Euripides' Orestes

Orestes, by Euripides

Background and Preliminaries

Mythic traditions that the audience will know, that the plays appears to be about to violate

Orestes comes to Athens after the murder (the Athenians pour a libation to him every year during the spring festival called the Anthesteria)

so he can't die in Argos! (as it appears he will up until the deus ex machina)

Helen -- as we know from the Odyssey! -- lives happily ever after with Menelaus in Sparta

so she can't die in Argos, before she ever reaches Sparta! (as it appears she will up until the deus ex machina)

The "Baroque" in Euripides: extreme variety in tone, in audience response

The strange opening scene: the figure of Helen

The scene: We've always wanted to know of what happened after the murder of Clytemnestra... The stage set is the House of Atreus, with all that entails of adultery, revenge, killing of kin... Helen is is town, Helen that symbolic creature: most beautiful, the erotic, the adulteress, the hated one, who sent thousands of men to their death in a bitter war far from home
With this as backdrop, Helen enters the stage: lines 71ff
Problems of tone, paratragic, comic, bathic?

The opening sequence: note the variety of tone, emotion, lyricism

note how the scene shifts from comic/bathic to delicately lyric (magical entrance of the chorus, perhaps the most brilliant in Greek tragedy!), to realistically terrifying (madness)
The deeply lamenting song preserved in the Orestes musical papyrus: first stasimon (lines 316ff: the papyrus embraces lines 321ff and 338ff specifically) helps to make clear that this is a tragedy, not a comedy (if nonetheless "baroque" with comic elements

The strange figure of Orestes

The bizarre figure of the Phrygian messenger

Announced is death of Helen, and we expect the ekkyklema to reveal her dead body
Instead: Phrygian messenger: the only singing messenger in Greek tragedy! Also full of dialect jokes (he only half speaks Greek), a common motif in comedy! What's the effect??

Orestes as an anti-Eumenides:

Eumenides: world of gods and myth: a cosmic problem "solved" by a jury of men (sort of, at least): in some sense a celebration of democratic institutions and the rule of law
Or: rule of law is paramount, but corrupt: Spartan politics, Tyndareus & Menelaus; sucking up to the new leader; the problems of Sophism (on both sides!); the problems of a collapsing democracy, the rule of the 400 in 411: Orestes makes Apollo's speech!

Ending: "an apparent resolution which in fact resolves nothing" (Arrowsmith e.g.)

Scene: God on the mechane (a platform), Orestes on roof, Menelaus on stage, chorus in orchestra: ground, stage, roof, sky all occupied. Thronged with extras: M's men are summoned to help storm the palace; Electra & Pylades also on the roof, with torches, along with Hermione; Helen with Apollo. WOW!
lines 1616ff: suffering does NOT lead to compassion: realistic?
A modernist, absurdist feel?:

Eur. brings in a god to remind us that the gods, if they exist, are not in the habit of rescuing people from the consequences of their evil actions.
Or is this an affirmation of the gods, esp. Apollo? (Nisetich)

Orestes: at first he thought Apollo's words the "whispers of some fiend"!! (line ***)

People and places to know

Orestes (as presented here)

Electra (as presented here)

Pylades

Tyndareus

Menelaus (as presented here)

Helen

Apollo (in his role here)

Phrygian messenger (!)