Trojan Women Program Notes |
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The poet Wilfred Owen, killed in the dying days of the First World War, once wrote: “My subject is war and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.” These words inspired Benjamin Britten in the composition of his War Requiem. No tragedy has captured the pathos and pity of war more than Euripides’ Trojan Women, which is often regarded as the greatest anti-war play ever written. Recent successful productions in London, U.K. and Stratford, Ontario testify to its enduring relevance. The play was first produced in Athens in the spring of 415 B.C.E. That summer, the Athenians, already embroiled in a war with the Spartans that had dragged on and off for 15 years, embarked on a second war in Sicily. Whatever the superficial pretexts for the invasion, the real reason was, as Thucydides wrote, conquest. The main prize was Syracuse, the most powerful city of the island and itself a democracy like Athens, which gives the lie to the modern journalistic cliché that democracies don’t make war against each other. The whole operation, which had been promoted by ambitious politicians and supported by a fickle populace, ended in utter disaster and was largely instrumental in the eventual fall of the Athenian Empire. Forty thousand Athenians and allies were killed, an unprecedented number for the times. The fate of the remnant of the army, as recounted by Thucydides, makes for horrifying reading. Left to rot alive in the quarries in Sicily they suffered unbearable heat by day and extreme cold at night. According to Plutarch, a few that were spared were those who could quote from the plays of Euripides. In Euripides’ Trojan Women, the Trojan War can be regarded as instigated by shallow leaders for shallow reasons. But Euripides, unlike Thucydides, dwells not on the sufferings of the soldiers, but the true, innocent victims of the war, the women and children. Brutalised and raped they have nothing to hope for except slavery or death. Unlike more conventional tragedies there is not the customary, crafted plot; rather the play simply dwells on the pathos and the pity and the horrors of war. The prologue, spoken by the gods Poseidon and Athena, frames the human action and shows that ultimately in war there are no victors, for those who win today will be losers tomorrow. These Olympian gods – projections of the fickle nature of human fortune – are like nation-states: they have no real friends, only vested interests. Aristotle called Euripides the most tragic of the poets. He was, and still is, the most controversial playwright of the western canon. This is the 8th annual reading of a Greek Tragedy. All are welcome.
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