Introduction

Electra, also Elektra or The Electra[1] (Ancient Greek: Ἠλέκτρα,[2] Ēlektra), is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes (409 BC) and the Oedipus at Colonus (406 BC) lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career. Jebb dates it between 420 BC and 414 BC.[3]

Storyline

Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan War, the play tells of a bitter struggle for justice by Electra and her brother Orestes for the murder of their father Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and their stepfather Aegisthus.

When King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War, his wife Clytemnestra (who has taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus as a lover) kills him. Clytemnestra believes the murder was justified since Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war, as commanded by the gods. Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, rescued her younger brother Orestes from her mother by sending him to Strophius of Phocis. The play begins years later when Orestes has returned as a grown man with a plot for revenge, as well as to claim the throne.

Orestes arrives with his friend Pylades, son of Strophius, and a pedagogue, i.e. tutor (an old attendant of Orestes, who took him from Electra to Strophius). They plan to have the tutor announce that Orestes has died in a chariot race and that two men (really Orestes and Pylades) are arriving shortly to deliver an urn with his remains. Meanwhile, Electra continues to mourn the death of her father Agamemnon, holding her mother Clytemnestra responsible for his murder. When Electra is told of the death of Orestes her grief is doubled, but this grief is to be short-lived.

After a choral ode, Orestes arrives carrying the urn supposedly containing his ashes. He does not recognize Electra, nor does she recognize him. He gives her the urn and she delivers a moving lament over it, unaware that her brother is, in fact, standing alive next to her. Now realizing the truth, Orestes reveals his identity to his emotional sister. She is overjoyed that he is alive, but in their excitement, they nearly reveal his identity, and the tutor comes out from the palace to urge them on. Orestes and Pylades enter the house and slay Clytemnestra. As Aegisthus returns home, they quickly put her corpse under a sheet and present it to him as the body of Orestes. He lifts the veil to discover who it really is, and Orestes then reveals himself. They escort Aegisthus offset to be killed at the hearth, the same location where Agamemnon was slain. The play ends here before the death of Aegisthus is announced.

Similar works

The story of Orestes' revenge was a popular subject in Greek tragedies.

There are surviving versions by all three of the great Athenian tragedians:
- The Libation Bearers (458 BC), in the Oresteia Trilogy by Aeschylus
- Electra (Euripides play), a play by Euripides, probably in the mid 410s BC, likely before 413 BC, that tells a very different version of this same basic story from Sophocles.
- Electra (Sophocles play)
The story was also told at the end of the lost epic Nostoi (also known as Returns or Returns of the Greeks)
The events are also brought up in Homer's Odyssey

Reception

Roman writer Cicero considered Electra to be a masterpiece,[4] and the work is also viewed favorably among modern critics and scholars. In The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama, John Gassner and Edward Quinn argued that its "simple device of delaying the recognition between brother and sister produces a series of brilliant scenes which display Electra's heroic resolution under constant attack."[5] Of the titular character, Edith Hall also wrote, "Sophocles certainly found an effective dramatic vehicle in this remarkable figure, driven by deprivation and cruelty into near-psychotic extremes of behavior; no other character in his extant dramas dominates the stage to such an extent."[6] L.A. Post noted that the play was "unique among Greek tragedies for its emphasis on action."[7]

Commentaries

Davies, Gilbert Austin, 1908 (abridged from the larger edition of Richard Claverhouse Jebb)
Finglass, P. J., ed. (2007). Sophocles: Electra. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 44. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86809-9. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
Kovacs, David (August 3, 2009). "Review of Sophocles: Electra. Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 44 (2007)". Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

Translations

Edward Plumptre, 1878 – verse: (full text available at Wikisource)
Lewis Campbell, 1883 – verse
Richard C. Jebb, 1894 – prose (full text available at Wikisource)
Francis Storr, 1919 – verse (full text, with audio, available at Wikisource)
Francis Fergusson, 1938 – verse
E.F. Watling 1953 – prose
David Grene, 1957 – verse
H. D. F. Kitto, 1962 – verse
J. H. Kells, 1973 – verse (?)
Kenneth McLeish, 1979 – verse
Frank McGuinness, 1997 – verse
Henry Taylor, 1998 – verse
Anne Carson, 2001 – verse
Jenny March, 2001 – prose (acting edition)
Tom McGrath, 2003 – prose; full text
M. MacDonald and J. M. Walton, 2004 – verse
G. Theodoridis, 2006 – prose: full text
Eric Dugdale, 2008 – verse (acting edition)
Timberlake Wertenbaker, 2009
Nick Payne, 2011
Mary Lefkowitz, 2016 - verse
Ian C. Johnston, 2017 – verse: full text

Adaptations

Elektra (play), a 1903 adaptation by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Elektra, Op. 58 (opera), a 1909 one-act opera by Richard Strauss
Elektra: A Play by Ezra Pound and Rudd Fleming, written in 1949, published 1989 by Princeton University Press
Electra: An opera by Mikis Theodorakis (1995).
Elektra (2010 film), a 2010 Malayalam psychological drama film co-written and directed by Shyamaprasad.
Elektra, a 2025 adaptation/translation by poet Anne Carson, directed by Daniel Fish and starring Brie Larson. To be staged at the Theatre Royal, Brighton (13 to 18 January 2025) and Duke of York’s Theatre, London (24 January to 12 April 2025).[8]

References

^ Jebb, R. C. (1894). Sophocles The Plays and Fragments Part VI. The Electra. Vol. 6. Cambridge: London: C. J. Clay and Sons, Cambridge: University Press Warehouse, Ave Maria Lane. Glasgow: 363, Argyle Street. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell And Co. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus. New York: Macmillan And Co. pp. Title. ark:/13960/t5v77xt8s.
^ Jebb (1894). Sophocles The Plays and Fragments Part VI. The Electra. p. 1.
^ Jebb (1894). Sophocles The Plays and Fragments Part VI. The Electra. pp. lviii.
^ Csapo, Eric; Goette, Hans Rupprecht; Green, J. Richard; Wilson, Peter (2014). Greek Theater in the Fourth Century BC. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. p. 178. ISBN 978-3110337556.
^ Gassner, John; Quinn, Edward (2002). The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama. Courier Corporation. p. 200. ISBN 0486420647.
^ Hall, Edith (2008). Introduction. Antigone; Oedipus the King; Electra. By Sophocles. Translated by Kitto, H. D. F. Oxford University Press. p. xvii–xviii. ISBN 978-0191561108.
^ Post, L.A. (March 2, 1953). "Sophocles, Strategy, and the Electra". The Classical Weekly. 46 (10). Johns Hopkins University Press: 150–153. doi:10.2307/4343363. JSTOR 4343363.
^ "About". Brie Larson | Elektra. Retrieved 2024-10-03.

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