Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
In the 1970s and 1980s feminist scholars launched an important critique of the patriarchal values embedded in Western culture. Amongst other targets, they questioned the canonization of ancient Greek tragedy, labelling the plays misogynistic.1 Nevertheless, many female directors and playwrights continue to stage ancient Greek tragedy today. In this essay I want to recall what the distinguished theatre scholar Sue Ellen Case wrote about such plays in 1985 and discuss this in the light of more recent productions. In particular I want to consider why women who contrive to murder their husbands or their mothers or their children have become so popular on the stage.
Sue-Ellen Case's criticism of ancient Greek drama titled 'Classic Drag: The Greek Creation of Female Parts', for Theatre Journal, was based mainly on two texts: Aeschylus' Oresteia and Aristotle's Poetics. In addition to documenting the androcentric nature of ancient Greek society, she used the example of the Oresteia to assert that Greek drama was written by men and performed by male actors for a male audience to promote an anti-female agenda. She argued that the judgment at the end of the trilogy is indicative of the patriarchal values controlling the play (and Greek tragedy in general), determining that the male is the true parent of the child and that the female is only 'the nurse of the child'.2 Orestes can be exonerated for killing his mother since his father, whom he was avenging, was his only real parent. Because of the chauvinistic attitudes expressed in this trilogy (and other ancient Greek plays), Case suggested that the feminist reader might decide that 'the female roles have nothing to do with women, that these roles should be played by men as fantasies of "Womanâ[euro] as "Otherâ[euro] than men, disruptions of a patriarchal society which illustrates its fear and loathing of the female parts' and that the 'roles of Medea, Clytemnestra, Cassandra or Phaedra are properly played as drag roles'.3 Case also quoted Aristotle's argument that women are 'inferior' and should not be depicted as brave or intellectually clever in plays. She concluded her article with the suggestion that the revered position of ancient Greek drama should be reconsidered: 'Overall, the...