Hecuba

In Attic tragedy, all scenes following the entrance of the Chorus are known as episodes, with the exception of the final scene preceding the exit of the Chorus, which is known as the Exodus. Each episode is separated from the following episode by a choral song called a stasimon.

The opening of Euripides’s Hecuba is noteworthy, even unusual, in a few ways. The Prologue speech, spoken by the ghost of Hecuba’s son Polydorus, is standard enough: Most of Euripides’s plays begin with this kind of Prologue. It is likely that the actor who played the ghost would have been suspended over the stage ex machina, that is, by a kind of crane (in Attic tragedies, supernatural beings—especially gods and dead heroes—were often suspended over the stage this way). The innovation comes after the Prologue: The choral song that usually follows the Prologue in Attic tragedies, known as the parodos, is fragmented into a lyric scene that features a sung exchange between Hecuba, the Chorus, and Hecuba’s daughter Polyxena.

The opening of the play is also the first indication of the play’s two-fold structure, another novelty, which combines two standard plot patterns into one. Scholars have often commented on—sometimes disapprovingly—the play’s sharp division into two distinct parts. The first part describes the events leading up to the sacrifice of Polyxena, showcasing Hecuba’s heartrending attempts to save her daughter. This is a typical suppliant plot, familiar from many other tragedies (both Aeschylus and Euripides, for example, wrote plays titled Suppliant Women). The second part of the play, follows a typical revenge plot, with Hecuba discovering the body of Polydorus and resolving to punish Polymestor, the man who killed her son (compare other revenge tragedies, such as Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers or Sophocles or Euripides’s Electra).

The opening of the play underscores this doubleness: The Prologue features two ghosts, Polydorus (who delivers the Prologue) and Achilles (who is said to have demanded the blood of Polyxena). The ghost of Polydorus speaks of the “two corpses” (45) of her “two last children” (46) that Hecuba will have to bury. There are two parties in the Greek army: One, led by Agamemnon, opposes Polyxena’s death, and another, led by Odysseus, argues for it. Perhaps most importantly, the opening prepares the audience for the theme of the Degeneration of Character: Hecuba will become virtually a different person in the second part of the play when she carries out her brutal revenge on Polymestor, directly reflecting the doubleness of the play.

Also significant is the indeterminacy of the play’s liminal setting. The play is set on an edge, in multiple ways. Geographically, the characters are on the beach of the Thracian Chersonese, across from Troy on the narrow strait known to the Greeks as the Hellespont (the Dardanelles). Hecuba and the Chorus of Trojan Women can glimpse their ruined home across the strait, which puts them, in a sense, both outside and inside of Troy. Similarly, the Greeks both have and have not left Troy, waiting as they are for a wind to blow them home. Still within Troy’s orbit, the Greeks can speak of seeing the ghost of Achilles appear over his tomb, which would have been built very close to Troy. Later, Odysseus will even refer to the “dust of Troy” (325) as though he were still standing upon it (in the original Greek, the demonstrative article he uses for the land of Troy, hede, indicates something that is immediately on hand, “here”). Likewise, the body of Polydorus is in an unfixed location, sometimes on the shore, but sometimes floating on the sea. The play also hovers between life and death, since ghosts such as those of Polydorus or Achilles are as much a part of its reality as are the living. But perhaps most importantly, the play is set on the borderland between the Greek world and the “barbarian” east, juxtaposing Greek values—often speciously—with the disparaged values of the Trojans or Thracians throughout the play.

Enduring the Vicissitudes of Fortune, particularly the fate of female survivors of war, is another central theme introduced in the opening of the play, above all in the lyric scene. Hecuba’s very first words, for instance, contrast her former status as “queen of Troy” (64) with her current status as a “slave” (61). “How the mighty have fallen” becomes Hecuba’s defining characteristic—both to others and to Hecuba herself. In this world of suffering, it becomes necessary to endure. And Hecuba does learn to endure, the worse her suffering becomes. But Hecuba’s endurance also changes her, and this change becomes more prominent as the play progresses, especially in the second part.