Phaedra

Seneca · c. 50 CE · Play · Roman · Classical

Theseus has been four years in the underworld on another man's errand, and the wife he left in Athens tells her nurse she is being eaten alive by desire for his son, a hunter who wants nothing but dogs and open country. Where the Greek kept the confession at one remove, here she makes it to his face in the woods, and the sword he throws down in horror stays on the ground where it lands. Seneca's declamatory version, not the Athenian one, is what Renaissance Europe read and staged.

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Lineage

• influenced by ↑ Hippolytus
  Euripides · 428 BCE · Play
• ↓ Phèdre
  Jean Racine · 1677 CE · Play — influenced by this

Attributes

Closest analogues

• Phèdre
  Jean Racine · 1677 CE · Play

  70% · 13 shared
  PlayTragedyForbidden LoveGuilt & ConscienceFreedom vs FateFallen WomanInnocentTragic ReversalFall (Tragedy)A Belovedvs Selfvs Fate / GodsTragic
• Throne of Blood
  Akira Kurosawa · 1957 CE · Film

  59% · 10 shared
  TragedyGuilt & ConscienceFreedom vs FateTragic HeroTragic ReversalThe ForestBloodvs Selfvs Fate / GodsTragic
• Hercules Furens
  Seneca · c. 50 CE · Play

  58% · 13 shared
  PlayTragedyGuilt & ConscienceClassicalTragic HeroTragic ReversalFall (Tragedy)The SwordBloodvs Selfvs Fate / GodsTragicRoman
• Oedipus
  Seneca · c. 50 CE · Play

  58% · 12 shared
  PlayTragedyGuilt & ConscienceFreedom vs FateClassicalTragic HeroTragic ReversalBloodvs Selfvs Fate / GodsTragicRoman
• Hippolytus
  Euripides · 428 BCE · Play

  58% · 11 shared
  PlayTragedyForbidden LoveGuilt & ConscienceFreedom vs FateClassicalTragic HeroTragic Reversalvs Selfvs Fate / GodsTragic
• Macbeth
  William Shakespeare · c. 1606 CE · Play

  53% · 10 shared
  PlayTragedyGuilt & ConscienceFreedom vs FateTragic HeroTragic ReversalBloodvs Selfvs Fate / GodsTragic