I enjoyed reading Medea, because it was so dramatic but with a fairly simple plot line. While Medea is completely out of her mind with anguish, she’s still trying – and succeeding – to trick other people into conforming to her plans, which I found impressive. Although, when Aegeus presents the “clever” Medea with his riddle she turns out to be no use, and the riddle remains unsolved. I wish that the riddle’s solution, or relevance to the story, had been further mentioned. Also, Medea struck a really good bargain with the king of Athens. While she says she’ll help him out with fathering a child, and is fairly vague on how she really plans to help him, he agrees to shelter her in her exile. On top of that, Medea has him swear an oath not to exile her no matter what, which then makes him start to look a bit like a fool. The other characters in the play were quite unlikeable. Firstly, there’s Medea, who is completely set on killing her sons, the king in the city that she lives, and his daughter. All of that just to make her former husband miserable. Then there’s Jason, who leaves his wife and children for another woman, however it’s to help support his first family, allegedly. I found it unclear whether those were his motives, or just a rich new wife was his objective. Jason also hates women, and would get rid of them if he could, since all they want is sex, and that’s the only time that they’re happy. To top it all off, he is really stupid. One minute Medea is frothing at the mouth, the next she calls him back, shrugs it off and says she is now on his side, she understands, and he believes her completely. Though mostly in the background, the nurse was unconvincing in her concern for the children. She is at first very careful to keep the boys away from Medea while she is angry. Later on, when Medea is carrying out her plan, the nurse doesn’t interfere at all, even though she knows the details of the revenge, and disappears.
Nearing the end of the play, I thought it was amusing the way Medea and Jason were yelling at each other for a while. They both had important things to do – Medea to escape, and Jason to attend to his charred bride – yet they stood there bickering. In the end, I really appreciated the writing and the interesting plot, the bipolar characters, and Medea’s perfect execution of revenge.