Phaedra

The play begins with a kind of ode to nature sung by Hippolytus, who speaks fondly and lavishly of the forests around Athens. Nature is not merely ornamental in the play. Natural imagery is used throughout for characterization and for adding vividness to the emotions and passions of the different characters. Phaedra’s desire for Hippolytus, for example, is likened to “the blast which gushes out / From Etna’s depths” (102-3), or “a quick flame [that] runs over timbered roofs” (644). The inflexibly chaste Hippolytus, similarly, is compared to a rock:

so hard, immovable:

As a rock resists the waves and dashes far away

The waters which assail it […] (580-82).

Later, the Chorus describes physical beauty in its transience:

Briefer than meadows, lovely in the spring,

Which the blast of summer’s heat will lay to waste

When the noon-time of the solstice burns,

And night runs on a shorter track (764-67).

Hippolytus’s own beauty is compared to the moon, stars, and evening star (744-52).

The way each character views the relationship between human beings and the natural world develops their characterization. To the innocent and naïve Hippolytus, nature represents freedom and purity.