Euripides Andromache
- Background myth
- Thetis, a minor sea goddess, married Peleus, a mortal hero.
- They had a son, Achilles.
- For some reason Thetis leaves Peleus' company.
- But Thetis stashes Achilles on the island of Skyros to keep
him out of the Trojan War
- Odysseus, however, tricks Achilles into revealing himself
and brings him along to the war.
- While Achilles is on Skyros, Achilles and Deidameia (dtr of
the local King) have a child, Neoptolemus.
- Neoptolemus fought on the Greek side after Achilles was
killed (yeah, the chronology might be hard to construct: he
seems likely to be too young?)
- Neoptolemus obtained Andromache as a war prize (b/c Achilles
killed Hector? but in some versions, Neoptolemus killed
Hector, so it depends on how you tell it).
- Andromache bore a son (name?) to Neoptolemus
- Neoptolemus marries Hermione, daughter of Helen and Menelaus
- The structure radically simplified:
- 1. Andromache starts out in distress: she fears Hermione and
Menelaus
- but then her danger is relieved by Peleus
- the play seems to be ending
- 2. Then at 870, Hermione's difficulty (she fears the return
of Neoptolemus) and the trap for Neoptolemus take center
stage.
- without the earlier part, Hermione would have no
difficulty, no reason to fear Neoptolemus
- Neoptolemus is killed through Orestes' machinations at
Delphi
- Peleus is grief-stricken
- Thetis descends to arrange things for Andromache and Peleus.
- Melodramatic: Andromache had no choice in any of this , but
Hermione acts as if she did, and Menelaus is just a plain bad
guy
- Euripides has picked one part of myth for Andromache.
Remember where Hector was talking to Andromache behind the walls
at Troy: the situation in this play is what Andromache feared in
her speech at 6.427(Lombardo's line #'s)
- Andromache is a strong, distressed woman
- Euripides specializes in them. Parallels include Medea,
Hecuba (in Trojan Women), Alcestis (in Alcestis)
- Andromache: a good woman (I think: could she be staged
otherwise?) put in the worst of situations
- Loss and Grief:
- Deracinated:
- Loss of social status
- At mercy of family members of master
- In general, generalizations rule the day when it comes to
characters' words about women in the play.
- There are many generalizations in the play that are
misogynistic generalities about women, delivered by all sorts
of characters.
- How does this interact with Euripides' strong, admirable,
female characters such as Andromache or Alcestis? People call
it "irony."
- Irony is a rather vague descriptor: it means that two
things are in conflicting tension with one another:
- examples:
- the surface meaning of words versus their actual
meaning
- a situation that appears one way but is another
- ...
- the tension
- a horrible person named "Goodson"
- carrying an umbrella every day except the one day it
rains
- saying "I love you" but meaning "I hate you"
- ...
- Euripides brings into question or maybe even mocks the values
of traditional heroism.
- Win by whatever means.
- Menelaus is pretty much a bad man who does his daughter's
bidding.
- But Euripides also sensibly questions honor and glory: some
glory is bad, and justice must accompany it.
- Acknowledging and instantiating how justice and honor can be
at odds with each other is something drama can do well.
- Euripides also specialized in showing the aftermath of the
Trojan War, especially for women.
- Even Hermione is a victim here, in a way, passed around by
her father.
- Euripides famously shows "psychological realism"
- Not full on realism: rather, he injects here and there
personal traits and emotions and arguments that seem more
realistic than the stylized ones of Aeschylus or Sophocles
- Many different viewpoints are presented rather than a simple
black and white binary, and the tension is not resolved.
- On the other hand, the arguments and emotions are either
typical of "sophists" or stereotypes: so calling them
"realist" is tendentious.
- "Sophists" were the intellectuals, the pundits of the day:
they had a variety of intellectual positions, but they all
were into argumentation and being somehow innovative.
- Euripides usually includes a debate, a so-called agon.
- A rational examination of opposing sides.
- Often juxtaposed with scenes of high emotion/pathos
- Andromache has three such debates:
- Hermione v. Andromache
- Andromache v. Menelaus
- Menelaus v. Peleus
- usually it's pretty clear which side the audience would be
on
- Split structure of the play
- Andromache just about disappears half way thru the play
- cf Ajax by Sophocles, which seems split into two
halves
- Euripides' Heracles is likewise split into two
halves
- this split nature of the play has been leveled as a
criticism: it is a flaw IF one believes in a certain sort of
unity, but not if one doesn't require every play to fit an
ideal mold
- Sparta is criticized severely (Hermione and Menelaus are from
Sparta): Athens at the time was at war with Sparta.
- Probably was produced at a smaller festival than the City
Dionysia (it is not on the didaskalia, the list of
tragedies that were in the City Dionysia).
- Probably produced around 425, during the so-called
'Archidamian War' part of the bigger Peloponnesian War.
- Concubines and their offspring are treated differently in
Homer from in Andromache
- In Homer, concubine's offspring take part in the household
and city at a lesser status, but not as servants, not as
illegitimates: cf. Teucer and Ajax, half brothers
- In Andromache, her son cannot inherit or be
legitimate
- These are more values of contemporary Athens than some
recreated past.
- Most of the plot is traditional, but fleshed out (that
Neoptolemos died at Delphi is traditional: how he died is what
Euripides probably made up), and it seems probable that
Euripides invented the idea that Orestes was Hermione's second
husband.
- Binaries exploited by playwright: war/peace,
male/female, Greek/Barbarian, domestic/political, slave/free,
strong/weak, courage/cowardice, legal/non-legal (wife/son),
force/persuasion, fortunate/unfortunate, fortune-fate/choice,
rich/poor, noble/lowborn,
- The Trojans at this point were somehow associated with the
Persians, the empire that had been defeated in its attempt to
take over Greece in the beginning of the 5th century. Kind of
a broad-brush seems to be used to associate Trojans (East of
Greece) with Persians (also East of Greece) (as if we would
never do that today! right!)
- But keep in mind that Athens and Sparta are contrasted
just as much with one another
- And behind all that, Homer treated Greek and Trojans alike
sympathetically without any great cultural distinctions.
- An example of a binary in the play: juxtaposition of
private and public: public policy (2 kings in Sparta, divided
states) vs. two women in one household
- Very Brief Historical background:
- Whereas Aeschylus
- grew up and lived in the glory days of the saving of
Greece twice from the attacking Persians: Aeschylus himself
fought at Marathon
- witnessed the Athenian Empire coming to be and in its
heyday
- Euripides lived:
- during the Peloponnesian War, when Athens and Sparta and
all of their allies fought each other
- the Athenians in 427 voted to execute every Male
Mitylenian after Mitylene revolted (they rescinded that vote
the next day, but still)
- 427: the Spartans killed every man of Plataea who had not
helped them, and enslaved many of the women
- Andromache was produced circa 425
- Later:
- 418: Athenians killed the men of Scione and Torone
- 415: Athenians killed the Melians