Initially S. places Euripides' Medea in its historical context and proceeds to give a general introduction to the religious nature of Attic tragedy in the fifth century b.c.e., its conditions of performance in the Theatre of Dionysus and its role as a didactic tool for the edification and entertainment of the ‘demos’. For the average scholar and even relatively advanced student this is familiar ground. One asks, therefore, at whom this volume is aimed, since the accompanying twelve essays composed by a distinguished range of scholars vary in both the quality and depth of their discussions and, indeed, in length. They embrace most of the crucial questions raised when teaching the Medea or confronting it for the purposes of production. Accordingly the volume would be valuable as a teaching aid in a senior high school or undergraduate university class.
J. Griffin's piece on murder in the family elegantly retells the original myth, and comments on Jason's cool calculation of his parlous situation in Corinth and the practical wisdom of his marriage to the Corinthian princess. Griffin advises that the view of Medea as ‘mad, bad and dangerous’, to use words deployed to describe Byron, panders to the stereotypical and misogynistic male view of womanhood rampant since the time of Hesiod. No room for proto-feminism here as later discussed by other contributors.
Another discussion of sources and Euripides' originality is furnished by C. McCallum-Barry, but she provides little of originality, while her judgement that women in tragedy are ‘not meant to be realistic portrayals’ (p. 31) begs an enormous question regarding the verism or otherwise of Greek tragedy. I. Karamanou in an essay dedicated to Eric Handley discusses the horrors of otherness and exile and makes sound points about the thematics of Medea and also the other lost plays in this tetralogy, Philoctetes, Dictys and Theristae, although the idea of satyrs being significantly ‘other’ (p. 35) and so parallel to Medea seems something of a stretch.
R. Wyles' ‘Staging Medea’ concentrates on the notion of the audience's memory of past productions playing a part in the fifth-century audience's reception of the details of Euripides' production of Medea in 431 b.c.e. Her contrast between Medea and Sophocles' Deianeira is insightful as is her discussion of Euripides' willingness to flout the conventions of the Athenian stage, as in his loaded use of the ‘mechane’ to facilitate Medea's shocking escape.
Perhaps the most satisfying essay is I. Ruffell's ‘The Nurse's Tale’ where the role of the humble Nurse as confidante and representative of a lower social class, along with that of the Tutor, is representative not only of Euripides' alleged democratisation of the genre but also of a narrative tradition that stretches from the Odyssey, through Libation Bearers to Romeo and Juliet and beyond. Think only of Nursie in the Elizabethan episodes of Blackadder. It is the humble characters who more readily give vent to their sympathies and fears for their ‘betters’ than those aristocrats so concerned with self-image that they can commit matricide or infanticide for the sake of vengeance or damaged pride. J. Morwood re-evaluates Jason in a very brief and unsatisfactory piece condemned by its own paucity of notes. R. Rutherford's ‘The Final Scene’ has more substance, talking of the apotheosis of the Demonic witch, as Medea rides off into the sunset. He is intrigued by the ‘agon’ between Jason and Medea which seems to break the conventions of the usual deus ex machina scene. Perhaps Rutherford underestimates the originality of Euripides' dramaturgical skills. S. Hill's essay is a far-reaching study of the complex relationship between Medea and the Chorus throughout the play, stressing the sympathy of the Chorus for Medea's plight, their fellow feelings as repressed women and then their horror at having to condone by their silence the murder of Medea's boys. Perhaps Euripides is demonstrating in his play the potentially awkward nature of ever-present witnesses on the tragic stage. H.M. Roisman produces a typically thoughtful piece on the motif of vengeance in ancient tragedy, concentrating on Medea's disposal of the princess, Creon and the total destruction of the oikos of Jason and his future happiness. This is a persuasive and illuminating essay, while it seems that D. Cairns in ‘Medea: Feminism or Misogyny’ seems to be swimming rather against the feminist tide, although his arguments drawn from an intimate knowledge of Athenian wedding-ceremony rituals and his own sympathies for the fifth-century male audience make for interesting reading, especially when his prose produces such comments as ‘She [Medea] is every Athenian's worst nightmare of what a woman might be and do’ (p. 134). After all such a comment takes notice of an atmosphere that gave rise to Pericles' comments on women at the end of the Funeral Speech as recorded by Thucydides. The vexed question of Euripides' attitude to the gods and to the status of Medea is discussed by E. Hall. She gives a brilliant summary of the reasons for the play's timeless appeal despite all its apparent strangeness. The roles of Zeus, Themis, Aphrodite, Hera and Hecate are all subjected to scrutiny by Hall in a convincing way, although her belief that that the ‘friends’ of v. 745 are the previously mentioned deities rather than the ever-present chorus needs some justification. Her quotation from Pasolini on p. 153 is apposite, and very relevant to the earlier enfant terrible of drama, Euripides. The discussion of modern adaptations of Euripides' Medea is excellent with its emphasis on the dangers of colonisation for the colonised. In the final essay, ‘Black Medeas’, B. Van Zyl Smit produces a survey of modern Medea plays, both close and distant adaptations of Euripides' original. This will be of particular interest to students of theatre history as it demonstrates the wide range of ethical and political and religious issues that an ancient drama can be adapted to illuminate and make accessible. A pity there was no mention of Heine Müller's Medeamaterial given its postcolonial and ecological concerns.
The collection covers a huge amount of ground with only a little overlap of material and where that occurs it is refreshing to find conflicting views among the experts. This should in turn encourage students to think for themselves in their quest for the meanings of this complex and alien play.
Then there is S.'s translation which was by all accounts successfully performed by his own company, the Actors of Dionysus. I have to declare a personal interest here as one who has translated and directed almost 30 ancient plays in my career at Canterbury. All my translations have been into verse with free iambics and trochees for dialogue and free ranging verse for the lyrics sometimes associated with the ancient metres where appropriate. For example I made use of bacchiacs in my translation of Euripides' Bacchae. It seems to me somehow to do an injustice to the ancient play and poet when the words are translated into prose, however accurate and fluent that prose may be. The encasement of powerful emotions within a disciplined metrical setting produces an aesthetic tension which cannot be reproduced in prose. Having said that, S.'s prose version does read well as prose and is clear in meaning, if a little overloaded with otiose exclamation marks, but it lacks the dynamism of Euripides' rhetoric and the musicality of his lyric passages.
S.'s volume will be valuable in introducing the mysteries and intricacies of Euripides' Medea to students, and will provide a valuable and good value guide and aid to hard pressed teachers and lecturers, despite my feelings about prose translations and a rather dull collection of poorly presented illustrations.
