of the gods have a poetic splendour to match almost anything in Aeschylus. The characters have more depth and subtlety…” 

That is probably why Sophocles is my favourite, even though I love all three. They’re all different: Aeschylus is monumental, full of grandeur, but he’s more distant; Sophocles and Euripides focus more on individual characters, though Sophocles has a tragic hero or heroine at the centre for the entire play whereas Euripides tends to shift the focus from one character in half of the play to another in the latter half. 

“The plays of Euripides, although they still work within the traditional range of myths, do not generally dramatize heroic initiatives and triumphant achievements. His are tragedies of suffering rather than action (the Medea again is a special case, a partial exception).” 

Rutherford makes an important point though: 

“In some ways Euripides can be seen as a more self-consciously literary dramatist than his fellow tragedians. […] He seems regularly to modify the conventions of his genre and adapt the work of his predecessors, sometimes even drawing attention to the changes he has made. […] Aeschylus and Sophocles are also experienced in reshaping and adapting traditional motifs, but Euripides goes far beyond them in playing with conventions and exploiting the spectator’s awareness of the dramatic situation. While shocked and moved by the events on stage, we are nevertheless frequently reminded that this is ‘only’ a play.” 

I would probably have to think more about the last sentence, but that passage has a good point. If I have to choose between Euripides and Aeschylus, I would probably go for Euripides for the variety and inventiveness and the various interesting things he does in his plays, though the Oresteia is magnificent.

To go back to Aristophanes—after all this blog post is meant to be about him and The Frogs (which, by the way, Richard Rutherford does mention in his introduction)—he is also a great dramatist and very inventive. The five plays I’ve read so far are all different: Lysistrata is a farce about a sex strike; Women at Thesmophoria Festival includes Euripides as a character and parodies multiple of his plays; The Clouds is the most intellectual of the plays, satirising the Sophists; The Birds is a fantasy, about the utopia of Cloudcuckooland; and now The Frogs is something different altogether. 

It is fascinating that these great dramatists were alive and working in the same place around the same time. 

Surely Shakespeare must have known the Greeks [updated]

All the writings I have so far come across tell me that Shakespeare probably didn’t read ancient Greek plays: there were no English translations available at the time, writers from ancient Rome were more important, there’s no evidence that Shakespeare knew Greek or read the Greeks. But Latin translations were available, and I can’t help finding it unlikely that Shakespeare wasn’t curious about Greek tragedy: Roman writers, who influenced Shakespeare, were themselves heavily influenced or inspired by the Greeks; Francis Meres, the first to canonise Shakespeare, in 1598 (!) knew the Greeks (“As the Greek tongue is made famous and eloquent by Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Phocylides and Aristophanes; and the Latin tongue by Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Silius Italicus, Lucanus, Lucretius, Ausonius and Claudianus: so the English tongue is mightily enriched and gorgeously invested in true ornaments and resplendent abiliments by Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlowe and Chapman”); Ben Jonson knew the Greeks (mentioning Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in his poem about Shakespeare); and so on. 

There is no way that Shakespeare was in such a circle and never read the Greeks. 

In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, Agamemnon begins with a watchman, like Hamlet; the scene of Orestes confronting his mother Klytaimestra (or Clytemnestra) in Libation Bearers reminds me of Hamlet and Gertrude. There are also similarities between Hamlet and Sophocles’s Electra: both are revenge plays that focus more on the mind of the protagonist than on the revenge itself; Electra is consumed with hate, and concentrates all her hate on her mother Clytemnestra even though Aegisthus also took part in the killing; Hamlet seems to hate his mother even more than he hates Claudius; Electra thinks about her mother sleeping with the murderer of her father, so does Hamlet. 

Sometimes the similarities don’t necessarily suggest influence—perhaps it’s simply that Shakespeare and these playwrights were writing about human nature and human nature doesn’t really change: for instance, Oedipus’s anger and bitterness at being abandoned by his children makes me think of King Lear. But I do wonder if the Oresteia and Sophocles’s Electra influenced Hamlet. 

I also like to think that Shakespeare got inspiration from Euripides for The Winter’s Tale: he adapted the play from Robert Greene’s Pandosto but wanted to change the ending—he clearly didn’t care for all the incestuous stuff—so perhaps he got some ideas from Alcestis and Heracles. As my friend Himadri pointed out, Leontes, like Heracles, destroys his own family in a fit of madness; Leontes, like Heracles, has to live not only with the loss, but also with the guilt. I didn’t see strong parallels between Alcestis and The Winter’s Tale when I first read the play, but now that I’ve thought more about it, there are: however you interpret Hermione’s restoration to Leontes, the scene is a vision of resurrection; and as in Alcestis, the happiness in the ending of The Winter’s Tale is subdued, Leontes cannot undo what he has done to Hermione (and their son), the same way Admetus has to face the fact that he has let Alcestis die in his place. 

Surely Shakespeare must have known these plays. 

Thoughts? 

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Update on 14/8/2025: Currently not on Twitter, I have more time to read literary essays on JSTOR and found, among others, two interesting essays about the subject of Shakespeare and the Greeks.  

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2870800

In this essay, Louise Schleiner argues that Hamlet was influenced by Aeschylus’s Oresteia and Euripides’s Orestes. 

“Whatever Shakespeare’s competence with Greek and Latin may have been (respect for his learning is fashionable again), I am convinced that at least some passages of Euripides’ Orestes and Aeschylus’ Oresteia (in the latter namely the graveyard and matricide scenes of the Libation Bearers) by some means influenced Hamlet. The concrete theatrical similarities between the Shakespearean and Aeschylean graveyard scenes and between the roles of Horatio and Pylades (in both Aeschylus and Euripides) are in my view too close to be coincidental. Furthermore, the churchyard scene of Hamlet does not occur in any of the play’s known sources or analogues: if it was not a sheer invention—and Shakespeare very seldom sheerly invented anything in the way of plot—it has some source not yet identified.” 

She also argues that Shakespeare could easily borrow books from Ben Jonson’s large library, as they were fellow playwrights (and friends). 

The main arguments for the possible influence are: 

• Hamlet has “Orestean urge to kill his mother” (he may not say it but he’s “at considerable risk of killing her”); 
• There are parallels between the graveyard scene in Libation Bearers and the one in Hamlet, which isn’t in Roman and medieval sources; 
• Horatio seems to mirror Pylades, which may explain the inconsistency in the characterisation of Horatio (“Shakespeare had superimposed upon the domestic Horatio of the Ur-Hamlet the concept of Pylades, dear foreigner-companion of Orestes from his youth abroad, touchstone of justice and male friendship, soul mate and supporter of the Orestean hero with his dreadful commission to cleanse away his own mother’s evil and the usurping step-father whom that evil has enabled to take power”); 
• Orestes is haunted by the Furies after taking revenge, the Furies seem to be let loose on Hamlet before he takes revenge. 

These are interesting points, no? 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40210320

In this essay, Sarah Dewar-Watson argues that The Winter’s Tale may have been influenced by George Buchanan’s Latin translation of Alcestis. 

Alcestis and Hermione are both restored to their husbands; in both plays, they are first veiled in the recognition scene; in both plays, a third party brings about the reunion of husband and wife; in both plays, the wife says nothing to the husband at the end. 

After Alcestis’s departure to Hades, Admetus thinks about creating a sculpture (or something similar) of Alcestis: 

“I will have an image of you, the work of a skilled craftsman’s hand, and lay it in my bed. I will kneel before it, clasping it in my arms, and call your name, and it will seem as though I hold my dear wife, although I do not. An empty pleasure, I know, but it will lighten my heavy heart. Or perhaps you will visit me in my dreams, and console me. We welcome a glimpse of our loved ones in our sleep, however long it lasts.” 

Dewar-Watson argues: 

“Buchanan interpolates the word statura at a crucial moment in the recognition scene: “O femina, / quaecumque tandem es, es profecto Alcestidi / modo et statura corporis simillima” (Lady, whoever you are, you are just like Alcestis, the very image of her form) (ll. 1137-39). This is a rendering of Euripides, lines 1061-63: “σύδ’, ώγύναι, / ήτις ποτ’ εί σύ, ταϋτ’ έχουσ’ Άλκήστιδι / μορφής μέτρ’ ίσθι καί προσήιξαι δέμας” (You, lady, whoever you are, have the exact form of Alcestis and your body is just like hers). Buchanan’s interpolation of the statue motif, therefore, provides a clear model for the device in the equivalent scene in Shakespeare. Buchanan’s variation on the source text is-like his interpolation of umbra-striking, since the rest of his translation is generally a very close rendering.

The link between Buchanan’s Alcestis and The Winter’s Tale is underscored by another verbal echo. In Euripides, Admetus exclaims to Heracles, “uń u’ έλης ήρημένον” (You destroy me, I who am already destroyed) (1. 1065), which Buchanan closely follows (“neve perdas perditum”) (1. 1141). The line is especially memorable because of the reduplicative effect provided by the cognate accusative, and it thus provides a likely source for Perdita’s name. Although the cognate accusative is an effect that English cannot readily accommodate, Shakespeare substitutes a bilingual pun (“Our Perdita is found” [5.3.121]), which playfully inverts the original grammatical structure. Where the cognates in Latin and Greek heavily reinforce a sense of loss and destruction, Shakespeare’s reconstruction of the syntax creates a new play on words in which the very idea of loss is countered and dispelled.” 

The Greeks make me realise what Shakespeare doesn’t do

When I read Shakespeare’s contemporary playwrights in England, or Spanish Golden Age playwrights such as Lope de Vega, I think Shakespeare’s light years ahead of them all. But I don’t think that way when reading the ancient Greeks—I think they’re great in a different way.

Shakespeare’s works may feel richer as he has the advantage of having more actors and mixes the tragic and the comic—not to mention that he can do both tragedy and comedy, and other genres—but the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are not any inferior to Shakespeare’s tragedies in terms of depth and tragic power. This is especially staggering when we consider that there’s a gap of 2000 years between them. 

More interestingly, the Greeks make me realise what Shakespeare doesn’t do. In King Oedipus by Sophocles for instance, the tension in the entire drama arises not because of what’s happening, but because of what has already happened. This is something I later see in Ibsen, but not in Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s plays also don’t question human agency. 

The Electra plays remind me again that Shakespeare doesn’t seem to take any interest in the mother-daughter relationship. He very often explores the father-daughter relationship (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, King Lear, The Tempest, etc) and depicts some fascinating mother-son relationships (Hamlet and Coriolanus); the only mother-daughter relationship I can think of is Lady Capulet and Juliet, which is not particularly developed, and if we stretch it a bit, the Countess and Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well, but they’re not actually mother and daughter. 

He also doesn’t take much interest in the subject of incest. In Pericles, it’s only a small part at the beginning of the story, not explored, and that’s a late play that Shakespeare co-wrote with another playwright. 

Now that I’ve read Hippolytus and other versions of the same myth, I’ve also realised that Shakespeare doesn’t write about women who make false rape allegations. We know he’s fascinated by jealousy and slander, and writes multiple times about women being falsely accused of cheating (Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale), but not about the other way around. 

Shakespeare also doesn’t adapt any of the classical plays. For his plays, he uses historical accounts, poems, Ovid, Chaucer, romances (such as Pandosto), and so on, but doesn’t rewrite or revisit any of the classical plays. Even if he didn’t know Greek, I believe there were Latin translations of the ancient Greek plays available. We don’t see him adapting the Roman plays either. 

This is fascinating stuff. 

Aias by Sophocles

Over the past few days, I was in Geneva (“again?” I can hear you say). I’m now (physically) back in London (and mentally back in ancient Greece). 

1/ Aias (better known as Ajax) is a great warrior in the Trojan war. After Achilles’s death, he thinks he deserves Achilles’s armour but Agamemnon and Menelaus decide to award it to Odysseus instead. Enraged, he decides to kill all three, but Athena intervenes by sending him into a fit of madness that makes him mistake some cattle for his enemies. He kills them all. Upon the restoration of sanity, Aias realises with horror and shame at what he has done, and kills himself. 

The rest of the play is other characters reacting to his death, and disagreeing about whether he should get a burial. 

That’s the plot. 

I find the play very interesting for a few reasons. First of all, ancient Greek plays, unlike 16th century and later plays, tend not to show people doing things but depict people reacting to things—fights, deaths, murders… happen offstage and get reported—but in this play, Aias appears to kill himself onstage (though I’m not sure how Sophocles staged Aias falling on his sword). 

Secondly, unless I’m mistaken, Aias has a soliloquy before his suicide—a feature we (well, I) associate mainly with Shakespeare—in other ancient Greek plays, characters may have monologues but in front of the Chorus, but in this scene, Aias is alone. 

2/ The play oddly begins and ends with Odysseus. 

He says to Athena:

“ODYSSEUS […] For my venturous course,

Past or to come, is governed by thy will.” 

(translated by Lewis Campbell) 

And when he speaks in defence of Aias: 

“ODYSSEUS […] But, though he hates me sore,

I pity him, poor mortal, thus chained fast

To a wild and cruel fate,—weighing not so much

His fortune as mine own. For now I feel

All we who live are but an empty show

And idle pageant of a shadowy dream.” 

Later Aias’s half-brother Teucer comes to say that a prophet has said Aias has to stay in the tent that day or he would die. But it’s too late—Tecmessa, Aias’s concubine, finds his dead body. 

The play raises disturbing questions about fate vs free will. At the same time, Sophocles depicts the gods as callous or at least biased.

“ATHENA Then, warned by what thou seest, be thou not rash

To vaunt high words toward Heaven, nor swell thy port

Too proudly, if in puissance of thy hand

Thou passest others, or in mines of wealth.

Since Time abases and uplifts again

All that is human, and the modest heart

Is loved by Heaven, who hates the intemperate will.”

Athena gloats in the delusion and humiliation of Aias.

Later we learn: 

“MESSENGER […] ‘Thus ever,’ said the prophet, ‘must he fall

Who in man’s mould hath thoughts beyond a man.

And Aias, ere he left his father’s door,

Made foolish answer to his prudent sire.

‘My son,’ said Telamon, ‘choose victory

Always, but victory with an aid from Heaven.’

How loftily, how madly, he replied!

‘Father, with heavenly help men nothing worth

May win success. But I am confident

Without the Gods to pluck this glory down.’

So huge the boast he vaunted! And again

When holy Pallas urged him with her voice

To hurl his deadly spear against the foe,

He turned on her with speech of awful sound:

‘Goddess, by other Greeks take thou thy stand;

Where I keep rank, the battle ne’er shall break.’

Such words of pride beyond the mortal scope

Have won him Pallas’ wrath, unlovely meed…” 

This is a heroic man, a great warrior, and Athena punishes him only because of his pride? How petty are the gods? Such a depiction of the gods I tend to associate with Euripides.

3/ One fascinating thing is that Aias isn’t a particularly sympathetic character, especially at the beginning. Not only does he want to kill Odysseus and the others, he wants to “stain [Odysseus’s] back with scourging till he die”—it’s no surprise that Menelaus and Agamemnon later don’t want to give him a burial. When the manic episode passes and Aias realises what he has done: 

“AIAS […] Behold what gory sea

Of storm-lashed agony

Doth round and round me flow!” 

For some time, Aias remains a hater: 

“AIAS […] But the invincible

Stern daughter of the Highest, with baneful eye,

Even as mine arm descended, baffled me,

And hurled upon my soul a frenzied plague,

To stain my hand with these dumb victims’ blood.

And those mine enemies exult in safety,—

Not with my will; but where a God misguides,

Strong arms are thwarted and the weakling lives.

Now, what remains? Heaven hates me, ’tis too clear:

The Grecian host abhor me: Troy, with all

This country round our camp, is my sworn foe…”  

And yet one feels for the shame, the humiliation Aias goes through, and Sophocles gives us some moving scenes between him and Tecmessa and their child Eurysakes. And when Aias dies, one feels pity for the downfall of such a great warrior. 

Philoctetes by Sophocles

1/ The premise is simple: in the Trojan war, Philoctetes gets bitten on the foot by a snake, which causes him constant agony and an awful smell; Odysseus and others forsake him on a desert island; however, after 10 years have passed, Odysseus hears from the seer Helenus that the Greeks need the archer Philoctetes and his bow, from Heracles, to win the war; and the entire play is about tricking or persuading Philoctetes to get on the ship with Odysseus. 

It is fascinating to see the differences between the ancient Greek plays and the Elizabethan/ Jacobean plays: the latter are full of incident and full of action, Shakespeare’s plays for instance often have multiple plot lines, in different locations, sometimes even different countries; the former keep to one action (Electra and Orestes killing their mother, Medea killing her children, etc). Philoctetes has an even simpler plot than some other ancient Greek plays—but isn’t that the challenge? To get the audience interested? And interested I was. 

Odysseus wants Neoptolemus (Achilles’s son) to bring Philoctetes back by trickery, which he initially does in spite of his own misgivings. 

“ODYSSEUS Son of a valiant sire, I, too, in youth,

Had once a slow tongue and an active hand.

But since I have proved the world, I clearly see

Words and not deeds give mastery over men.”

(translated by Lewis Campbell) 

The first conflict is between Odysseus and Neoptolemus. 

“NEOPTOLEMUS And is not lying shameful to thy soul?

ODYSSEUS Not if by lying I can save my soul.”

After the conversation between Neoptolemus and Philoctetes, the conflict is then between the two sides within Neoptolemus, then between him and Odysseus, and finally between Philoctetes and the other two. Neoptolemus yields to his own nobility and wins Philoctetes over by honesty and trust.

Neoptolemus is the one with complexity, the one who changes. 

2/ Lewis Campbell seems to embellish a bit: 

“PHILOCTETES […] Nor would fire come unbidden, but with flint

From flints striking dim sparks, I hammered forth

The struggling flame that keeps the life in me.

For houseroom with the single help of fire

Gives all I need, save healing for my sore.” 

These are the same lines, in James Scully’s translation: 

“PHILOKTETES […] No fire, none, but striking

stone on stone

I’d make the secret spark

leap up, out of darkness!

And this is what saved me.

A roof overhead, fire,

it’s all I need—except

release from this disease.” 

I did very much enjoy Lewis Campbell’s verse translation though. There are many great passages. 

“CHORUS I feel his misery.

With no companion eye,

Far from all human care,

He pines with fell disease;

Each want he hourly sees

Awakening new despair.

How can he bear it still?

O cruel Heavens! O pain

Of that afflicted mortal train

Whose life sharp sorrows fill!” 

Philoctetes is another picture of woe and resentment. Tormented by the wound “[made] by the cruel basilisk’s murderous tooth.” 

“PHILOCTETES How full of griefs am I, how Heaven-abhorred,

When of my piteous state no faintest sound

Hath reached my home, or any Grecian land!

But they, who pitilessly cast me forth,

Keep silence and are glad, while this my plague

Blooms ever, and is strengthened more and more.” 

He is however more likeable, more sympathetic than Oedipus (at Colonus) and Electra. Part of it, I suppose, is that he’s still capable of trust. 

3/ Philoctetes asks Neoptolemus about Thersites (whom I remember from Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida): is he dead? Neoptolemus says he’s alive. 

“PHILOCTETES He must be: for no evil yet was crushed.

The Heavens will ever shield it. ’Tis their sport

To turn back all things rancorous and malign

From going down to the grave, and send instead

The good and true. Oh, how shall we commend

Such dealings, how defend them? When I praise

Things god-like, I find evil in the Gods.” 

Contrast that with this speech, to Odysseus:  

“PHILOCTETES […] Perish!—So ye shall,

For the wrong done me, if the Heavens be just.

And that they are, I know…” 

I like that contrast. Makes Philoctetes more alive.  

He tries to persuade Neoptolemus: 

“PHILOCTETES […] Convey me home, and thou, in Scyros dwelling,

Leave to their evil doom those evil men.

So thou shalt win a twofold gratitude

From me and from my father, and not seem,

Helping vile men, to be as vile as they.”

And he’s right—why should he help the Greeks against Troy? 

“PHILOCTETES […] And do not linger to take thought of Troy.

Enough that name hath echoed in my groans.” 

What does it have to do with him? He wants to leave the desert island and go home. That is not an option however—not just an option for Philoctetes to take, but I also mean not an option for Sophocles to rewrite the myth—Heracles appears at the end, as deus ex machina, promising to heal the wound, but Philoctetes is still going to Troy.

Medea by Euripides

1/ When my friend Himadri joined Tom’s read-along of the ancient Greek plays in 2022, he noted a few times the big differences between the English translations, which was concerning. Now I can see that myself. 

This for example is from the prose translation by John Davie: 

“NURSE There you are, my poor little loves! Wasn’t I right? Your mother has a troubled heart, and an angry one, too! Inside the house with you quick and no delay! Don’t let her catch sight of you or approach her! Watch out for that savage temperament of hers, that stubborn will and unforgiving nature! Off with you right now, go in and quickly! It’s clear that this anger of hers will grow; soon enough her grief like a gathering cloud will be kindled by it and burst in storm. What action will she take then, that proud, impassioned soul, so ungovernable now that she has felt the sting of injustice?”

Compare the same lines translated by Gilbert Murray: 

“NURSE Ah, children, hark! She moves again 

Her frozen heart, her sleeping wrath. 

In, quick! And never cross her path, 

Nor rouse that dark eye in its pain. 

That fell sea-spirit, and the dire 

Spring of a will untaught, unbowed. 

Quick, now!—Methinks this weeping cloud 

Hath in its heart some thunder-fire, 

Slow gathering, that must flash ere long. 

I know not how, for ill or well, 

It turns, this uncontrollable 

Tempestuous spirit, blind with wrong.” 

Quite different, no? 

For Medea, I mainly read Gilbert Murray’s verse translation. 

2/ It’s interesting that Euripides begins the play with people who love and feel compassion for Medea. 

“NURSE There is no house! ’Tis gone. The lord 

Seeketh a prouder bed: and she 

Wastes in her chamber, nor one word 

Will hear of care or charity.” 

Then Medea appears, and gets our sympathy. 

“MEDEA […] O friends! He, even he, 

Whom to know well was all the world to me, 

The man I loved, hath proved most evil.—Oh, 

Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, 

A herb most bruised is woman. […]

Thou hast this city, and thy father’s home, 

And joy of friends, and hope in days to come: 

But I, being citiless, am cast aside 

By him that wedded me, a savage bride 

Won in far sea and left—no mother near, 

No brother, not one kinsman anywhere 

For harbour in this storm…” 

She has used magic to save and help Jason, she has abandoned her own home, they have had children together, and yet he leaves her for King Creon’s daughter. And she gets banished! The confrontation between Medea and Jason is a great scene. 

“MEDEA […] Is sworn faith so low 

And weak a thing? I understand it not. 

Are the old gods dead? Are the old laws forgot, 

And new laws made? Since not my passioning, 

But thine own heart, doth cry thee for a thing 

Forsworn.”

How false, selfish, and callous Jason is! He says he would support the children and their lives would be better when their (future) half-brothers are kings, but does nothing, till Medea asks, about Creon’s banishment of his sons. 

(On a side note, I had heard of it before but it was still weird to come across the name Jason—a name that looked so modern—in an ancient Greek play). 

3/ Roughly, the mid-point of the play is Medea deciding to kill her own children, after killing the princess, to make Jason suffer. Before that is the build-up: wronged and forsaken, Medea considers various ways of revenge. Then the rest of the play is the carrying out of the revenge, and its aftermath. 

I can see why readers and theatregoers see Medea as a striking, unforgettable depiction of hate, vengeance, and savagery; I can see why critics have debated the character for thousands of years. But I don’t particularly like the play, perhaps the same way I don’t really like Elizabethan/ Jacobean revenge plays or Japanese/ South Korean revenge films. Why do I love Sophocles’s Electra but not Euripides’s Medea, when both are studies of hate and vengeance? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s the way Medea oscillates between being a loving mother and a hateful woman willing to kill her own children. Perhaps it’s the four-page speech describing the deaths of Creon’s daughter and Creon. Perhaps it’s the sensational nature of the story. Perhaps it’s the ending. I don’t know, but for some reason I don’t find the play satisfying. 

One difference, I guess, is that in Medea, Euripides is interested in the revenge; in Electra, Sophocles is not, he’s interested in what years of hate and anger do to the human psyche, and that I find more interesting.

I still get along best with Sophocles. 

Electra (or Elektra) by Euripides and the Electra myth

As I read the play in Gilbert Murray’s translation, I will use his spellings (Latinised names such as Clytemnestra, rather than Greek transliterations such as Klytaimestra). 

1/ Among the ancient Greek plays that survive today about the killing of Clytemnestra (Klytaimestra), the first was Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers, part of the Oresteia, first performed in 458 BC. 

Sophocles and Euripides, from the same generation, both wrote a play named Electra, though it’s not certain which one came out first: the one by Euripides was written in the mid-410s BC, the one by Sophocles is dated around 420–414 BC (wouldn’t it have been funny though if they were first performed the same year?). 

These two Electra plays don’t seem to reference each other, but there’s one scene in which Euripides clearly mocks a scene in Libation Bearers: how could Electra recognise Orestes from some strand of hair, or footprints? Don’t be ridiculous, Aeschylus. 

2/ Like Sophocles, Euripides focuses on the character of Electra. 

“ELECTRA […] Brother, brother, on some far shore 

Hast thou a city, is there a door

That knows thy footfall, Wandering One? 

Who left me, left me, when all our pain 

Was bitter about us, a father slain, 

And a girl that wept in her room alone. 

Thou couldst break me this bondage sore, 

Only thou, who art far away, 

Loose our father, and wake once more…

Zeus, Zeus, dost hear me pray?... 

The sleeping blood and the shame and the doom! 

O feet that rest not, over the foam

Of distant seas, come home, come home!” 

Sophocles’s Electra is a larger-than-life character: striking, intense, deformed by hate. Euripides’s Electra appears more vulnerable and fragile. 

One of the changes Euripides makes is that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus (also known as Aigisthos) don’t imprison Electra, but marry her off to a poor peasant so that she doesn’t have the power to wage war against them. She’s stripped of the position of princess. The peasant however doesn’t sleep with her, out of respect for her and her father. We then have this interesting passage:  

“ORESTES How dark lies honour hid! And what turmoil 

In all things human: sons of mighty men 

Fallen to naught, and from ill seed again 

Good fruit: yea, famine in the rich man’s scroll 

Writ deep, and in poor flesh a lordly soul!

As, lo, this man, not great in Argos, not 

With pride of house, uplifted, in a lot

Of unmarked life hath shown a prince’s grace…” 

Not hard to see why some people call Euripides modern. 

3/ In this play, Orestes is much weaker and more passive. The old man who rescued him as a child is now the one to come up with the plan to kill Aegisthus. The plan to kill Clytemnestra comes from Electra. 

Orestes hesitates. 

“ORESTES ’Tis my mother comes: my own

Mother, that bare me. 

[…]

ORESTES What would we with our mother? Didst thou say

Kill her? 

ELECTRA (turning on him) What? Is it pity? Dost thou fear 

To see thy mother’s shape? 

ORESTES ’Twas she that bare

My body into life. She gave me suck. 

How can I strike her?”

(The word “bare” is in my copy, shouldn’t it be “bore”?). 

“ORESTES I was a clean man once. Shall I be thrust 

From men’s sight, blotted with her blood? 

ELECTRA Thy blot 

Is black as death if him thou succour not!” 

Euripides humanises Orestes and removes Apollo—there is no command from the gods—it is Electra who pushes Orestes into it. 

Like Sophocles, he lets us see Electra’s point of view and then shows us Clytemnestra’s: not only did Agamemnon kill her daughter Iphigenia…

“CLYTEMNESTRA […] Nay, for long, 

I never would have killed him. But he came, 

At last, bringing that damsel, with the flame

Of God about her, mad and knowing all; 

And set her in my room; and in one wall 

Would hold two queens!...” 

In a way, Aeschylus sees and depicts the tragedy from a distance; Sophocles and Euripides come close to the characters and depict their clashing perspectives; both give us a confrontation between mother and daughter. 

4/ Sophocles’s play focuses on Electra’s state of mind that leads to the killing. Euripides’s play has the revenge, and also depicts the horror of Electra and Orestes when they realise what they have done. 

“ORESTES Saw’st thou her raiment there, 

Sister, there in the blood?

She drew it back as she stood, 

She opened her bosom bare, 

She bent her knees to the earth, 

The knees that bent in my birth…

And I… Oh, her hair, her hair…

(He breaks into inarticulate weeping)”

I would guess that Euripides’s Electra was after Sophocles’s. 

There are mentions of gods throughout the play and a god does appear at the end telling what Orestes and Electra have to do to pay for the murder of their mother, but I would say that the play is humanist, not mythic: unlike the characters in Aeschylus’s and Sophocles’s plays, Euripides’s Electra and Orestes choose to kill their mother themselves, without an oracle. A god only appears after the deed is done. Not only so, the killings are more brutal: Orestes kills Aegisthus after being welcomed as a guest to his feast; Electra lures Clytemnestra to the house and pretends to reconcile with her before having her killed. 

All three plays are wonderful, in different ways. 

The Oresteia by Aeschylus: Libation Bearers

1/ As written in the previous blog post, this is the second part of the trilogy, and about the killing of Klytaimestra (also known as Clytemnestra). 

I read the translation by Michael Ewans, who uses transliterations from Greek. 

2/ Aeschylus’s plays are rich in metaphors and similes. 

“ELEKTRA […] We call upon the gods, who know 

that great waves toss us all around

like men at sea; but when we’re fated to survive, 

a small seed often grows into a great tree-root.” 

Some animal imagery: 

“ORESTES Zeus! Zeus! Look down and witness this! 

You see the orphaned offspring of the eagle who has died – 

a fearful serpent’s trapped him in its coils. They are bereft 

of father-love, and suffer pangs of hunger; they’re not strong enough 

to hunt food like their father, bring to the nest. 

[…] If you were to destroy the eagle’s brood, you could not send 

back any sign of hope to mortal men; 

and if this tree of kingship shrivels up and dies 

we will not be your ministers upon the festive days of sacrifice…” 

Mixed metaphors. 

Klytaimestra’s nightmare also has an interesting image: “she dreamt she gave birth to a snake” and “a clot of blood poured out into the milk.” 

Orestes later compares her to snakes: 

“ORESTES […] If she had been a seasnake, or a viper, she could make men’s flesh dissolve

without a bite, so great her daring 

and the power of her evil mind…” 

3/ This is an interesting passage: 

“LIBATION BEARERS The earth 

breeds terrifying beasts. 

In her embrace the sea 

encompasses a multitude 

of monsters that can kill a man. 

Up in the sky are comets, meteors—

like flying torches which descend 

to harm us. Then think of the hurricane, 

the anger of the stormwind. 

But who can find words to speak 

of the ever-daring mind of man

or woman’s love that dares all, 

wedded to disaster? 

When passion overcomes 

the female, it destroys 

the unions of animals, 

the marriages of men and women.” 

The play is full of such wonderful passages. I can see why my friend Himadri thinks the Oresteia is monumental. 

4/ It’s fascinating to see that Aeschylus and Sophocles tackle the same myth in completely different ways. 

In Liberation Bearers, Aeschylus does repeat the point about the cycle of violence, but presents Orestes’s killing of Klytaimestra and Aigisthos (better known as Aegisthus) as fulfilling the wish of many people, even a god: Orestes has doubts but Apollo tells him of “vile and frosty torments” and the pursuit of the Furies if he doesn’t avenge the murder of his father; the Libation Bearers or the female slaves of the house (the chorus) also egg him on, and take an active role in the revenge plot… 

In Elektra—I will stick to Greek transliterations for consistency—Sophocles does something different: he changes the circumstances of the sacrifice, thus making Artemis appear petty and Klytaimestra’s killing of Agamemnon more justified or at least less of a wanton act of violence; concentrates on Elektra and her state of mind; brings in the counter-voices of Elektra’s sister and the chorus, clashing with Elektra’s thirst for revenge; gets the audience to feel compassion for Elektra but also see something perverse in her love of her father and hatred of her mother, etc. 

However, Aeschylus adds some discordant notes towards the end of his play.

“ORESTES […] I’m like a charioteer who’s forced to drive 

outside the course; I am beaten, and cannot control 

my senses. Terror comes prepared to sing its song of hate 

beside my heart, and join the dance…” 

He is haunted. Did Apollo lie? Or did he warn Orestes of the father’s Furies if the murder’s not avenged, and not of the mother’s Furies if Orestes killed her?

“LIBATION BEARERS […] Where will it end? When will it be sated, 

lulled to sleep, the force of destruction?” 

5/ Another notable difference is that Sophocles reverses the order: Aeschylus has Orestes kill Aigisthos first and then Klytaimestra; Sophocles starts with, and focuses more on, Orestes’s killing of his mother Klytaimestra. 

In Libation Bearers, Elektra also seems to be dropped in the latter part of the play—Aeschylus focuses more on Orestes. 

6/ As my main frame of reference is Shakespeare, it’s hard to read these plays without wondering if Shakespeare knew them—just look at Libation Bearers, look at the confrontation between Orestes and his mother Klytaimestra—do you not think about Hamlet and Gertrude? For 400 years, people have debated the phrase “small Latin and less Greek” that Ben Jonson wrote about Shakespeare—most people seem to take it literally, though there is influence of Latin works on Shakespeare’s plays and scholars generally say Shakespeare may just have “small Latin and less Greek” compared to the learned Ben Jonson—I’ve recently read an essay in The Antigone Journal arguing that the sentence may have been misunderstood as “though” also has an archaic sense of “even if”. Do we know if Shakespeare knew these plays? If not in the original then perhaps in Latin translations? I need to look more into this.