Electra (Sophocles play)

Electra, Elektra, or The Electra[1] (Ancient Greek: ΗΛΕΚΤΡΑ[2], Ēlektra) is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes (409 BC) and the Oedipus at Colonus (401 BC) lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career. Jebb dates it between 420 BC and 414 BC[3].

This article is about the play by Sophocles. For other uses, see Electra (disambiguation).
Electra
Electra and Orestes by Alfred Church
Written bySophocles
ChorusWomen of Mycenae
CharactersPaedagogus
Orestes
Electra
Chrysothemis
Clytemnestra
Aegisthus
MutePylades
Handmaid of Clytemnestra
The Attendants of Orestes
Place premieredCity Dionysia
Original languageAncient Greek
GenreTragedy
SettingMycenae, before the palace of the Pelopidae

Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan War, the play tells of a bitter struggle for justice by Electra and her brother Orestes for the murder of their father Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and their step father Aegisthus.

When King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War, his wife Clytemnestra (who has taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus as a lover) kills him. Clytemnestra believes the murder was justified, since Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war, as commanded by the gods. Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, rescued her younger brother Orestes from her mother by sending him to Strophius of Phocis. The play begins years later when Orestes has returned as a grown man with a plot for revenge, as well as to claim the throne.

Storyline

Orestes arrives with his friend Pylades, son of Strophius, and a pedagogue, i.e. tutor (an old attendant of Orestes, who took him from Electra to Strophius). Their plan is to have the tutor announce that Orestes has died in a chariot race, and that two men (really Orestes and Pylades) are arriving shortly to deliver an urn with his remains. Meanwhile, Electra continues to mourn the death of her father Agamemnon, holding her mother Clytemnestra responsible for his murder. When Electra is told of the death of Orestes her grief is doubled, but is to be short-lived.

After a choral ode Orestes arrives, carrying the urn supposedly containing his ashes. He does not recognize Electra, nor she him. He gives her the urn and she delivers a moving lament over it, unaware that her brother is in fact standing alive next to her. Now realizing the truth, Orestes reveals his identity to his emotional sister. She is overjoyed that he is alive, but in their excitement they nearly reveal his identity, and the tutor comes out from the palace to urge them on. Orestes and Pylades enter the house and slay Clytemnestra. As Aegisthus returns home, they quickly put her corpse under a sheet and present it to him as the body of Orestes. He lifts the veil to discover who it really is, and Orestes then reveals himself. They escort Aegisthus off set to be killed at the hearth, the same location Agamemnon was slain. The play ends here, before the death of Aegisthus is announced.

Similar works

The story of Orestes' revenge was a popular subject in Greek tragedies.

  • There are surviving versions by all three of the great Athenian tragedians:
  • The story was also told at the end of the lost epic Nostoi (also known as Returns or Returns of the Greeks)
  • The events are also brought up in Homer's Odyssey

Reception

Roman writer Cicero considered Electra to be a masterpiece,[4] and the work is also viewed favorably among modern critics and scholars. In The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama, John Gassner and Edward Quinn argued that its "simple device of delaying the recognition between brother and sister produces a series of brilliant scenes which display Electra's heroic resolution under constant attack."[5] Of the titular character, Edith Hall also wrote, "Sophocles certainly found an effective dramatic vehicle in this remarkable figure, driven by deprivation and cruelty into near-psychotic extremes of behavior; no other character in his extant dramas dominates the stage to such an extent."[6] L.A. Post noted that the play was "unique among Greek tragedies for its emphasis on action."[7]

Commentaries
  • Davies, Gilbert Austin, 1908 (abridged from the larger edition of Richard Claverhouse Jebb)
  • Finglass, P.J. (editor) (2007). Sophocles: Electra. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 44. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86809-9.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  • Kovacs, David (August 3, 2009). "Review of Sophocles: Electra. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 44 (2007)". Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

Translations
  • Lewis Campbell, 1883 - verse
  • Richard C. Jebb, 1894 - prose: full text
  • Francis Storr, 1912 - verse
  • Francis Fergusson, 1938 - verse
  • E.F. Watling 1953 - prose
  • David Grene, 1957 - verse
  • H. D. F. Kitto, 1962 - verse
  • J. H. Kells, 1973 - verse (?)
  • Kenneth McLeish, 1979 - verse
  • Frank McGuinness, 1997 - verse
  • Henry Taylor, 1998 - verse
  • Anne Carson, 2001 - verse
  • Jenny March, 2001 - prose (acting edition)
  • Tom McGrath, 2003 - prose; full text
  • M. MacDonald and J. M. Walton, 2004 - verse
  • G. Theodoridis, 2006 - prose: full text
  • Eric Dugdale, 2008 - verse (acting edition)
  • Timberlake Wertenbaker, 2009
  • Nick Payne, 2011
  • Ian C. Johnston, 2017 - verse: full text

Adaptations

References
  1. Jebb, R. C. (1894). Sophocles The Plays and Fragments Part VI. The Electra. 6. Cambridge: London: C. J. Clay and Sons, Cambridge: University Press Warehouse, Ave Maria Lane. Glasgow: 363, Argyle Street. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell And Co. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. New York: Macmillan And Co. pp. Title. ark:/13960/t5v77xt8s.
  2. Jebb (1894). Sophocles The Plays and Fragments Part VI. The Electra. p. 1.
  3. Jebb (1894). Sophocles The Plays and Fragments Part VI. The Electra. pp. lviii.
  4. Csapo, Eric; Goette, Hans Rupprecht; Green, J. Richard; Wilson, Peter (2014). Greek Theater in the Fourth Century BC. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 178. ISBN 311033755X.
  5. Gassner, John; Quinn, Edward (2002). The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama. Courier Corporation. p. 200. ISBN 0486420647.
  6. Hall, Edith (2008). Introduction. Antigone; Oedipus the King; Electra. By Sophocles. Translated by Kitto, H. D. F. Oxford University Press. p. xvii–xviii. ISBN 019156110X.
  7. Post, L.A. (March 2, 1953). "Sophocles, Strategy, and the Electra". The Classical Weekly. Johns Hopkins University Press. 46: 150–153. JSTOR 4343363.

Further reading
  • Duncan, A. 2005. "Gendered Interpretations: Two Fourth-Century B.C.E. Performances of Sophocles’ Electra." Helios 32.1: 55–79
  • Dunn, F. M., ed. 1996. Sophocles’ Electra in Performance. Drama: Beiträge zum antiken Drama und seiner Rezeption 4. Stuttgart: M & P Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung.
  • Griffiths, E. M. 2012. "Electra." In Brill’s Companion to Sophocles. Edited by A. Markantonatos, 73–91. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill.
  • Ierulli, M. 1993. "A Community of Women? The Protagonist and the Chorus in Sophocles’ Electra." Métis 8:217–229.
  • Lloyd, M. 2005. Sophocles: Electra. London: Duckworth.
  • MacLeod, L. 2001. Dolos and Dike in Sophokles’ Elektra. Mnemosyne Supplement 219. Leiden, The Netherlands, Boston, and Cologne: Brill.
  • Marshall, C. W. 2006. "How to Write a Messenger Speech (Sophocles, Electra 680–763)." In Greek Drama III: Essays in honour of Kevin Lee. Edited by J. F. Davidson, F. Muecke, and P. Wilson, 203–221. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 87. London: Institute of Classical Studies
  • Nooter, S. 2011. "Language, Lamentation, and Power in Sophocles’ Electra." Classical World 104.4: 399–417.
  • Segal, C. P. 1966. "The Electra of Sophocles." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 97:473–545.
  • Sommerstein, A. H. 1997. "Alternative Scenarios in Sophocles’ Electra." Prometheus 23:193–214.
Library resources about
Sophocles's Electra


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