Medea (play)
ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides
Medea (Ancient Greek: Μήδεια, Mēdeia) is a tragedy based on a myth, written by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides. It was first performed in 431 BC as part of a trilogy, the other plays of which have not survived. Its plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis and the wife of Jason. She finds her position in the world threatened as Jason leaves her for a princess of Corinth and takes vengeance on him by murdering his new wife, his new father-in-law, and her own two sons. She then escapes to Athens to start a new life.
Euripides's play has been retold and reinterpreted for centuries. Playwrights across the world have explored it in a variety of ways, offering political, psychoanalytical, feminist, and many other original readings of Medea, Jason, and the core themes of the play.
Medea, along with three other plays, earned Euripides third prize in the City Dionysia. Some believe that this indicates a poor reception, but "the competition that year was extraordinarily keen"; Sophocles, often winning first prize, came second. The play was initially rediscovered with Rome's Augustan drama, and then again in the 16th century.
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This entry incorporates text from “Medea (play)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.