THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES

The Male Characters of Euripides by Professor EM Blaiklock MA

THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES
(Continued)……

I am their mother. When you prayed that they might live,
I felt unhappy to think that these things will be.
But come, I have said something of the things I meant to say to you, and now I will tell you the rest.
Since it is the king's will to banish me from here-And for me too I know that this is the best thing,
Not to be in your way by living here or in
The king's way, since you think me ill disposed to them-
I then am going into exile from this land;
But do you, so that you may have the care of them,
Beg Creon that the children may not be banished.
(Med. 930-940. Warner)

The irony is at first pathetic. After three or four lines it becomes wicked, and the old Medea is back again, held in an awful self-control.
The effect of the scene is to invest Jason, that so self-satisfied figure, with a touch of pathos, which, later on, is to win him his meed of pity. He is so very helpless in this woman's hands. Such plays must have made even such securely seated gentlemen as Xenophon's Ischomachus wonder uncomfortably how much lay behind the quiet, submissive exteriors of those who sat at home. Medea is so clearly master of the evil situation, and Jason so unconsciously her dupe. The tatal gifts are put into the children's hands to be delivered to Medea's " mistress.

Haste ye, and to your mother bring glad tidings
Of good success in what she longs to win.
(Med. 974, 975. Way)

And then, at 1. 1019, the old struggle of the heart breaks out again, and the mother in Medea wrestles with the savage.
Euripides maintains to the last that insistence on the basic humanity of the barbarian woman, which, as we saw, is one of the remarkable achievements of the play. Those who are mentioned in the Argument already quoted as having 'blamed' Euripides for allowing Medea to burst into tears in the midst of her plotting, doubtless objected also to the passionate speech in which she forswears her purpose and is driven back to it by the sting of her wounded pride.