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Double Meaning and Mythic Novelty in Euripides' Plays Author(S): Emily A Double Meaning and Mythic Novelty in Euripides' Plays Author(s): Emily A. McDermott Source: Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), Vol. 121 (1991), pp. 123- 132 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/284447 Accessed: 27/10/2010 09:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-). http://www.jstor.org Transactionsof the AmericanPhilological Association 121 (1991) 123-132 DOUBLEMEANING AND MYTHICNOVELTY IN EURIPIDES'PLAYS EMILY A. MCDERMOTT The Universityof Massachusettsat Boston The mythic tradition of the Greeks is protean. Each of the vast number of stories is itself variable, appearing now in one form, now in another, often standing alongside other versions which it flatly contradicts. Critical study of this remarkabletradition is doubly vexed, first by received myth's intrinsically fluid nature,then by the fragmentarypreservation of mythic source material. The critic who would assess the connection between a Greek tragedianof the fifth centuryand the mythic matterfrom which his plots are drawnis neces- sarily tangled in a nexus of questions concerning the relative antiquity of differing versions of a particularmyth, their geographicalaffiliations, and their association with cultic practice.Nonetheless, few would dispute a general asser- tion that Euripides' plays are rife with mythic innovations, both major and minor. A commentaryon any Euripideanplay will almost inevitably cite more than one plot element which seems to have been Euripides' own introduction into the saga. Unfortunately,however, the key words here are "seems to have been," for the intrinsic difficulty of reconstructing pre-Euripidean mythic sources often makes it impossible to demonstratewith certaintythat a particular instance of mythic heterodoxy is traceable to a consciously innovative Euripides.Was he the first to have Medea deliberatelykill her children?Had the motif of the wresting of a soul from death been attachedto the story of Admetus and Alcestis before Euripides presented Heracles bumbling into the mourning king's palace? How much had Hermioneand Andromachehad to do with each other before the murderousplottings of the Andromache? The path that I will follow in this paper will be especially difficult, for it becomes involved not only with the problems in mythic reconstructioncited above, but also with the slippery question of double meaning. In brief, I will propose that, at certain points in Euripides' plays when he was consciously making innovations into received myth, he also had his characterssignal those innovations throughdouble meaning. Euripides was a "bookish"playwright, a "poietes sophos."' Increasingly, critics have called attention to instances of Euripidean cleverness. Long- recognized bits of wit at the expense of the literary traditions, such as the Electra's parody of the recognition scene between Orestes and Electra in Aeschylus's Choephori, have been joined by others in which the playwright consciously picks out a certain tension between his characters'words or actions 1 The first characterization is Robert Eisner's in "Euripides' Use of Myth," Arethusa 12:2 (1979) 157; the second is taken from the title of a study which is seminal in the examination of Euripidean wit, R. P. Winnington-Ingram, "Euripides: Poietes Sophos,"Arethusa 2:2 (1969) 127-42. 124 Emily A. McDermott and the conventional dramaticform within which they were, perforce, circum- scribed. Thus, Winnington-Ingramhas pointed out that Electra's query, -oib yap ayyeXot; at Electra 759 contains an anomalous glance at the dramatic convention whereby off-stage events are promptlyreported to the charactersand audiences of Greek tragedies by the fortuitous arrival of messengers; other studies have followed in similarmold.2 An action or event in a tragedy may be unexpected in one or both of the following senses: (a) a twist of plot may run counter to a character's expecta- tion; that is, it may be something which he or she, from a vantage point within the plot, has no way of predicting;or (b) it may run counter to an audience's expectation, either because it seems inconsonantwith the charactersand events which lead up to it, or because it contradictsa more familiarversion of received myth. When a playwright (as commonly) turns to creation of tragic irony, the first element above pertains, but the second does not: the dramatic effect is achieved by the fact that the audienceknows where events are heading,while the charactersare patheticallyignorant of the truth.In the type of double meaning I will examine in this study, however, both these elements are joined together: events that come to a character unexpectedly are also mythic innovations intendedto surprisethe audience.Thus, when a charactersays words thatexpress the novelty of a turn of events, these words may not only apply at the level of dramatic action, but also reflect the response of the audience as they discover that the plot is departingfrom a predictablemythic track. One example of the type of double meaning I will discuss in this study has previously been identified. Euripides' introductioninto the Hercules Furens of the usurper Lycus provides a certain case of pure mythic invention. This unsavory tyrant(and archetypicalfoil for the proto-democraticTheseus) appears in no independent source; three later references to him clearly derive from Euripides'play.3 Wilamowitz noted long ago thatEuripides' elaborate introduc- tory explication of Lycus's provenanceand pedigree (HF 26-34) is tantamount to an admission that he is the playwright's own invention.4 More recently, Bond has added the pertinentobservation that the descriptionof Lycus just after his introduction as 6 Kaitv6o oxo; Tio6e? y; a0pXgovA^ico; (38)5 -echoed by three later recurrencesof the epithet icactv6;for Lycus (at 541, 567, 768)-is 2 E.g., Geoffrey Arnott, "Euripides and the Unexpected," G. & R. 20 (1973) 49- 64; Arnott, "Red Herrings and Other Baits, A Study in Euripidean Techniques," MPL 3 (1978) 1-24; George Gellie, 'Tragedy and Euripides' Electra," BICS 28 (1981) 1-12; F.J. Nisetich, 'The Silencing of Pylades (Orestes 1591-1592)," AJP 107 (1986) 46-54; Emily A. McDermott, "Medea Line 37: A Note," AJP 108:1 (1987) 158-61; and McDermott, Euripides' Medea: the Incarnation of Disorder (College Park, Pa. 1989) 17ff. Ann N. Michelini, "MAKPAN FAP EEETEINA." Hermes 102:4 (1974) 524-39, examines internal references to the rhesis form among all the dramatists. 3 Asclepiades, S Od. 11.269 (= F.Gr.H. 12F27); Hyginus, Fab. 32; Seneca, HF. 4 Ulrich vonWilamowitz-Moellendorff, Euripides, Heracles2 (Berlin 1959; orig. publ. 1895) 2.112. 5 This and all subsequent quotations from Hercules Furens, Heraclidae, Hecuba, and Supplices are from J. Diggle's OCT, vol. 1 (1984) and vol. 2 (1981). Quotations from Phoenissae and Orestes are from Gilbert Murray's OCT, vol. 3 (1913). Titles and names appear as they are found in the OCD2. Double Meaningand Mythic Novelty 125 a furthersignal of Euripides' invention: Lycus is a new king not only because he has just recently succeeded Heracles, but also because he makes his mythic debut in this play.6 This emphatic attributionof "novelty"to a characterwhom Euripides has invented and inserted, full-grown, into the mythic traditionthus becomes double-edged,blurring the conventionalseparation between the charac- ters' world and the audience's; thus the playwrightunderscores, from within his plot, a techniqueof his own dramaticart: his penchantfor mythic innovation. Several more examples of the sort of self-conscious double meaning that occurs in the Hercules may be identified in Euripides' plays. While the fact of mythic innovation is seldom so demonstrableas in Lycus's case, nonetheless referencesto novelty or unexpectednessby charactersin the plays are found with some frequency in connection with probableEuripidean alterations in the tradi- tion, leading to an inference that these references constitute deliberate double meanings, intended as authorial signposts to his characteristic mythic innovations. The legend of the expedition of the Seven Against Thebes and its aftermath was a frequenttopic in Attic tragedy;among extant plays, Aeschylus's Septem and Euripides' Phoenissae deal directly with this episode in the Theban cycle; three others
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