The Opsis of Helen: Performative Intertextuality in Euripides (original) (raw)

Comicality penetrates Euripides’ Helen much deeper than so far noticed. By focusing on Euripides’ configuration of various aspects of opsis, this paper argues that the inter-generic give-and-take in the construction of plot and theme is strikingly replicated in the granularity of the staging technique. Elements of comedy and satyr play have been detected at work at the level of plot, individual scenes, characterisation and use of motifs. Irony and a sense of amusement are inherent in the multiple paradoxes which Euripides’ new, chaste and noble, Helen has to face. In any reading, the wit and playfulness of this play cannot be dismissed. What has not received sufficient emphasis in previous analyses is the profound extent to which this interaction between genres operates on several levels: dramatic space, blocking, proxemics, and skeue. The context and the way of handling staging motifs reinforce the association with the comic trope. By focusing on staging technique, this paper rereads the Helen through a different lens. Furthermore, by indulging in a synkrisis of comic and tragic performance poetics of fifth-century drama, it engages in the wider debate on tragedy as genre and its development in the late fifth century.