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Medea-Princess of Colchis, Wife of Jason; is fiercely proud and unwilling to allow her enemies to have any kind of victory. She is also a skilled cunning and cold manipulator. She sees through the false pieties and hypocritical values of her enemies, and uses their own moral abandonment against them. She is determined to gain revenge on those who have wronged here even if the cost is the lives of the people she loves.
Jason- Son of Aeson. Hero of the Golden Fleece. Leader of the Argonauts, Jason met Medea during his quest for the Golden Fleece and opted to marry her. He is opportunistic, unscrupulous and deceptive. He takes Medea and all she has done for granted and pays for it in the end.
Creon: King of Corinth and Jason’s father-in-law. Creon exiles Medea, fearing that the dangerous witch will seek vengeance against his family. Creon serves as an easy pawn for Medea, allowing her to not only destroy him, but the source of the problem…his daughter as well.
Aegeus- King of Athens and friend of Medea. He is a kind and trusting ruler. He runs into Medea by chance, and ends up providing Medea with the means to ensure her own survival and safety.
Nurse- Servant to Medea and Medea's children. She constantly worries for the children and feels that they are in danger while near Medeas hands. She is loyal to Medea and disagrees with Jason’s actions. The Nurse serves as outside commentator on the events of the play.
Tutor- Tutor to Medea's children. Like the Nurse, he is a sideline commentator on the behavior and actions of his masters. Although his narrative differs in perspective to the nurses.
Chorus of Corinthian Women- The women of Corinth. Medea is able to gain their loyalty, and a vow of silence on their part. They watch and comment on all the turns of events but never interfere Though they condemn Medea at times, but really on the whole they seem to be more amazed at the fact that she has the cunning to what she is doing. Medea does not let herself be down played by that fact that she is a woman and they are awed by that, because they too suffer injustices as women but can not bring themselves to be as bold as Medea and stand up for themselves. Medea serves as a model to them.
Messenger- He is the bearer of bad news to Jason, he brings word of Creon and Glauce’s deaths
Themes • Passion and Rage: Both of which are portrayed to extremes by Medea. So intense is her passion that she decides to sacrifice everything she cares for to be with Jason.She turns her back on her father and her country. She even brings herself to kill her own brother, in order to win Jason’s attentions. Medea in turn is also very violent. When she is betrayed, her love morphs in to rage, a rage so strong that she would stop at nothing in order to bring forth the demise of Jason.
Revenge: Medea will stop at nothing to make her revenge perfect. She murders her own children, ironically, to protect them from going through any kind of betrayal or negligence. Most importantly though she doesn’t want them to be anyone’s pawn, as she was.Her desire is so great that she overlooks all emotional consequences on her part. In relation to Jason, Medea is set and completely intent on hurting Jason in the most agonizing ways possible. She takes his wife, children, and father in law away from him leaving him to continue his alone and futureless.
Greatness and Pride: In their literature the the Greeks seemed to suggest that the same traits that made a man or woman great seemed to just as well aid in the the path to their destruction. Medea has the makings of a great hero, she has great intellect, determination, pride, honor, loyalty etc.. but just as much as these talents make her a good person they easy aid in converting her into a monster. Pride drives her to commit unessecary brutal actions. Medea achives her revenge by killing the source of the problem, the other woman, but then she goes the extra mile and decides it would be equally as achieving to kill her children as well, because that would be like the cherry on top to her plan detroy those who destroyed her. Medea represents the damaged and distorted pride of a woman, used and belittled in the world of man.
A Womans Place-Medea's opening speech to the Chorus perhaps is the most eloquent observation in the whole of classical Greek text, on the injustices that befall women. Athens, a city that prided itself as a place more free than the neighboring dictatorships, was nonetheless a city that depended on slave labor and the oppression of women. The geeks had a tendency to skimp on attentions toward women and appreciation, men made certain to exclude women on decisions, intellectual conversations, and world and outside motherhood and marriage. Women at times were used as pawns, they were wanted for their families and good names, only to better their own economic and social status. Medea is not quite the make of the ideal feminist role model, but she is though a real women, who has suffered and become distorted by her suffering.
Exile: Exile for Greeks was absolute damn nation, having to wander with out home, family, friends or safetywas absolutely worse than the fate of death itself. For them their city-state not only served as home but as protector. Medea, for the sake of her husband, exiled herself from home and everything she knew. On top of that though she has also earned her and her husbands family exile. Their position is vulnerable. Jason, hero of the Golden Fleece (although it was really all Medea thanks to Medeas work) is now a wanderer. His marriage is shrewd and calculating: he decides to take a new bride one from Corinth's royal family. He is faithless, but he has a point when he argues to Medea that something needed to be done to provide their family with security.Euripides links the themes of exile and the position of women. When emphasizing the circumstances women must bear after marriage (leaving home, living among strangers), Medea is reminding us of the conditions of exile. Her position, then, is doubly grave, as she is an exile in the ordinary sense and also an exile in the sense that all women are exiles.
Cleverness: This theme is linked to the theme of pride and of woman's position. Medea tells Creon that it is better to be born stupid, for men despise the clever. Part of her difficulty is that she has no real outlet for her gifts. without a country to rule" Her force, her intellect, and her strength of will all exceed her station. The Greeks, though they have some respect for her, often treat her smugly because of her sex and her barbarian origins. She is surrounded by people less intelligent and resourceful than she, but social power and respect is theirs. Medea is despised for talents that should win her praise; she is also terrifyingly free. Because she is an outsider to normal order, she behaves without restraint or morality. Her genius, denied an empire to build, will instead be used on the smaller playing field of personal revenge. • Manipulation: Manipulation is an important theme. Medea, Jason, and Creon all try their hand at manipulation. Jason used Medea in the past; he now manipulates the royal family of Corinth to secure his own ends. Creon has made a profitable match between his daughter and Jason, hoping to benefit from Jason's fame as the hero of the Golden Fleece. But Medea is the master of manipulation. Medea plays perfectly on the weaknesses and needs of both her enemies and her friends. Medea plays to Creon's pity, and to the old king's costly underestimation. With Aegeus, she uses her bargaining skills and takes advantage of the king's soft-heartedness to win a binding oath from him. Against Jason, she uses his own shallowness, his unmerited pride, and his desire for dominance. She plays the fawning and submissive woman, to her husband's delight and gratification. Jason buys the act, demonstrating his lack of astuteness and his willingness to be duped by his own fantasies.
SYNOPSIS • Euripedes' Medea opens in a state of conflict. Jason has abandoned his wife, Medea, along with their two children. He hopes to advance his station by remarrying with Glauce, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth, the Greek city where the play is set. All the events of play proceed out of this initial dilemma, and the involved parties become its central characters. • Outside the royal palace, a nurse laments the events that have lead to the present crisis. After a long series of trials and adventures, which ultimately forced Jason and Medea to seek exile in Corinth, the pair had settled down and established their family, achieving a degree of fame and respectability. Jason's recent abandonment of that family has crushed Medea emotionally, to the degree that she curses her own existence, as well as that of her two children. • Fearing a possible plot of revenge, Creon banishes Medea and her children from the city. After pleading for mercy, Medea is granted one day before she must leave, during which she plans to complete her quest for "justice"--at this stage in her thinking, the murder of Creon, Glauce, and Jason. Jason accuses Medea of overreacting. By voicing her grievances so publicly, she has endangered her life and that of their children. He claims that his decision to remarry was in everyone's best interest. Medea finds him spineless, and she refuses to accept his token offers of help. • Appearing by chance in Corinth, Aegeus, King of Athens, offers Medea sanctuary in his home city in exchange for her knowledge of certain drugs that can cure his sterility. Now guaranteed an eventual haven in Athens, Medea has cleared all obstacles to completing her revenge, a plan which grows to include the murder of her own children; the pain their loss will cause her does not outweigh the satisfaction she will feel in making Jason suffer.
Synopsis con… • For the balance of the play, Medea engages in a ruse; she pretends to sympathize with Jason (bringing him into her confidence) and offers his wife "gifts," a coronet and dress. Ostensibly, the gifts are meant to convince Glauce to ask her father to allow the children to stay in Corinth. The coronet and dress are actually poisoned, however, and their delivery causes Glauce's death. Seeing his daughter ravaged by the poison, Creon chooses to die by her side by dramatically embracing her and absorbing the poison himself. • A messenger recounts the gruesome details of these deaths, which Medea absorbs with cool attentiveness. Her earlier state of anxiety, which intensified as she struggled with the decision to commit infanticide, has now given way to an assured determination to fulfill her plans. Against the protests of the chorus, Medea murders her children and flees the scene in a dragon-pulled chariot provided by her grandfather, the Sun-God. Jason is left cursing his lot; his hope of advancing his station by abandoning Medea and marrying Glauce, the conflict which opened the play, has been annihilated, and everything he values has been lost through the deaths that conclude the tragedy
Legend of the Golden Fleece • Jason, a Greek hero and captain of the Argonauts. He steered his crew to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. The fleece was kept under guard by King Aeetes of Colchis, father of Medea. • Jason’s voyage is the first naval assault by the Greeks against the Eastern people. Traps make reaching the fleece near impossible. Jason enlists Medeas help to get the fleece, Medea ends up killing the serpent that was guarding the fleece. Medea also ends up killing her brother, cutting up his body into little pieces and dumping them in the sea in order to make a clean get away, while her father trails behind distraught and making a feeble attempt to pick up the pieces of his son. Medea and Jason flee to Jason’s homeland Iolcus, they arrive to the news that Jason’s father has died and that Peli[a]s his unlce has taken over the throne. • Jason wants the thrown and has Medea convince his uncles daughters to kill him and cut him up into pieces,so that Medea could bring him back to life, younger, through magic. The plan works but the outcome doesn’t not only does Jason not get the throne he gets the boot and is forced to find safe haven in a foreign land to him and Medea, Corinth.
Biography Euripides (c. 485-406 B.C.), last of the great Greek tragedians, did not enjoy the personal popularity accorded Aeschylus and Sophocles, possibly because his work criticized Athenian politics and society. Moreover, he was not highly regarded because he broke away from the formality of language and theme of his predecessors.Euripides is especially noted for shifting the focus of dramatic events from the gods to humans. He values individual human beings and the working of their wills. One aspect of his dramatic critique of Greek culture was an unusual emphasis on women. Medea is the first thoroughly developed female character in Greek drama. She is treated as an independent woman, not as Jason's wife or as someone's mother. Athenians, intolerant of foreigners and women, felt both groups to be inferior to Greek aristocratic men. It is no wonder that of the twenty plays Euripides produced at the feasts of Dionysus only five won prizes.Of his ninety-two plays, eighteen surviveﾑmore than twice as many as survive from any other Greek tragedian: Alcestis (438), Medea (431), The Children of Heracles (c. 430), Hippolytus (428), Andromache (c. 426), Hecuba (c. 424), Cyclops (c. 423), The Suppliants (c. 422), Heracles (c. 417), Electra (c. 417), The Trojan Woman (415), Iphigenia in Taurus (c. 412), Helen (412), Ion (c. 411), The Phoenician Women (c. 412-408), Orestes (408), The Bacchae (405), and Iphigenia in Aulis (405).Another play, Rhesus, long attributed to Euripides, is now thought to have been written by an anonymous fourth-century B.C. playwright.
Ten of Euripides' remaining plays place women at their center.Euripides continued Aeschylus's innovations in his use of the skene. Instead of representing the front of a palace, the skene in Euripides' plays sometimes represented a peasant's hut, a rural shrine, or other common structure. He was interested in theatrical devices, especially machines that gave him the opportunity to achieve dramatic effects. His choral odes, although beautiful, are sometimes considered detachable from the episodes of dramatic action. Moreover, his dialogue is more colloquialﾑcloser to everyday speechﾑthan is the dialogue found in other Greek tragedies. All these deviations from the dramatic norm emphasize the humanity in his plays and elevate human values over those of the gods.Eighteen months before his death, Euripides left Athens for the court of King Archelaus in Macedon. His departure may have signaled his dissatisfaction with the politics of Athens, or it may have been prompted by the indifference of Athens to his talents. In any event, his works were performed long after his death, and, ironically, his posthumous popularity dwarfed that of the other tragic playwrights.
Sources Thank you to: • www.google.com • www.google.com/images • www.gradesaver.com • www.sparknotes.com • www.LarryGleason.com, esp. history links • www.yahoo.com • Kinko’s • Mac Clip Art
