The Transformation of Seneca’s “Phaedra” in Sarah Kane’s Play “Phaedra’s Love”

Abstract

The paper analyzes the artistic transformation of Seneca's "Phaedra" in the play "Phaedra’s  Love" by British playwright Sarah Kane.

Speaking of Phaedra it is necessary to mention Euripides' "Hippolytus." Ketevan Nadareishvili notes in her article "The Face of Phaedra in Euripides' Hippolytus" that Euripides' Phaedra's face is considered one of the most perfect literary characters in Greek tragedy.

The content of the tragedy is a variation of the so-called "Potiphar motif." The Potiphar motif was popular in legends and sagas around the world, and its structure is well known to everyone.

In Euripides' "Hippolytus," the main director of the process is Aphrodite, who determines Phaedra's tragic fate and decision.

Seneca offers a different version in his tragedy "Phaedra", whose central figure, as the title clearly indicates, is a woman. Seneca, like his predecessors, draws on Greek mythology and is directly or indirectly influenced by three great Greek writers, including Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Characters in Greek tragedy often reveal their emotions and motivations through dialogue with other characters. However, Seneca's plays feature fewer dialogues and more monologues, which help us understand the actions of a particular character.

The best example of this is the monologues of Phaedra. The focus on emotion - specifically the destructive effects of anger and passion - leads us to the Stoic philosophy, in which Seneca was very interested. The Stoics were also interested in human psychology, so it is not surprising that Seneca's characters are also deeply psychological.

Unlike Euripides' play, in Seneca's play the will of the gods is not only minimized, but all the blame is shared between the two characters of the play. One of them is Phaedra.

In Seneca's play, Phaedra is more cruel. Desperate and rejected, she makes a difficult decision. Moreover, here, unlike Euripides' play, the power of the gods has nothing to do with it. In Seneca's play, we are dealing with pure human feelings, which the queen herself voices at the very beginning of the play, with great suffering, pain, but at the same time with dignity and pride.

We see themes of human feelings, alienation, and nihilism in Sarah Kane's play, "The Love of Phaedra."

In 1996, Sarah Kane was asked by London's Gate Theatre to write a new play that would echo a Greek or Roman classic, and she said: "Oh, I always hated those plays. Everything happens offstage, so what's the point of doing it?" ( Tabert 1998, 11. )

Indeed, ancient Greek dramaturgy has little in common with Kane's plays, filled with brutal, cruel, and violent scenes that are often very difficult to bring to life on stage, although the author of the plays himself thought differently. He believed that whatever can be imagined must also be possible to show.

As Erica Bexley notes in her article " Show or Tell Seneca's and Sarah Kane's Phaedra Plays," it will come as no surprise to classical philologists that Kane chose Seneca's rather than Euripides' model for his play. Although Kane himself notes that he only read Seneca's play once while working on the play, Kane is more "indebted" to Seneca than to Euripides.

References:

Bexley E. “Show or Tell Seneca’s and Sarah Kane’s Phaedra Plays” Trends in Classics, vol. 3, pp. 365–393, Walter de Gruyter 2011.

Kane S. 2001. Sarah Kane, Complete Plays. Methuen Drama, 2001.

Sanders G. ( 2002) “Love me or kill me” Sarah Kane and the theatre of extremes. Manchester University Press, 2002.

Seneca - Phaedra, 2024. Translated by Nini Kutelia.

Searcy A. ( 2001) “In-Yer- Face Theatre” British Drama Today. Faber and Faber, 2001.