Medea, by Liz Lochhead

ASSOCIATION FOR SCOTTISH LITERARY STUDIES TEACHING NOTES: 2017 ASLS Classical Adaptation in Modern Scotland Medea by Liz Lochhead (after Euripides) Katherine Heavey This teaching note focuses on Liz Lochhead’s Moreover, in her Foreword to the play, 2000 adaptive translation of Medea, the ancient Lochhead has drawn comparisons between Greek play by Euripides. Euripides’ version was the xenophobic climate of Euripides’ Athens, not the only classical tragedy on the subject of and the troubling and intolerant attitude to the vengeful Colchian sorceress, who slaughters homosexuality that she perceived in some her children after she has been abandoned by quarters of Scotland, even as it entered the Jason. However, today it is by far the most new millennium. It is thus clear that for popular classical version, in large part because Lochhead, the revival of an ancient play could the play’s treatment of Medea herself is felt to speak specifically, and compellingly, to modern be more nuanced than that of the later Roman Scotland. However, Lochhead’s Medea was dramatist Seneca. Euripides’ Medea continues staged first in Glasgow, then at the Edinburgh to be adapted today: a version by Ben Power Fringe Festival, and then toured nationally, recently played at the National Theatre in and as this suggests, the play also reflects wider London, with Helen McCrory in the title role. concerns, both poetic and social. First, Lochhead This teaching note chooses to concentrate on is described as the play’s author ‘after Euripides’, Liz Lochhead’s version, produced for theatre and her drama compels its auditors to think babel’s series ‘Greeks’ in 2000, in part because about adaptation as an artistic process (and of the clearly Scottish context of the adaptation. indeed as a creative one). The play is far more In Lochhead’s play, Medea and her Corinthian than a translation from ancient Greek: rather, opponents speak different languages: what it self-consciously modernises ancient poetry, Lochhead terms ‘patrician English’ and Scots, often in deliberately shocking terms, in ways respectively (Lochhead 2000: Foreword).1 A play that invite comparison with similar adaptive or about a quintessential outsider, and the revenge imitative projects, such as Ted Hughes’ version she takes on the society that arrogantly presumes of Euripides’ Alcestis. Second, while Euripides’ to reject her, thus becomes a self-conscious meditation on conflicting national identities, RANGE: • Higher and Advanced Higher English / Drama which is particularly potent in the light of the KEY TEXTS: recent referenda on Scottish independence and • Medea (Euripides, adapted by Liz Lochhead; Brexit. Nick Hern Books, 2000) • Medea (Euripides, trans. Gilbert Murray; 1. However, in Graham McLaren’s 2001 production of George Allen & Unwin, 1910). Also available Lochhead’s play for theatre babel, Medea speaks with an Eastern online as a free Project Gutenberg e-text. European accent. See Charles Spencer’s review for the Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4724941/A-magnificent-Medea- www.gutenberg.org/files/35451/35451- for-the-21st-century.html Accessed 23 Dec 2016. h/35451-h.htm Association for Scottish Literary Studies, Scottish Literature, 7 University Gardens, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QH, Scotland Tel/Fax: +44 (0)141 330 5309 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.asls.org.uk Permission granted to photocopy for educational purposes only 1 ASSOCIATION FOR SCOTTISH LITERARY STUDIES TEACHING NOTES: 2017 ASLS own play has often been seen as particularly supernatural powers, agreed to help Jason in sensitive to the plight of its abandoned heroine, his quest in return for a promise of marriage, and Edith Hall has demonstrated how it despite Jason’s existing relationship with another has historically been allied to the suffragette princess, Hypsipyle. Medea assisted Jason in movement, and to early twentieth-century his capture of the Fleece by magical means, thinking on the rights of women, Lochhead’s and fled Colchis with him, killing her young revisioning often recasts speeches and scenes in brother to distract her father. The couple landed an even more clearly feminist light. For example, in Jason’s homeland, and Medea assisted him the Chorus, which in Euripides is composed again, killing his uncle Pelias by tricking Pelias’ simply of Corinthian women, is described daughters into stabbing him to death, in the by Lochhead as being made up of women mistaken belief that they were participating in ‘of all times, all ages, classes and professions’ a ritual to make him young again. Pursued by (Lochhead 2000: 7), and these women Pelias’ son, Jason and Medea fled to Corinth, insistently link Medea’s suffering to their own, where they were received by King Creon, who and to that of all women. Lochhead’s Medea has insisted that Jason put Medea and their two sons been described as ‘an intense play of sexual strife aside, and marry his daughter Glauke (elsewhere accentuated by racial disparities’ (Gifford and Creusa) instead. Jason abandons Medea for Robertson 2002: 17), and the drama encourages this more advantageous match (just as he had students and teachers alike to think about abandoned Hypsipyle when he needed Medea’s issues of adaptation, reception, feminism and help in Colchis) and Euripides’ tragedy opens nationhood. with Medea having just learnt of Jason’s betrayal. This teaching note suggests approaches to These events are referenced by Medea and Jason teaching and discussing Lochhead’s Medea at through the play, and are described in Latin Higher or Advanced levels. The recommended by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses edition is by Nick Hern Books: Liz Lochhead, (Book 7) and Heroides (letters 6 and 12) and by Medea (2000). Additional suggestions for the Roman playwright Seneca, in his tragedy teaching the play (particularly from a theatrical Medea. (Both Ovid and Seneca wrote after perspective) can be found in Anne Gifford Euripides, who drew on more ancient sources, and Jane Robertson, Contemporary Scottish now largely lost). Plays for Higher English and Drama (Hodder Gibson, 2002), a work that includes the text of Preparatory activities Lochhead’s Medea and tips for students on how Euripides’ and Lochhead’s Medea both refer to to approach essays on it. past events (such as Medea’s killing of Jason’s uncle Pelias, or the deal Jason struck with Medea’s story before Euripides Creon to marry Glauke) with various different Like much ancient drama and epic, Euripides’ emphases, depending on who is recalling these play (and Lochhead’s) opens with the story well events (e.g. Jason, Creon, Medea herself). In underway, and Medea and Jason in particular pairs, write brief recollections of the events make frequent reference to previous events. It of Lochhead’s play, from the point of view of is therefore important that students are aware Medea, and any two of the following: Glauke; of these events, to allow them to set the play in Jason; Medea’s daughter (who is invented by context. Lochhead); Creon; the Nurse. Medea and Jason met when Jason came Medea is excluded in Corinth both as an to her father’s kingdom, Colchis, to win the abandoned woman, and as a foreigner. What, in Golden Fleece, the kingdom’s greatest treasure: your opinion, would make someone feel more Jason was sent on this quest by his wicked vulnerable or different in modern Scotland, uncle Pelias, who hoped he would not return. their gender or their national and/or racial Medea, a young and beautiful princess with background? 2 Permission granted to photocopy for educational purposes only ASSOCIATION FOR SCOTTISH LITERARY STUDIES TEACHING NOTES: 2017 ASLS Reading activities [NB: in his adaptation of Euripides’ play, • Read pp. 6–11 of Lochhead’s Medea (from Seneca also cuts the meeting with Aegeus, ‘Why don’t you bloody die you / cursed but does not add a meeting with Glauke. litter of a cursed mother?’ to ‘what have I In his work Poetics, the Greek philosopher done to deserve this?’) and the parallel scene Aristotle had criticised the fortuitous in Gilbert Murray’s translation of Euripides’ appearance of Aegeus in Euripides’ play as Medea, pp. 8–17 (‘Have I not suffered? … improbable]. Unlawful, wilt thou cast me out, O King?’) • Compare the meetings between Medea • List the various contrasts and differences and Glauke (in Lochhead) and Medea and apparent within Lochhead’s version of this Aegeus (in Murray). Are they similar in any scene. You may wish to consider contrasting way? How do the two characters interact, in characters and their backgrounds, contrasts each case: how do they speak to each other? in language, contrasts in register of What does each character want, in these language. Are these same contrasts evident two scenes? How do the two meetings end? in Murray’s translation? How have they contributed to the action of • Murray’s is an English translation of the play? Euripides’ ancient Greek, whereas Lochhead’s is an adaptation, or version, of Discussion questions Euripides’ play. Which are the most obvious • What are the advantages and disadvantages moments in the passage from Lochhead (to both Lochhead’s and Euripides’ plays) of that show her changing or updating having such a dominant title character? Euripides’ work? Where does she choose • Why does Lochhead choose to adapt a well- to keep things from Euripides’ play? Why known play, rather than write an entirely might she sometimes retain what she found new play on the subject of an abandoned in Euripides, and sometimes change it? and vengeful woman? Does Murray make similar changes? • Suggest how two readers (differentiated • Does your attitude to Medea change while by age, gender, nationality or religious reading Lochhead’s passage? Note where or political conviction) might respond you feel most and least sympathetic to differently to Medea – is she a monster, or Medea, and try to explain why.

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