Electra E-Book

Sophocles

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Drama Classics
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 93

Beschreibung

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price A tragic tale of duty, retribution and fate. King Agamemnon, on returning from the Trojan Wars, is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover. Now, to avenge the crime, their daughter Electra must commit one even worse and face the inevitable consequences. This edition of Sophocles' play Electra, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton.

Leseprobe

DRAMA CLASSICS

ELECTRA

by

Sophocles

translated and introduced by

Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

Sophocles: Key Dates

Characters

Electra

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Sophocles

Sophocles was the second of the great Athenian dramatists. He was said to have been born around 496 BC and to have died in 406 BC, soon after Euripides, his contemporary and rival. Born at Colonus, the setting for his final play, Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles lived through the Athenian defeat of the Persians in two major battles, Marathon in 490 and Salamis in 480. Much involved in public affairs, in 443/2 he became a treasurer, or Hellenotamias, of the Delian League, a confederacy of independent city-states which Athens headed after the Persian wars.

He was elected a general to put down the revolt of Samos, one of the members of the League, in or around 441. The bodies of the dead were exposed, as enemies often were, and it was possibly here that Sophocles became interested in heroes and heroines who wanted to bury the dead (for example, Teucer in Ajax, and Antigone in the play that bears her name, both written about the time of the Samian War). Another theory claims that he was awarded this generalship on the strength of having written Antigone. In 413, during the Peloponnesian War against Sparta (431-404 BC), he was elected one of the Probouloi, special officials appointed to deal with the aftermath of the Sicilian defeat.

Late in his life, it is said that he was sued for incompetence in managing his affairs by one of his children. He won the day by reciting a chorus from Oedipus at Colonus, which he was writing at the time. At the Greater Dionysia of 406, shortly after the death of Euripides, he took part in the dramatic competition and dressed all his actors in mourning to honour Euripides. He himself died later that year, before the final Athenian defeat by the Spartans in 404, and was spared seeing his city’s final humiliation. Oedipus at Colonus was performed posthumously in 401 BC.

After his death, Sophocles was revered as Dexion, a type of healing spirit associated with Asclepius, whose worship he had introduced to Athens after the plague at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. He was also a priest of the healing god, Halon.

Tragedy and Comedy in Athens were presented in competition at two major religious festivals in honour of the god Dionysus. Sophocles’ first dramatic victory, we are told, was in 468, in competition against Aeschylus. In all, Sophocles wrote about 120 plays, more than any of the other playwrights (Euripides writing about 90 and Aeschylus about 80). He often won first prize, sometimes second, but never third. He was the most successful and popular playwright of the three great tragedians: Aeschylus was said to have won about thirteen victories, Euripides, four, and Sophocles over twenty, possibly twenty-four. We are told Sophocles had a weak voice, and so did not act in his own plays, as Aeschylus had, but he did lead a chorus once.

Of the surviving seven plays, only Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus can be dated with certainty, and the Antigone approximately, if we accept a connection with the Samian War. The following chronology is tentatively suggested:

Antigone

ca. 443-440 BC

Ajax

ca. 442 BC

Women of Trachis

ca. 430s BC

King Oedipus

ca. 420s BC

Electra

ca. 425-413 BC

Philoctetes

409 BC

Oedipus at Colonus

401 BC (performed posthumously)

There are fragments of many other plays, including a large part of the satyr play, the Ichneutae (The Trackers).

What Happens in the Play

Legend tells us that King Agamemnon fought a war at Troy to recover Helen, his brother’s wife, who had been stolen by Paris, a prince of Troy. To secure favourable winds, he sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia. While he was away at Troy, his queen, Clytemnestra, took a lover, Aegisthus, and plotted to kill Agamemnon on his return, which she did after luring him into a bath. Electra, Iphigenia’s sister, rescued her brother, Orestes, and gave him to the family Tutor to bring to Strophius, who would raise him in Phocis out of harm’s way. Orestes grew up with Pylades, the son of Strophius.

At the beginning of Sophocles’ play, Orestes enters with Pylades and the Tutor. Orestes has consulted Apollo, who told him that he should take vengeance on Aegisthus and Clytemnestra by stealth. Orestes sends out the Tutor to reconnoitre. They will bring a false story of Orestes’ death in a chariot race. Orestes will make offerings at Agamemnon’s tomb, enlisting the help of his dead father. Orestes leaves with Pylades.

Electra appears, grieving for her father. Her lamentations are in lyric metres and would have been sung in the original. The Chorus show themselves to be Electra’s allies in the desire to punish the ruling tyrants. However, the Chorus advise Electra she is mourning too much. She rejects them, on the grounds that such advice is ignoble. She as a noble woman will never give up her ideals, or cease to mourn her father and plan the destruction of the new rulers.

The Chorus warn her that wandering outside the house and making seditious remarks can only bring her harm. Chrysothemis enters and urges her sister to comply with the rulers. Electra answers her with contempt and calls her a coward. Chrysothemis reveals that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are planning to send her away if Electra continues acting as she is. Electra says she would welcome this, because she is sick of Chrysothemis and others who advise her to curb her public complaints.

Chrysothemis is carrying offerings for Agamemnon, which Electra learns were sent by Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra has had a bad dream of Agamemnon’s sceptre growing larger until its branches and leaves cover all of Mycenae. Electra hopes that the dream is favourable to her cause and advises Chrysothemis not to make the offerings, as they would be construed by their father as an insult since they were sent by his murderer.

Clytemnestra confronts Electra and gives as her excuse for the murder of Agamemnon the killing of their daughter Iphigenia. (In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Clytemnestra added two more reasons: Cassandra, the mistress whom Agamemnon brought home; and her inevitable fulfilment of the family curse which afflicted the house of Atreus.)

Clytemnestra asks why her child had to be sacrificed rather than Menelaus’, since it was his wife they were trying to regain. Electra answers by saying that Artemis commanded this sacrifice. Agamemnon killed her sacred stag and boasted about it. To gain favourable winds and win the war, he was compelled to kill his child.

Electra asks her mother why she killed her father, married a lover and had children by him, while neglecting the children she already had. Clytemnestra is furious and threatens her with what will happen as soon as Aegisthus returns home.

The Tutor enters and tells an elaborate story of a chariot race at the Pythian Games in which, he says, Orestes was killed. The account is breathtakingly graphic and convinces both Electra and Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra is in part relieved but laments that her safety is bought with pain: even when children treat a parent badly they are still loved. She takes the Tutor indoors.

Chrysothemis arrives with news that she believes Orestes has returned, because of fresh grave offerings she found on Agamemnon’s tomb. Electra tells her she is a fool and informs her about the report she has just heard. She tries to enlist Chrysothemis’s help in taking vengeance, telling her of the freedom and admiration they will gain, and how easily Chrysothemis will find a fine husband to marry. Chrysothemis refuses and Electra accuses her again of being a disloyal coward: ‘A shameful life shames nobility’.

Orestes enters with Pylades. Electra asks to hold the urn he brings which he tells her contains her brother’s ashes. An emotional lament follows. Orestes is so moved by her grief that he reveals himself, showing her a signet ring which belonged to their father.

Electra celebrates her brother’s arrival with an enthusiasm as excessive as was her mourning. The Tutor appears from indoors to say that they are making too much noise and risk having their plot revealed.

Clytemnestra is alone indoors, so they all go inside the palace. Electra comes out again to watch for Aegisthus. Clytemnestra screams as she is stabbed, but Electra tells Orestes to strike again if he can. Aegisthus arrives, having heard of Orestes’ death and asks to see the body.

The doors open to reveal Orestes and Pylades with a body under a sheet. Aegisthus uncovers it only to discover Clytemnestra. Orestes says that he will take Aegisthus inside to kill him. Electra suggests that his body be thrown out of the house. At the end of the play Orestes says, ‘Every criminal should be punished by death/And without delay. Then we’d have less crime.’

The Chorus celebrates the victory at the end and the freedom attained, albeit costly.

Electra

The story of Electra is the only surviving example we have of the same plot written in different versions by all three of the great Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. There is a play called Electra by Euripides as well as one by Sophocles. The date of both of these is uncertain, and critics, including the present editors, disagree about which came first. Both were probably performed between 428 and 413 BC, but perhaps much closer in time so that one of them could have been seen by the first audiences as a direct response to the other. Both were written with an awareness of, and to some extent as a riposte to, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, produced in 458 BC, two years before the poet’s death. The Oresteia is a trilogy, three plays of which the middle one, Libation-Bearers, covers almost exactly the same span of time as do the Electra plays of Sophocles and Euripides. The treatment of all three is highly individual.

Aeschylus offers a broader view of the saga, from the return of Agamemnon after the fall of Troy and his murder by his wife Clytemnestra and Aegisthus (Agamemnon), through the revenge of Orestes and Electra (Libation-Bearers), and on into the third play, Eumenides, in which Orestes is tried for matricide at the Court of the Areopagus in Athens, and acquitted. So we can say, with confidence, that both later playwrights and their first audiences would have had some idea of the outlines of the plot as presented on stage before, but were interested from a dramatic and theatrical standpoint in the variations that could be worked on how the story was treated. Euripides also wrote several plays on other aspects of the story, two about Iphigenia and one called Orestes set after the revenge. Between 458 BC (the date of the Oresteia) and the two Electras great changes had taken place in Athens, both politically and socially. These are reflected in the context and priorities of tragedy as the playwrights placed more emphasis on character and began to experiment with the possibilities of the stage. Audiences, too, came to apprecaite new approaches.

This Electra