Euripides: Hecuba

by Helene P. Foley

Chosen as one of the ten canonical plays by Euripides during the Hellenistic period in Greece, Hecuba was popular throughout Antiquity. The play also became part of the so-called 'Byzantine triad' of three plays of Euripides (along with Phoenician Women & Orestes) selected for study in school curricula, above all for the brilliance of its rhetorical speeches & quotable traditional wisdom. Translations into Latin & vernacular languages, as well as stage performances emerged early in the 16th century. The Renaissance admired the play for its representation of the extraordinary suffering & misfortunes of its newly-enslaved heroine, the former queen of Troy Hecuba, for the courageous sacrificial death of her daughter Polyxena, & for the beleaguered queen's surprisingly successful revenge against the unscrupulous killer of her son Polydorus. Later periods, however, developed reservations about the play's revenge plot & its unity. Recent scholarship has favorably reassessed the play in its original cultural & political context & the past 30 years have produced a number of exciting staged productions. Hecuba has emerged as a profound exploration of the difficulties of establishing justice & a stable morality in post-war situations. This book investigates the play's changing critical & theatrical reception from Antiquity to the present, its mythical & political background, its dramatic & thematic unity & the role of its choruses.

Genres: Classics

162 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2015

Reviews

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this will conclude my re-reading of Euripides's plays regarding the conquered Trojan women inspired by my recent reading of Christa Wolf's Cassandra. Of the three I read this time through, this one was the most dramatically pleasing. By focusing in on the figure of Hecuba, and laying off of her lamentations regarding future slavery (laments for which this poor capitalist wage slave has little pity given her previous complicity as a queen accustomed to being served by slaves of her own) and rather recounting her legitimate grievances regarding two of her children, one slaughtered for superstitious reasons and the other out of greed, both breaking the bonds of social decorum even in war, we feel more sympathy for the character and are left in a more ambiguous position regarding her bloody act of revenge which climaxes the play.

Thus the primary theme of the piece becomes Hecuba's outrage and personal desire for revenge and/or justice (in our choice of which of these two words lies our moral ambiguity) juxtaposed to the ever-politic Greek conquerors and the mamby-pamby political concerns of allegiance and expediency that temper their moral obligations to personal justice. (Isn't the cry of the political assassin always "I had to do it," or "They made me do it!" or the old standby "I was only following orders.") This theme rings very loudly in today's world in which political and economic factors so frequently lead governments to turn a blind eye to human rights issues when striking up or down alliances and so often help to justify oppressive regimes because we need the oil or need the political foothold against even worse regimes (or simply regimes hostile to or in protest of our own).

As long as there are governments, by their very nature, I fear, conglomerates of the rich almost always in direct opposition to the masses of the poorer people (citizens) that they pretend to represent, these issues and this conflict will remain prescient. In this play at least Euripides was, dare I say it, something of a Marxist.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phillip Vellacott translation: Interesting take on familiar characters, largely straightforward greif addled characters being upset about bad things. Not the most interesting of Euripides works.