Word: hecuba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When the wily Odysseus (Church), he whom Homer called "the man of many devices," thinks up the ruse of the Trojan horse, Troy falls. In Trojan Women by Euripides, the women are to be parceled out among the victors. Queen Hecuba (Eliza Ward) leads the women in a keening catalogue of I woe: she has lost her husband Priam, her son Hector, and will eventually lose all of her children...
...this point, it is worth noting the three basic speech patterns of Greek tragedy. Hecuba embarks on a lamentation that might be called the first language of the Middle East, stretching around the Mediterranean crescent from the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem to the melancholy, snakelike flutes of the Casbah. The second mode is anathema, the curse absolute. The third is the speech of self-absolution. Protagonists in Greek plays never blame themselves for their actions. Either the gods made them do it, or their enemies are culpable or they are the victims of tyche: luck or blind chance...
...Hecuba plays the blame game, Helen, "the whore of Troy," is responsible for everything. Helen (Suzman) appears, as haughty as an international star. She seems to regard the Trojan War as her biggest hit ever. Menelaus is ready to butcher her for adultery, but he is so afraid of Helen's siren sway that he does not look at her. Silkily, she makes her excuse. She was in the power of Aphrodite-her will was not her own. Menelaus' meat-cleaver hand drops, Helen sashays away, whistling in sultry triumph...
This is the gory part of the epic: blood lust and revenge couched in the name of justice. Polymestor (Oliver Ford Davies) is an erstwhile friend of Troy to whom King Priam and Queen Hecuba sent their youngest son, Polydorus, for safekeeping-along with a stock of gold. But in Greek tragedy, today's friend is tomorrow's fiend...
...soon as he knew that Troy had fallen, Polymestor murdered the boy and took the gold. Unknown to him, the sea-rotted corpse has drifted to shore and is dumped before Hecuba's gaze. She is past weeping by now. She wants the gift of death, surcease from all sorrow. But she has a priority: vengeance. Before the final curtain, Polymestor lurches forward on all fours, his eye sockets craters of streaming blood. He utters the primal howl that punctuates these plays. It is the moment when all reason has toppled and the dogs of fate rend man with...