Phaedra

Theseus dominates the final three acts of the play. His characterization and actions are far from sympathetic. Theseus treats Phaedra with very little sensitivity when she makes a show of wanting to die by suicide, and is self-centered when confronting her. For example, when he hears that Phaedra is on the verge of suicide, the first thing he asks is: “Why die when her husband is back?” (857). He is very harsh, even threatening to torture the Nurse for information. When Phaedra finally tells him that Hippolytus raped her, Theseus believes her without question. Lustful and reckless man that he is—he has just returned from trying to abduct and rape Proserpina, the queen of the dead—Theseus is all too ready to see the same qualities in his son.

Theseus’s decision to punish Hippolytus without a trial highlights his tendency to act on impulse rather than with deliberation and reason. The irrationality of his anger is highlighted by the fact that he uses the last of Neptune’s three wishes to destroy his son, when he held off using this wish to escape from the Underworld. When Theseus’s wish is granted, he again gives way to his wild and irrational emotions. He weeps when he learns of Hippolytus’s death, saying that he mourns his son: “Because I killed him, not because I lost him” (1122). When he finds out that Phaedra has lied to him, he becomes even more wild and erratic, as when he tries desperately to reassemble Hippolytus’s dismembered body. Theseus exemplifies perhaps better than any other character The Destructive Power of the Passions.

There is a cyclicality that marks the final acts of the play. Act 5 is a mirror of Act 3, beginning with Phaedra frantic and on the verge of suicide as Theseus confronts her. Phaedra views everything that has elapsed in the play as a repetition of the past:

Cruel Theseus, when you come home, you always

Bring disaster. Your father and your son

Have paid for your returning with their lives.

You always destroy your home, in love or hatred for your wives (1164-65).

Phaedra has fallen prey to a forbidden lust like her mother. Likewise, Theseus has repeated his pattern of bringing ruin and death to those close to him. Phaedra alludes to the traditions in which Theseus’s actions led to the death of his father, Aegeus, and later to the death of Hippolytus’s Amazon mother.

Within the world of the play, cyclical patterns tend toward destruction rather than renewal. Phaedra, again declaring her intention to kill herself, actually does so in the final scene. Hippolytus, torn apart by his horses, loses his beauty in death—hence Phaedra’s lament over his corpse: “Ah, where is your beauty gone, your lovely eyes / Which were my stars?” (1173-74). Phaedra resumes caring about her honor and reputation after making a show of rejecting such concerns. Now, Phaedra can restore her sullied reputation only through death:

Only death can cure such evil love,

Only death can give me back my wounded honour.

Death, I run to you; forgive me, and embrace me (1188-90).

The theme of fortune and fate is very strongly emphasized in the final acts, occupying the last two choral odes. In one possible interpretation, the play’s events are governed by fate. Phaedra views her actions as beyond her own control, and Theseus also hints that he may hold fate or fortune responsible for his suffering when asking: “Did I come back for this?” (1213).

However, this belies an alternative—and perhaps more philosophical—interpretation of the play, namely, that it is the human failings of Phaedra, Theseus, and even Hippolytus that caused everything to get so out of hand. The oscillation in the play between fate and human responsibility is accompanied by much talk of punishment. Theseus punishes Hippolytus for a “fabricated crime” (1210); Phaedra punishes herself by dying by suicide; and Theseus spends much of Act 5 trying to imagine a “just punishment” for mistreating his own son (1222).