No Updates mean Busy Al

Back to it, a little more than a week later. My on-line absence has not reflected a similar lack of scholastic motivation: on the way to and from work this week, I finished up Alcestis (I didn't realize how short of a play it was... Medea was comparatively much longer than the three other Tragedies included in the Greene and Lattimore edition). Then I went on to read The Heracleidae and Hypollitus. After reading these "off-the-beaten-track" plays, I'm beginning to see more clearly why people (and institutions and countries, etc.) have favorite plays that return again and again to the stage while other shows sit by the wayside. Producing the Acharnians a year and a few months ago made me realize how infrequently the show was performed, especially in comparison to Lysistrata and perhaps even the Frogs (note to the reader, a truly aquatic performance of the Frogs was done in a U-M Swimming Pool over 50 years ago... Kate Bosher in the Classics Department has the details, but I'd love love LOVE to see the pictures!

So, onto my "immediate" interpretations (made without rereading, or even having the text with me now as I type this). Alcestis, as a stock character myth, seems to me totally underplayed--what an amazing "type" of woman, who volunteers to die for the sake of her husband. Medieval male scholars surely would've cited this as one of the few cases when women acted bravely AND well (as opposed to ones like Medea and, at least in part of her final outcome, Phaedra). However, the play was somewhat weak: the plot rolled-up and un-rolled, but the "recognition scene," at least in the text and without a visual, seemed unfulfilling and nearly anticlimactic. From the production of The Winter's Tale I was involved with in Fall 2004, I know how much a physical "re-appearance" can hold the audience in thrall: but I feel like Shakespeare's "recognition" scene, although maybe slightly overwrought, had much more emotional and dramatic power: perhaps because Hermione had been absent from the plot for decades, and the play for over an hour and a half--and because there is no hint of her being secretly alive under the care of Paulina. From Herakles's speech as he exits, however, we know what's going to happen--though I did have a hard time believing it.

In the end, I suppose my disatisfaction came from what seems like an inbalance in the calculus of justice--death truly gets cheated. Perhaps we can take Alcestis's re-animation as the reward of Admetus's "pious" action in taking Herakles in, even in the greatest abyss of his personal mourning--but from the Chorus's reaction to Admetus's hospitality, and my own sensibilities (however anachronistic and culturally myopic), I feel that Admetus should have been upfront with Herakles about his grief, but somehow made accomodations for the son of Alcmene. However, it must be granted that death, or more abstractly Fate, is the real loser here: he was supposed to get a soul: first Admetus's, then Alcestis's, but in the end he was beaten by Herakles! And Death's loss was through no deception or by Admetus's cunning: I remember being told a Mayan myth where two brothers, Medea-style, were able to cut themselves apart and then heal themselves. They were sent to the underworld for some reason, and the chthonic deities wouldn't let them escape--but the brother's showed off how they could be dismembered and then re-animated, and the deities were jealous, and all asked to undergo the same process. And similiar to Pelias's fate, the deities allowed themselves to be cut apart, but the two brothers didn't make them whole again.

To look in other Greek analogues however, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice comes first to mind--there, the male lover takes an active role in bring back his bride, but fails at the last minute, almost corroborating the conceptual finality of death and reinforcing it's inescapability, despite all efforts. Odysseus and Aeneas go to hell and back, but never take or Antikleia or Anchises back to the surface. In Alcestis, though, Death is cheated by brute force--something which would never happen in Homer, and even seems strange in Tragedy. I appreciate it's novelty, but I'm having a hard time digesting it as successful.

As for the Heracleidae, I was happy to know that Hercules, the Kevin Sorbo TV Series, was mythologically correct in making Iolaus the Sancho Panza to Herakles's Don Quixote. The introduction talked about it's place as a potential historical comentary on a death sentence without trial in the Pelopponesian War, and I support the hypothesis, because the play had too many peculiarities in structure and plot which seem almost incoherent without feeling a sympathy with the enemy. I hope the play was successfully received in the 5th Century--it deserved it.

And today I read Hippolytus, but I'm tired and need to work in the morning, so I won't go on in detail. My first question (???) though is that I thought Hypollitus was the son of Theseus and Hypollita, a captured Amazon (cf.Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream and Chaucer's Knight's Tale) and was surprised to see that she had a different name here (and no, I don't mean his stepmother, Phaedra).

What an awesome plot, and what a virtuous/wicked woman. Her psychology would do well to undergo comparison with Medea's--starting in a position of the Chorus and the Audience's sympathy, but quickly changing. I think Medea's position is (although more fatal) understandable to the audience--until she kills her children. Phaedra might be responding as a spurned lover--but I'lll need to re-read for a better sense of the motivation behind her suicide note.

However, I'm glad suicide notes have been around since the beginning of writing. Something I wouldn't have really thought about until now.

Bonne nuit, tout le monde.