Dec 25, 2009

Electra | Electra

In this essay, J. Michael Walton provides an overview of Sophocles's Electra. He differentiates Sophocles's version of the story from similar works by his Greek contemporaries Euripides (a play also titled Electra,) and Aeschylus (who chronicles the legend in his trilogy the Oresteia).

Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, arrives back in Argos from exile to avenge the murder of his father by his mother. A plot is hatched which leads to the death of Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, but the play centres on the character of Electra, Orestes's sister, and her sufferings at the hands of Clytemnestra.

The Electra plays of Sophocles and Euripides share plot and main characters, if not title, with Libation-Bearers, the middle play of Aeschylus's Oresteia. The relationship between the two Electra plays is a subject of constant...