Like Lenormand, Anderson makes use of the outline of Euripides’ tragedy, but prefaces it with various scenes which provide background information and establish the mood of the play. The picture is created of a narrow-minded, loveless, Christian community, who collectively represent the Creon figure: the Rev Phineas McQuestion, his mother and the elders of the church. News is brought of Phineas’ brother Nathaniel, the Jason character, who has returned, after an absence of seven years, as the owner of a five-mast ship laden with spices. He has acquired not only wealth, but a Black wife and two children. This poses a dilemma for his family and the Puritan community, as they are racially prejudiced, but desperately in need of Nathaniel’s money, as they are facing financial ruin.
It is against this tense background that the Medea character, the dark princess, Oparre, enters. Significantly she is admitted through the kitchen door, thus pointing up the general attitude in Salem that anyone who is not White is a menial and a servant. In spite of this cold treatment, Oparre expresses her determination to make a new life for herself and her family in the orderly society. Anderson shows the couple as devoted to one another at their arrival in Salem, but in the second act, six months later, unbearable pressures are clearly taking their toll. In spite of Nathaniel’s financial support of the community, his family are treated as slaves and he is summoned to give a bond for them. Oparre has tried to fit into the community by dressing like them, but realizes that she will never be accepted. Her longing for a neutral country, where they could be safe, cannot be realized, as their money has been tied up in Salem. The Rev Phineas finds out about possible criminal conduct in the acquisition of the ship and uses that knowledge to blackmail his brother into agreeing to send Oparre back to her country. This Jason character thus does not abandon his wife for another woman, but surrenders to the forces of hatred and materialism. Oparre remains loyal and pleads with Nathaniel to return with her, even if they are penniless. But Nathaniel is not strong enough. He has been affected by the attitude of his family and the other Puritans and now even feels some of the racial prejudice himself.
The resolution of the drama takes a similar path to that of Asie. Oparre herself takes poison, that she has brought from the East, and also gives some to the children (daughters in this play), and rocks them to sleep. As she kneels and prays to her god, she is interrupted by Nathaniel, who has repented and realizes he cannot face life without her. Oparre, however, makes clear that his rejection of her has changed her attitude to life completely, but she dies confessing that she still loves Nathaniel and wants to free him by her death. For the first time we see a Jason who assumes responsibility for his wife’s actions, which have led to the deaths of his children and, in this case, her own as well. The impact of the altered ending shifts responsibility for the tragic outcome to the intolerance of the Puritan community. Oparre must be one of the purest and noblest Medea figures to have been imagined. In many ways she is almost the antithesis of the traditional conception. She lacks the force of the typical Medea figure, who is fired by hatred and the thirst for revenge. Anderson’s goal with this reinterpretation was to warn against the disastrous effects of racial prejudice, bigotry and materialism, and he thus created a community, who represent all that is bad, while the Medea figure incarnates the ideals of unconditional love and selflessness.
This tame Black Medea is exceptional, as most of the modern adaptations do preserve something of the steely quality of the ancient Medea. This is evident in the French adaptation by Jean Anouilh, which was published in 1946, but first performed in 1953. Anouilh had already produced two other plays based on Greek models, notably Antigone, which was staged in Paris during the German occupation and presented the theme of resistance to unjust rule under the camouflage of Greek myth. Anouilh’s Médée is heavily indebted to Seneca’s Medea. Like Seneca he omits Aegeus, and the children are to be allowed to stay with Jason. A technical innovation by Anouilh is the omission of a chorus, but the most striking aspect of the French play is the reinterpretation of the relationship between Médée and Jason. Jason’s new marriage is not the root cause of the rupture of their relationship, but the final symptom of an unbearable tension that has been building up between them for years. Médée’s outsider status is indicated by making her a gypsy, squatting in a caravan outside the town. Her hatred for Jason is vividly depicted, but this is the other side of her fierce love for him which is part of their intense sexual relationship. Anouilh does not elaborate on the effect of his Medea figure being a gypsy. It is part of her wild nature. She is shown as always craving action, always ready for a new adventure, but Jason is tired of a life of adventure and wants a settled life. Thus Anouilh’s Black Medea is not the victim of oppression because of her colour, but her dark skin marks her as different to the settled, bourgeois community and expresses her restlessness and inability to settle in an orderly society. This Medea also kills herself along with the children, by setting fire to the caravan when they are all inside. Ironically, although she thinks that this mode of death will make her an indelible part of Jason, he is shown at the end of the play as getting on with civic duties. In this way Anouilh moves the spotlight from Médée, and Jason becomes the hero, an everyman whose positive approach to the problems of human existence leaves the audience with a feeling of relative optimism.
The title, African Medea, indicates that Jim Magnuson’s adaptation involves the Third World. That an American playwright chose in 1968 to set his Medea play in Africa raises several questions. Why not set it in the USA where there is a huge Black population engaged in the struggle for civil rights, or why not set it in a country where the USA has significant involvement, such as Vietnam? The answer must be that by choosing nineteenth-century Portuguese colonial Africa, Magnuson was ensuring that the message of the play would become more general and not be considered as confined to the specific American problems of the moment.
Magnuson follows the outline of Euripides’ tragedy closely, but has made changes to the characters in keeping with the new location. Medea is a princess of the Bono, a distant tribe in Africa. Her Nurse is an old slave woman. Jason is a Portuguese adventurer, slave-trader and dealer in ivory, while the Creon role is transformed to that of Barretto, the Portuguese governor of the city. His daughter, Cecilia, is not a dramatis persona. The Tutor of the two boys, who have small speaking parts, is an old Black man, while Adago, the king of another African country, has the role of Aegeus. The chorus consists of ‘poorly dressed African women’. A soldier plays the role of the Euripidean messenger, while a blind beggar, a character invented by Magnuson, represents certain elements of the native population.
The opening scene already indicates general disharmony between Black and White, between indigenous Africans and Portuguese overlords. The Black beggar’s words are ominous: ‘Awake, masters, for you are in Africa! … Your many kindnesses to us – slavery, death, disease, are soon to be repaid. The time is near.’ (p. 155). Thus the conflict between Medea and Jason is played out against the background of strife, which adds an extra dimension to their own struggle. The religious element in their conflict is again highlighted: Jason is free to marry the blonde daughter of the governor, because his marriage to Medea was not a Christian one. Medea, on the other hand, calls on the Sun goddess, Nyame, to help her avenge her wrongs. Medea refuses the sympathetic solidarity of the chorus. They have accepted their position as slaves and have thus become accomplices of the oppressors.
This play also touches on the difficult position for the children as they are ‘mulatto’. That makes their future uncertain, as they belong to neither the Black nor the White world. In addition, Medea, in her hatred for Jason and all who have betrayed her, also has a revulsion for the whiteness in the children. Magnuson enhances the significance of the Golden Fleece. Its holiness is emphasized throughout and Medea displays the bodies of her sons against the Fleece when she has killed them. She refuses to leave the children’s corpses but will take them with her. She is able to leave safely, as
her magic power protects her against bullets, and she is surrounded by poisonous snakes.
Magnuson’s creation of a background of racial and political unrest in the city lends even more urgency to the execution of Medea’s vengeance. The creation of the Black beggar, who voices the feelings of those who do not accept the colonial dispensation, adds to the racial tension. The last words of the chorus, however, effectively convey the utter chaos and despair caused by the completion of the dramatic action: ‘We watched helpless as violence raced violence, as evil mated evil’ (p. 190). There is no hope for ordinary people left behind in the strife-torn city now deprived of its governor, while Medea’s future is also uncertain. Magnuson’s conclusion is unequivocal: wrongs or injustices repaid in kind will provide no lasting solution. The beggar’s dream of a violent overthrowing of the local order is contrasted with Medea’s goal of reaching ‘a land of hope where [she] could be safe and free’ (p. 173). Both these ideals are shown to be unrealistic. Moreover, the terms in which Medea’s utopia is described, ‘a land where men have died to win their liberty, and freedom stretches as far as the mountain’s horizon’ (p. 174), evoke the popular image of the USA. The implication of the chorus’ final words is that Medea will not reach that land – that it may, in fact, not exist. Thus Magnuson’s play ultimately points to the impossibility of achieving freedom and justice by unjust means. This lesson would apply to the goals of the Civil Rights movement in the USA, which was at its height at the time of the play’s first performance, and also to the war being waged in Vietnam. Medea as a Black freedom fighter is thus shown up as flawed because of the violence of her means.
Another Black Medea who symbolizes the struggle for equal rights for those suffering discrimination as a result of imperialism is Demea, the protagonist of the South African poet Guy Butler’s reworking of Euripides’ Medea to highlight the injustices of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Butler transfers the action of the play to the late 1820s on the Eastern Cape frontier where the British settlers and the indigenous Xhosa tribes met, often in war. Butler changes the names of the characters without obliterating their link with the Greek originals. Thus the protagonists become by anagram, Demea, a Black princess, and Captain Jonas Barker, a British officer in the Peninsular wars, who, since 1815, has been an adventurer-trader in Southern Africa. Butler explicitly states that he was prompted to create his play by his interpretation of Euripides’ Medea and his concern for the situation in contemporary South Africa:
I was particularly struck by the Medea of Euripides, which dealt with an issue much on my mind: racial and cultural prejudice … In writing Demea, I have turned the Medea into a political allegory of the South African situation as I saw it, at the height of the idealistic Verwoerdian mania.
Butler wrote his play in the 1950s, but it could only be published and performed in 1990, when the political situation in the country had changed and the legislative framework that upheld apartheid was being dismantled.
Further changes to the details of the Greek tragedy in order to fit in with the new context are that Jonas and Kroon, an older White Afrikaner, are both leaders of treks (groups of people who left the Cape Colony during the nineteenth century). Jonas’ group is multiracial, but Kroon, the Creon figure, leads a pure White trek. When the play opens, Jonas has become disillusioned with the prospects of a mixed community and has decided to disband his trek, to abandon his wife Demea and their sons, to marry Kroon’s daughter and to join his party. This sets the stage for the revenge of the Medea figure. Butler makes use of South African history to flesh out the details. His Aegeus figure is Agaan, a tribal chief, who conspires with Demea to enlist the support of Black allies to attack Kroon’s trek on the day when the wedding of Jonas and Kroon’s daughter is celebrated. They will kill the Boers and also Demea’s children, who will be sent with a gift to Kroon. Butler substitutes this ploy, which has historical precedents in South Africa (notably the ambush and slaughter of Piet Retief and his Voortrekkers at the kraal of Dingaan, chief of the Zulus, in 1838) for the magic robe and tiara in the Greek drama and for the killing of the children at their mother’s hands. As in Asie and The Wingless Victory, the Medea figure kills her children not only to punish her unfaithful husband, but to spare them the humiliation of suffering from racial prejudice. However, Butler sharpens the conflict between White and Black insofar as Demea is not isolated, but enjoys the support of Agaan and his allies. Before Demea takes leave of her sons, she changes from Western clothes, that she calls ‘slave’s clothes’, into her tribal dress. This indicates her total rejection of the ‘White’ world and identification with her own people. Some interpretations have seen this allegory as aimed especially at the betrayal of Black South Africa (Demea) by the English (Jonas), who makes common cause with the racist Kroon. However, the outcome of the play, the disastrous consequences of the betrayal of trust between White and Black, has wider and more permanent significance.
These examples of adaptations of Euripides’ play illustrate how modern authors have elaborated Medea’s status as an outsider in the Greek world to find equivalents in the modern world and thus broach themes important in the new contexts. There are also examples of performances where directors have been less explicit in transferring the play to the modern world, but have indicated the relevance of the themes of racial prejudice and colonial exploitation simply by casting a Black actress as Medea. Kevin Wetmore in his Black Dionysus, that deals with the reception of Greek tragedy by black Americans, mentions that in 1936 the black actress, Rose McClendon, was set to take on the Medea role in a version of Medea, which was not ‘Africanized’ in any other way.
Much has been written on the performance and adaptation of the Medea story over the centuries. Some versions emphasize her role as a murdering mother and attempt to provide a psychological explanation; some emphasize her position as a woman. This chapter has shown how the modern world has tried to deal with her depiction as a non-Greek in the ancient play and that, for many modern playwrights, the solution has been to make her non-white.
Euripides’ Medea
Translated by David Stuttard
Dramatis Personae
In order of appearance:
Nurse
member of Jason and Medea’s (former) household
Tutor
member of Jason and Medea’s (former) household with responsibility for educating the children
Sons
Jason and Medea’s two sons
Chorus
of (fifteen) Corinthian women
Medea
Colchian princess, brought by Jason to Greece
Creon
king of Corinth
Jason
prince of Iolcus, hero of voyage of the Argo, taker of the Golden Fleece, faithless husband of Medea
Aegeus
king of Athens
Messenger
member of Jason and Medea’s (former) household
The action takes place outside (perhaps in a courtyard of) the royal palace of Creon in Corinth. Although the play is set in an heroic kingly age, some eight centuries or more before the date of its first production, it imagines its social context as containing elements of fifth-century democratic Athens.
Euripides’ Medea was first performed at the City Dionysia in Athens in Elaphebolion (March/April) 431 BC as part of a tetralogy, which also contained the now lost plays, Philoctetes, Dictys and (the satyr play) Reapers. The tetralogy was awarded third prize.
No stage directions appear in the received texts. The only real direction in this translation concerns the ex machina ending, where the appearance of Medea on high is of importance. Other minor directions are, in fact, translations of phrases in the text; for example, ‘sobbing’ can translate the Greek, ‘ió’ or ‘ió moi moi’, and ‘screaming’ the Greek, ‘aiai’.
Prologue
Nurse Oh, how I wish that ship, the Argo’d never spread its sails and soared between the Clashing Rocks, slate-grey Symplegades, to Colchis and
our home. I wish they’d never felled the pine-trees in the hidden glens of Pelion, or made them oars for heroes’ hands, that they might come as raiders for the Golden Fleece – all for the sake of just one man, Pelias.
For then my mistress, my Medea, never would have sailed to Greece and to the towers that ringed Iolcus, her mind askew, her heart crazed, captivated by her lust for Jason. She’d never have beguiled Pelias’ daughters, then, to kill their father, never come to live here in this land of Corinth with her husband and her sons.
Oh, yes! In everything she does, she bends her will to Jason’s, makes his happiness her chief concern. Well, it’s the best way for a woman to ensure security – not to argue with her man.
But now all’s turned to hatred. Love has sickened and turned sour. You see, he has betrayed his own sons and my mistress, too. Yes, Jason’s getting married. A royal wedding. Yes! He’s marrying the daughter of this country’s king, King Creon.
And poor Medea, so humiliated, scorned, keeps crying out on the oaths they swore, keeps calling up their promises, her trust and her fidelity, so total and so absolute, keeps calling on the gods to witness Jason’s treatment of her in return. She won’t get up. She will not eat. She’s even harming herself physically. Deliberately. And she dissolves all time itself in tears. And since she learned of how her husband’s wronged her, she has not raised her eyes or lifted her head up from the ground.
Looking at Medea Page 22