Hippolytus - Euripides

Euripides entered his play Hippolytus into the drama competition of 428 B.C. and won first prize; since then the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra has gone through many reiterations by many playwrights including Sophocles, Seneca, Racine, O'Neill in his Desire under the Elms and Jeffers in his Cawdor.

The story is as follows: Theseus, King of Athens has an illegitimate son by an Amazonian woman, named Hippolytus, who is sworn by his love for Artemis to a life of chastity. Some time later Theseus takes a Cretan wife named Phaedra, and it is not long before Phaedra, under the unfortunate spell of Aphrodite, is struck with Cupid's arrow and overcome with heartsickness over her unrequited love for Hippolytus. Although she recognizes the perfidy of this feeling of love, she is unable to continue living with the hopelessness of misplaced affection.

According to David Grene (1942) unlike other traditions, such as the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, where the woman figures only as a one-dimensional temptress, "Euripides has gone with great sympathy into the feelings of Phaedra, a helpless victim of her passions (Aphrodite) whose mind clings despite all its integrity. Hippolytus too has his ideals. His seraphic love for the unattainable Artemis displays at the same time his admiration for beauty and his dislike of sex. But the quarrel between sacred and profane love, represented by Artemis and Aphrodite, thwarts the good purpose of the human persons and wrecks both lives."

The play opens with a prologue by Aphrodite:

"I am called the Goddess Cypris: I am mighty among men and they honor me by many names...Such as worship my power in all humility, I exalt in honor. But those whose pride is stiff-necked against me I lay by the heels..."

Hippolytus would fall in the "stiff-necked" category. Not only does he reserve no honor for her, but he actually goes so far as to blaspheme her, counting her "vilest of the Gods in Heaven." Rather than love and romance etc. he would rather spend his days with Artemis, the Maiden Goddess, hunting and running through the green, "mortal and immortal in companionship." Many things about this particular relationship infuriates Aphrodite, so she make it her personal goal to destroy him. But not only destroy him, Aphrodite would like to have as much carnage as possible in the wake of Hippolytus' destruction, so she includes a few curses into the mix of her cocktail of misery.

First, Phaedra, the unsuspecting victim and step-mother will be stricken with the bitterness of love for her stepson. "The goads of love" will prick her cruelly and continuously until she kills herself. And second, Theseus, not believing his sons innocence will "slay the son with curses" before realizing they have all been hopelessly caught in the snare of an angry fouler.

As the prologue ends, Aphrodite spits her last bitter lines, the abhorrence dripping from every word:

"Look, here is the son of Theseus, Hippolytus! He has just left his hunting. I must go away. See the great crowd that throngs upon his heels and shouts praise of Artemis in hymns?! He does not know that the doors of death are open for him, that he is looking at his last sun."

Enter Hippolytus, singing platonic love songs to his best friend/goddess Artemis. "Maiden Goddess most beautiful of all the Heavenly Host that live in Olympus..." You can almost see Aphrodite becoming more and more apoplectic. Peppered throughout his ode to Artemis, Hippolytus is sure to include stanzas devoted to his chastity. His love for Artemis is pure and unsullied by the degrading physical act of love.

Scene II. We are introduced to Phaedra's misery as her nurse tries to comfort her with such uplifting tidbits like the misery and hopelessness of childbirth and the suspicious mercurial nature of love:

Nurse: "...The life of a man entire is misery: he finds no resting place, no haven from calamity. But something other dearer still than life the darkness hides and mist encompasses; we are proved luckless lovers of this thing that glitters in the underworld: no man can tell us of the stuff of it, expounding what is, and what is not: we know nothing of it. Idly we drift, on idle stories carried."

While Phaedra, in agony, her spirit crushed by the weight of her unfortunate love, her nurse again cautions: "Love must not touch the marrow of the soul. Our affections must be breakable chains that we can cast off or tighten them." But the chains of Cupid are less tensile than ordinary love and uneasily cast off.

Finally as Phaedra wastes away, ("the tides of love, at its full surge are not withstandable") the nurse concocts a terrible scheme, but the only one she hopes will save her mistress. She will go to Hippolytus and try to persuade him to carry out the only deed certain to save Phaedra's life. Hippolytus, as expected is offended and disgusted. He has promised not to reveal his stepmother's shameful secret, but that's the only compliance he makes and as he turns to leave the nurse grabs a hold of his robe, an interesting parallel to the Joseph story.

At last, Phaedra has no other option than to kill herself, but she takes the time to write a note for Theseus to find, accusing Hippolytus of raping her and setting in motion the avalanche that will lead to the consummation of Aphrodite's curse.

Naked Masks - Luigi Pirandello (Part 1: Liola)

According to Eric Bently (1952) Liola is a dream play. It takes place in an imagined vacuum, isolated from the horrors of a world war, presenting at the surface, a discussion about paternity; but between the lines is an ontological query into how and what we perceive as truth and the impact this has on our philosophy of life.

"Pirandello has dreamed himself away from the problems of Agrigento in 1916 it is back into the Agrigento of another day. The breath of happy paganism is felt in his play, which is the last Sicilian pastoral."(Bently, 1952) Pirandello's greatest creation is the character of Liola, a joyful, passionate, idealist and perhaps the only morally positive (ie being an agent rather than victim to fate) character Pirandello breathed life into.

To say Liola is a bit of a ladies man would be an understatement, it seems like he can't sashay into a room without impregnating all women in his path. He is a free spirit, whistling a tune wherever he goes, unshackled to societal demands or expectations. He pursues love, but has no interest in commitment and as the play opens, his three little sons, each from a different mother sit helping their grandmother shell almonds.

Ostensibly the play is about Tuzzu's  attempt to take revenge on Mita, who has been blessed with both a rich husband (Uncle Simone), and the gallant lover (Liola.) Tuzza of course is ignoring the constant abuse Mita must endure from Simon for her inability to produce an heir and overlooking the fact that while Mita might be enjoying the attentions from Liola that she wishes were hers, the only reason Liola is pursuing Mita is because she is practically speaking unavailable.

Tuzza's plan, now that she has become pregnant, is to claim that the father is Uncle Simone. Simone, so desperate for an heir will publicly acknowledge the child as his own and then Mita will be cast off leaving all the wealth, power and glamour for Tuzza alone. All goes according to plan and Tuzza, steeping in the bitterness of unrequited love eases her heartache with a little guile.

As Liola comes waltzing into the scene, a tune on his lips, a trails of maidens in his wake, he's asked if this is how he intends to find his queen, his flagrant disregard for conventional romance being overlooked. His response and the fulcrum on which the play hinges is:

"Who says I haven't found her already and she simply doesn't know why I laugh and sing this way? Pretending is a virtue. 'If you can't pretend, you can't be king.'"

Liola is the expert pretender. The only moment of transparency comes when he dutifully goes to Tuzza's mother to ask for her hand in marriage, knowing that yet another son is destined to be born and unaware of her sinister plot.

"...I can't live caged up, Aunt Crice, I'm a bird that must fly - here today, there tomorrow, in the sun, the water, the wind. I sing and am drunk - on song and sun - I hardly know which affects me more. Far all that, here I am: clipping my wings and have come to shut myself in a cage of my own making. I am asking for your daughter Tuzza's hand."

Tuzza refuses to have anything to do with him. What good is a nomadic idealist when she can have wealth and stability. Love is just a feeling destined to ruin all in its path.

After a few impassioned speeches between Liola and Tuzza's mother, Liola professing the enormity of his love for his young sons and assuring Tuzza's mother he will provide for Tuzza and her child, Tuzza's mother tells him that Tuzza doesn't want him, which Liola demands that Tuzza, herself proclaim, in the presence of Uncle Simone.

Liola says he wouldn't want to commit an outrage, but he also wouldn't like others to commit an outrage and make use of him, which is exactly what Tuzza has planned. She has successfully turned Simone against Mita, and now Mita has nowhere to turn, floating precariously on the flotsam of uncertainty.

Liola has a plan. Since he's given Tuzza a child destined to take over Simone's estate...why not give Mita one as well? At first outraged by this plan, Mita soon realizes that this is her only hope and after a short time she reclaims her place in her husbands house, pregnant with another mans child. Simone is only too happy to have an heir and despite the subterfuge, chooses to believe the child is his despite his record of impotence.

Act II ends with Uncle Simone muttering under his breath: "In the country when it is dark, a man is easily deceived!" Thinking he had seen someone creeping into the house (Liola) that Mita is staying at, but quickly reassuring himself that he was just seeing things. Again, belief is what you choose it to be. It is not a fundamental, universal fact, but rather, like Proteus, an amorphous, shape shifting water demon.

As the play comes to an end, one deceit piled high upon another, Simone has renounced Tuzza's child and happily accepts Mita's in its stead. While love between a man and a woman can be tempestuous and opaque, the love Liola has for his son is transparent and constant. Despite his many flaws, Pirandello presents Liola as an archetype for fatherhood.

Helen - Euripides

Unlike the widely accepted legend of Helen making her single-handedly responsible for the woe and misery of the Trojan War, Euripides presents us with Helen's own version of how things actually happened.

First Helen brings up the matter of her birth, one day her mother was courted unsuspectingly by a swan, and 9 months later a little demi-god is born in the form of Helen...

"...a legend tells how Zeus winged his way to my mothers Leda's breast, in the semblance of a bird, even a swan, and thus as he fled from an eagle's pursuit, achieved by guile his amorous purpose..."

Her beauty is unsurpassed and legendary. She is wed to Menelaus and all goes smoothly until three goddesses, Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena put together a beauty pageant and challenge Paris to decide which of them is the most beautiful. Aphrodite, says that if Paris will choose her, then he can have Helen as his bride; so of course Paris chooses Aphrodite as the most beautiful of all the goddesses, and leaving his sheep and the shores of Ida makes his way to Sparta to claim his prize.

"But Hera, indignant at not defeating the goddesses, brought to naught my marriage with Paris, and gave to Priam's princely son not Helen, but a phantom endowed with life, that she made in my image out of the breath of heaven..."

So that's basically Helen's excuse. While she sat by, a victim to this mercurial world, a phantom went in her place and caused 10 years of bloodshed, while Hermes caught her up in the "embracing air" and set her down far away, in the Egyptian house of Proteus. Proteus, being virtuous, respected her marriage to Menelaus, so she has remained faithful to him these past 17 years.

As the play opens, Proteus has died, leaving Theoclymenus in his stead. Theo, is a little less "respectful" of Helen's claim to a previous marriage and plans on marrying Helen as soon as possible. Helen, alone more than ever sees only a hopeless future. The world hates her and curses her for the countless lives lost, the countless mothers, wives and daughters grieving all because of her alleged harlotry.

"Woe is thee, unhappy Troy! Thou through deeds not done by thee art ruined, and hast suffered direst woe; for the gift that Aphrodite gave to me, hath caused a sea of blood to flow and many an eye to weep, with grief on grief and tear on tear."

After a brief encounter with the exiled Teucer who claims that Menelaus is dead, Helen ponders the most honorable way to kill herself. What to do. If only Menelaus were here, in Egypt, with her, instead of dead on the far from glorious field of battle.

Enter Menelaus. A little worse for wear. These past 17 years have not been kind to him and at present he looks like a shipwrecked beggar. After a few moments of confusion, they finally recognize each other and after the momentary joy of being reunited, Menelaus is quick to ask about her fidelity, which she assures him is intact. The next order of business is how to escape, when a wedding is impending and Theo has a particular distaste for Spartans...

The first scheme is a gruesome Romeo and Juliet type. If they can not escape...Menelaus will slaughter his wife, laying her body upon an alter and then climb up and kill himself as well. After a little consideration they come up with a better scheme where they both get to live.

They will tell Theo that Menelaus' body has been found. Helen the faithful wife, now widowed, must perform the customary Spartan burial, which will involve Theo giving them a ship, a crew to sail and basic provision to that Helen can take his body to its watery grave. If Theo complies, Helen will be the most respectful and dutiful future wife, and the wedding can take place the moment she returns. Theo, decides that a compliant wife is better than a sullen and brooding wife, so he approves their plan and they sail out to sea, and begin their journey home.

 "What mortal claims, by searching to the utmost limit, to have found out the nature of God, or of his opposite, or of that which comes between, seeing as he does this world of man tossed to and fro by waves of contradiction and strange vicissitudes?...That which gods pronounce have I found true."

A Hand Full of Dust - Evelyn Waugh

"I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust"

T.S. Eliot - The Wasteland


Reading this book was like watching a car wreck in slow motion, just when you think everything has hit rock bottom, the bottom drops out into an entirely new level of hell reserved for jaded cuckolds and their promiscuous counterparts.

Tony and Brenda Last have a modest estate in the country, a quiet repose that they share with their little boy John Andrew. Life is calm and predictable, until one day they have a guest, a Mr. John Beaver, and their life of solitude is forever changed.

Brenda is left to entertain Mr. Beaver, an uninteresting-non-entity of a man who still lives with his mother, has no income to speak of and is of little interest to anyone; whether it is the change of pace, or just having the taste of something different, Brenda, who is at first nonplussed, decides maybe there is something fascinating about this Mr. Beaver after all, and so begins a nose-dive into a midlife crisis.

Quickly she decides to take up economics as a pretext for staying in London, a flat is rented and she finds herself untethered from the chains of domesticity. Tony is left alone at the estate with their son, as Brenda's visits home become less and less frequent.  As a proper English gentlemen, Tony never doubts his wife's character and as her affair becomes more and more flagrant, he dutifully puts on his rose colored glasses.

Days turn into weeks, and while Brenda flits from one high society gathering to the next, with the vapid Mr. Beaver on her arm, life at the estate remains virtually unchanged, until their son, going out on his first fox hunt is kicked off his horse by an unruly mare and instantly killed. When Brenda hears the news her first response is "Thank God." The last bastion of domesticity has been surmounted and she is now free to pursue her quest of John Beaver's personality wholeheartedly. In her note to her husband, offering condolences for their loss, she simultaneously requests a divorce, saying she has been in love with Mr. Beaver and there is now no reason to pretend otherwise; although divorces can be unpleasant and unsightly, she promises for her part to end things as amicably as possible. Yet within a nano-second she is nonchalantly challenging Tony for an income he could never pay, as the victim of his fictitious infidelity.

Tony, compliant and gentlemanly as ever goes along with the plan. He hires a woman to go away with him to the sea side to build evidence of his alleged infidelities, but when Brenda's solicitors demand that he sell his estate to provide for his wife's income, he for once musters a bit of a spine and puts his foot down.  Quickly writing up a new will and setting his affairs in order he leaves for Brazil with a certain Dr. Messenger of somewhat reputable character.

Brenda, cut off from an income, becomes less and less of an interest for Mr. Beaver, if in fact she ever was; when his mother suggest they go to America, he quickly and without hesitation decides to join her, leaving Brenda alone, without income, family or society; she no longer has the means to afford the level of conspicuous consumption demanded.

As Tony's adventure begins well, slowly things begin to become dire. Stranded without guides, in search of an obscure city, with their rations quickly depleting; Tony becomes ill. Racked with fever, he is incapable of journeying on, and while the rations are quickly disappearing Dr. Messenger sets out to find help, only to disappear in the rapids.

Tony somehow manages to deliriously make his way through the jungle to a small village, where he is found and looked after by Mr. Todd, a kindly old man, who dabbles in herbal remedies. As Tony is nursed back to health, Mr. Todd's turpitude is quietly uncovered, and as he requests that Tony read a few chapters in Dickens, it is not long before Tony realizes he is a captive, destined to live out the rest of his days stranded somewhere in the middle of Brazil with Mr. Todd and Charles Dickens.