Medea

Guide Note:

The play Medea begins with Jason abandoning his wife Medea and daughters in order to marry Creon's daughter Glauce.

Creon plans to have Medea sent into exile, but she convinces him to delay for one day. Medea then starts planning to have Jason, Glauce, and Creon killed. She doesn't believe Jason's claims that he married Glauce because she was a princess and that Medea can be his mistress.

Aegeus arrives telling her about the prophecy of Theseus. He agrees to her bargain that Aegeus will protect her if she will help his wife conceive. She then pretends to sympathize with Jason and gives Glauce a golden robe which has been secretly poisoned. She kills her children to punish Jason. She takes the children's bodies and leaves Athens in Helio's chariot enjoying Jason's pain.

Fast Facts:

1. First produced in 431 B.C.
2. Author: Euripides
3. Tragic play
4. Set in Corinth
5. Won third place at the Festival of Dionysis
6. The indecisive chorus broke with tradition
7. Includes irreverence towards the gods
8. Jean Anouilh's adapted it as Medee
9. Basis for Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Medea
10. Parodied by Ben Bagley in the musical Medea in Disneyland
11. Major theme is revenge
12. Some scholars consider it one of the first feminist works
13. Chorus less important than in most Greek plays

Important Quotations:

1. Great people's tempers are terrible, always having their own way, seldom checked, dangerous they shift from mood to mood. How much better to have been accustomed to live on equal terms with one's neighbors. I would like to be safe and grow old in a humble way. What is moderate sounds best.
2. I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.
3. Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.