[Your Name] [Your Address] [City, State, Zip Code] [Date] To the Honorable Archon Eponymous, I humbly submit for your esteemed consideration a proposal for a tragic play that delves into the profound depths of moral conflict and divine justice. As an ancient Greek tragedian, it is my honor to present to you "Eumenides," a work that grapples with the timeless themes of familial duty, divine command, and the pursuit of justice. Title and Author: The title of the play is "Eumenides," and it will be authored by none other than Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy. Choosing Aeschylus as the author holds great significance for the play's thematic and stylistic elements. Aeschylus, known for his grandeur, reverence for the gods, and exploration …show more content…
The myth provides a rich tapestry of dramatic conflict, divine intervention, and moral reckoning. By adapting this myth to the stage, the play explores the enduring relevance of ancient themes to contemporary audiences, inviting reflection on the nature of justice, guilt, and redemption. I am confident that "Eumenides" will resonate deeply with audiences, offering a thought-provoking exploration of moral ambiguity and the pursuit of righteousness. With your gracious support, this tragic masterpiece will serve as a testament to the enduring power of Greek drama to illuminate the human condition. Episode 1: The Temple of Apollo The play opens at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, where Orestes seeks refuge from the pursuing Furies. Orestes is tormented by guilt over his mother's murder and haunted by visions of the avenging goddesses. The stage is adorned with symbols of Apollo's divine authority, including an altar and a statue of the god. Orestes, dressed in tattered garments and clutching a blood-stained dagger, pleads for Apollo's protection. The chorus, embodying the Furies, appears as ghostly apparitions, their faces hidden beneath veils as they chant ominous incantations. The scene sets the tone for the ethical conflict that will unfold, as Orestes
In this essay I will examine the war-of the-sexes taking place in The Eumenides, the final play of The Oresteia. The plot of The Eumenides pits Orestes and Apollo (representing the male gods and, to a certain extent, male values in general) against the ghost of Clytemnestra and the Furies (equally representative of female values.) Of more vital importance, however, is whether Athene sides with the males or females throughout the play.
Many thematic issues are found in modern plays from classic myths in the book Nine Muses by Wim Coleman. Long ago, when life was full of mysteries, myths, or explanations, helped people make sense of a perplexing world. Myths also explain deeper questions. Such as, how did the world itself come to be? How did life begin? How were human beings created and why? And why is there suffering and death in the world? People of ancient cultures all over the world puzzled over such questions, and they created stories to answer them. One of the main thematic issues in Nine Muses is the tragic effect of engaging in actions which are forbidden. Some plays which express this thematic issue are “Pandora”, “Phaeton and the Sun Chariot”, and “Eros and Psyche”.
Some evaluations claim that the Dionysus appearing in The Bacchae is fairly true embodiment of the ideals of ancient Athens. He demands only worship and proper reverence for his name, two matters of honor that pervaded both the Greek tragedies and the pious society that viewed them. In other plays, Oedipus' consultations with Apollo and the many Choral appeals to Zeus reveal the Athenian respect for their gods, while Electra's need for revenge and Antigone's obligation to bury Polyneices both epitomize the themes of respect and dignity. Yet although Dionysus personifies these two motifs, his clashes with the rest of Athenian tradition seem to make him its true adversary. Dionysius distinctly opposes the usual views on gender, age, rationality and divinity, leaving the reader to wonder whether these contrasts were Euripidean attempts to illuminate specific facets of the culture itself.
Prometheus Bound is quite different from other tragedies in that it is peopled entirely by gods. The play focuses on the story of Prometheus, and we have versions of this myth in Hesiod's famous works. There is reason to think that the author of Prometheus Bound was not only acquainted with Hesiod's version but actually drew on Hesiod directly in this play. This essay therefore aims to establish in what ways the author of Prometheus Bound seems to have drawn from Hesiod's version of myth, in what ways he has diverged from it, and what reasons he might have had for making these changes and innovations. This might therefore highlight any particular emphasis or purpose of Prometheus Bound and what its author might have been trying to get across. Though there is not space in this essay to discuss the problems of attributing this play, it must be recognised that this ambiguity of authorship and dating makes it even more difficult than usual to look at views and purposes behind the play.
Gender is made explicit as a theme throughout the Oresteia through a series of male-female conflicts and incorrectly gendered characters dominated by the figure of Clytemnestra, a woman out of place. This opposition of gender then engenders all the other oppositions of the trilogy; conflicts of oikos and polis, chthonic and Olympian, old and young can be assigned to female and male spheres respectively. In this essay I will look at how the polis examines itself in terms of gender by focusing on the Eumenides' exploration of the myth of matriarchy, issues of the conflict between oikos and polis and the use of speech within the polis. I will then look at how these themes are brought together in the trial and the play provides an image of resolution. Many of these issues are set up in the opening speech of the priestess Pythia as already resolved and are then reconfirmed by the trial itself and closing images order.
Oedipus as the Hero Archetype. The character Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King follows a literary pattern known as the hero archetype. The hero archetype is a pattern involved in transformation and redemption. Manifested in three stages called the quest, the initiation, and the sacrifice, Oedipus is transformed from the redeemer of the city to the cause of its downfall.
In Euripides Greek tragedy, Medea, it is the civilised values of Greek culture, which govern all facets of Corinthian life, yet Medea’s triumph is not a celebration of such values, but a mockery of them. While on the surface, Medea’s triumph appears an act of personal revenge out of pure passion, the implications of her actions extend far beyond one individual to encompass an entire civilisation. In committing “vile” acts of infanticide, Medea not only absolves herself from the one- dimensional role of women in a patriarchal society, but also transcends the social orders of that society. Moreover, it also serves as a warning to sacrificing all reasoning and rationality, and allowing
Finally, human nature must also be carefully understood so as to protect it from being manipulated and to understand its place in society. In ancient Greece, Aeschylus sought to define for the people of Athens the part of human nature that necessitates justice and power. At the end of his series of plays in the Oresteia, Aeschylus tells the story of Orestes and the progression of justice. The final play, The Eumenides, ends with a struggle between different definitions of justice. Orestes is a youth charged with matricide, which is punishable by death according to the Furies and the traditional method of restoring equity.
Euripides. Three Plays of Euripides: Alcestic, Medea, The Bacchae. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1974. Print.
The Resolution of Conflict in Aeschylus' Oresteia Aeschylus, was a master dramatist - he liked to portray conflict between persons, human or divine, or between principles.1 His trilogy of plays, the Oresteia, develops many conflicts that must be resolved during the action of the Eumenides, the concluding play of the trilogy. The central theme of the Oresteia is justice (dike) and in dealing with questions of justice, Aeschylus at every stage involves the gods.2 The Oresteia's climactic conflict in the Eumenides revolves around justice and the gods - opposing conceptions of justice and conflicting classes of gods. This essay will describe and discuss these conflicts and, more importantly, the manner in which they are resolved so that the play, and indeed the entire trilogy, might reach a
The myth of Eurydice is a sad story in which two lovers are separated by death. After his love dies, Orpheus journeys into the underworld to retrieve her, but instead loses her for good. Playwright Sarah Ruhl takes the myth of Eurydice and attempts to transform this sad tale into a more light-hearted story. However, despite humorous lines and actions throughout the play, the melancholy situation of the actual tale overwhelms any comicality present. Although meant to be funny, Sarah Ruhl's “Eurydice” can be seen as a modernized tragedy about two lovers who are separated forever by a twist of fate.
Do you know that the bacterium behind ulcers was discovered by accident? In 1982, two Australian doctors Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were trying to culture the bacteria but it was extremely difficult. When they wanted to culture the bacteria, they only waited the usual two days for each experiment. One day they accidently left some Petri dishes in the lab and went on the Easter holiday. After five days when they came back, growth of colonies on the Petri dishes were noticed. They were the first scientists who could culture the bacteria. Later, those bacteria were named Helicobacter pylori. This discovery helped in understanding ulcers. Marshall and Warren were awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize for their discovery of H. pylori. These bacteria are widespread worldwide. More than 50% of the world population is infected with H. pylori; although, not everyone who is infected with H. pylori suffer its symptoms. Because of its high prevalence, scholars are studying its spread trying to find how we get infected. About 30 years since the discovery of H. pylori and still different scholars are giving different hypotheses of the mechanism of H. pylori spread. By looking at the different suggested hypotheses of the mechanisms of spread, it becomes clear that they are related to culturally-specific habits because of the biological mechanisms of spread. This suggests that effective prevention will involve different mechanisms of public awareness and educational campaigns that challenge cultural beliefs, values, and practices.
In Euripides’ tragic play, Medea, the playwright creates an undercurrent of chaos in the play upon asserting that, “the world’s great order [is being] reversed.” (Lawall, 651, line 408). The manipulation of the spectators’ emotions, which instills in them a sentiment of drama, is relative to this undertone of disorder, as opposed to being absolute. The central thesis suggests drama in the play as relative to the method of theatrical production. The three concepts of set, costumes, and acting, are tools which accentuate the drama of the play. Respectively, these three notions represent the appearance of drama on political, social, and moral levels. This essay will compare three different productions of Euripides’ melodrama, namely, the play as presented by the Jazzart Dance Theatre¹; the Culver City (California) Public Theatre²; and finally, the original ancient Greek production of the play, as it was scripted by Euripides.
Aristotle, a philosopher, scientist, spiritualist and passionate critic of the arts, spent many years studying human nature and its relevance to the stage. His rules of tragedy in fact made a deep imprint on the writing of tragic works, while he influenced the structure of theatre, with his analysis of human nature. Euripides 'Medea', a Greek tragedy written with partial adherence to the Aristotelian rules, explores the continuation of the ancient Greek tales surrounding the mythology of Medea, Princess of Colchis, and granddaughter of Helios, the sun god, with heartlessness to rival the infamous Circe. While the structure of this play undoubtedly perpetuates many of the Aristotelian rules, there are some dramatic structures which challenge its standing with relevance to Aristotle's guidelines, and the judgment of Medea as a dramatic success within the tragic genre.
This paper aims to study two significant playwrights, Sophocles and Euripides, and compare their respective attitudes by examining their plays in respect to plot and character structures. To achieve this goal, the paper is organized into two main sections. In the first section, we provide a brief biography of both Sophocles and Euripides. The second and last section includes summaries of Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Electra which were based on same essentials and give an opportunity to observe the differences of the playwrights. This section also includes the comparisons that are made by our observations about the plays.