Looking at Medea

by David Stuttard

  I have been told the evils I must do. My passion’s stronger than my resolution, and this lust for vengeance is the well-spring from whose waters pour the greatest sufferings for man.

  Anapaestic Interlude

  Chorus I’ve often been involved in softer sophistries and in debate more subtle than a woman should. But women have their muse of inspiration, too, which brings them understanding. Not all, perhaps, but there are some (how could there not be) and you’d find them out, I think, among the many. For womankind is not devoid of inspiration.

  And I maintain that being childless, having no experience at all of children, brings more happiness than parenthood. The childless, through their inexperience, can speculate on whether children are a blessing or a curse, and yet are free from all the toil.

  But those, who have the ‘joy’ of children growing up in their own homes – I see them worn inexorably down by worries: first how best to bring them up and how to make enough of an inheritance to leave them when they die. And then, how do they know if all this toil, this effort, is for children who are virtuous or bad?

  One worry still remains to parents everywhere, the last of all: for even if they’ve found the means to bring them up, and if their children have grown big and strong, and if they’ve turned out virtuous, Death still is there to snatch the corpses of your children down to Hades and so turn your former happiness upon its head. Why, then, should we embrace this new anxiety of parenthood, when there already are so many others, that the gods bestow on men?

  Episode 6

  Medea My friends! It seems like an eternity I have been waiting, listening, intent for any sign to tell what is to be. And now I see a servant, one of Jason’s household, coming here. He’s breathing hard. He speaks of horrors strange and new.

  Messenger Medea! All you have done! The cruel atrocities! Go! Go away! Use any means you can!

  Medea What have I done that I should run away?

  Messenger The girl, the princess is destroyed, and Creon too, her father, all through your venom!

  Medea You tell such an enchanting story, that I’ll think of you for all the rest of time as my well-wisher and my friend.

  Messenger What are you saying? Are you thinking clearly, lady? Are you mad? The horror you’ve unleashed upon the royal house – how can you hear what you have done and smile and be not terrified?

  Medea There is much that I could say to justify what I have done. But take your time, my friend, and tell me how they died. You see, you’ll give me twice the satisfaction if their death was hard, in twisting cruelty.

  Messenger Your two sons came in with their father and they went on through towards the bridal rooms. And we were glad – the house-slaves all had been distressed to see you suffer so. And so at once, there was much talk throughout the house, how you had put aside your former quarrel with your husband. They took your two boys’ hands and kissed them, and they kissed their golden hair. And I myself was moved so by my happiness I followed the boys all the way inside the women’s quarters.

  She was there – our mistress, now that you are our mistress no longer – but at first she did not see your sons. Her eyes were searching only for her Jason. But then she saw them, and the blood drained from her face. She turned away, her fists clenched to her eyes, in indignation and revulsion that your sons had been brought in. Your husband went to her and tried to soothe her, comforted the child, and said: ‘Will you not put away this anger with my friends and family? Will you not check your temper? Look at me. Will you not think of my friends and my family as yours, accept these gifts and ask your father to revoke my children’s exile for my sake?’

  And when she saw the beauty of your gifts, well, she could not resist. No. She agreed to everything her husband asked. And as soon as Jason and his sons had left her rooms, she took the dress, so shimmering, so fine, and wrapped it round her. And she set the golden crown upon her head and took a mirror in her hand and in its brightness bunched her curls and laughed to look upon the ghostly spectre of her face reflected there. She stood up from the chair she sat on, and she walked from room to room, treading softly, airily on milk-white feet, enraptured by your gifts; and many times she’d arch her back and gaze in admiration at her loveliness.

  But then what we saw next – so horrible to see! You see, all colour drained from her; she staggered, stumbled, her limbs shaking uncontrolled; she would have fallen headlong on the ground, but somehow found a chair and sank down huddled in it.

  One of her servants, an old woman, thought that it might be the anger of some god, of Pan, had settled on her and she raised the ritual wail to ward off evil. But then she saw the white saliva seeping from her mouth, she saw the girls’ eyes twisting up, contorted, in their sockets and her bloodless skin. Her ritual wail became a scream that froze the soul. At once one of her servants ran to Creon’s quarters, one to Jason to tell him of his bride, how she was suffering. The whole house thundered with the clattering of running feet.

  It happened all so quickly, in the time a sprinter takes to run two lengths, and then her eyes, which had before been dull and lifeless, snapped into sudden focus and she groaned – a terrifying unearthly groan. You see, a double agony was pressing raw against her. The golden garland, which had sat so lightly on her head before, began to smoulder with a stream of fire, supernatural, corroding all it touched. The gauzy dress, which your own sons had given her, tore through her soft white skin. She staggered from the throne. She tried to run. Engulfed in fire, her hair, her head shook violently in spasms as she tried to tear away the crown. But still the golden chains clamped tight, and every movement of her head but fanned the fire the more. Exhausted by the pain, she fell, disfigured, features gone. Only a loving parent would have recognized her then. Her eyes were melting and her face had lost all form, and from her forehead gouts of blood and fire drenched down. And as the poison ate its acid way unseen, her very flesh, like glistening drops of resin, oozed from her bones.

  It was so harrowing to see. We all were terrified to touch her corpse. What she had suffered stood as warning to us all.

  But suddenly her father burst into her chamber. He did not know how she had suffered, and he fell down on his knees beside her corpse. And as he did so, he let out a groan. He hugged her to him, kissed her, talked to her: ‘My poor dear child! Which of the gods so hated you to make you die like this? I am an old man, near to death; who has bereft me of my only child? Oh, how I wish that I could die with you, my child!’

  When he had stopped, and tried his tears, he tried, so old, so frail, to stand. But he could not. The gauzy dress stuck to him fast like ivy to a laurel shoot. He wrestled desperately to stand, but as he struggled to his knees, her weight dragged leaden down and made him fall. And if he tried to free himself by force, he tore his flesh, so old, so dry, from off his bones. In time, the poor man sank, exhausted, to the ground and so gave up his soul. You see, the evil and the pain had broken him.

  They’re lying there now in death together – an old father and his child – a destiny to make the very world dissolve in tears.

  (To Medea) But as for your affairs, Medea, you will yourself know how you best can ward off punishment. I shall not speak of that. But I have thought before and think it now, how human life is nothing but a shadow. For there’s no man alive who can be truly free from cares. If he has gained great wealth, one man perhaps may seem more lucky than another but his cares are with him always.

  Chorus On this one day, I think, some spirit’s clamped so many sorrows hard on Jason, but with justice. Our poor princess, poor Creon’s child, what grief is ours for all your suffering! And even now you make your lonely journey down to Hades’ house of death, your only crime: to marry Jason.

  Medea My friends, the die is cast. I must lose no time, but I must kill my children and so flee this land. For if I hesitate, I shall by my delay but turn my children over to another’s hands to die more cruelly. Compulsion crowds them from all sides and they must die. Since it is so, then it is b
etter I should kill them, for I gave them life. So, steel yourself, Medea. Why hesitate, when there is no escape from pain and cruel compulsion? My hand, my hand! Come, take the knife and trace that narrow line, which starts my future and yet ends their past. Do not shrink back! Do not think back on their sweet childhood, how you cradled them, your babies. No! For this one day forget they are your children. You will have all your life to mourn. And if you kill them, well, at least you loved them once. I am a woman and my destiny has overwhelmed me.

  Stasimon 5

  Chorus You, Earth, and you, you golden shafts of sunlight, look! Look on this woman now, taboo, before she stains her hands in the black blood of her own children’s slaughter! Your shimmering sunlight gave her birth, your blood flows in her veins, and terror comes to mortal men when the gods’ blood is spilled. So, sunlight, Zeus-born, stop her! Stay her hand! Drive her away! She has become a Fury bent on blood, lashed to a vicious frenzy by the screaming wraiths of death.

  Was it all empty, then, the loving care you gave them? And all the love that they returned, was that all nothing, too? Why did you ever cross the Clashing Rocks, slate-grey Symplegades, the boundary that separates the ordered world from chaos? How can your mind be so consumed by such a holocaust of hatred, such a lust for blood? When we spill the blood of our own blood, a terrifying miasma settles, seeping from the ground, and from the sky-gods comes the curse of their anathema.

  (The children scream within)

  Did you hear them scream? The children! Did you hear them? The woman is accursed!

  Child A What shall I do? Where can I flee my mother’s hands?

  Child B I do not know, my dearest brother! We are lost!

  Chorus Shall I go inside? I should protect them!

  Child A Yes! By the gods, protect us!

  Child B The sword-snare closes tight!

  Chorus Medea! Your spirit must have been as hard as stone, as iron to grasp fate in your hands and kill your children! I’ve heard tell of one woman only, who in time past raised her hand to kill her sons, when Ino, maddened by the madness of the gods, was driven from her house by Hera, wife of Zeus, to wander far from home. She flung herself headlong into the salt-sea-swell because she’d killed her children in her cruelty. She stepped into the stomach-churning void from the high cliff and died to join in death with her two sons. So what should now seem strange or terrifying? A woman’s sexuality can bring many pains; it has already reaped its swathe of suffering for men.

  Exodos

  Jason Women, oh!, the horror and the cruelty of all she’s done, Medea! Is she inside or has she fled? Yes, she must either hide below the very earth or soar on spreading wings into the vastness of the sky, if she is not to suffer retribution from the royal house. Or does she think that she can kill a king, a princess, and escape the direst punishment?

  And yet my thoughts are not so much for her as for my children. Yes, Medea’s fate lies in the hands of those, whose relatives she’s killed, but I’ve come to save my children’s lives, lest Creon’s family carry out some grim atrocity in retribution for their mother’s sacrilegious crime.

  Chorus Jason, you poor man! You do not know the depths of all the suffering you must endure. For if you did, you’d not have spoken so.

  Jason What then? Does she want to kill me too?

  Chorus Your sons are dead. Their mother killed them.

  Jason No! What will you say? It will destroy me, women!

  Chorus Accept it Jason – they are dead.

  Jason Where did she kill them? Out here? In the house?

  Chorus Open the doors and you will see them dead.

  Jason Unbar the doors, slaves, now! As quickly as you can! Unlock the bolts that I might see the horror of my children’s death and take my vengeance on their murderess!

  Medea (Appearing high above the palace in the fiery chariot of Helios, the sun-god, drawn by serpents. She holds torches in both hands. Her children’s bodies lie at her feet.)

  Why are you straining at the doors? Why would you open them? What is it that you hope to find? The corpses of the dead? And me, who murdered them? Stop now! If you would speak to me, then speak! But you will never touch me. My father’s father, Helios, the Sun, has given me his chariot, my tower and my defence against my enemies.

  Jason You! You! I hate you! Of any woman anywhere you’ve earned the greatest hatred of the gods and me and all mankind! You so endured to stab and stab again your sons, whom you yourself had borne, and so leave me bereft, destroyed! And now, you still can show your face before the sacred sun and earth, though you are guilty of the greatest sacrilege! Damnation take you!

  I now see clearly, though I did not see it clearly then before, that when I brought you from your palace and your strange barbaric land to Greece and to my home, I brought in you a mighty evil, yes, a woman who’d betrayed her father and the very land that brought her up. The gods unleashed you on me as a demon to destroy me. You killed your brother at your hearth and so stepped on my ship, my Argo, in all its sacred innocence. And so it all began. You were my wife. You bore my sons. And now, because of nothing more than sexual jealousy, you’ve killed them. There was no woman ever in the whole of Greece who could have done such things, and yet I did not marry any Greek. I married you. I married hatred, spite, destruction – not a woman but a lioness unleashed and more inhuman than the sea-snakes circling Scylla. Why catalogue your countless crimes? You have no concept of remorse.

  My curse goes with you! Yes, your life is sordid, you, your children’s murderess! All I have left now is to mourn the spirit of my own destruction – my bride, so young, so innocent, is there for me no longer and my sons I brought up with such care – I’ll never speak to them or see them in this life again. All that I had is gone.

  Medea I would construct a lengthy argument to meet your accusations, but Zeus, the Father, knows not only what I’ve done to you but what I’ve done for you as well. You were not to humiliate my marriage and my bed, while you yourself enjoyed a charmed life, ridiculing me with mocking laughter. Nor could the princess, no, nor Creon either, who’d arranged your marriage, banish me and go unpunished. So do what you will. Call me a lioness unleashed, if that gives you some pleasure. Think of me, if you like, as more inhuman than the sea-snakes circling Scylla. But I have done all I set out to do. My venom is implanted in your heart.

  Jason But they were your sons, too! Your loss, your grief’s as great as mine!

  Medea Know this: you cannot ridicule me now, and that soothes all my pain.

  Jason My sons, your mother was so cruel.

  Medea My children, no, it was your father’s weakness, that destroyed you!

  Jason It was not I, who killed them!

  Medea No, but it was your arrogance and your decision to take your new bride.

  Jason And so you thought your jealousies could justify such slaughter?

  Medea Do you think that a woman cares so little for a husband’s infidelity?

  Jason A woman who is rational would, yes! For you, though, everything that’s done, you think is done to hurt you.

  Medea Your sons are dead, and I have had my vengeance.

  Jason Yes, they are dead, and they will have their vengeance upon you!

  Medea The gods know who it was began this conflict.

  Jason Yes, and they know your mind and it repels them.

  Medea Hate all you will. The shrillness of your ranting merely fills me with contempt!

  Jason As I feel nothing but contempt when I hear you! Yes, I am glad to see you go!

  Medea Then I shall go. No more delay. I have no wish to stay now.

  Jason Wait! Let me bury them and carry out the rituals of death for my dead sons!

  Medea No. I shall bury them with my own hands. I’ll take them to the sacred precinct of the goddess Hera on her headland where it overlooks the sea, and there, where none who hate them may dishonour them, I’ll build their tomb. And for all future time in Corinth, in this land, I shall ordain a solemn festival a
nd rites, an expiation for their death and for my sacrilege. And I shall go to Aegeus in Athens and there shall live with him. But you, as is a coward’s due, will die all shabbily, struck on your head by a splinter of your ship, your Argo. So in the squalor of your death will die our marriage and our union.

  Jason The furies of your children’s vengeance, yes, and blood-soaked Justice damn you!

  Medea There is no god or spirit hears you now, for you have broken solemn oaths and sullied all the sacred ties of friendship!

  Jason You cursed abomination! You have slaughtered your own sons!

  Medea Go back inside. Bury your wife.

  Jason Yes, I shall go. My sons are lost forever.

  Medea Your grief will grow as you grow old into great old age.

  Jason My sons! I love my sons so much!

  Medea Their mother loves them. You do not.

  Jason And still you killed them.

  Medea That they might break your heart.

  Jason I wish so much that I could kiss my children one last time!

  Medea Yes, there is so much that you would say, so many kisses, yet a moment since you’d drive them out in exile.

  Jason By all the gods! Let me caress their soft skin one last time!

  Medea It cannot be. There is no longer any use in words.

  Jason Zeus! Hear how she rejects my prayers; see how I suffer at her hands! She is a savage lioness, a foul abomination! She has killed my sons!

  But now, as best I can, though it can be but poorly, I must mourn all that has happened here, and call the gods to witness how you killed my sons and then denied me any right to lay their bodies out or bury them. I wish that I had never fathered sons to see them so destroyed, and you their murderer.