Plays entitled Medea by Seneca and Euripides
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This study will compare two plays entitled Medea, by the Roman Seneca and the Greek Euripides. The focus of the study will be on the general superiority of Euripides' presentation of the tragedy. Despite the fact that the plays tell the same story, except for a few minor differences, the dramatic skills and story-telling flair of Euripides outshine the more leaden and much longer-winded Seneca. Seneca tends to create interminable-seeming speeches with little dramatic or expository reward, especially from his Chorus. In fact, the editors themselves excise one long and obviously irrelevant speech "of great detail" from the Chorus of Seneca (Seneca 318). In addition, Seneca's tendency to flowery language often stops the play in its tracks rather than deepening its emotional impact as the author must have intended. Euripides, on the other hand, uses down-to-earth language meant to propel the action and character development, rather than impress the audience with the lyrical skill of the writer. Euripides is capable of lyricism, but he uses his gift judiciously in comparison to the extravagant Seneca. Perhaps most importantly, the Medea of Euripides is a more fully-developed and complex character than the constantly raging protagonist in Seneca. Again, with minor exceptions, the plays portray the same characters, present the same story and plot, and begin and end at the same points. Right from the beginning, however, Euripides' superior talent in drawing the reader into the play
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an important inclusion because their murder at their mother's hand will be the most horrific part of the play.
As opposed to the purely hateful Medea of Seneca, who is onstage at the beginning in her full toxicity, Euripides's Medea is not introduced until the audience's tension and anticipation have built. Even then, she first speaks offstage, so that we hear all about her from other characters, and then hear her voice before we see her. Her words draw the sympathy of the audience, rather than being repelled by the bile of Seneca's Medea. Euripides has Medea's first words be ones of terrible grief: "O God!/ Wretched am I and full of woe,/ How I wish I were dead!" (Euripides 176). Seneca, on the other hand, before the audience is even fully aware of what is happening or has happened, has Medea immediately calling on the gods to help her with her vengeance: "Bring death to the new bride, death to the king, death to Creon's royal line! But to my Jason--for this shall be my curse on him--grant a yet more fearful woe: let him live on!" (Seneca 311).
In Medea's feminist speech to the women of Corinth (Euripides 177), Euripides reflects his opposition to the second-class citizenship under which women suffered in the Greece of his era
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Approximate Word count = 1678
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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