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Andromache: A Play in Three Acts
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94 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1900
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 13, 2024
okay so i thought i was reading Murray’s translation of Euripides’ Andromache buuuuuut i was wrong, it is actually his own play he wrote with the same theme. very good nonetheless
(off to read Euripides’ version now)
(off to read Euripides’ version now)
April 19, 2024
This is a free and creative translation of Eurípides’s play of the same name. Andromache, formerly the wife of Hector and putative Queen of Troy, is one of the spoils of war. In the absence of Achilles, she is awarded to his son Neoptolemus (the Pyrrhus of Murray’s play). Orestes, the son of Agammemon, had been betrothed to his cousin Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen of Troy since his childhood. Hermione is traditionally believed to have inherited some of her mother's beauty. With both her parents away in Troy, and Orestes under a curse for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra, Hermione was left defenceless. Neoptolemus made a swift foray into Sparta, and kidnapped her. According to Murray's play, they were married.
The play looks at the rise of humanism in a world emerging from the ashes of Troy. For the Greeks, the killing of another human being, whether by accident or intention, always meant exile until the dead man’s family were satisfied that atonement was made. Such atonement could take several forms – a deadly feud, which could go on for one or two generations; a donation; a pardon at the hands of a neutral king acceptable to both parties, or atonement at Delphi.
The idea of forgiveness was deemed so cowardly, so unmanly, it was never even considered as an option until Aeschylus worked it into his play about Orestes, ‘The Furies.’ Even then, it took another five hundred years to gain full currency. Forgiveness is the beginning, if you like, of civilisation. Murray's play takes both concepts - voluntary atonement for what was not considered either a crime or a sin, but simply an outcome of the hunt (and it is interesting that Andromache murmurs against the hunt itself), and the very Christian concept of forgiveness and makes them the lynch pin of a very Greek play.
Murray reduces the cast in Euripides's play, and simplifies the action to two basic issues: the hostility of a young, but barren, queen towards a still-beautiful, perhaps still-loved, concubine of her husband's. Orestes, who has come to take Hermione away, finds himself thoroughly disillusioned. Secondly, the deadly antagonism between Orestes and Pyrrhus, a carry-over from the bitter rivalry between Agammemnon and Achilles in the Iliad. As the drama plays out, Murray's love of the old pagan gods takes on his Christian ethos.
But ‘Andromache’ is a tragedy. And it becomes a tragedy only because of the unrelenting hatred in her breast that Hermione has for Andromache the woman. A woman at least twenty years older than herself, still beautiful, still desirable in her husband's eyes. The mother of his son. His only son. Even Orestes, who is supposed to be besotted with herself and has come to rescue her from Pyrrhus, seems to have fallen under her spell. For Pyrrhus, wounded by Mycenaean arrows, has last words only for his concubine:
“I am glad I did not slay you, Andromache. [Dies.]” Perhaps the most moving sentence in the whole play, as he finally understands what Andromache has been saying to Orestes:
“Listen. You and I have had more grief than others. We have seen beyond the glory of battle, beyond the joy of the conqueror and the shame of the conquered—as Priam and Hector saw before they died.”
The play looks at the rise of humanism in a world emerging from the ashes of Troy. For the Greeks, the killing of another human being, whether by accident or intention, always meant exile until the dead man’s family were satisfied that atonement was made. Such atonement could take several forms – a deadly feud, which could go on for one or two generations; a donation; a pardon at the hands of a neutral king acceptable to both parties, or atonement at Delphi.
The idea of forgiveness was deemed so cowardly, so unmanly, it was never even considered as an option until Aeschylus worked it into his play about Orestes, ‘The Furies.’ Even then, it took another five hundred years to gain full currency. Forgiveness is the beginning, if you like, of civilisation. Murray's play takes both concepts - voluntary atonement for what was not considered either a crime or a sin, but simply an outcome of the hunt (and it is interesting that Andromache murmurs against the hunt itself), and the very Christian concept of forgiveness and makes them the lynch pin of a very Greek play.
Murray reduces the cast in Euripides's play, and simplifies the action to two basic issues: the hostility of a young, but barren, queen towards a still-beautiful, perhaps still-loved, concubine of her husband's. Orestes, who has come to take Hermione away, finds himself thoroughly disillusioned. Secondly, the deadly antagonism between Orestes and Pyrrhus, a carry-over from the bitter rivalry between Agammemnon and Achilles in the Iliad. As the drama plays out, Murray's love of the old pagan gods takes on his Christian ethos.
But ‘Andromache’ is a tragedy. And it becomes a tragedy only because of the unrelenting hatred in her breast that Hermione has for Andromache the woman. A woman at least twenty years older than herself, still beautiful, still desirable in her husband's eyes. The mother of his son. His only son. Even Orestes, who is supposed to be besotted with herself and has come to rescue her from Pyrrhus, seems to have fallen under her spell. For Pyrrhus, wounded by Mycenaean arrows, has last words only for his concubine:
“I am glad I did not slay you, Andromache. [Dies.]” Perhaps the most moving sentence in the whole play, as he finally understands what Andromache has been saying to Orestes:
“Listen. You and I have had more grief than others. We have seen beyond the glory of battle, beyond the joy of the conqueror and the shame of the conquered—as Priam and Hector saw before they died.”
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