Staging in the Central Scene of the Hippolytus
Author(s): Wesley D. Smith
Source: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 91 (1960),
pp. 162-177
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/283852
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Wesley D. Smith
XIII. Staging in the Central Scene of the Hippolytus
WESLEY D. SMITH
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
The central scene of the Hippolytusbegins with Phaedra's discovery
that the nurse has told Hippolytus her secret and ends with
Phaedra's exit to commit suicide. The traditional conception of
the action and the assignment of speeches within the scene,'
accepted by modern editors and commentators with few insignificant
variations, is as follows:
From 565 to 600 Phaedra listens at the central door of the
palace and informs the chorus that the nurse has betrayed her
secret. She reports the words of Hippolytus which she overhears,
and finally, in answer to the chorus' question what she will do,
she announces her intention to die immediately. The door opens,
and Hippolytus and the nurse enter, still in conversation (601).
Phaedra remains onstage, seen or unseen by Hippolytus and the
nurse, whose conversation she overhears (601-68).
When Hippolytus exits, Phaedra sings a lament. She then
rebukes the nurse for her betrayal and dismisses her abruptly
when the nurse tries to defend herself (680-709). Phaedra then
swears the chorus to silence and tells them of her discovery: the
single available course for saving her reputation, and so her family.
Again she says she must die immediately, but she obliquely
indicates that she will avenge herself on Hippolytus (710-31).
Her exit ends the scene.2
1 The ultimate source and authority of the assignments of speakers in the manuscripts,
or of the scholia which give stage directions, are problematical. Most likely
none of this helpful apparatus appeared in the original editions of the plays; cf. U. von
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Einleitungin die attischeTragoedie(Berlin 1899) 120-29,
D. L. Page, ed. Euripides'Medea(Oxford 1952) xxxvii-xli. Many staging scholia are
demonstrably related to theaters and to productions of the fourth century or later, as
shown by A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Theaterof Dionysusin Athens(Oxford 1946)
210-14. In no case can the scholiast's opinion as to staging or speaker involved have
an authority greater than the text it interprets.
2
Manuscripts and scholia vary only in the assignment of lines 669-72 (see below,
note 9). All editions, commentaries, translations, and discussions of the play naturally
depend on some concept of the staging, but few discuss it. Notable departures
from the treatment of the staging outlined above are: a statement by Reisch, in W.
162 [1960
Staging in the Hippolytus
In this paper I will argue that a natural interpretation of
Phaedra's words in 599-600, the words of the lament (669-79),
the chorus' address to Phaedra (680-81), and Phaedra's estimation
of Hippolytus' intentions, as shown in 689-92, leads to a quite
different construction of the action within the scene. Briefly, I
propose that Phaedra's lines 599-600 are what we should expect
such a climactic couplet to be: an exit line. Phaedra is absent
from the stage from that point until the chorus acknowledges her
reentrance by addressing her at 680. The new discovery that
she speaks of at 715-16, she makes offstage, and that is what
brings her back. The lament between Hippolytus' exit and
Phaedra's reentrance is sung by the nurse. I will consider the
evidence which the text offers for this construction, and then I will
attempt to assess the significance of the staging for our interpretation
of the scene.
Between 565 and 600, descriptions and explanations contained
in the dialogue between Phaedra and the chorus indicate that
Phaedra is listening at the palace door and that the chorus is in
the orchestra where they were singing when Phaedra interrupted
them (565, 575, 577, 587). Repeated descriptions of the scene
are for the sake of the audience. Since the scene is an unusual one,
the poet is concerned that the audience shall not miss the fact that
Phaedra is overhearing a conversation by people who are unseen.
When at 598 the chorus asks Phaedra what she will do in the
present hopeless situation, her answer is:
I know of only one thing, to die immediately.
That is the only cure for the evils now present.
This couplet represents the moment of decision for Phaedra. To
this point in the play she has been delaying, resisting, calculating
Dorpfeld and E. Reisch, Das griechischeTheater(Athens 1896) 204, that Phaedra apparently
exits into the women's quarters at line 600; L. E. Matthaei, Studiesin Greek
Tragedy(Cambridge 1918) 96, says that possibly Phaedra exits at 601 and reenters at
668, in which case we must imagine that someone reports Hippolytus' words to her;
David Grene, Euripides,FourTragedies,ed. D. Grene and R. Lattimore (Chicago 1955)
188, gives the following stage direction at 600: "She retires into the palace through
one of the side doorsjust as Hippolytus issues through the central door, dogged by the
nurse. Phaedra is conceived of as listening from behind the door during the entire
conversation between the nurse and Hippolytus." It seems apparent, however, that
if Phaedra leaves the stage at 600 after the dramatic announcement that she must
die with dispatch, the audience will not imagine her waiting for a report or crouching
behind the closed door.
6*
Vol. xci] 163
W'esley D. Smith
how she can best live or die without disgrace. At the suggestions
of the nurse that she need not die, but can be cured by a "potion,"
Phaedra gave in.3 She has been waiting for the promised drug
while the chorus sings about the power of love.4 What Phaedra
now learns from the exchange she overhears is that the nurse was
deceiving her. The nurse has done the thing that Phaedra most
feared (520). Betrayed by the nurse to whose care she had
entrusted her life, she is driven to action and must find her own
cure. She reverts to the only one she could devise before the
nurse's intervention. As written, the emphatic couplet in which
she announces her decision to die as soon as possible sounds like
an exit line in anticipation of offstage action that is to be reported
to the audience.
What has prevented scholars from so reading her words is their
knowledge that Phaedra does not die "as soon as possible" but
speaks again later in the scene. Nevertheless, there are clear
indications that Phaedra does, indeed, leave the stage. First, the
nurse is concerned with shushing Hippolytus so that no one will
overhear. He protests that he does not care whether he is overheard
(603 f., 609-12). Their words might be spoken if they are
aware of the chorus at a distance, but seem very unlikely if they
were to discover Phaedra when they come out of the house.
Secondly, Hippolytus addresses only the nurse throughout and
3 Lines 486-524. The best analysis of this dialogue that I know is offered by
B. M. W. Knox, TaleClassicalStudies13 (1952) 10-12, who emphasizes the double
application of all that the nurse says, which allows her to make astounding propositions
without being specific. It should be emphasized, however that Phaedra's "suspension
of critical judgment" involves primarily her faith, finally, that the nurse will obey her
and speak no further of such things (503-4). The nurse's assent is unambiguous: she
will not violate Phaedra's intentions nor involve her in the shameful deeds she has been
urging. Phaedra reminds the nurse of that promise in 685-86. Contrary to the
view of David Grene, CP 34 (1939) 57-58, the nurse is not acting as Phaedra's agent,
nor does Phaedra give consent, tacit or otherwise, to the nurse's plan. Cf. below,
note 14.
4
Symptomatic of the difficulties involved in arriving at an accurate view of the
staging are the discrepant treatments of Phaedra's action at this point. Few modern
commentators would agree with the scholiast who posits Phaedra's absence during the
choral ode (ad565: "Enter Phaedra, distraught."). L. Meridier, L'Hippolyted'Euripide
(Paris 1935) 114-16, describes her as resting on her couch where she has been
throughout, but up against the door where she can overhear Hippolytus. Wilamowitz
in his stage directions, GriechischeTragoedien(Berlin 1899), has her get up at 215,
sink back at 238, get up at 311, go back to the bed at 353, and get up for good at 373.
Most descriptions of Phaedra during the choral song would agree with Wilamowitz:
"She listens at the door with increasing agitation."
164 [1960
Staging in the Hippolytus
speaks of Phaedra as though she is absent. He is talking to a
slave, taunting and threatening. But the strongest evidence that
Phaedra is not a witness, seen or unseen, is that she does not
hear what Hippolytus says. His words are (656-63):
Know, woman, that it is my piety that saves you. If I had not
been trapped in oaths to the gods, I would not have hesitated to
tell my father. Now I shallleave home as long asTheseusis away.
And I will keep silent. But I shall watch, when I come home
with my father, the way you look at him, you and your mistress.
I shall recognize your boldness, having tasted of it.
There are many things in what Hippolytus says that Phaedra
might find fault with. He draws a sordid picture. But what she
does say misses the mark completely (687-92):
I can no longer die with a good reputation. Instead, I have
need of new words. For that man, his mind whetted by anger,
will accuse me of your sins to his father, will tell old Pittheuswhat
has happened, will fill the whole land with ugly words.
There is no reason given in the play why Phaedra should ignore
or contradict Hippolytus' explicit statements about his intentions,
if she heard them. The contradiction is so evident and so significant
for Phaedra's motives in leaving the lying note of slander that
it cannot pass unnoticed. What Phaedra says is an inference
from precisely what she overheard Hippolytus shouting at the
nurse (581 f., 589). There are no grounds for constructing a
complicated calculation for Phaedra, in which she balances
Hippolytus' asseveration against his earlier taunt that the oath
means nothing to him (612). It is better to assume that she
means what she says, and to accept the indications that Phaedra
is absent during the interview between the nurse and Hippolytus,
rather than to concoct a series of ad hocexplanations for them outside
what the text offers.5
The device employed by Euripides in having Phaedra exit,
5
E.g. Hippolytus studiously ignores Phaedra while he is onstage (Meridier [above,
note 4] 124; Schmid-Stiihlin, Gesch.d. gr. Lit. [Munich 1940] 1.3.387), or gives her a
contemptuous glance before his final curse (Wilamowitz [above, note 4] ad 665).
Phaedra speaks as though she has not heard Hippolytus, because Phaedra and the
women simply do not trust Hippolytus after his one tremendous lapse (Matthaei
[above, note 2] 97; W. H. Friedrich, Euripidesu. Diphilos[Munich 1953] 144); "probably
she had hardly noticed the actual words in his torrent of rage," Gilbert Murray,
note adloc.in his translation (London 1912); Phaedra realizes he was telling the truth
and will not disgrace her, but she kills him anyway, because of his insults: G. M. A.
Grube, The Dramaof Euripides(London 1941) 185.
Vol. xci] 165
Wesley D. Smith
apparently to die, but subsequently reappear, is not uncommon.
Two exits by a character to die or to do murder are better than
one, and all the dramatists knew it. It is a way of drawing out
the climax. In the AgamemnonClytemnestra follows Agamemnon
inside the house, the doors close firmly, and the chorus broods
about its forebodings (975-1033). But when the doors open and
Clytemnestra comes out, it is not to announce murder but to
summon Cassandra to join them in the house; the dramatist
devises a second opportunity to create suspense. In the Ajax,
Ajax announces that he must die and goes into his tent. The
chorus sings in anticipation of his death (598 if.). But the doors
open and Ajax comes out again to talk about time and change
and burying his sword by the sea. In the Medea, Medea in a
magnificent monologue wavers in her resolution to murder her
children, calls them back from the house, steels herself and sends
them in, and then follows them (1021-80). But after the choral
song she reenters to watch for news from the palace about her
other plot. The messenger appears with the news, and after a
lengthy scene and another statement of her plan, Medea exits to
do the murder (1250).
In the Hippolytusthe device is used with more subtlety. Phaedra's
announcement that she must die and her sudden exit serve
as an effective context for Hippolytus' scene with the nurse. And
on Phaedra's return, Hippolytus' words, unheard by Phaedra,
serve in turn as a context for Phaedra's gradual revelation of her
change in plan: she cannot simply die as it seemed she could
before. To save her family and her own name she now believes
that she must "be an evil to another." She returns to the stage,
then, to hint to the audience about her plan for vengeance. The
dramatic occasion for her return is her need to insure that the
chorus will not interfere.
Two passages in the play might be thought to offer evidence of
different sorts that Phaedra is onstage throughout. Hippolytus'
statement in his first surprised reaction to Phaedra's death was
cited by Wilamowitz5a as evidence that he actually sees Phaedra
on the stage during his conversation with the nurse. His words
are (907-8):
73v CapTlwS iAELTrOV,7 aoSoTOOs
ov7rct Xpovov 7TTrCAcXCvEI'cEEpKET0.
6aOp. cit. (above, note 4) 79.
166 [1960
Staging in the Hippolytus
The kind of evidence offered by the lines could perhaps be described
as follows: if the audience had not seen or known of a
specific meeting between Phaedra and Hippolytus, they would
find Hippolytus' statement more than confusing. Since no
meeting between Phaedra and Hippolytus has been described
elsewhere, Hippolytus must be referring to an event in the play.
Otherwise Euripides would not have written the lines as he did.
An examination of the lines in their context, however, yields a
more satisfactory explanation of them.
When the lines are spoken, Euripides is making use of Hippolytus'
innocence and Theseus' suspicions that Phaedra's note tells
the truth. Hippolytus must seem to implicate himself without
doing so. Spoken innocently, Hippolytus' words have sinister
implications for Theseus, who has a vivid conception of what
occurred at the last meeting between his wife and son. For
Hippolytus, this is the conventional response to the shock of seeing
Phaedra dead. "It is not long since I saw (or used to see) her
alive." "She was so young." The audience is supposed to
shudder as it sees the gap widening between father and son.
This is why the poet wrote the lines as he did. Ambiguity is
essential. But what exactly does Hippolytus say? He does not
say, "I just now left her" (&dpIosAcAoLtraor cAEXca). Since the
imperfect is what is used, it does not draw attention to a specific
act of leaving. The meaning is something like "I have been
out of her presence only a short time," leaving the specific time
when he last saw her vague enough so as not to confuse the audience
and those scholars who have posited that Hippolytus does
not see Phaedra in the course of the play. If he were to refer
coolly to his stalking from the stage after an insulting speech in her
presence, it would offer an interesting characterization but one
inconsistent with the rest of the passage. As it is, he refers only
to the brevity of the time since he saw her alive, a sentiment which
is completed by his reference to the brevity of her life as a whole.
As evidence for the staging of the central scene, the lines could be
said to be neutral. They do not depend on a particular known
event for their meaning, however vividly Theseus may be imagining
such an event.
The other possible indication that Phaedra remains onstage,
or receives a full report of Hippolytus' speech, is the apparent
reference by Phaedra to words used by Hippolytus in the scene.
Vol. xci] 167
Wesley D. Smith
Phaedra's final words in the play are a dark reference to her
vengeance on Hippolytus. She will die, she says, but she will be
a source of evil to someone else, "so that he will learn not to be
arrogant about my evils. Sharing this sickness in common with
me, he will learn s6phrosyn6"(730-31). This exit line anticipates
the rest of the action in the play. It is also a verbal reminiscence
of Hippolytus' exit line, sixty verses before. Hippolytus had said,
"Let someone teach women sophrosyne,or else allow me always to
attack them" (667-68). The verbal echo is a significant one,
drawing the two people and their motives into comparison: each
is going to teach the other a lesson in sophrosyne. But what kind
of echo is it? G. M. Kirkwood6 distinguishes between two types
of verbal repetitions and echoes. One type he calls "argumentative,"
i.e. conscious and purposeful repetition by one character
of the words of another, a purely local effect. The other type
involves "emphasis of dramatic themes by means of words or
phrases that strikingly recall previous occurrences of the word or
word-group" (229). An example of this second kind of repetition
in the Hippolytusis Theseus' dismissal of Hippolytus' request that
he delay the sentence of banishment until Hippolytus' guilt can
be tested by divination. rovis 8' vrr7p KCpaO[ ( o6rTvrrac o'pvts
roXA' Ecy X(apELv AEWco(1058-59) is Theseus' retort, and it
recalls Hippolytus' rejection of Aphrodite's claim to his service:
r-Nvor)V ?E Kvrrpv TrodAAh'E'y XpatPELvAE'yc (113). The audience
cannot fail to notice the first statement or catch this echo of it.
In Hippolytus' mouth the play on chaireinis emphatic and humorous:
he has been counseled by the old servant to be a friend to
all, easily met, not stuffy (91-103). "I bid your Cypris a grand
hello," he says. His statement is also near to blasphemy, as the
servant has explained: "Goodbye to your Cypris." It also reinforces
a thematic verbal motif introduced by Aphrodite herself
with a strained use of the term.7 The audience recalls Hippolytus'
witty remark with horror when Theseus repeats it. But
Theseus did not hear Hippolytus. The repetition is part of the
dialogue between author and audience, not of argument between
characters.
6 A Studyof SophocleanDrama (Ithaca 1958) 219-46.
7 Line 8; cf. 64, 70, 183, 1094, 1097, 1340, 1437, 1453 for noteworthy occurrences.
E. M. Blaiklock, The Male Charactersof Euripides(Wellington 1952) 41, nicely reproduces
the wit and insolence in the farewell of line 113: "My love to Aphrodite."
The emphatic senalso adds another nuance, "your kind of Aphrodite."
168 [1960
Staging in the Hippolytus
A verbal echo, then, is not evidence, in the face of indications
to the contrary, that one character has heard what another said.
Phaedra and Hippolytus have both laid claim to sophrosynepreviously.
The theme is a constant one throughout.8 Now in the
central scene Phaedra and Hippolytus condemn one another in
the name of s6phrosyne,and each claims he will be a source of
education in it. But each speaks in ignorance of the other's
words.
Phaedra exits at 600. The chorus addresses her again at 680.
There are various indications in the text that 680-81 is the chorus'
greeting to her on her return to the stage and that the lament
preceding her reentrance is sung by the nurse.9 Phaedra's attitude
when she realizes that she has been betrayed by the nurse is
that there is one solution only, immediate death (599-600). Her
speech to the nurse, beginning at 682, and her later speech to the
chorus show the same mood but somewhat developed: she
gradually reveals that she has added another plan to her plan to
commit suicide. The lament does not belong to the sequence.
Instead, the vocabulary and sentiments are wholly characteristic
of the nurse and serve as a reminiscence and summary of her part
in the play. The lament opens (669-73):
Oh wretched, ill-fated lot of women. What device have we now,
what words to loose the knot, now we have failed? Our fate
was justice, oh earth and light. Whither can I avoid this fate?
The nurse is stunned by her failure and desperate. She characteristically
looks for a new expedient to replace the old ones, for
a techne,just as before she boasted of her female ability to produce
8 For the theme of s6phrosyne,its use and occurrences, see Matthaei (above, note 2)
114, E. R. Dodds, CR 39 (1925) 102-4.
9Although the MSS. assign the opening lines to the chorus or to Phaedra, the
scholia attribute them to the nurse, and Murray's OCT apparatus should be so corrected:
ad 671, sphaleisaiis explained: "having failed in the hope of persuading him
to sin," a sentiment that fits only the nurse. Ad 672 the scholiast explains the change
of speaker as follows: "The scene is transferred to the other part, i.e. to the suffering
of Phaedra and the sympathy of the chorus." He may mean "part of the scene,"
i.e. stage, or "part of the plot," i.e. the Phaedra plot as opposed to the Hippolytus plot.
In either case he conceives of the interview with Hippolytus as being finished by the
nurse's rather personal lament, followed by the lament of Phaedra. I suspect he
envisions two separate areas of action on the stage. Wilamowitz failed to connect
these two scholia and used the first to impugn Phaedra's motives, AnalectaEuripidea
(Berlin 1875) 210.
Vol. xci] 169
Wesley D. Smith
mechanai(480-81).10 In response to Hippolytus' condemnation
of women, she speaks, as before, in the name of womankind, using
well the conventional plural for singular. Characteristic of the
nurse, too, is the repeated emphasis on tyche(669, 672, 673, 679).
This is preparation for her final philosophical contribution to the
play: "wisdom is only a matter of chance" (701). The word
kathamma (671), metaphorically "a knotty problem," "an
entanglement," involves also a reference to Phaedra's intended
suicide. It is quite appropriate for the nurse, who has tied the
knot through her devices, to refer unconsciously to the result. If
Phaedra or the chorus, who know of Phaedra's intention, were to
speak the lines, the pun would be grotesque.
The lament continues with a wish for a god or mortal to stand
by or be an accomplice in these evil affairs, recalling the nurse's
prayer to Aphrodite in similar terms as she exited to corrupt
Hippolytus (522-23). Next the nurse describes the situation as
impossible, not to be overpassed in life, reminding the audience of
her exorbitant, self-dramatizing reaction to Phaedra's first admission
of her passion (353 if.). Finally the nurse calls herself the
most unlucky of women. Naturally the audience thinks of
Phaedra, and at that moment Phaedra appears. The chorus
greets her (680-81): "Alas, alas. It is finished. The devices of
your servant failed, queen. All goes badly."
Had Phaedra delivered the lament, it would be rather otiose for
the chorus to inform her that the nurse's devices failed. As it is,
the lines have a clear function. Phaedra has been absent since
Hippolytus and the nurse entered. The chorus leader greets her
now and reports that little has changed since she left. She picks
up the word technaifrom the nurse's lament to describe the failure.
She informs Phaedra that the interview, of which she had heard
the preliminaries, is finished, and she directs Phaedra's attention
to the nurse's presence and so offers the occasion for her address
to the nurse. Euripides also uses the choral greeting to direct
the audience's attention where he wants it. He has gotten the
effect of suspense during Phaedra's absence. He causes surprise
10For the nurse's characteristic use of logos, congruent with 671, see B. M. W.
Knox (above, note 3) 18-20. The MSS. are unanimous in repeating two forms of
logosat the end of successive lines, 670-71, though they do not agree on the forms. The
word is emphatic in this whole passage (note 688, 692, 703, 706). As Monk notes
(ad 670), Euripides did not hesitate to repeat words, particularly where he sought
emphasis. This double use by the nurse should not be edited out.
170 [1960
Staging in the Hippolytus
when she returns alive. Now by turning Phaedra's anger on the
nurse until the nurse departs, he can draw out his effect by delaying
Phaedra's announcement of the new and deadly resolution
that brought her back.
Readers and editors have given too little attention to the nurse's
situation at this moment. Her position is a dangerous one, a fact
that would be more obvious on the stage as she is attacked by the
two people in turn. For much of the play she has been the object
of satire. Her sophistries are the vehicle for a reductioad absurdum
of commonplaces about moderation: it is hard to take her seriously
as a person when she extends moderation to include moderate
immorality and moderation of intelligence. She inevitably
reminds us of the philosophical slave who is the clown in new
comedy, or even in old."l But despite these characteristics she
is still a character in tragedy, where blows are painful and swords
kill: she is a slave who has truly betrayed her masters.
The nurse is grovelling in fear as she begs Hippolytus to keep
his oath, and he taunts her. He ends with an implied threat as
he describes his watching her in the future (661-62). Her subsequent
personal lament shows her fear. Then Phaedra's first
address to her begins and ends with a curse (683-85, 693-94),
and Phaedra shortly dismisses her with a warning (706-9). The
nurse failed to tell Hippolytus that she was not sent by Phaedra,
presumably because she got no easy opportunity and because she
was afraid for herself. Now the nurse does not correct Phaedra,
who says that her reputation is irreparably ruined, since Hippolytus
is going to fill the whole countryside with the story. For the
second time the nurse fails to speak the words that might avert the
tragedy, and for the same reasons as before. She shows no inclination
to tell the truth about Hippolytus. Instead she speaks in
answer to Phaedra's curses, in defense of her own motives. And
her defense is a crude one, which amounts to: "If I had succeeded
you would have been gratified" (700). When she attempts to
prolong the conversation on the promise of showing a safe way
out, she is driven from the stage. She never learns of Phaedra's
intention of immediate suicide nor of her intention to slander
Hippolytus. The nurse's ignorance joins a crowd of fatal
misunderstandings.
11Wilamowitz (above, note 4) 104, Friedrich (above, note 5) 139 f.
Vol. xci] 171
Wesley D. Smith
There are dramatic reasons also why the chorus does not intervene
to tell Phaedra the truth (cf. below, note 13), reasons which
make it unnecessary to explain their reticence by their ignorance,
by their antipathy to Hippolytus, or by carelessness on the poet's
part. Actually the chorus never shows that it has heard Hippolytus'
words. All the information it gives Phaedra (680-81) comes
from the nurse's lament, which is addressed to the chorus (674).
Nevertheless, the Hippolytus-nurse dialogue must be conceived as
an exterior scene,12 and though the chorus is at some distance
(577, 585), they are aware that the argument is going on even
before it moves outside. By their position and by the swift and
violent progress of the scene, they are simply excluded from any
active part in it.
It remains now to consider briefly what the staging does for the
audience's reception of the scene, and how the scene contributes
to the design of the play as a whole. The scene is so conceived
as to throw the audience's sympathies violently first one way and
then the other. It opens with a sudden new development in the
plot, reported by Phaedra, whom it most affects. Hippolytus'
denunciation of the nurse as a pander brings to a sad and undignified
end Phaedra's attempt to keep her own guilty secret until
her death. Her sudden realization that she has been deceived
and her equally sudden exit to die summon all the audience's
sympathy for her. Whatever weakness and abdication of moral
control she showed in response to the nurse's urging are more than
punished now.
As a result, Hippolytus' condemnation of the absent Phaedra
receives the worst possible hearing from the audience. His
righteous indignation is not in excess of the facts he is aware of.
He is defending his father's honor and his own against a cynical
proposal. His innocence and his ability to feel shame are refreshing
after the nurse's rationalizations. But the audience is aware
that Phaedra is as sensitive to the situation as he, though her problems
are less simple. When this innocent boy speaks crudely and
with imagination of the world of which he is ignorant, the results
are not impressive. The audience's belief that the object of his
scorn is dead or dying also changes the effect of his pious threats.
12 This statement is based on 601 as well as our ignorance of any device or convention
for presenting interior scenes. Cf. Pickard-Cambridge (above, note 1) 99,
" . . tragedy is not in the habit of representing interior scenes at all."
172 [1960
Staging in the Hippolytus
When he draws the picture of himself watching how Phaedra
greets Theseus, while he stays on guard and so forces her to learn
s6phrosyne,the audience can retain little concern for his delicate
feelings of shame.
The nurse's lament reinforces what the audience already feels.
She did not speak the truth to Hippolytus, which would have been
of some use. Now her search for a new techneand a new accomplice
and her references to bad fortune and the knot that needs
loosing remind the audience point by point how the situation was
created. Her language of high morality does the same. The
nurse is afraid for herself now, and the audience is led to supply
reasons why she should be.
But with Phaedra's reappearance the situation is exactly reversed.
Phaedra begins with violent abuse of the nurse and
curses which echo Hippolytus' words (683, 693; cf. 616, 664). The
nurse's answers are similar irritating sophistries (700-701, cf. 615),
increasing Phaedra's fury like Hippolytus' before. The chorus is
given no part in either conversation, and they are now given no
leisure to comment or discuss. Phaedra does not lose her
momentum after she dismisses the nurse. Without pausing she
turns to the chorus, addresses them as paideseugeneisand asks them
to swear silence.l3 They swear by Artemis; the audience is not
allowed to forget the previous oath. But Phaedra proceeds in
ignorance of it, and chorus and audience finally learn why she
has returned alive to the stage. She needs the chorus' aid in
deception. The new words she needed, like the old ones (688,
cf. 490-91), are calculations about her reputation on which her
fate and that of her family depend. This time her words are
grim, not fair-faced. One life cannot be a hindrance.
As she describes Hippolytus speedily filling the whole land with
the story of her disgrace, her imagination is fevered in a way
reminiscent of Hippolytus himself. There is nothing in the
scene to prevent the audience from conjecturing what elements
13 It is usual, following the scholiast, to comment that the oath is necessary to the
economy of the drama. But the oath does more than account for the later silence of
the chorus. Phaedra's sudden request and equally sudden revelation of her new plan
make it dramatically feasible to keep the chorus from becoming an active element in
this part of the scene any more than in 601-68. Later the chorus can intrude its pleas
for moderation (891-92, 1036-37, urging acceptance of Hippolytus' second oath),
but here for the sake of the dramatic economy they must not be given the chance to
intervene and try to straighten out the confusion.
Vol. xci] 173
Wesley D. Smith
her emotion contains of bitterness for her wasted passion and
restraint, or fury at the apparent speed with which Hippolytus
condemned her, or even her hereditary taint which the chorus is
shortly to discuss. Similarly nothing prevents our viewing Hippolytus'
rage as the "gratifying of a repressed impulse under the
guise of virtue." 14 But there is little time for such conjectures,
and Euripides does not encourage them. Instead the emphasis
falls on the fact that Phaedra's violence, like that of Hippolytus,
is defense against an imaginary attack. She kills Hippolytus for
words he does not intend to speak. And when her final words
echo the final words of Hippolytus, the reversal of the pattern is
complete. The audience felt distaste for Hippolytus' ignorant
condemnation of the dying Phaedra. Now with a kind of poetic
justice Phaedra has returned to repeat his act. Both in their
ignorance will teach a lesson in sophrosyne.
There is a larger pattern in the play to which these two lessons
in sophrosynebelong: a pattern to which each character contributes.
The first moral lesson is that described by Aphrodite in the prologue,
expressed in terms of size. Aphrodite is a great god, she
says (polle, line 1), who honors those who revere her power. But
those who think big thoughts (mega, 6) she trips up. Hippolytus
thinks Artemis is the greatest of the gods (megiste,16) and enjoys
a companionship with her greater than mortal (meizo, 19). But
14 Dodds (above, note 8) 103. Gilbert Norwood, Essays on EuripideanDrama
(Toronto 1954) 80, note, offers a salutary correction to discussions of Phaedra's
characterization in 565-600, which also applies to the whole scene: "her words contain
no hint of baffled lust." In general it is difficult to assessthe degree to which the
audience's knowledge of the myth and Phaedra's "traditional character" might have
controlled their reactions to the scene. Certainly modern knowledge has prevented
adequate appreciation of possibilities for suspense in the scene. On the basis of
Polygnotus' picture as interpreted by Pausanias (10.29.3) we can probably assume a
pre-Euripidean story that Phaedra had hanged herself. Beyond that there is no evidence
of a story with a definite form before Euripides, though scholars assume that
there must have been; cf. Wilamowitz (above, note 4) 89-99, Hans Herter, RhlM,
N.S. 89 (1940) 273-79, Louis Sechan, REG 24 (1911) 105-36. If the audience did
know Euripides' first Hippolytus play (no one seems to question that it was allowed a
production), they may simply have spent their time cataloguing the alterations. But
modern attempts to reconstruct the firstHippolytusmust go far with little, and although
this is no place to question their likelihood in detail, I would suggest that we cannot
assume that the audience viewed the second Hippolytusin the light of the first. Certainly
the scholiastsshow no sign ofdoing so, despite Aristophanes' apparent knowledge
of the firstplay. In the prologue of the second Hippolytus,Aphrodite allows Phaedra
to keep her good name, but in details she is either vague or purposely misleading. This
seems to be a device for maintaining the suspense which is exploited by Phaedra's
exit at 600.
174 [1960
Staging in the Hippolytus
Aphrodite has already begun to trim him down (prokopsas',23)
and will complete her revenge in the play. The necessity of
sacrificing Phaedra is nothing beside her desire forjustice (47-50).
Aphrodite expresses the most familiar sentiment of Greek
morality: knowing one's necessary limitations is the safe way.
Growing too big, too powerful, forgetting one's mortal station is
dangerous. On this initial theme Euripides is to play a series of
variations, all drawing a comparison between men and gods, all
drawing specific lessons from the vague text of moderation.
The first scene offers the second moral lesson, given to Hippolytus
by the servant. Its subject is to semnon. Both men and gods
hate what is semnonand is not friendly to everyone (93). The safe
way is the opposite, to be euprosegoros,well met, easily addressed
(95). Semnotes is dangerous because it is uncompromising.
The point of the terms Euripides uses is their ambiguity. The
servant is not actually rejecting piety, but is opposing it to that
semnoteswhich sets one apart (and is perhaps reserved for the gods,
see Murray's apparatus ad 99 and 103). Hippolytus' grand
goodbye to Aphrodite is his rejection of the servant's lesson by
humorously accepting it.
The next lesson is taught by the nurse to Phaedra. The nurse
is an authority on moderation. Before she discovers Phaedra's
secret she has already philosophized on the subject: one must be
moderate in love and not let it touch the depths of the soul.
Relationships should be easily breakable. It is rigidity that
brings pain and disease (253-60). Her immediate reference is
to her own pain at Phaedra's troubles, but she expands on the
same subject after Phaedra's confession: "Mortals should not
work too hard at living." As long as their good deeds outnumber
the bad they do well (467-72). Phaedra's rigid morality is nothing
but hybris. The gods give in to love, and a mere mortal
should not presume to be better than the gods (473-76). Her
earthy colloquialism fits well with her characteristic use of gnomic
wisdom.15 Her extension of proverbs on the necessity of moderation
to include moderate adultery is the second paradoxical
lesson of the play. Her question to Phaedra, " Ti semnomytheis?
It is not fair-faced words you need but the man" (490-91), recalls
the first.
15 Scholiast ad 177, 465. If the nurse's opinions had not previously been expressed
as proverbs she makes it sound as though they had: 189-90, 207, 252 ff., 435 f.
Vol. xci] 175
Wesley D. Smith
By the time Phaedra and Hippolytus speak of teaching lessons,
they have developed their own variations on the theme of moderation,
particularly in terms of sophrosyneand its relation to knowledge.
Phaedra describes to the chorus the results of her own
pondering on how the life of mortals is corrupted (375 if.). It is
not from ignorance (380-83): "We understand and know what is
right, but we do not practice it, some from laziness, some preferring
some other pleasure to the good." Phaedra needed something
more than knowledge of the good to conquer the irrationality
with which she was beset. That something more she describes
as to sophronein(391-99). But even sophrosynewas insufficient,
and rather than violate it she chose death by starvation (400 if.,
esp. 413 if.). For Phaedra sophrosyneis that difficult self-control
that is required for following the good one knows, and one may
have to die to achieve it. The nurse calls it hybris and semno-
mythia.
Hippolytus has no such difficulties with self-control. He
describes his blessed state in terms of his right to pluck the flowers
in the sacred meadow (79-81): "Those whose sophrosyneis
untaught, who by nature have it in all things, can pluck the
flowers. The base man cannot." This natural sophrosyneis
what the servant condemns as semnotes. Both Phaedra and
Hippolytus prefer their own versions of sophrosyneto the moderation
offered them by their retainers. However, the moderation
offered to them is a parody of popular and philosophical sentiments.
It is later summed up by the chorus, who draw this lesson
from Hippolytus' banishment (1111-16): "May my opinions be
neither unwavering nor extraordinary. May I have good fortune
in life by changing my easy manners day by day."
16 For both
Hippolytus and Phaedra, Euripides has drawn a situation in
which moderation is intolerable and has thereby reduced moral
platitudes about moderation to offensive paradoxes. They are
right when they claim sophrosyneand oppose such moderation.
But their claims are to be examined in more difficult circumstances.
In the central scene Euripides shows these two opponents of
moderation successively in action. Each violently condemns the
16 The pattern of the moral lesson is completed by Theseus (916-20) and by Artemis
(1298 ff., 1431-36), but through the latter part of the play it is subordinate to the
other aspect of the theme as Aphrodite introduced it: the contrast between men and
gods in power, prerogatives, knowledge, and finally in the capacity for humaneness;
men can shed tears, forgive, and be reconciled.
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Vol. xci] Staging in the Hippolytus 177
other in confidence of his own sufficient knowledge of the right
and the other's relation to it. The stage management is such
that they never meet but also such that the natural progressions
of emotion and action for both are shown to be exactly parallel.
The fatuous defenses by the nurse, "It is mortal to err," "Wisdom
is only a matter of chance," within the dramatic context increase
the fury of both and deprive them of their remaining self control.
Still the lesson both teach, in their ignorance and misapprehension,
only illustrates the nurse's proverbs.