Electra (Sophocles play)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Infobox play

Electra<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> (Template:Langx,Template:Sfn Ēlektra, also called The Electra), is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes (409 BC) and the Oedipus at Colonus (406 BC) lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career. Jebb dates it between 420 BC and 414 BC.Template:Sfn

Storyline

File:Toneel, SFA022826804.jpg
Dutch actress Marie Hamel in costume as Clytemnestra (1920)

Set in the city of Mycenae a few years after the Trojan War, the play tells of a bitter struggle for justice by Electra and her brother Orestes for the murder of their father Agamemnon by their mother Clytemnestra and their stepfather Aegisthus.

When King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War, his wife Clytemnestra (who has taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus as a lover) kills him. Clytemnestra believes the murder was justified since Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war, as commanded by the gods. Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, rescued her younger brother Orestes from her mother by sending him to Strophius of Phocis. The play begins years later when Orestes has returned as a grown man with a plot for revenge, as well as to claim the throne.

Orestes arrives with his friend Pylades, son of Strophius, and a pedagogue, i.e. tutor (an old attendant of Orestes, who took him from Electra to Strophius). They plan to have the tutor announce that Orestes has died in a chariot race and that two men (really Orestes and Pylades) are arriving shortly to deliver an urn with his remains. Meanwhile, Electra continues to mourn the death of her father Agamemnon, holding her mother Clytemnestra responsible for his murder. When Electra is told of the death of Orestes her grief is doubled, but this grief is to be short-lived.

After a choral ode, Orestes arrives carrying the urn supposedly containing his ashes. He does not recognize Electra, nor does she recognize him. He gives her the urn and she delivers a moving lament over it, unaware that her brother is, in fact, standing alive next to her. Now realizing the truth, Orestes reveals his identity to his emotional sister. She is overjoyed that he is alive, but in their excitement, they nearly reveal his identity, and the tutor comes out from the palace to urge them on. Orestes and Pylades enter the house and slay Clytemnestra. As Aegisthus returns home, they quickly put her corpse under a sheet and present it to him as the body of Orestes. He lifts the veil to discover who it really is, and Orestes then reveals himself. They escort Aegisthus offset to be killed at the hearth, the same location where Agamemnon was slain. The play ends here before the death of Aegisthus is announced.

Similar works

The story of Orestes' revenge was a popular subject in Greek tragedies.

  • There are surviving versions by all three of the great Athenian tragedians:
    • The Libation Bearers (458 BC), in the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus
    • Electra, a play by Euripides, probably in the early to mid 410s BC, likely before 413 BC, that tells a very different version of this same basic story from Sophocles.
  • The story was also told at the end of the lost epic poem Nostoi (also known as Returns or Returns of the Greeks).
  • The events are also brought up in Homer's Odyssey.

Reception

File:P3085052 (4418793179).jpg
Scene from a 2010 Spanish production: the chorus is the women of Mycenae; Electra is at far right.

Roman writer Cicero considered Electra to be a masterpiece,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and the work is also viewed favorably among modern critics and scholars. In The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama, John Gassner and Edward Quinn argued that its "simple device of delaying the recognition between brother and sister produces a series of brilliant scenes which display Electra's heroic resolution under constant attack."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Of the titular character, Edith Hall also wrote, "Sophocles certainly found an effective dramatic vehicle in this remarkable figure, driven by deprivation and cruelty into near-psychotic extremes of behavior; no other character in his extant dramas dominates the stage to such an extent."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> L.A. Post noted that the play was "unique among Greek tragedies for its emphasis on action."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Commentaries

Translations

Adaptations

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

References

Template:Reflist

Further reading

  • Duncan, A. 2005. "Gendered Interpretations: Two Fourth-Century B.C.E. Performances of Sophocles' Electra." Helios 32.1: 55–79
  • Dunn, F. M., ed. 1996. Sophocles' Electra in Performance. Drama: Beiträge zum antiken Drama und seiner Rezeption 4. Stuttgart: M & P Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung.
  • Griffiths, E. M. 2012. "Electra". In Brill's Companion to Sophocles. Edited by A. Markantonatos, 73–91. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
  • Ierulli, M. 1993. "A Community of Women? The Protagonist and the Chorus in Sophocles' Electra." Métis 8:217–229.
  • Lloyd, M. 2005. Sophocles: Electra. London: Duckworth.
  • MacLeod, L. 2001. Dolos and Dike in Sophokles' Elektra. Mnemosyne supplement 219. Leiden, The Netherlands, Boston, and Cologne: Brill.
  • Marshall, C. W. 2006. "How to Write a Messenger Speech (Sophocles, Electra 680–763)." In Greek Drama III: Essays in honour of Kevin Lee. Edited by J. F. Davidson, F. Muecke, and P. Wilson, 203–221. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies supplement 87. London: Institute of Classical Studies
  • Nooter, S. 2011. "Language, Lamentation, and Power in Sophocles' Electra". Classical World 104.4: 399–417.
  • Segal, C. P. 1966. "The Electra of Sophocles". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 97:473–545.
  • Sommerstein, A. H. 1997. "Alternative Scenarios in Sophocles' Electra". Prometheus 23:193–214.

Template:Library resources box

Template:Sophocles Plays Template:Electra Template:Authority control

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sarg.dev/index.php?title=Electra_(Sophocles_play)&oldid=451461"