Phaedra
is a Roman tragedy written by philosopher and dramatist Lucius Annaeus
Seneca before 54 A.D. Its 1280 lines of verse tell the story of Phaedra, wife of
King Theseus of Athens and her consuming lust for her stepson, Hippolytus. Based
on Greek Mythology and the tragedy Hippolytus by Greek playwright Euripides,
Seneca's Phaedra is one of several artistic explorations of this tragic story. Seneca
portrays Phaedra as self-aware and direct in the pursuit of her stepson, while in
other treatments of the myth she is more of a passive victim of fate. This Phaedra
takes on the scheming nature and the cynicism often assigned to the Nurse
character. When Seneca's plays were first revived in the Renaissance, the play
that soon came to be known as Phaedra was titled Hippolytus, for example, when
presented in Latin in Rome in 1486. The play has influenced drama over the
succeeding two millennia, particularly the works of Shakespeare and dramas of
16th and 17th century France. Other notable dramatic versions of the Phaedra
story that were influenced by Seneca's version include Phèdre by Jean
Racine and Phaedra's Love by Sarah Kane. Major themes of Phaedra include the
laws of nature as interpreted according to Stoic philosophy; animal imagery and
hunting; and the damaging effects of the sexual transgressions of mothers and
stepmothers.
On moral grounds, Phaedra as a character deserves punishment for her
incestuous dark desires, she can not denied a tragic status for certain reasons. No
doubt, the root cause of Phaedra’s tragedy is that she is a victim of unrequited
love. However, a close inspection reveals that there are several other factors
which drive Phaedra to indulge in sexual perversity which resultant incurs her
inescapable doom. Firstly, Phaedra owns a hereditary curse upon herself. From
mythology and from the play itself we know that Venus has loaded the whole
race of Phoebus with ‘shame unspeakable’ as Apollo once exposed the love
between Venus and Mars. As a result, Phaedra’s mother Pasiphae was doomed to
fall in love with a bull and Phaedra with her stepson Hippolytus. As the play
opens, we find that Phaedra has an anguished moral awareness about her bestial
desires and she alludes to her bestial ancestry: “I recognize the deadly evil my
unhappy mother”. Then when the nurse advises her to smother her incestuous
passion, Phaedra declares, “I know, dear Nurse, that what you say is true; but
passion forces me to take the worse path”. She further complains, (“What can
reason do? Passion has won and rules supreme, and a mighty god has control
over all my soul”. Thus it can be said that Phaedra is a victim of some
independent fatal forces upon which she has no control. Secondly and
importantly in the Senecan version of the play, Phaedra’s husband Theseus is
much to blame for creating scope of Phaedra’s illicit passion. At the outset of the
play, Phaedra expresses her preference for being a faithful wife but fails because
of her frustration about Theseus. She directly refers to Theseus’ sexual exploits
and her accusations get strong proof when we learn that currently Theseus with
his friend Peirithous has gone underworld in order to kidnap and rape
Persephone. When Phaedra deplores, “Shame does not hold him back––in the
depths of Acheron he seeks fornication and unlawful bed,”- we actually hear the
voice of a neglected wife affronted by her husband’s constant philandering. It can
be argued that had Theseus been a more faithful husband, much of Phaedra’s
perversity would have been averted. Thus hereditary curse and Theseus’
unfaithfulness poison Phaedra with the passion of lust and thereby she commits a
series of errors of judgment, the basic requirement of a classic tragedy. Phaedra’s
first error is that she misinterprets her relationship with Hippolytus by laying
more importance on biology than domestic and social codes. She being not the
biological mother of Hyppolytus considers her position as a role playing mother.
Therefore, she asks Hippolytus to take his father’s place. Then when Hippolytus
calls her mother, she replies, “Mother – that name is too proud and high; a
humbler name better suits my feelings. Call me sister, Hippolytus, or slave – yes,
slave is better; I will endure servitude.” All these indicate that Phaedra’s tragedy
lies precisely in her lust driven role playing which transgresses the long drawn
social establishments.
Phaedra’s next error is that she makes wrong response to the counsels of the
Nurse. She refuses her counsels when she should accept and accepts them when
she should refuse. Thus up to the point of revealing her desires to Hippolytus, she
never gives a positive ear to the Nurse’s counsels, but when she is rebuffed by
Hippolytus, she follows the nurse’s advice word for word: “Crime must be
concealed by crime”. Resultantly, Phaedra treacherously accuses Hippolytus of
having raped her and wrecks destruction both for her and others. For the rest,
Phaedra earns her tragic grandeur because she struggles with herself and changes
in the course of the play. Even being so overcome by lustful passion, when she
hears the fearful death of Hippolytus, her viciousness turns into remorse. She
now faces up to her actions by taking responsibility for Hippolytus’ death,
admitting her illicit love and deception to her wronged husband, and finally taking
her own life as an act of self punishment. Besides, throughout her confession, she
scrupulously avoids any mention of the Nurse’s role in her deception and false
accusation so that no harms may befall on her. Seneca thus presents Phaedra as a
courageous woman, who, though still driven by her passion, returns to her
essential goodness and morality.
Phaedra’s basic problem is that she falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus and
he is appealed by this illicit love.Her destiny is like most of the destinies in Greek
mythodology,determined by fate.There are several stories about why she fell in
love with him.in one she lies and Hippolytus is killed,but all in all her destiny is
explicably tied to Hippolytus desire to remain virginal and the curses that go along
with such a desire. Thus it can be said that lust is the engine that drives the
tragedy of Phaedra. However, like Euripides, Seneca does not present Phaedra as
a lustful woman. By nature a good woman, Seneca’s Phaedra declines because
she is a victim of unrequited love whose origins already been mentioned above.
