Medea: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|"νῦν δ΄ ἐχθρὰ πάντα͵ καὶ νοσεῖ τὰ φίλτατα." <ref>(But now all [of their love] is hostile, and the dearest things are ill)</ref>|'''Euripides''', ''Medea'', Line 16}}
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[[What an Idiot!]]! Jason has created the original [[Woman Scorned]], and for the [[Greek Chorus]], it's only a question of whom she intends to kill--herself, or Jason. Neither. Medea [[Murder the Hypotenuse|kills the new girl]] and Glauce's father (King Creon, not be confused with Creon of the Thebes tetralogy), who arranged the marriage, but decides simply killing Jason would be too good for him. A conversation with the as-yet-childless Aegeus teaches her the cruelest, most painful, most unbearable punishment to inflict on a man--the death of his children. She takes their two children off-stage and kills them... but she struggles with it a bit first.
The death of her children was justifiable in Ancient Greek culture, as, because Medea was foreign born, neither of them were considered freeborn--so after their father remarried, they would be cut off from all inheritence and at extreme risk of being sold as slaves. Originally the murder doubled as revenge and a mercy-killing, though this is sometimes lost to modern audiences.
As was the standard for Greek [[Tragedy]], all the deaths occur [[Gory Discretion Shot|off-stage]] and are narrated on-stage by eyewitnesses. The play ends with Medea refusing Jason's request to at least give him his sons' bodies for burial before she takes the bodies and flees to Aegeus' kingdom, Athens (by way of a magical chariot, drawn by dragons). The chorus then marvels at the cruelty of the gods that such tragedies happen. [[Karma Houdini|Medea is not condemned for her actions]].
And yes, ''[[Fate/stay
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* [[Audience Monologue]]: Opens with one from the Nurse explaining what's happened. [[Lampshading|Lampshaded]] when the children's tutor comes and asks why she's talking to herself. ▼
{{tropelist}}
▲* [[Audience Monologue]]: Opens with one from the Nurse explaining what's happened. [[Lampshading|Lampshaded]] when the children's tutor comes and asks why she's talking to herself.
* [[Black Magician Girl]] - Medea.
* [[Bowdlerise|Bowdlerization]] - Apparently, there are versions where it wasn't her killing her kids, it was angry townsfolk, who later bribed the guy who wrote the play. After that it wasn't okay to sacrifice children to gods anymore. [https://web.archive.org/web/20140914114056/http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/medeahyposcholia.shtml Here] are some infobits.
** In another version, Medea killed her children because Jason was essentially going to declare her an unfit mother on top of everything else, take away the only happiness she had, and (it was implied) raise the children in an environment that would indoctrinate them against the barbarians, aka their mother.
* [[Character Title]]
* [[Deus Ex Machina]] / [[Deus Exit Machina]] - Medea carries the bodies of her sons away with her in a flying chariot drawn by golden dragons given to her by the Sun God Helios, her grandfather.
** In Seneca the Younger's version of the play, there is no chariot carrying Medea away and, correspondingly, no deus ex machina. The play ends just after she kills her children laughing in Jason's face. Because, really, if you're going the whole nine yards like she is, how much do you care about getting out?
* [[Don't You Dare Pity Me!]] - Medea would rather have revenge instead.
* [[Downer Ending]]
* [[Fate Worse Than Death]]
* [[Greek Chorus]]
* [[Gory Discretion Shot]]
* [[Horse of a Different Color]] - Dragon chariot! [[Special Effects Failure|Gotta wonder how performances represent that]].
* [[I Gave My Word]] - Not that Jason keeps it. Medea points out throughout the play that he has broken his marriage oath to her.
* [[In Medias Res|In]] [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Medea]] [[In Medias Res|Res]]
* [[Karma Houdini]] - While contextually, Medea was justified, she still killed four people, two of whom were [[Moral Event Horizon|her own]] [[Offing the Offspring|children]] and hurt her husband horribly, and in the end flies away in a magical chariot with no consequences for her actions other than her own guilt.
* [[Love Hurts]]
* [[Love Martyr]] - In Medea's backstory; she sacrificed ''everything'' so she could be with Jason, which is why his betrayal of her is so awful.
* [[Magical Girlfriend]] - ''Brutally'' deconstructed, showing just what happens when she gets mad.
* [[Mama Bear]] - Medea can't see any way to protect her children other than killing them... so that's what she does.
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[[Category:Theatrical Productions]]
[[Category:Medea]]
[[Category:Classic Theatre]]
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