The Power of Medea and Techniques Employed

By James Cox, Student

The Power of Drama

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

It has been said that 'the power of drama lies in the dynamic interactions between elements of the play itself.' The power of the play, Medea, is about the capability for evil in the human heart. Medea is a greek tragedy written by Euripides in ancient times. In that long gone era, the world was a much more violent and barbaric place than it is today, so this shows the power of the play more fully. The elements of the play used to contract this message are the set, the action, the dialogue, the chorus, and the characters.

When the set is related to the context, this element of the play turns out to be perhaps the most important of them all. The fact is that the Greek race of people was very arrogant. They believed in themselves as the most advanced race in the world, at the very top of all the others for recognition by the gods. They believed that all other people were barbarians, and therefore they got less rights and recognition while they were in Greece. There idea to the use of setting to create more power in the play is that all of the evil in the play occurred in 'civilized' Greece, the place where such things should not happen. This can be demonstrated in the chorus' Ode to Athens: ""Sprung from the blessed Gods, sturdy growth in healthy soil, the wisest of the wise.""

The set as an element within a dynamic interaction acts together with the characters and the action. The link of the foul deeds happening in the civilized city of Corinth is an example between the link between the setting and the action. To give more power to this link, however, a thorough knowledge of the context of the times is needed. The characters work together with the setting as members of the society of Corinth: this way the people viewing the play would be more able to relate to the characters. Of course, this is one ability which we in 2001 do not quite have! The setting also works with the chorus in much the same way as with the other characters, the chorus being made up of Greek women. ""Even Greeks look down on other Greeks."" (Medea)

Of course, without the action in the play, the power of the play would not be apparent. The action in the play is very horrific and violent: Medea murders not only the Princess and the King of Corinth, she also kills her own two offspring! Such evil deeds show the foul abilities of the human race. Medea tells of an interesting characteristic about herself in the play. She is the granddaughter of Apollo, the golden sun god, but at the same time she is also a priestess of the evil goddess Hekate. In the end, she shows that her evil background has the stronger influence over her actions than her side of 'gold.'

Obviously, action is linked dynamically to the characters, because it is the characters that have to do all of the action. While things such as the murder happened offstage in ancient Greece, the audience still knew what had happened and who had done it. Part of the power in the play comes from the heights of the characters in society, and the fact that they still do evil things. Jason, the 'vilest man alive,' is a hero of Greece, having retrieved the Golden Fleece. Kreon, the great King of Corinth, allows a mother to die (assuming banishment had actually occurred.) The action is also linked to the dialogue, because the dialogue in the play mainly consists of future plans and/or recounts of the action!
NURSE: ""The oaths he swore! The promises- Gods, witness the change in Jason's heart!""
The dialogue is perhaps a minor part of the meaning in the play: it mainly serves to reinforce the action. However, pieces of speech show us even more evil of the human mind:

MEDEA: ""... How did they die? Was it really so horrible, so vile? The worse it was, the more I want to hear.""

Not only does Medea commit the terrible double murder which even the chorus of women thinks is atrocious, she revels in the feeling of evil. She is happy to hear of the death, somewhat like the criminal returning to the scene of the crime. Not only does she want to hear the recount of the story, she also is very machiavellian in her reason for listening: to get enjoyment out of the death of her victims. The murder was not a 'noble' one of vengeance, but a senseless one mainly caused by jealousy.

The chorus is used as an example of the Greek womenfolk. In this play they side with Medea, and promise to keep the words she confides to them a secret. This turns out to be a fatal error, however, as what she plans turns out to become worse and worse: what starts as a simple payback of Jason turns almost into serial homicide. Part of the evil of humanity is shown by the chorus letting gender feuds get in the way of doing what is right: instead of letting someone know, they kept quiet because of how Medea's plight struck their sex. While this is not the dark evil of murder, it shows the all-too human tendency to keep quiet while bad things occur.
""You're right. To punish him. You've cause enough to grieve.""
""Medea, mother, murderess. Is this the price you claim for marriage mocked?""

The chorus mainly interacts with the other characters, certainly they interact with Medea, as they act as confidante and friend to her. They hide her schemes and plans, even when they escalate into the murder of four people including her own innocent sons just to spite Jason.

The characters are very important in showing this evil in the play. Of course, how to show evil in humanity but by the evil in the characters? Apart from the chorus' role, mentioned earlier, there is also the evil in such characters as Jason and Kreon. Jason has let down his wife (even though his marriage was not official by Grecian law, it was sanctioned by their oaths to the Gods) in his quest to get royal recognition, and Kreon banished a mother and her two sons, when banishment was certain death at those times of constant warfare among Grecian city states. Again, there are different levels of evil in the characters in the play. Medea's action are the most despicable, perhaps followed by Jason, then Kreon and the chorus.

Medea is obviously a very powerful play, and just by reading the text you do not get a real feeling for the action and the setting that would be used in a real production. All of these stage elements and other dramatic elements combine while in-motion to give a play a real power. In Medea, a play primarily concerned with the evil in people hearts, the dynamic fusion of elements works as well as one could expect from the work of Euripides.