The Medea

By James Cox, Student

The Reading of the Audience, Then and Now

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

The Medea: The Reading of the Audience, Then and Now
The Medea, a Grecian tragedy by Euripides, was written in the Golden Age Period of classical Greece. When the play was written, the particular context that the author was writing in and that the audience received would be different to the meanings and ideas that we pick up from studying or viewing the play now, over 3,000 years later. For example, the way that women in particular are pictured in old plays such as The Medea is quite derogatory and would be unacceptable for a modern play. (Unless it was trying to recreate a historical location.) Various meanings in Medea demonstrate this difference in the distinct readings that you can find in the text today, and those meanings that we can try to simulate by looking at the text from a historical context.

One meaning that probably has not changed much in the millennia is that 'human emotions are such that they can lead us to commit atrocities,' which is perhaps the largest meaning that you could find in the play. Any play in which such powerful images and actions occur would be similar, the extreme emotional toil experienced by the characters in a tragedy often causes them to do drastic things, such as Macbeth turning more and more evil as he slowly goes insane in Macbeth, or Oedipus blinding himself in Oedipus Rex. Medea, too, is under a huge amount of emotional toil. She has left her father and her native land behind, hacked up her brother while escaping the enemy's boats, and tricked Pelias' daughters into killing their father after Jason was denied the throne. To be with Jason, she destroyed all of the bridges connecting her to her past 'comfort zone,' but now that Jason wishes to leave her, she pays the price for doing these things; alone, in a foreign country, with two children to care for; it is no wonder that she resorts to grave measures.

Another meaning present in the text challenges the Greek ideal of the state being more important that the individual. The ancient Greeks had a highly advanced societal structure for their time, in fact what they had was a selective but true democracy. In a style that would be impossible today with city populations in the millions and country populations in the tens and hundreds of millions, each citizen of the city-state voted on issues facing the particular city. The state was considered as being at a higher level that each citizen in it; for example, a citizen could be exiled any time after a vote from his peers. The democracy being selective was based on the fact of what was actually considered a citizen: only free men who were Greeks could be called citizens: women, slaves and foreigners were subject to, but not protected by, law. Medea, the 'exotic wife,' an Asiatic, is a foreigner in a highly xenophobic and arrogant society that believed that Greeks represented the epitome of humanity, and they strive for the perfection of the gods themselves. Medea says this herself: ""And when you're a foreigner: 'Be like us,' they say. Even Greeks look down on other Greeks, Too clever to see the good in them."" Medea as a play challenges this point of view, saying that the ideal is wrong, since it can cause a great deal of harm and anxiety to someone who is subject to the ideal. Also, Jason, in seeking a path to royalty after being denied his first chance at it by King Pelias, shows the mindset of the Greek people. ""Who steps aside, takes time for beggars? I want our sons in peace and harmony, with new royal brothers."" Furthermore, the Greek arrogance is displayed in the choral Ode to Athens: ""Sprung from the blessed Gods, sturdy growth in healthy soil, the wisest of the wise.""

This meaning in the text is not carried over well after the thousands of years since it was written, though. While today, certainly, the challenged ideal is no longer present; and the idea of being able to vote out someone from the city in which they lived would not go down well, many people who do not have a good understanding of the historical context of which the play was written in will not understand the Greek city-state style of democracy, and the types of people that the Greeks were.

Due to the many changes that have occurred over the many years since the time of writing of Medea, and even across different continents in an entirely different hemisphere, some of the meanings that could be found by audiences and contemporaries of the author at the time are slightly diminished, especially to those with not much knowledge of the historical context. Significant differences in society and cultural codes can change the range of meanings available in studying a text; the reading of the audience (or student) coming from a current environment is important, but reading from a historical context can help to widen the range of readings available, and make it easier to understand certain aspects and insinuations of the text.