Euripides: ‘Hippolytus’

 Professor H.D.F. Kitto, my guide to the Greek tragedies, says that Hippolytus could pass for a Sophoclean tragedy — as long as Phaedra is on stage.

The play was written by Euripides, not Sophocles, and Euripides was toying with a complex character, Phaedra, to show what a simple one, Hippolytus, looked like.

Phaedra has contradictions within herself. She loves her husband, King Theseus. She’s a virtuous woman. She wants to do the right thing by her herself, her husband and children. But she’s suddenly smitten with love for Hippolytus, her stepson.

Hippolytus is not a complex character. To him, the world is simple. He’s devoted to the goddess Artemis, and his devotion demands chastity. The goddess of love, Aphrodite, decides to bring him down.

While Phaedra is wrestling with the contradictions within, Hippolytus isn’t wrestling at all. He’s single-minded, a fanatic. There are no moral or psychological complexities, only black and white.

He’s not a tragic actor in this drama because for him there’s nothing to decide. When Phaedra decides, he becomes a tragic victim, collateral damage from her choice.

Kitto reminds us that the gods, as portrayed by the playwrights, were “elemental forces of nature.” Aphrodite, the elemental force of love, was one of them. Humans can’t completely understand her. So they must show reverence and do their best to follow her laws.

This series of notes on the Greek playwrights began with Aeschylus, who insisted that all the laws representing all the gods must be followed. Humans are confronted by impossible contradictions in this duty. They must do their best.

Kitto says Aeschylus portrayed the laws as moral laws. Euripides sees them as psychological laws, part of the laws of nature.

Phaedra is a virtuous woman because she struggles with herself. She is trying to find balance among the contradictory forces within. When she loses that battle, she hangs herself, and, unable to face the loss of her reputation, leaves a note saying Hippolytus had raped her.

Theseus, believing his wife rather than his son, exacts revenge.

Aeschylus and Sophocles could not and would not have written this play. Their idea of tragedy involved a tragic character grappling with the conflicts within.

As Kitto puts in, in Euripides the tragedy is often in the people who are not complicated enough to have those contradictions within. He was interested in “the tragic specimens of humanity who come to shipwreck” because they are missing something — a sense of balance that most of have, even if it’s far from perfect.

Of the many wonderful lines in this play, I like these, spoken by Phaedra’s old nurse:

 

The ways of life that are most fanatical

trip us up more, they say, than bring us joy.

They’re enemies to health. So I praise less

the extreme than temperance in everything.

The wise will bear me out.

 

Religious fanaticism is a dominant theme in the news. It’s striking to read enlightening commentary on the news in an ancient play.

• Sources: H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954. The section on Hippolytus is on pp. 210-18.

Hippolytus, translated by David Grene, is in Euripides I in The Complete Greek Tragedies, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore; Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1953, pp. 157-221. The quotation is on p. 173.