Athaliah - Racine

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"Eight years ago, an impious foreign Queen (Athaliah was half Phoenician through her mother Jezebel), usurped King David's scepter and his rights, wallowed unpunished in our princes' blood - foul murderer of the offspring of her son - and now 'gainst God raises her wicked arm."

As the play begins, the high priest Jehoiada and one of the officers of the king, Abner, discuss the strange foreboding they feel. For eight years Jehoiada has been hiding the last remnant of the line of David, a small boy named Joash who has been raised along with Jehoiada's son Zachariah, from their vicious and calculating Queen Athaliah.

Athaliah, through Machiavellian cunning has issued in an unprecedented reign of peace in Jerusalem. "No longer does the Jordan see its banks by nomad Arabs or proud Philistines laid waste..." She is the unchallenged sovereign of Judea, an expert stateswoman, choosing to remove any contesting for her throne by murdering her grandchildren in an attempt to wipe out the royal race of David.

Despite her uncontested authority, as the play begins, Athaliah, a follower of Baal and previously unmoved by remorse for her actions, is ruminating on a strange and ominous dream in which her mother Jezebel cautions her that the Jewish god is not to be taken lightly. 

"Tremble,' she said, 'who followed in my steps. The cruel Jewish God over you too prevails. You'll fall into his dreaded arms, my daughter."

As Athaliah, in her dream, reaches out to embrace her mother, she is left clutching the mangled flesh and bones that have been torn apart by ravenous dogs. As she hurries to make her offerings to Baal she sees a child clad in the clothes of a Hebrew priest.  Caught in his deadly stare she abruptly wakes, only to relive the dream again and again.  This does not bode well. 

Athaliah decides she might try to appease this Hebrew God, and as she makes her way into the temple, she sees none other than the child from her nightmare, depicted just as she dreamed in a white robe and standing beside the high priests. After she recovers from her shock, and the boy has been spirited away, she calls her advisers together to see what this waking nightmare portends. 

Abner and Mattan, an apostate high priest of Baal, have differing opinions regarding how to proceed. Abner, assures Athaliah that she has no reason to be alarmed, would she really demand another death based purely on a foreboding? Mattan, suspicious of where Abner's loyalties lie, waits for Abner to leave and then offers his opinion:

"Now I can speak out at last. And now I can reveal the full, unvarnished truth. Some budding monster in this temple lurks. Ah! Queen, wait not until this storm cloud bursts..." 

Athaliah decides to have the child brought to her and see if he can shed any light on her suspicions himself. But as she prods Joash with questions about his paternity an enemy unanticipated storms the buttresses of her heart: pity.  She asks what he's been doing living in the temple all these years, and in answer Joash begins to recite the law: 

"God wishes to be loved. Blasphemy of His name He will avenge. He is father to the fatherless, withstands the proud, and smites the murderer." 

Athaliah is not deterred by their verbal sparring, and defends herself and her infamous deeds:

"Yes, my just fury - I am proud of it - Avenged my parents on my progeny.
 I saw my father and brother slain, down from the palace heights my mother hurled, and in one day slaughtered at one fell blow (A sight of horror) four score sons of kings. 
And why? Some obscure prophets to avenge, whose wild and lawless ravings she had curbed.
And I, unfeeling daughter, craven queen, slave of a coward's fitful pity, I, should I not have returned to this blind rage, at least murder for murder, crime for crime, and treat all your David's issue, even as you did Ahab's poor, ill-starred remains? 
Where would I be, had I not steeled myself and stifled my maternal tenderness; and if my hand shedding my own son's blood, had not put down your plots by one bold stroke?
And thus, in short, your God, implacable, between our houses broke all amity.
Yes, I loathe David's line; and that king's sons, though of my blood, are yet no kin of mine." 

Athaliah, up until this point has cast aside the roles and expectations of her gender, marching arrogantly, "with head erect" into the porch in the temple reserved only for men/priests. No rules apply to her and she has disdained this God of the Hebrews and his endless laws and restrictions. But as she takes leave of this strange, well read little boy, her reckless pride has been shattered. 

Athaliah's adviser, Mattan, a weaselly, conniving serpent of a man, is shocked by the slow change that has begun to creep over his Queen. She has quite obviously not been herself for the last couple days; "She is no more that bold, clear-sighted Queen, towering above her timorous woman's sex, who fell upon her startled enemies and never let a crucial moment pass..." While she hems and haws about what the best approach is, the Levites have begun to assemble an army in the temple, preparing and awaiting an attack.  

Jehoiada decides that now is the time for Joash's identity to be revealed and for him to be crowned King. Joash seems to take the revelation of his paternity in stride and quickly assures Jehoiada that he will do his best to fear the Lord, keep Him ever before his eyes, His precepts, judgments and laws and refrain from making his brothers sweat beneath a heavy burden. 

Athaliah is persuaded to come into the temple alone to see the treasure that Jehoiada has kept hidden all these years, when she realizes that the treasure is the boy, Joash, that her dreams foretold, she recognizes her defeat and raises her eyes to see herself surrounded by the Levites.

A Levite: "The sword has purged the horror of her life. Jerusalem, that long had borne her rage, at last delivered from her odious yoke, rejoices as she lies steeped in her blood.

Jehoiada: "From the grim end, the sanction of her crimes, learn and do not forget, King of the Jews, Kings have a judge in heaven, virtue a shield, and there's a father to the fatherless.

Racine ends the play with an admonition for those in power to follow God's ways, though they are unlikely to do so.  As we know, despite Joash's ambitions to live uprightly, thirty years later after abandoning himself to flatterers will defile himself by the murder of Zachariah, the son and successor of the high priest. In Racine's view there are no just men, only those whom God chooses to justify. All heroes are sinners, deeply involved in the lusts of the flesh and destined to struggle against corruption. Ultimately the protagonist of this play is God. His name has been blasphemed and his people have been destroyed by Athaliah and he will exact his vengeance. And while the throne and power can be poison, a just character will struggle against their demons, like Phaedra, yet will never give in to their temptations.

Phaedra - Racine

Voltaire considered Racine's Phaedra a  "masterpiece of the human mind"...I was a little skeptical at first of such high praise considering this play is just a revision of the Greek tragedies written by Seneca and Euripides (Hippolytus.) How could a revision be better than the original? But from the first moments, the first sentences, there was a stark and penetrating difference.

Euripides opens his play with a monologue given by Venus describing her annoyance with Hippolytus at his choosing a life of chastity and devotion to Artemis. She is resolved to destroy him and those closest to him will get swept up in the maelstrom of her rage. Next comes Hippolytus swooning over his love for Artemis and almost vindicating Venus' wrath. Euripides creates caricatures of his subjects, they are one dimensional beings, each wrestling with the concept of love and agency in a world dictated by those in another realm. When we finally meet Phaedra she is overcome by the poison of love, shot by the deadly and forever penetrating arrow of Cupid and contemplates the best way to kill herself.

Racine's play opens with Hippolytus, presuming his father is dead, deciding to make his way home despite being banished by his father's wife, his step-mother Phaedra.

Hippolytus: It is resolved, Theramenes. I go. I will depart from Troezen's pleasant land. Torn by uncertainty about the King, I am ashamed of standing idly by. For over half a year I have not heard of my dear father Theseus' destiny nor even by what far sky he is concealed. (1-7)

As he discusses his plans with Theramenes, we learn that although he has previously disdained love and has chosen a life of austere chastity...he has without reason or inclination, found himself overcome by Aricia, the daughter of his father's mortal enemy. Theseus, although allowing her to live, has forbade her to ever marry, decreeing that her brother's line will end with her, and condemning her to a life of chastity. Hippolytus is trapped between one woman who seems to hate him and another whom he must learn to hate in turn. Cautiously, Theramenes questions Hippolytus' motive for his sudden desire to leave the Troezan plains:

Theramenes: My lord, may I explain your sudden flight? Are you no more the man you once were, relentless foe of all the laws of love and of a yoke Theseus himself has borne? Will Venus whom you haughtily disdained vindicate Theseus after all these years by forcing you to worship with the throng of ordinary mortals at her shrine? Are you in love? (57-65)

Hippolytus is somewhat shocked by how bluntly Theramenes has distilled his emotions into one singular cause. Love. Must he disavow the feeling of a proud contemptuous heart? Must he no longer worship at the shrine of Artemis, but now like all men before him be compulsorily felled by Venus and her minion Cupid? As much as Hippolytus respects his father for the legendary warrior that he is, he also has a reputation as an unashamed womanizer, in fact even the hasty elopement with Phaedra left a weeping jilted Ariadne in their wake.

Hippolytus: And am I to be vanquished in my turn? And can the gods have humbled me so far? In base defeat the more despicable since the countless exploits plead of his behalf, Whereas no monsters overcome by me have given me the right to err like him. And, even if I were fated to succumb, should I have chosen to love Aricia? (95-103)

Hippolytus, unable to deny that he loves Aricia, wonders about the motivation behind these feelings. Is he defying his harsh and endlessly controlling father? Is this just a foolish passion launched by his youth? Theramenes, consolingly tells Hippolytus that even Hercules was subdued by Venus, and if it wasn't for Antiope (his mother) giving in to her love for Theseus, Hippolytus wouldn't exist...but no matter how diligently one seeks to ascertain the rationale behind matters of the heart, Hippolytus is decidedly in love.

Hippolytus decides the only course of action is to seek out his father. If he is truly dead, the bans against Aricia will be recanted and if he still lives...perhaps he can persuade his father, the romantic at heart, of his feelings for this hapless princess.

As Hippolyus makes his way to his step-mother's palace he is met by her nurse Oenone who cautions that Phaedra is almost at her "destined end." Struck with an indecipherable malady, begging for death, "eternal discord reigning in her mind." Hippolytus knows that he has the propensity to bring out the worst in his step-mother so he hastily leaves we are introduced to the heroine of the play.

Phaedra is racked with guilt, and palpable angst. Caught in a never ending battle and the perpetual uncertainty of what the future holds. She is incredibly self aware. If only she had never laid eyes on Hippolytus, but alas, almost from the moment of her marriage as her husband-to-be led her from the shores of Crete, she had seen Hippolytus and been forever cursed,

Although she had Hippolytus banished almost immediately and is innocent of any premeditated sin, in her heart she has been guilty of the gravest of sins since the moment she saw him and now wears the mantle of an incestuous adulterer; whether or not her sins become substantiated is almost irrelevant. She has harbored an ill favored love in her heart and of that she is guilty and deserving of death. But unlike the Phaedra of Euripides who immediately begins deciding which form of suicide would be the most advantageous, the heroine of Racine is much more pragmatic. What will happen to her children if she is gone? Their claim to the throne without Theseus to vouch for them becomes tenuous. Already Aricia, Hippolytus and perhaps many others stand in line to present their due claim...so she can not in good conscience leave her children motherless.

Instead she bemoans the destruction Venus has left in her wake, on a whim toying with people's hearts and destroying their lives.

Phaedra: O hate of Venus! Anger laden doom! Into what dark abyss love hurled my mother!"

Pasiphae, Phaedra's mother, overcome with a monstrous passion for a bull, subsequently gave birth to the Minotaur, a half man half bull monster. Her sister Ariadne led Theseus through the Minotaur's labyrinth only to then be deserted on a barren shore while Theseus eloped with Phaedra. And now this. This inexplicable, festering malady of love...

After Pheadra finishes speaking, her nurse, echoing Thermamenes, asks her lady "Are you in love?" (258)

Phaedra, choking on her words, quietly cries: "Love's furies rage in me..."

Unfortunately, Hippoluytus is everything is father is not. Unerringly chaste to his father's blatant and endless amorous pursuits. Despite her erecting temples and shrines to Venus in the hopes her love will be palliated, her demonstrances have gone unnoticed and unacknowledged. Yet even while she prayed and invoked the goddess' name...she was really thinking of him. She has deified him and he in turn has become inescapable.   

Phaedra: Venus in all her might is on her prey. I have a fitting horror for my crime; I hate this passion and I loathe my life. (305-308)  \

And then in Act 1- Scene 4 we learn that Theseus is dead! Verifiably so, (which in the tradition of Greek tragedy means they are actually still alive.) "In some amorous escapade the waters closed over his faithless head" (382) and now everything has changed. Oenone, rejoicing, tells her mistress "the king is dead and you must take his place!" (342) "Live then no longer tortured by reproach, your love becomes like any other love!" (350) Now that Theseus is dead, Phaedra's love for Hippolytus is slightly less abhorrent...and Oenone persuades Phaedra to lay her cards on the table. What's the worst that can happen? Everyone knows Hippolytus spurns love of any kind. So Phaedra will tell him of her love and he will give her the "it's not you it's me" speech... and hopefully she will be able to purge the knotty tendrils of love from her heart. 

Act 2- Scene 2: Hippotyus learning of his fathers death pardons Aricia leaving her free. (375) Since Hippolytus' mother was an Amazon, his claim to the throne is annulled; either his stepbrother becomes king or Aricia is returned the scepter given to her ancestors. (494)  Theseus defended and enlarged the bounds of Athens, which proclaimed him king and left Aricia's brothers in oblivion. (500) Hippolytus concocts a plan that will give him reign of Troezan, Crete will go to his step-brother and Aricia will rightfully regain rule over Attica. Now that the pragmatics are out of the way, let the wooing begin! Hippolytus admits to Aricia that he's a novice in the matters of love and although he has spent his life in proud rebellion of love, mocking those captive sufferers...he has now found himself somewhat helplessly in love. (530)  Aricia, like any warm blooded woman approached by the paramount eligible bachelor would, accepts Hippolytus' offer of love and generous gifts (i.e. re-installing her claim to the Attican throne) and Hippolytus departs for his intercession with the queen. 

But things don't go according to plan. As Hippolytus attempts to convince Phaedra to divvy up her sons estate, and Pheadra reveals her soul crushing love (much to Hippolytus' disgust and abhorrence, which the women expected considering his renowned profession of celibacy and take in stride...) when lo and behold, Theseus turns up not dead...and now that the cats out of the bag, his return is met with a somber attitude rather than celebratory.  Phaedra realizing Hippolytus has left his sword during their confrontation, realizes this could prove efficacious, and Oenone fabricates a lie on her behalf; Hippolytus has engaged in amorous pursuits of his own while Theseus was away...with his step-mother. Despite the lacking veracity of this story, Theseus is apoplectic, and immediately calls down a curse from Neptune dooming Hippolytus to an imminent and painful death. 

Theseus: Go seek out friends who in their viciousness applaud adultery and incest. These villains and ingrates, lawless, honourless, will shelter evildoers such as you. (1145-1148)

Phaedra, about to defend Hippolytus, listens to an enraged Theseus tell of his sons abhorrence, and to make matters worse, he says, Hippolytus has gone and fallen in love with the one person in the world I have sworn to a bitter life of solitude and chastity, that dang Aricia. Now it is Phaedra's turn to be apoplectic. So Hippolytus does love women. Just not her. Sickened with anger and unrequited love she contemplates what to do.

Phaedra: Alas, my sad heart never enjoyed the fruits of crimes whose dark shame follows me. Dogged by misfortune to my dying breath, I end upon the rack a life of pain.

Oenone: Ah, Queen! Dismiss these unbecoming fears, and of your error take a different view. You are in love. We cannot change our fate. (1291-1298)

Hippolytus secretly decides to meet Aricia at a holy shrine where they will pledge themselves to each other and then go into banishment together, but he never arrives to the rendezvous point. His horses, which he has raised from colts, no longer listen to his voice and Neptune calls forth a monster from the sea to terrify them. They, terrified, overturn the chariot and drag Hippolytus, in a frenzy toward the shrine. Aricia arrives and finds her dismembered lover, while she begs the gods to take her life, her nurse Ismene, summons her back to life, a life of pain and heartbreak. 

At this point, Oenone has killed herself, being a sort of scapegoat for Phaedra's rage. While Phaedra has had to live through every second of her life, waging a secret war, it wasn't until Oenone defamed Hippolytus that things really came to a head. Now sickened with life and no longer able to face the hideousness of what she has become, Phaedra ingests a poison that will give her just enough time to tell Theseus how wrong he was. As the poison sinks deeper into her veins, Theseus, disgusted leaves her alone to die and he rushes off to embrace his cherished son's remains and "expiate my mad atrocious wish, rending him the honors he deserves and to appease the anger of his shade, let his beloved, despite her brother's crime. be as a daughter to me from this day" (1650-1654)

In Euripides version, Artemis at the end, walks through the carnage of dead bodies and tells Theseus that although his son was innocent all along, the gods don't interfere with each other's predilections. Racine's version is so much sadder. Having Phaedra be the one to admit to Theseus that everything was a huge misunderstanding hinging on her much hoped for but ultimately imagined infidelity, to take responsibility for her guilt, not sheltering behind the gods that are responsible for her infatuation, only to be then left to die, abandoned and alone, surrounded by only her guilt and shame. 

While Seneca treats Phaedra as a wanton woman, and Euripides casts her as the incidental victim of the gods' whims, Racine wrestles with predestination. How much agency are mortals truly granted? And while Phaedra is fated to suffer an endless temptation, she is ultimately virtuous and expresses her free will in engaging her temptation and battling with it to the death. 

The Girl from Samos - Menander

The extravagant, phantasmagorical comedy of Aristophanes and the climate of the early 400's BC has slowly been replaced by the narrowed scope and limited range of domestic issues in the comedy of Menander. "Athens had first of all been defeated by Sparta, and then taken over by Macedon. Alexander the Great died just about the time Menander started writing, and struggles between and with the subsequent succors of Alexander dominated Athenian politics most of the playwrights life." (Norma Miller, 1987)

Athens, no longer mistress of her own city, was covered by a cloud of political uncertainty and domestic turmoil. Politics were no longer a suitable subject for comedy and to try to make them such could be perilous for the writer. So comedy made a transition from the fantastic and improbable, such as a band of marauding women successfully taking over the government and creating a liberated utopia in the Assemblywomen, to the more realistic and complex comedy of The Girl from Samos, where the heroes are no longer gods and demi-gods or taken from the echelons of society, but instead the heroes are on the fringes of a citizen society grappling with issues like the substance of the family unit and legitimacy. 

In an era steeped in hardship, Menander has been accused of escapism. Providing a safe heaven in the midst of the worlds he created for the middle class, but arguably the issues that faced the middle class were now mercurial and intimate and citizens were more concerned with the intricacies of life than of the sovereign, democratic city-state of fifth century Athens.

The Girl from Samos opens with Moschion, the adopted son of Demeas, bringing the audience up to speed on his life. He has always been taken care of by his father, and has had all that he ever wanted. Thanks to his father, he has become a civilized human being and in return for his father's kindness has behaved himself. All except for one tiny incident...

"I'll tell you about us at one go, I've nothing else to do -  then Father fell for a girl from Samos. Well, it could have happened to anyone. He tried to keep it quiet, being a bit embarrassed. But I found out, for all precautions, and I reckoned that if he didn't establish himself as the girl's protector, he'd have trouble with younger rivals for her favors..." 

And so the fulcrum on which the play rests. Demeas has fallen in love with a younger woman and despite himself, there will always be in the back of his mind the suspicions of an old lover envying the young. 

Moschion, for his part, is in love with their neighbor's daughter Plangon. And when both fathers leave for a quick business trip, the girl from Samos, Chrysis, and Plangon both realize they are pregnant. Perhaps Demeas is aware of Chrysis' pregnancy, but twenty or so lines are missing leaving a little opacity for the reader. 

Before the fathers return from their trip, Chrysis has her baby and the infant unfortunately dies. When Plangon gives birth to her child, Moschion and Plangon agree it will be less incriminating if they give their child to Chrysis. They would like to obtain consent to marry and believe a child out of wedlock may not work in their favor. Upon the return of the fathers Demeas confronts Chrysis while Moschion stands in her defence: 

Demeas: I thought I had a mistress, but it seems I have acquired a wife.

Moschion: A wife? What do you mean? I don't understand.

Demeas: I seem to have become - quite without my knowledge and consent - the father of a son. Well she can take him and get out of the house - to the Devil, for all I care.

Moschion: Oh, no!

Demeas: Why not? Do you expect me to bring up a bastard in my house, to humor someone else? That's not my line at all.

Moschion: For Heaven's sake! What's legitimacy or illegitimacy? We're all human aren't we?

Demeas: You must be joking.

Moschion: By God I'm not, I'm perfectly serious. I don't think birth means anything. If you look at the thing properly, a good man's legitimate, a bad man's both a bastard and a slave.

Moschion eventually persuades his father to keep the child, and moves on to the matter of his marriage. He would like to marry Plangon as soon as possible, to which both fathers agree. As the wedding preparations are in full force, Demeas overhears a servant mention that Moschion is the poor baby's father, and at once Demeas suspects his son of the worst treachery.

The rest of the play is spent trying to untangle the web of errors. While it is true the baby is Moschion's, like his outraged father accuses...the mother is Plangon, not Chrysis. Demeas runs about ranting about the trollop that like Helen has started a war, albeit a small one. When he comes upon Chrysis and the baby he screams at her to get out, she bewildered asks where she should go only to have Demeas shout "to hell! this minute!" Chrysis, without thought to defend herself, leaves and is momentarily housed at the neighbors', until the neighbors witness Plangon nursing her baby and eventually come to the realization that Chrysis is innocent in this particular affair.

Moschion, offended that his father thought the worst of him, decides to play a little prank; He will dress up as if leaving for battle and make his father apologize and beg for forgiveness. His father quickly sees through his play acting to his real motive and quickly admonishes him for trying to publicly humiliate him. While Demeas was in the wrong, he was privately so and that fundamentally is the moral of the play. No matter what happens behind closed doors, it is the family's job, despite the sometimes vague interpretation of family, to keep private matters private.

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.