Medea : Methuen Student Edition With Commentary & Notes

The most controversial of the Greek tragedians, Euripedes is also the most modern in his sympathies, a dramatist who handles the complex emotions of his characters with extraordinary depth and insight.

Euripedes’s play is based on the myth of Jason and Medea, but gives it a decidedly feminist slant. Many critics have read the play as the first example of feminist theatre, seeing Medea as a feminist heroine. Others have argued that Euripedes is showing us how a woman shouldn’t behave. All the action of the play takes place in Corinth, and Jason has left Medea in order to marry King Creon’s daughter Glauce, despite the sacrifices that Medea originally made to marry Jason and her protection of him henceforth. Medea plots to murder Glauce and her father by sending them poisoned golden robes which they won’t be able to resist wearing. After she receives the news that Glauce has been poisoned and her father through trying to save her, Medea then decides to murder her children (offstage) to hurt Jason. She is seen at the end in the skies in a chariot, emphasizing her successful revenge. Both a fierce and sympathetic portrayal, the character of Medea is an example of a person’s desire for revenge and justice as a result of being personally wronged.

Translated by J.Michael Walton.

Euripides was born near Athens between 485 and 480 BC and grew up
during the years of Athenian recovery after the Persian Wars. His first
play was presented in 455 BC and he wrote some hundred altogether. His
later plays are marked by a sense of disillusion at the futility of
human aspiration which amounts on occasion to a philosophy of
absurdism. A year or two before his death he left Athens to live at the
court of the king of Macedon, dying there in 406 BC. Nineteen of his
plays survive, including Hippolytos, The Bacchae, Iphigeneia at Aulis,
Hecuba, Medea, and The Trojan Women.