A PLAY OF EURIPIDES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23277, 23 August 1937, Page 14

A PLAY OF EURIPIDES

W.E.A. DRAMA CLASS ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR ADAMS At the W.E.A. Drama Class on Saturday evening a reading was given of the play " Iphigenia," by Euripides. The reading was introduced by an explanatory address by Professor T. D. Adams. , The story of the play, the professor said, went back to Homer. Homer told of a feast of the gods, at which the offended Goddess of Discord had thrown before the company an apple, inscribed "To the fairest." Three goddesses had laid claim to it, and as none of. the gods could decide to whom it should rightly go, they had chosen a mortal, Paris, to do so. One of the goddesses had promised Paris limitless power if he should decide in her favour; another had promised wisdom; and' the third, the most beautiful woman in.the world Paris had given the apple to the third. The most beautiful woman, Helen, had already been married to King Menelaus of Sparta, and she had eloped to Troy with Paris after he had been wafted over to Sparta by the goddess. Menelaus got his brother Agamemnon to organise an expedition to attack Troy, but when it set sail the fleet was held up by contrary winds at Aulis. The seer Calchus said that the only way to make the winds cease was for Agamemnon to keep a promise he had made to the goddess Artemis some years before, to sacrifice to her the most beautiful thing that had been born in that year—which happened to be his daughter Iphigenia, •At the suggestion of the crafty Odysseus, he sent a \ message to his wile Clytemnestia to bring his daughter to marry the warrior Achilles. . When Iphigenia was brought on this pretext she was sacrificed to Artemis, the winds ceased, and the fleet went for^ After a ten years' seige, Troy was taken, but on his return Agamemnon was slain in vengeance by Clytemnestia. Her son Orestes was taken away from her and brought up with Pylades, with whom he had formed a, friendship like that of David and Jonathan. When he had grown old enough, Orestes was bidden by Apollo 'to avenge his father. .He slew Clytemnestia, but lost his reason, when he approached the -Delphic Oracle to be rid of the "furies, which pursued him, he was sent to tne wild Torian lands to bring back to Athens a vooden image of Artemis which had fallen from heaven. The Torians had been a warlike and barbarous people,-and-had sacrificed to this image any • strangers who came among them. According to the version of the legend used by Euripides when Iphigenia was sacrified by her father to Artemis, the goddess had substituted a deer for her and wafted her away to this Torian land, where she had been made high priestess to the goddess. With this situation, and the landing of Orestes, the play began. A number of captive Greek women in the service of Iphigenia at tne temple formed the chorus to the play. The chorus in a Greek drama, Professor Adams said, was not something arbitrarily added to it. On the contrary, the drama actually originated out of the chorus. Greek drama had begun with a group of people assembled periodically to celebrate the anniversary of the death of some hero or demi-god. The group went through various symbolic motions, and sang dirges. This was pure choral work, but soon one member of the chorus was chosen to impersonate the dead hero. Then he came to carry on a dialogue with the leader of the chorus, and at a later stage it was realised that a better dramatic effect could be obtained with two actors, then three, though the Greeks had never gone beyond three. One virtue of the chorus was that it made it unnecessary to have any dropping of a curtain between the acts. When the action fell back the chorus came forward and held the stage untir it started again. The speaker pointed out that altnougn "Iphigenia" was a play of action it was also full of "atmosphere." The mystery and menace of the Torian regions cast a grim glamour over it \'W '' ■■ ■•••"• -• ■ I