Penny Dreadfuls, 1912 · page 14 of 118
The Medea — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Page Content This is a running prose page from an **Introduction** section (likely to a classical text or scholarly edition). The text is printed in traditional book format with justified columns. The visible prose discusses Euripides' play *Medea*, analyzing how the drama's psychological scheme—centered on oppression and revenge—differs from typical treatments of the subject. The author argues that Euripides depicts revenge not as triumphant justice but as a corrupting force that degrades both victim and perpetrator. The passage then references other Euripidean plays (*Trojan Women*, *Hecuba*, *Orestes*) to illustrate this recurring thematic pattern in the playwright's work. **Note:** Despite the header's mention of "penny dreadful," this appears to be an actual scholarly introduction to classical drama, not sensational fiction.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
x INTRODUCTION the dragon chariot, much less Medea’s involuntary burst of tears in the second scene with Jason, that really produces the feeling of dissatisfaction with which many people must rise from this great play. It is ‘ rather the general scheme on. which the drama is built. It isa scheme which occurs agairt and again in Eurip- ides, a study of oppression and revenge. Such a subject in the hands of a more ordinary writer would probably take the form of a triumph of oppressed virtue. But Euripides gives us nothing so sympathetic, nothing so cheap and unreal. If oppression usually made people yirtuous, the problems of the world would be very different from what they are. Euripides seerns at times to hate the revenge of the oppressed al- most as much asthe original cruelty of the oppressor ; or, to put the same fact in a different light, he seems _ deliberately to dwell upon the twofold evil of cruelty, that it not only causes pain to the victim, but actually by means of the pain makes hint a worse’ man, so that when his turn of triumph comes, it is no longer a triumph of justice or a thing to make men rejoice. This is a grim lesson; taught often enough by history, though seldom by the fables of the poets. Seventeen years later than the Medea Euripides expressed this sentiment in a more positive Way in the Zrojan Women, where a depth of wrong borne without revenge becomes, or seems for the moment to become, a thing beautiful and glorious. But more plays are constructed likethe Medea. The Hecuba begins with a noble and injured Queen, and ends with her hideous vengeance on her enemy and his innocent sons. In the Ovestes all our hearts go out to the suf- Eomicbooks: co