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Euripides Our Contemporary PDF

257 Pages·2009·1.889 MB·English
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EURIPIDES OUR CONTEMPORARY J. Michael Walton is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Hull. He studied Greek under Kenneth Dover andDouglasYoungattheUniversityofStAndrews,wherehe directed the first of over fifty subsequent productions with professionalorstudentcasts.AtHullhewasfounder-director of the Performance Translation Centre and he has been a Getty Visiting Scholar. He was General Editor of the sixteen volumes of Methuen Drama’s Classical Greek Dramatists series, to which he also contributed nine translations. His books include Greek Theatre Practice, The Greek Sense of Theatre: Tragedy Reviewed, Living Greek Theatre: A HandbookofClassicalPerformanceandModernProduction, MenanderandtheMakingofComedy(withPeterD.Arnott) andFoundinTranslation:GreekDramainEnglish.Heedited CraigonTheatreand,withMarianneMcDonald,AmidOur Troubles: Irish Versions of Greek Tragedy and The CambridgeCompaniontoGreekandRomanTheatre. bythesameauthor AmidOurTroubles:IrishVersionsofGreekTragedy (editedwithMarianneMcDonald) TheGreekSenseofTheatre:TragedyReviewed GreekTheatrePractice EURIPIDES OUR CONTEMPORARY J.MichaelWalton MethuenDrama 13579108642 ThiseditionfirstpublishedintheUnitedKingdomin2009by MethuenDrama A&CBlackPublishersLtd 36SohoSquare LondonW1D3QY www.methuendrama.com Copyright©2009byJ.MichaelWalton TherightofJ.MichaelWaltontobeidentifiedastheauthorofthisworkhasbeen assertedbyhiminaccordancewiththeCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct,1988 ACIPcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary ISBN9781408112045 TypesetbySXComposingDTP,Rayleigh,Essex PrintedbyMPGBooks,Bodmin,Cornwall Thisbookissoldsubjecttotheconditionthatitshallnot,bywayoftradeorotherwise, belent,resold,hiredout,orotherwisecirculatedinanyformofbindingorcoverother thanthatinwhichitispublishedandwithoutasimilarcondition,includingthis condition,beingimposedonthesubsequentpurchaser. Contents Introduction 1 I.DomesticatingTragedy 1. PlaymakerandImage-Breaker 11 2. TheFamilySaga 29 PhoenicianWomen,Bacchae,IphigeneiaatAulis 3. WomenandMen 44 Alcestis,Medea,Hippolytus 4. TheComicTouch 62 Cyclops,Ion,Orestes,Electra,Bacchae,ChildrenofHeracles, Helen II. PowerfulForces:TheGrandPassions 5. WarandtheMilitary 81 Rhesus,TrojanWomen,Suppliants,IphigeneiaatAulis 6. Revenge 97 Electra,Hecuba,ChildrenofHeracles,Andromache,Medea 7. ImmortalsandMortals 115 Alcestis,IphigeneiaAmongtheTaurians,Electra,Rhesus, Ion,Hippolytus,Bacchae 8. Sanity,MadnessandResponsibility 131 Orestes,Heracles,Bacchae,Electra III. TheatreTheatrical 9. PlayingtheGame:IllusionandReality 151 Hecuba,Suppliants,Ion,Rhesus,Helen,Bacchae 10. GreatRoles 168 Medea,Alcestis,Heracles,Hippolytus,IphigeneiaatAulis, Hecuba,Electra,Helen,Bacchae 11. HeirstotheLegacy 192 Shaw,Strindberg,Brecht,Pirandello,Anouilh,Sondheim, Frisch Appendix:Aplotsummaryofallnineteensurvivingplays 213 SelectBibliography 235 Index 245 Acknowledgments Ishouldliketotakethisopportunitytoconveymyenormousgratitudeto Methuen Drama publishers and the various umbrella companies under which they have flourished. Over the last twenty-five years individual commissioning and copy-editors, collaborators and readers too numeroustomentionhavenursedmethroughdiversevolumes,savingme from countless errors of style or taste with notable tact and baffling tolerance. Among the copy-editors, however, I must single out by name Georgina Allen for her unflagging eye and ear, as well as her good humourandpatienceovermanyvolumesincludingthepresentone.This I realise is my twenty-third publication under the Methuen Drama imprintaseditororauthor.Toallmydeepthanks. For this particular book, I have greatly appreciated the constructive criticismofreadersofthemanuscript,amongthemMary-KayGameland Herbert Golder. I also wish to thank my frequent co-translator and co- editor Marianne McDonald for her always valuable and supportive suggestions at every stage. I exonerate her completely from any responsibility for the more idiosyncratic interpretations of individual plays. vi Introduction In1964,thePolishcriticJanKott’sbookonShakespearewaspublished in England as Shakespeare Our Contemporary.1 It was in the form of a seriesofessays,eightonvariousofShakespeare’stragedies,threeonhis comedies. Peter Brook wrote a brief foreword in which he described meetingKottatanightclubinWarsawandspendinghalfthenightwith him trying to secure the release of one of Kott’s students who had been arrestedbythepolice.Brookwassurprisedthat,atthepolicestation,the policecalledKott‘Professor’andaskedhimwhathewasaprofessorof. ‘Of drama,’ replied Kott. This seemed a revelation to Brook and not without reason. In 1964 there were only three independent Drama departments in British universities, at Bristol, Manchester and Hull – a fourth was about to open at Birmingham – and only two professors of Drama. Kott’s book was greeted with enthusiasm by numerous critics and practitionersforcombiningseriousstudyofthetextswithanawareness, derived from his own political situation and circumstances, of the historicalandsocialclimatethatspawnedthem–‘scholarlywithoutwhat we associate with scholarship’ was Brook’s verdict. The essays were accessible and informative to actors and directors as well as to students and teachers. To put it another way, this was an academic book with a minimumoffootnotes.TheotherfactorthatmadeKott’sstudyunusual among books on Shakespeare was that it looked forwards as well as backwards, the index including references to the major European theatricalinfluencesofthe1960s,Adamov,Artaud,Brecht,Dürrenmatt, Genet,Ionesco,Sartreand,aboveall,Beckett,aswellCamus,Kafkaand Malraux. Two years later, in 1966, Kott began work on a further volume, this timeaboutGreektragedy,whichwaspublishedin1970asTheEatingof the Gods: An Interpretation of Greek Tragedy.2 This second book, a series of essays on Aeschylus’ Prometheus, Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes and Euripides’ Alcestis, Bacchae and related topics, proved less influential than the first, perhaps because Kott needed recourse to 1 Jan Kott, szekspirze wspólczesny (1965), trans. Bolesaw Taborski, published as ShakespeareOurContemporary,London:Methuen,1964,revised1967. 2PublishedbyRandomHouse(1973)andsubsequentlyinGreatBritainbyEyreMethuen (1974). Taborski was again the translator, this time in collaboration with Edward J. Czerwinski. 1 EURIPIDESOURCONTEMPORARY scholars of ancient Greek. Though he turned to the work of major luminariesinthefield,amongthemRichardJebb,A.W.Verrall,Gilbert Murray, George D. Thomson, Maurice Bowra, T. B. L. Webster, E. R. Dodds,HumphreyKitto,BernardKnoxandPeterD.Arnott,nevermind philosophers and anthropologists, Heidegger, Lévi-Strauss, Graves and Auerbach, the work of such giants on the classical world is not always compatible. The resultant essays vary from provocative insight, worthy of the author of Shakespeare Our Contemporary, to awkward generalisation1andactualinaccuracy.2Nonetheless,itisinappreciation of Kott that the present book acquired its title. Euripides Our Contemporary is intended both as an acknowledgment of the need for Drama professors from time to time to re-investigate the earliest manifestations of the world’s theatre repertoire and a strong belief that thekindofinterrogationthathasbeenappliedtoShakespearemaybejust asappropriateforEuripides. AsfarasGreektragedyisconcerned,afargreaterinfluencethanKott has been William Arrowsmith, a formidable scholar and translator of Greekdrama.His‘EuripidesandtheDramaturgyofCrisis’wasinitially alecturedeliveredatColumbiaUniversityin1984.3Thisreassessmentof Euripidesasaplaymaker,inthelightofhisconglomerationofstyles,his scepticism and sheer theatricality, went a long way to identifying Euripides’ significance for a twentieth-century world. This is not to suggest that there has been any dearth, either before or after 1984, of books and articles on Euripides and his nineteen plays which have survived, in close to six hundred English translations since Lady Jane Lumley’sElizabethanIphigeneia.Twothousandfourhundredyearsafter hisdeath,itmightnotbeunreasonabletowonderwhatsortofbookcan anylongerbewrittenaboutEuripides.Thelinguisticdetailsandtextual peculiarities which formed the basis of school and university study for longerthanbearthinkingaboutaresurelyanexhaustedseam;toolittle isknownforabiography;individualplayshavereceivedtheclosestand 1Forexample‘Alcestisisaheroineoftragedy,buthasahusbandtakenfromcomedy’, p.83;‘OfallGreekplays,TheBacchaeseemstobemostpervadedbyeroticism’,p.224. WhatofHippolytus? 2‘PrometheusBoundistheonlyGreektragedyinwhichtheChorusperisheswiththehero’, p.36–neitherdies;‘Medeadoesnotaddressthegods.Theydonotexistforher,justasthe worlddoesnotexist,asherchildrendonotexist’,p.237–sheinvokesHecate,Themis, Artemis,HeraandZeus,nevermindhergrandfather,Helios. 3ArrowsmithdeliveredthefourBamptonlecturesatColumbiain1984,inthefirstofwhich heexploredthenotionof‘anachronization’inEuripides.Thisfirstlecturewaspublished posthumouslyin1999,butatthetimeofwritingtheotherthreeremainunpublished,his prematuredeathin1992havingpreventedrevision. 2 INTRODUCTION mostingeniousofscrutinies;locatingtheplaywrightwithinthesocialand political context of his time is a well-trodden path, if still a contentious one.LessexploredhasbeenEuripides’impactonlatergenerations.Itis inthiskindofterritorythatthepresentstudyistobelocated.Theaimis specific.WhatEuripideswasinhisowntimeislessimportantherethan whyheshouldstillhavesomethingtosayaboutourhecticcontemporary world when concerns such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, terrorist infiltration and bank failures dominate the headlines. How, in short,andwhymayEuripidesstillresonate? If this were to be simply a book listing topics to show how ‘contemporary’ the plays of Euripides may prove, it could be short indeed.WhatarethesubjectsofthisancientGreekplaywright?War,its causesandconduct;moralityandpower;theinfluenceofoligarchyina notional democracy; domestic strife; old age, illness and bereavement; sickness within society; personal responsibility; refugees and immi- gration; religion and ideology; sacrifice and self-sacrifice. No difficulty finding comment on such themes in Euripides. His plays are filled with people who constantly fiddle with the truth, gods, heroes, soldiers, politicians, even messengers. At a symposium on ‘Contemporary Performance of Greek and Roman Drama’ held at the J. Paul Getty Museum in June, 2002, the American director, Peter Sellars, told his audiencehehadjustreturnedtoAmericaaftertwoyearsaway:‘andI’m shocked at the absence of dissent in this country.The absence of public voiceoverthingsthatabsolutelymustbespokenof.So,ofcourse,Iam now working with Euripides. That’s simple . . . and the reason I’m working on The Children of Heracles, it’s about refugees and immigration.’ To give his words their full political context, they were deliveredalmostexactlyatmidpointbetweenthedestructionoftheTwin TowersandthesecondinvasionofIraq. ThisbooktakesSellars’positionasastartingpointandaimsfurther. CommentontheirowntimewasfilteredbytheGreektragediansinaway thattranscendsperiod.Euripidesmayhavenoknowledgeofthespecific problems of our age, but any comment on his own age was strictly deflected. He and his contemporaries set their tragedies, with minor exceptions,intheworldofmyth.Theadvantageofmythisthatitsstories are basic but malleable. Entrenched in an unspecific Greek past as nebulousasthatofShakespeare’sTroilusandCressida,TimonofAthens orAMidsummerNight’sDream,theplotsofallthreeGreektragedians engaged topical issues from an oblique perspective. The Trojan War servedasameansofviewinganywar,itsavoidabilityorunavoidability, itsheroicsandmock-heroics,itsconsequences,itsfutilityanditsmisery. 3

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