Medea

After three acts of discussion, debate, and planning, the play’s fourth act focuses on Medea carrying out bold and decisive action. The Nurse describes with horror and wonder what she sees as Medea begins to carry out her plans; she notes that “things that even she/Has feared for years, she now takes out, unpacks/Her whole array of evil, secrets long concealed” (IV.677-679). Medea has already implied that she has renounced and abandoned many of her native cultural traditions in an attempt to conform to life in Greece with Jason: Medea last used her magical talents as a young woman, immediately before and after her marriage. Now, as a mother and more mature woman, she returns to an earlier identity, reclaiming her birthright, talent, and skills.

The first part of the fourth act focuses on a long speech in which the Nurse narrates what she is seeing and hearing, before switching to Medea speaking. The act’s structure mirrors the experience of the reader/audience, who take their cues from the Nurse’s spellbound witnessing of Medea’s awful power. If the play was intended to be performed, the Nurse’s speech reinforces what an audience would have been seeing or invited to imagine seeing; if the play was intended primarily to be read, this speech would evoke important visual imagery and mood at a dramatic moment.

Part of the mythological tradition surrounding Medea includes her status as a witch or sorceress. Medea’s use of plants to concoct poisons aligns her with a tradition of “wise women,” who could use herbal compounds both to heal and to harm. In addition, “she added to the poisons certain words” (IV.737), moving from the realm of the natural to the supernatural. Medea’s casting of a spell to produce particularly venomous substances evokes a literary tradition of witchcraft being aligned with nocturnal or frightening animals: “she gathers the poisonous plants and squeezes the venom/Of the snakes, and mixes it with birds of ill omen" (IV.731-732, emphasis added). Medea’s work is also violent, involving harvesting the body parts of the animals she finds, such as “The heart of a melancholy eagle-owl, and the innards/Cut from a living screech owl” (IV.733-734).

In addition to the poisons and spells, Medea conjures up a number of spirits and deities, particularly the goddess Hecate. Hecate (sometimes associated in Roman times with the goddess Diana) was associated with night, the moon, magic, and witchcraft. In order to invoke Hecate’s blessing on her plan, Medea ritualistically cuts herself and drips her blood onto the altar. Medea’s blood-offering foreshadows the violent deaths of her children, possibly with the same knife, especially when Medea urges herself to “submit to shed your own dear blood” (IV.810). As her beloved biological relatives, her children’s veins also contain Medea’s “own dear blood,” which she will soon shed.

Medea’s plan takes cunning advantage of innocence, both the innocence of her children, and the innocence of Creusa. Medea’s sons trust their mother and unwittingly become accomplices to her crime when they carry the poisoned gifts to Creusa. Although Creusa should be suspicious and on guard, presumably her faith in the innocence of children makes her inclined to accept the gifts. Creusa’s bridal gifts will prove false and deceptive because her new husband is false and deceptive, and has promised her a marriage that he cannot ethically offer to her.

At the end of the act, the Chorus gives a short speech rich in “dramatic irony”—an instance when a character is unaware of something that the audience already knows. The Chorus does not know what Medea is planning, and wonders “what crime does she plot/In her violent fury?” (IV.96). They also naively hope that Medea will soon leave Greece and that peace will be restored. The Chorus’ interjection increases irony and dramatic tension, since the audience knows that Medea has already set her fatal plan in motion. In fact, at the time that the Chorus is speaking, Creusa is likely in her death throes.