PHAEDRA’S LOVE

Author: Sarah Kane

Title and subtitle: Phaedra’s Love

Editorial and year / place of publication: Methuen, 1996, Gate Theatre, London

  “Dramatis personae”: In this play appear nine characters but only six are important.  Theseus and Hippolytus are king and Prince but they do not behave like them. Theseus are married with Phaedra, it is his twice. Both have a son or a daughter respectively. The son of Theseus is Hippolytus and the daughter of Phaedra is Strophe.  Hippolytus behaves such as an animal, he eats, sleeps and satisfy his sex desire. Phaedra is not happy, she does not fall in love of her husband, she loves her stepson. Strophe also has a special relationship with her stepbrother. And the other characters are the Doctor that tries to cure Hippolytus and the Priest that tries to help Hippolytus when he is accused of rape. Theseus and Phaedra are more or less about the middle age and their sons are still children, I think.

  Plot: this play is divided in eight scenes. In the first Hippolytus is sitting watching television in a dark room and he is eating a hamburger. While he is going to smell his sock that it are in the floor. He picks up one, he thinks that it is fine, he puts it in his penis and he masturbates. When he finishes he takes off the sock and throws it on the floor and he starts to eat another hamburger. In the following scene Phaedra goes to the Doctor. They talk about Hippolytus’ health. But the Doctor say to her that the trouble of her son was not medical and he did not help her. In the third scene, Phaedra and her daughter have a conversation. Strope accuses to her mother, she thinks that her mother falls in love of her stepbrother, and her mother confesses that it is true. In the next scene, Phaedra arrives with some presents, she enters in the Hippolytus’ room, he is watching the television, she puts the presents down and starts to clean and tidy this room, and they have oral sex. Phaedra confesses that she falls in love of him but he does know anything about her.  In scene fifth, Strophe speaks with her stepbrother, she asks him, and she wants to know If he has sex with her mother since her mother was raped, and he answers that it does matter, and finally he told her that he did not do. In the following scene, Hippolytus is in the prison cell and one priest goes to visit him. He tries that the boy was sorry, but he is not sorry. In the seventh scene, is the Phaedra’s funeral. And finally in the last scene, they are outside of court, and people shout him and swear him. Theseus kills his stepdaughter, he is wrong, because she is defending at her stepbrother, and Theseus takes his own life after he kills his son. In other words the play finishes with the dead of Phaedra, Strophe, Theseus and Hippolytus.

  Space and Time: The action takes place in various places, such as the house of them, the prison cell, Real Palace… so we can say that the space is not single, and neither closed since all places is not closed, for instance, when the characters are outside the court, and about the time the playwright says nothing so we cannot know.

      The language that he used in his play is colloquial. There are some idioms and swearwords. The lexicon is simple and easy, the characters use sentences unfinished and monosyllables such as, “yes”, “a man”…  The play is written in prose.

  Other aspects: I think that this play has an high budget since there are many characters, and there are three different spaces that they are needed to perform. 

 As I see it, I think that this play shows us feelings like love, obsession, attraction, jealousy, odium…, that is to say, the ways of love. In this play Sarah Kane determines clearly the concept of tragedy since the characters die cruelly.  And though tell us a story of a rich family, they do not behave should be.