On Teaching Medea
ON TEACHING EURIPIDES’ MEDEA
K.O. Chong-Gossard
Euripides’ Medea remains one of the most often performed Greek tragedies today, and one of the favourite tragedies for secondary school students to read in Classics or English courses.
Since there is a tremendous amount of scholarship already published on this play of plays, this article is intended to provide a quick reminder of the background to the play, a discussion of the character of the chorus and the character of Medea, and thus a variety of topics which students can ‘think about’ or indeed write essays about. It also includes some previously unpublished comments by an actress and a director of an international production of Medea from 2002.1
1 The original production
We know that Euripides’ Medea was first produced in March of 431 BCE at the City Dionysia festival in Athens. How do we know this? In the medieval manuscripts of the Medea, the play is preceded by a hypothesis or ‘summary’ attributed to Aristophanes the Grammarian
(also known as Aristophanes of Byzantium, the Alexandrian scholar of the 3rd to 2nd century
BCE), who writes that the play was produced ‘in the archonship of Pythodoros, in the first year of the 87th Olympiad’, which is 431 BCE. Later in this same year, war broke out between Athens and Sparta, inaugurating the Peloponnesian War.
At the City Dionysia it was customary for three tragic playwrights to compete against each other, and each playwright would produce four plays—three tragedies, and a satyr-play (a kind of burlesque with a chorus of satyrs). According to Aristophanes the Grammarian’s hypothesis, in 431 BCE the three competitors were Euphorion (the son of the deceased playwright Aischylos), Sophokles (who was about 65 years old at the time), and Euripides (who was just about age 50). We know that Euphorion was awarded first prize, Sophokles second place, and Euripides third and last.2
Aristophanes the Grammarian’s hypothesis also states that Euripides
K.O. Chong-Gossard
Euripides’ Medea remains one of the most often performed Greek tragedies today, and one of the favourite tragedies for secondary school students to read in Classics or English courses.
Since there is a tremendous amount of scholarship already published on this play of plays, this article is intended to provide a quick reminder of the background to the play, a discussion of the character of the chorus and the character of Medea, and thus a variety of topics which students can ‘think about’ or indeed write essays about. It also includes some previously unpublished comments by an actress and a director of an international production of Medea from 2002.1
1 The original production
We know that Euripides’ Medea was first produced in March of 431 BCE at the City Dionysia festival in Athens. How do we know this? In the medieval manuscripts of the Medea, the play is preceded by a hypothesis or ‘summary’ attributed to Aristophanes the Grammarian
(also known as Aristophanes of Byzantium, the Alexandrian scholar of the 3rd to 2nd century
BCE), who writes that the play was produced ‘in the archonship of Pythodoros, in the first year of the 87th Olympiad’, which is 431 BCE. Later in this same year, war broke out between Athens and Sparta, inaugurating the Peloponnesian War.
At the City Dionysia it was customary for three tragic playwrights to compete against each other, and each playwright would produce four plays—three tragedies, and a satyr-play (a kind of burlesque with a chorus of satyrs). According to Aristophanes the Grammarian’s hypothesis, in 431 BCE the three competitors were Euphorion (the son of the deceased playwright Aischylos), Sophokles (who was about 65 years old at the time), and Euripides (who was just about age 50). We know that Euphorion was awarded first prize, Sophokles second place, and Euripides third and last.2
Aristophanes the Grammarian’s hypothesis also states that Euripides