Medea

0:00This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It is a thrill to be live from the BBC marquee at Hay Festival because it feels extra appropriate to be talking about a play which was of course like all ancient Greek plays performed outside. And in this case, your repeat is Medea was performed

1:02for the first time in 431 BCE. So this is not an auspicious year for Athens, right? This is the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. It's going to last 30 years and destroy their democracy. They obviously don't know that in 431. But the Dionysia is their theatre festival. This happens each year. It goes across three days of performance. You might get plays from Eastkiller some one day, Suffolkley's on another day, Euripides on another day. I see your Netflix box set and I raise you. Each of those traditions puts on three plays and then after your three tragedies there would be a satire play. A satire play is like, it's quite short, maybe about half an hour long, it's very baudy and it sort of allows you to decompress from all the trauma that you've seen. Today we're going to do it without the satire play. I think it'll be fine. So the trilogy that Euripides writes with Medea in comes third in competition at the Dionysia out of three. So it's initial performance is greeted with, it's hard to know, I think probably shock more than anything else.

2:06Although we don't know what happens to the other two plays. So maybe they were just awful and that brought the whole trilogy down. My view is if you've written Euripides Medea you can basically have the rest of your life off and that is fine. But I guess the judges might have been a tough crowd. I don't know. Within a really short amount of time the play is incredibly popular, it's being performed across the Greek world. So something happens. Euripides perhaps changes the story. He was notorious for changing the plot of myths from things people knew to things they suddenly found they didn't know very well and certainly were told by ancient literary critics that he took a bribe not to implicate the Corinthians in his version of the Medea. So money well spent in that case because he doesn't. It costs an incredibly long shadow. This play every version of the Medea or Jason and the Argo story, subsequent to Euripides Medea is in dialogue with it in some way or another. Every version right up to the present day. It is a play I love. I think it's the best play ever written in any language, not just in Greek. It's the

3:08first or maybe second Greek play I read in Greek at school. It's the first Greek play I saw performed. My dad drove me from Birmingham where I grew up to London to see Diana Rigg play in Medea. Right? Because he had a crush on her because he's not an idiot. And it was a life changing experience for me. I went on and wrote my undergraduate dissertation on women killing children in the work of Euripides. I don't have children before you write to the new director general. More relevantly, I didn't use to have children. A little bit of a recap for you for what's going on at the time this play is performed. We're in the fifth century. Athens has its democracy. It is of course a very limited democracy. You only get a vote if you're a male Athenian citizen adult. It's a pretty limited franchise. The audience at the Dionysia was probably, certainly, but probably just men.

4:13Right? We have very little evidence for women taking part in the civic life of Athens. And all the roles in this play are being performed by men because remember this is masked theatre. Other things you might need to know. It's a liminal play. Bing, we'll get a mark in our exam. Insofar as all the action happens outside the house that formerly belonged to Medea and Jason. The play begins with a monologue from the nurse to the children of Jason and Medea. And this is what gives us the backstory. This is a perfect Aristotelian play. It has unity of time, unity of place, all the action in this one location, all the action in one single day. So there'll be some coincidences to make it all happen in one day, but they're not coincidences to make the story happen at all. So you don't feel cheated by the coincidence. You just feel like you're being sped through it. And the nurse tells us that she wishes that the Argo had never set sail. That Jason and his Argonauts had never sailed to Colcus because then he would never have met Medea, priestess and princess of Colcus. She and he wouldn't have stolen the golden fleece from her

5:14father, IET's King of Colcus. They wouldn't have fled back to Greece and got married and have children. And then he wouldn't have abandoned her as he has in order to marry the King of Corinth's daughter. Euripides doesn't give her a name. Other sources call her Glauquet, so I will do the same. And this play is set in Corinth. So Medea has lost her husband to the princess of the local King. So it's not a great day for her all in. And so the nurse issues this monologue, wishing that all these things hadn't happened. And then the tutor of Medea and Jason's children arrives with the children and says how are things? And the nurse says they're not great, actually. Yeah, generally bad. Medea is pretty heartbroken, lying inside, crying on the floor. And the tutor says, oh, that's disappointing because it's about to get a lot worse. And the nurse goes, um, how? And he goes, oh, I shouldn't have said anything. And she's like, dude, seriously, it's quite a loose translation that I'm giving you there. And the tutor says, well, I shouldn't say anything. Don't say

6:16you heard it from me, but they're about to get exiled. Cree on the King is going to exile Medea and her children today. And the nurse says that can't be right. That can't be right because even though Jason doesn't care about Medea anymore, he must care about his children. He doesn't want them to be just thrown out into the street and have nowhere. That can't be right. And the tutor says, when I came to write my version of this story, I translated the play at first. I did this a couple of years ago. If you're thinking, is that weapons grade work avoidance Natalie? Yes, it is. But I hadn't translated it like long-hand since college. I thought it would really help. And it did because I found the title of my novel when I was doing this speech. I think it's line 76, I think, don't quote me, she said, on the radio. The nurse says he can't have agreed to that. And the tutor says, old loves are banished by new loves. That man is no friend to this house. And I was like, bingo! That's what I'm calling my book. And so the tutor and the children go inside the house. We hear

7:20Medea crying. She is wishing for death. She is wishing for her whole household to die. That would be her ex-husband, children, everything. The chorus of the play are women of Corinth. They come to tell the nurse that they sympathize with Medea. And that's why they're there. And they will sympathize with her throughout this play, even at the end. It's really tempting to believe that people think she's a monster, but that's not the case in terms of how people within the play respond. The chorus say we have friends, we've come to help her. Can you get her to come outside? And the nurse is like, I don't know, I'll give it a go. Generally, when someone tries to talk to her, she just turns her head to face the wall in Christ. And the chorus is like, we really, can you give it a go? And the nurse is like, okay, as she leaves, she says, the problem here is that what we need is something that makes people's spirits better when they're down. We've got music, but music is only for happy times, like banquets. And that's true, of course, because this is nearly two and a half thousand years before the 10 minute version of Taylor Swift's all too well. We shouldn't have made a huge difference to this whole play's outcome, but no, not available. And so, Medea comes out of the house

8:26at last. And when she comes on stage, she is completely composed. And this is surprising, because we've heard her in the house crying on the ground wishing for death. But when she comes out, she's like, game face on. And yet, somehow, we never see her on her own in this play. We see her in dialogue with other characters. We see her talking to the chorus. We see her monologuing at us, but we never get inside her mind, because it's not a novel, it's a play. And yet, we find ourselves going, oh, yes, she's being brave now. We know the first time we see her, how? I don't know, you're a police, it's a genius, right? She comes out and she delivers one of two absolutely astonishing monologues in this play. She says, I've come out, because I didn't want to seem a loof. I didn't want you to think I was being snooty, because I'm indoors, I'm a stranger in this land, I'm a foreigner, and I didn't want you to think I was being stuck up. People often think the worst of you, when you're a foreigner, even though it's really difficult, when you don't know somewhere, because you were brought up somewhere else. But my husband has turned out to be the worst of men, she says. And who could know that? Women are the most wretched creatures who live. She says,

9:29because we buy ourselves a husband at an enormous price, she's talking about the dowry. And there's no way of knowing if you're going to get a good one or a bad one. And that's true, of course. And she says, there's no possibility of us divorcing him if it doesn't work out, but they can divorce us, you know, just find somebody, wherever they want. It's not possible for us to do the same thing. We can't do anything to stop him from leaving. And what Madera is talking about here, and this is one of the many fascinating tensions within this play, isn't really her own life, because she is a Bronze Age princess. She didn't use a dowry to buy a jace, and this isn't a marriage that was decided by her father. They did a runner with the fleece. I suppose you could call the fleece her dowry, but she did nick it, so it's not quite the same thing. The life that she is talking about, in fact, is the life of the women who aren't in this audience, the wives of the men who are in the audience, because they will have been sold, as Madera perceives it, for a dowry by their fathers to their husbands. They can be divorced by a man saying, you're divorced, but can't do anything

10:29if they don't like it. They are those people. And sometimes I wonder if the men in this room, well, not room, outdoor space theatre, well watching this play, thinking, hang on a minute, is this how my wife feels? Well, you know, it's one of those questions I get asked a lot, is if you could travel back in time, when would you go back to? And my answer is always the same, no time at all, because I like having medicine and a vote. But sometimes I wonder what it was like being in the audience when this play was first performed, all these guys go, yeah, no, that sounds terrible, wait. And familiar, hang on, I just sometimes wonder. She says, it's extra hard for me because I'm a foreigner, you would need magic powers to know what the customs are like, somewhere that you didn't grow up. We kind of gloss over, she's so persuasive. The fact that she technically has magic powers, it's like you're literally a witch, but we're just like, oh yeah, no, that does sound awful. You're a pretty, he's right, it's a very persuasive speech. If he'd wanted a different career, he would have written legal speeches and nobody would ever have been

11:31convicted on his watch, that's all I'm saying. And then she delivers one of the most famous lines in all of Greek tragedy. She says, men will say that their lives are harder because they have to go and fight in battles. Those fools, I would rather stand three times behind my shield than give birth once. So she is explicitly heroizing childbirth here. It is an extraordinary sentiment to find in a play that's nearly two and a half thousand years old. In number terms, she's right. If you make it to 12 or 13 and your binomins likely to an antiquity, infant mortality is very high, then great news is a boy you'll go off to fight him wars as a girl, you'll start giving birth, your body is ready for neither of these things. That's why the average age is 30, 35. It's not because there are old people, it's because a third of people don't make it to adulthood. And so she's right to heroize childbirth. And yet still, this is happening two and a half thousand years ago, and it still seems to me extraordinary and it's being performed by a man. And it was written by a man and it's being watched by an audience of men. And it's such an extraordinary speech, it was being read at suffrage

12:34meetings a hundred and ten years ago. Because in the intervening years, nobody had written anything, which said, it's so hot and that's giving me goosebumps even now. Look at that. And so she says, okay, to the chorus, if you want to help me, this is what you can do, keep my secret. If I find a way to punish Jason, keep my secret. And the chorus says, yes, we will, we're your friends. And then, Cree on the King of Current Horizon stage and says, you are exiled. And Medea goes, really? And he goes, yes, you are a terrible person and you're very clever and I'm afraid of you. Clever people are frightening, especially women. And she says, I'm not that clever. She actually is that clever. She says, no, I'm not that clever. I get why you're sort of angry because I do hate Jason and you're obviously marrying your daughter to him, best of luck with that. But I don't hate you or your daughter, spoiler, yes, she does. So I guess I can't really change your mind and who's like, you definitely can't change my mind. She's like, well, okay, could you do one thing for me?

13:35He's like, probably not. And she says, you know how much you love your daughter? My children don't have a father like that. They've just got me and I haven't had time to make any plans for them to keep them safe. So could you give me a day so I can just make arrangements so that my children have a little bit of safety like your daughter has? Could you do that? And he says, I will definitely regret this. I'm always, always regretting being kind when I shouldn't be fine. You can have one day. You can't do what I'm afraid of in that time. So dude, if you're not seeing the place, you definitely can. And he leaves the stage and Medea says, I would never have formed on him if I didn't need something from him. And we watch her going, that's absolutely true. I fully know you are lying just then and now you're telling the truth. And the chorus are like, yeah, okay, this is a bit difficult. And Medea says, okay, my current plan is I'm going to sneak into the palace after doc and I will stab Jason and his wife and then stab myself. And the chorus is like, it's their plan B at all. And she's like, I set the place on fire. They're like, plan C. How about that?

14:35And then they sing an ode about how Odds are no longer sacred because Jason has promised to marry Medea and Maritur and then he's now breaking his promises. And then Jason appears on stage. He says, oh look here you are complaining some more. Like it wasn't bad enough that you've got yourself banished by moaning. I know, honestly, it cost me some. That's why we have to do this outside in a tent because otherwise I punch a wall. And Medea says, you absolute scum. I saved your life over and over again. I killed for you. I betrayed everyone for you. We have children. Where am I supposed to go now? Home, I betrayed them. Your home, we betrayed them. That's why we're an ex-up. What am I supposed to do now? And Jason says, well, you know, I hear what you're saying. The thing is, you didn't really help me. Did you? It was sort of Aphrodite who helped me by making you fall in love with me. And yeah, fine, you saved my life, I guess. But I brought you

15:38to Greece and made you famous. So really, when you think about it like that, they're sort of the same. And yeah, you're very jealous about me, you know, abandoning you for somebody else. But actually, this way, if you think about it, I'm marrying her for your benefit because I know. I know. Seriously, no walls in sight. This is why. He says, because this way, our children brackets the ones I'm prepared to see go into exile and probably die. We'll have royal brothers. Doesn't that sound great? And the chorus, who'd very rarely intervene, say, you're very plausible, Jason. But that's not right. No, it isn't. It descends very quickly into a slanging match. I'm sure you can imagine why. He says it's her fault. She says it's his. The chorus, deliver an ode as he leaves about how it's best to stay in your homeland. A little late, obviously, for Medea. And then Egyus, the legendary king of Athens appears on stage and says, hello, Medea, how are you? I've just come from Delphi and she says, I'm pretty terrible. How was Delphi? And he says, well, I've received a very

16:41enigmatic message from the oracle. And she says, tell me about it. And he says, well, I'd like children, but I don't have them. And it gave me this absolutely impenetrable puzzle. I don't know what to say to you. It's incredibly easy, oracle to understand. But for the purposes of this play, Egyus is an idiot. And Medea says, well, I think I could help you with that oracle. I tell you what, here's a coincidence, I'm banished. So I actually need somewhere to live. How about if I come to Athens and help you with your oracle? And Egyus says, what banished? What from here? What? And Medea says, yes, Jason's left me and he's going to marry the king's daughter. And Egyus goes, but aren't you married to Jason? And she's like, yeah, apparently it doesn't count because I'm not Greek. Egyus, you'll know the king of Athens thinks it counts. He's not buying any of what Jason is selling, I would say. And Egyus says, okay, well, yeah, you know, you can come and the thing is, I can't get you out of Corinth. I can't extract you from Corinth because this isn't my territory. But if you make

17:42your way to Athens, yeah, I'll give you somewhere to stay. And she says, will you, will you be like a safe haven for me in my difficult storms? A lot of ship metaphors to this play because the R goes a big part of her story. And Egyus says, yeah, definitely, I can't get you out of here, but make it to Athens all fine. And she says, and you won't hand me over to my enemies or anything. He goes, enemies, like a lady like you could have enemies. Of course I won't. And she goes, will you solemnly swear an oath? And he goes, and she makes him solemnly swear an oath. And she says, okay, once he's left, she says, okay, I'm going to send a message to Jason. And then I'm going to kill everyone, including my children. And the chorus goes, that sounds like a great idea. Wait, what? And then Jason comes back on stage and he's like, oh, I suppose you're going to shout at me again. Are you? And Medea says, do you know what? You were right the whole time. It's an absolutely astonishing switch, right? And a lot of productions will play this scene like he is an idiot. And you know what? He isn't an idiot. He's smart. He's plausible. The chorus of

18:43already said that was a really strong argument, but we don't think you're behaving appropriately. The point is that when he comes in in that first scene and says, I'm not the villain, you're the villain. Even though it's maddening, I think he believes it. And I think what Medea does here is so psychologically astute, it's such an incredible piece of writing, because what she's doing is telling him that the version of him that he tells himself is true is true. She's giving him what he most wants, which is to be the good guy. It's all he wants is to be the hero in her eyes and everyone else's eyes. And she makes him believe that that's what she sees. She says, you know, I know that you were right. I was just being jealous when I was upset that you're leaving me for a younger woman and princess. And I was banished with our children to die in obscurity. I was upset by that. I was, yeah. But now I see that actually you were doing it for my benefit. And I just didn't realize. And he's like, that's right. Man, it's a line she feeds in, but of course he's going to bite and she

19:47knows it. They've been married all this time. She says, yeah, you're right. I am going to leave. There's just one thing. I think the children should stay with you. And he's like, oh, don't you want to take them? This is a little disingenuous because in 5th century Athens and indeed, virtually all the way through history until about 20 minutes ago, in the very unlikely case that a couple divorced, children would always stay with their father. Suns especially would always stay with their father. And he says, don't you want them? And she's like, no, they should stay here with their father. You can definitely bring them up best. So what I'll do is I'm going to send presents to your new bride. So she asks her father if they can stay. And Jason says, oh, you don't need presents. She'll just, you know, listen to me. And Medea says, you know, everyone likes a present, even the gods like presents. And this is a lovely dress and crown from my grandfather who is Helios the sun god. And I've put them in the children. Take this present. They're in a box. Don't open the box. And put it into the hands of the princess. Make sure she takes it in her hands. Definitely don't open it. And so Jason and the children and their tutor all leave. And Medea has a very difficult monologue. The second

20:51great monologue of this play in which she debates whether or not she can really bring herself to kill her children. The first monologue was an extraordinary piece of social commentary of its time. The second monologue is an extraordinary piece of psychological exploration in which she says, you're not going to see them grow up. They're going to grow up here without you. And you won't be there to see them. And it's like, yes, but at least they will grow up. And then she's like, no, no. I'm not going to let my enemies injure me and then say they got away with it. I'm going to hurt Jason for what he's done. And nothing less than killing his children will be enough. And you're like, wait, what? And then she's like, no, but of course you can't do that. Of course you can't do that because they're your children. How could you forget that even for one minute when you love them so much, so much more than he does. And then she swings. I cannot let my enemies prosper at my expense. And then she swings back. She changes her mind, I think seven times in this monologue. And she convinces herself with different bits of evidence. She's like, you can't, this is a very Greek tragic mindset. You

21:52cannot let your enemies laugh at you. And then she, she sways back and she's like, but you love them. You gave birth to them. You can't fit. And it's just, it's heartbreaking and beautiful and devastating and brilliant. And she concludes this monologue by saying that her anger has overwhelmed her reason. You shouldn't at any point, however, think that that's suggesting she's not in full possession of her faculties. She is still ferociously articulate and aware. Yet more with BBC podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favorite shows, like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and Your Dead To Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts, ad-free, with an Amazon Music subscription. And then the tutor comes back on stage, he's brought the children back and then the messenger arrives from the palace and says, how are you still here? How are you still here? You've done something so awful. You know, they're going to be coming to get you. And Madera says,

22:53oh, have I done something awful? Tell me all about it. And what follows is an incredibly gory messenger speech in which everyone dies. They basically melt. Glaukay melts. Her father goes to embrace her. He melts. He sticks to her, then melts. It's incredibly gory and thrilling. And Madera's like, this is tremendous news. I could not be happier. And the messenger is like, you're quite frightening to me right now. And then she has one last wobble and she's like, can I, I can't do it, I'm going to have to. And she turns and goes into the house, determined to kill her children. You'll note that when she killed Glaukay, she used poison to do it long distance. A traditional women's weapon in Greek myth. When she goes to kill her children, she uses a sword. It is incredibly transgressive on multiple grounds, right? Firstly, a woman holding a sword is transgressive in Greek culture, full stop. A sword being drawn in a house is transgressive. Against children is transgressive. But in this moment where she has to forget that they are her children, she has to forget not just that she's a mother, but that she's a woman. She has to behave like a warrior and they are her enemies, right? And the chorus are appalled and they're like,

23:58how can we stop this? What can we do? Should we go inside? This is a very shocking idea that the chorus might leave the stage. We hear the children crying out for help. It is one of the most shocking things in all Greek drama. It is fully terrifying. We hear them saying, where should I turn? My mother, it's just awful. We hear the whole thing happen. The chorus deliver her about I know a woman in Greek myth who kills her children, having been rendered mad. It's the only parallel they can even slightly think of because something so horrific is going on. Then Jason arrives on stage, bedraggled, having run from the palace and says, I cannot believe she could do this. She's killed my wife. She's killed the king. I've come to rescue my children before the Corinthians killed them. So, Medea was right to fear that that might happen. If we thought it was an excuse, it wasn't. And the chorus say, oh, you're too late. And he says, what do you mean? Is she planning to kill me too? And they're like, no, no, no. She's already killed your children. And he says, what? And they say she's already killed your children. And he hammers on the door of the

24:58house and says, let me in. And then what happens is that Medea comes out, but not at ground level where he is. She comes on stage in a chariot, loaned to her by her grandfather, the son. It is pulled by dragons. We can assume this is scenery. Right? And when God's appear on stage in Greek place, they always come in upper level. That's why the phrase is Deus ex-macchaner, a God from a machine. This is where it comes from. She is a God in a machine. She's on a crane. She's coming in at this level. It's a really, really difficult moment for modern productions of Medea. They almost invariably kind of blink and make her mad at this point. Because in the Greek, what happens is she kills her children. She shows no remorse. And she apparently is turned into a goddess by doing it. And this seems weirder to us than it did in ancient Greece. We can safely assume. She comes on stage in this extraordinary chariot. And she says, why are you hammering at the door? It's too late, too late for everything. And he says, how could you? You're so evil. No Greek woman could have done this. Maybe you wouldn't have abandoned a Greek woman is all I'm saying. Medea says, do you snows who started

26:01this? You're the one who broke your oaths to me. You're the one who said you'd marry me and then betrayed me. So, you know, no, I think it's fine. You can call me whatever you want. He calls her Silla, like the monster. She's like, call me Silla. I'm fine with that. He says, you're suffering too. She says, yeah, it was worth it. I love them twice as much as you did, but it was worth it to injure you. That's all I could do. He says, at least let me bury them. And she says, no, you're never going to touch them. You didn't care about them when they were alive. You don't get to care about them now they're dead. You know what I'm going to do? Is I'm going to take them to the temple of Hira, a Kriya. That's Hira in a high place. And I'm going to bury them there. You're not going to go anywhere near them. And he says, you're a monster and she says, go home and bury your wife. I know. I don't love everything she does in this play, but man, that's a line. And the thing you have to know, this is the end of the play, of course. Jason is left powerless, weeping on the ground. Remember how the play began? We couldn't see her, but we heard from

27:03everyone. The medea was powerless, weeping on the ground. And now she is in a divine chariot, and he is left in rags on the floor. So when she says, the gods know who started this, do you know what? Really looks like they agree with her. There's always an advantage having Helios as your grandfather, I suppose. And the play concludes with the chorus saying, the gods do unexpected things, which is obviously true. But when I saw Diana Rig play this, I was, I think, 17. I was in the sick form. I read the play so slowly. I read it quite slowly last year, truthfully, but I read it much more slowly in the sick form. And the production was a place called the Armeida Theatre in North London. It's still there. It's not deep. It's only a few rows deep, but it's wide. So you're not a long way back from the stage. And the back wall was a solid piece of aluminium. And at the point where he says, at least let me touch their bodies, at least let me have that. Diana Rig thumped the middle of this panel. These two huge pieces of aluminium hidden inside it, held on by wire, suddenly dropped and slammed against the backstage. And we all jumped like a foot and a half

28:07in our seats, because it was so loud. And I sat there at age 17 thinking, I will never be the same again. And you know what? I fully wasn't. So be careful taking your children to the theatre, they might become class assistants. Get more with BBC Podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and Your Dead To Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription.