The Eumenides
bent on gender
focused on justice
international touchstone
Temple of Dionysius, birthplace of
Western drama
Aristotle, from The Poetics
“Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is
serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in
language embellished with each kind of artistic
ornament, the several kinds being found in
separate parts of the play; in the form of action,
not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and
fear, wherewith to accomplish its katharsis of such
emotions. . . . Every Tragedy, therefore, must have
six parts, which parts determine its quality—
namely, Plot, Characters, Diction, Thought,
Spectacle, Melody “
theater history
c. 625 choruses are produced, transferred to
Dionysius 25 years later
540-527: festival of the Greater Dionysia (Athens)
525 Aeschylus is born; his first dramatic competition
is when he is 25 or 26; he does not win one until
484 when he is almost 40.
The Oresteia: 458; he dies 2 years later, in 456 . To
get a sense of time here, Socrates dies in 399
Theaters: note basic structure
Tragedies: basic structure
Prologue: before chorus appears
Parados: chorus sings as it enters orchestra,
dances
First Episode…characters and chorus talk
First Stasimon…chorus dances & sings this,
puts events in larger framework
continues alternating these until
Exodus: chorus sings, words of wisdom
Ruins of Temple of Apollo, Delphi
Theatre and Temple at Delphi
The stage set-up
• Actors performed on three levels: in the orchestra, on
the stage, and on the roof of the skene. In the center
of the orchestra was the altar of Dionysus The skene
(literally, “tent” or “hut”) served as the dressing room
of the actors.
• The façade of the building, the proscenium, carried the
scenery of the play which usually represented the front
of a palace or a temple with three doorways, with
columns, pediments, and statues.
• There was no stage curtain. By mid-5th century B.C.,
painted scenery, attributed to Sophocles, was fully
established: painted draperies or boards attached to the
wall of the skene.
Part 1 of Eumenides
Scenery: temple of
Apollo at Delphi, with
central door of stage
as main entrance,
surrounded by statues
of gods
Time: Orestes has just
arrived from Argos,
pursued by the Furies
(Erinyes). Apollo
stands with him
Staging of Eumenides, 2
• Part 2: Temple of Pallas Athene on the
Areopagus (Mars’ Hill;
pre-classical: Council
of elders; classical: chief
homicide court; temple of
Furies: a sanctuary)
Staging of Agamemnon
• In the Agamemnon, the skene is dressed to look like
the Palace at Argos. Who enters the performance
area through the double doors of the skene?
Clytemnestra. Who is in charge? Clytemnestra.
• Agamemnon, the King, arrives home after the war,
but enters directly into the orchestra (via the
parodos) in his chariot and joins the multitude
outside the royal house, like any other citizen of the
city (represented by the chorus, already in that
space) - a clear signal that he doesn’t hold the upper
hand in his own house.
Agamemnon, 2
• Agamemnon eventually does pass through the doors
of the skene - and the next time we see him, he is
being wheeled out through those doors again as a
corpse. After the murders of Cassandra &
Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus make a
final appearance, passing through the double doors of
the skene one more time to appear before the people of
Argos as their King and Queen. This scene is replayed
in reverse in The Libation Bearers
• people.hsc.edu/drjclassics/lectures/theater/ancient_greek_t
heater.shtm
In costume
Political goals of Eumenides
• Assumed by most classical scholars of 19th
and early 20th century to be an exaltation of
Athens and the Athenian demos (see i.e.
http://www.stoa.org/projects/demos/home)
• The play gives sanctuary to the Furies, who
become the Eumenides: older, vengeful
justice is tempered by mercy, which is now
built into the Athenian system of justice
Political and moral choices
• One moral theme of the trilogy is seen in the
opening chorus with their omen, the two eagles
who kill the pregnant hare: they echo the
sacrifice of innocent youth by power
• Tracing the imagery of the play shows the rise
and the fall of light, from the watchtowers in A
to the cloaks in E
• Gender becomes a major issue in death and
choices
Hubris – actions
that shame victim
and perpetrator
through pride and
arrogance
Hamartia – the
tragic flaw
Modern interpretations
“for contemporary artists…[classical] texts
are certainly neither dead nor viewed as the
property of dead white males….Despite
debate over the Western canon in US
universities, Rita Dove…. poet laureate”
published an adaptation of Oedipus Rex set
in pre-civil-war South. An Alaskan play
included the shaman Tiresias [Foley 1999]
Foley: TransAmPhilAssn 129:1-12
• Eastern theater traditions, with mask, dance,
ritual and poetry, “bring to life those aspects
of ancient drama that are alien to the
tradition of Western 19th c realism” (Foley 2)
--because Greek tragedy has imaginary past,
amenable to change of venue, multiracial
casting, political without being topical:
often used to stage political protest
World War II and Sartre’s The Flies
• The French Existentialist philosopher put on
this play in 1943; since many feel the play
was in reference to the French Occupation,
it is often so staged. In this interpretation,
Orestes must create the meaning of his own
existence and repudiates the
injustice of Zeus; he takes on the
guilt of his people, and leaves
Molora: adapting Greek tragedy for
South African stage
by Jael Farber, 2004: uses
the Oresteia as a
metaphor for the brutal
horrors of Apartheid, to
break the cycle of
violence
http://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=OaLnLckySio
Wole Soyinka’s chorus of village
women
• From Death and
the King’s
horseman
• Nobel Prize
winner, play
wins plaudits:
“antique tragedy
with the cultic
sacrificial death
as theme”
Other recent versions
Japanese Orestes: has been played 3 times in the last decade
by Tatsuya Fujiwaru, who expands the relationship of O
with Electra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPN132VfVw
An all-male version, British:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqFgCGuBn4A&featur
e=PlayList&p=718F4214E345891D&index=8
Chinese opera, experimental:
http://hidvl.nyu.edu/video/NYUb13611625.html
SIMS trilogy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oMF7QRehKE
The force that is Electra
Eugene O’Neill’s play cycle premiered in 1931;
currently playing off-Broadway. It is reset as a
family of a Northern General in the American
Civil War. It includes murder,
adultery, incest, revenge and the NY
Times hates this revival.
O’Neill’s cycle has also been a movie,
a miniseries and an opera.
Jill Scott’s Electra after Freud
Electra’s choices re-evaluated
Chooses anger, revenge over sorrow
Orchestrates matricide: violent, aggressive
Causes us to re-evaluate Freud and the focus
on the Oedipal model
Gives rise to multiple new references and
metaphors: i.e. Plath about “Daddy”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHjctqSB
wM
Changing roles of men and women
• Rise of powerful female protagonists in late
19th and early 20th C plays, books – see
Ibsen and others.
• New debates on gender and subjectivity
• Just as with the whole Oresteia, just as with
the focus on Orestes, Electra has been
appropriated as metaphor for making sense
of trauma
Toni Morrison’s Jazz
Even more than Beloved, Jazz may be the
work in which Morrison most draws on the
Greeks to reintepret barbarism, love, death
and sacrifice. Carolyn Jones (1997; 31) says
Morrison asks in Jazz the questions of
Aeschylus: how to break the cycle, how to
escape retribution, victimhood, how to
claim a recovered, rememoried self
changes
A myth becomes a
Play
Becomes a metaphor
Becomes another work
Of art
Becomes a
Myth
becomes a