What is the role and function of the Messenger in Antigone and Medea?

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What is the role and function of the Messenger in Antigone and Medea?

The plays Antigone by Sophocles, and Medea by Euripides, present the conventional figure of a Messenger at climactic junctures in each play. Each Messenger brings appalling and shattering news that is deeply disturbing for the audiences and henceforth reflects on this shock. In Antigone, the Messenger's narrative presents a dramatic recount of the deaths of Antigone, Haemon and Eurydice. The Messenger in Medea presents a long speech rendered dramatic, providing a grotesquely vivid image of Glauce and King Creon's horrid deaths. This essay will consider the significance, impact and role of these Messengers through the exploration of such aspects of the play as stagecraft, philosophical viewpoints, manner and characterization.

Stage restrictions can be accounted for the messenger-speech. Certain events had to be narrated rather than shown because of several reasons: since it is a convention a Messenger enters immediately after a choral song as in the case of Antigone and Medea, the presence of the chorus facilitates scene-shifts; miracles cannot be shown on stage and the rules1 of Greek tragedy did not allow bloodshed or murder on stage, more unfeasible if it concerns suicides and supernatural deaths. Furthermore, the Messenger's report allows the audience to reflect on the nature of Medea's actions and consider Creon's altered position, instead of focusing on the tragic appearance of the deaths.

Both Messengers in the plays are ordinary slaves of the royal house who happened to be present during the events and have no personal relationships with their masters. Their function in the play is simply to bring news of events offstage, and then disappear. However, their servitude prompts them to react, clearly seen in their arrivals. The Euripidian Messenger enters dramatically, 'gasping for breath'2 and exclaims to Medea in a tone of anger and disbelief, showing bias in their exchange of words; however, true to the conventions of the messenger-speech he was impartial in his narrative. In contrast, the Messenger's arrival in Antigone was less dramatic, reflected in his more reserved tone in his dialogue with Eurydice, displaying pity for Creon. Both arrivals allude to depressing news, however Sophocles' Messenger makes the audience feel as if his diffident reaction implies of news much terrible than that in Medea. Although their characters are not explored further, the Messengers embody the value of honesty, and their recollections can thus be trusted by the audience, as conveyed "Truth is always best."3
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The Messenger is an eyewitness of the events he will be recounting although the degree of his participation is quite low. In both speeches, the Messengers explain their point of view by establishing eyewitness status, using first-person figures prominently: "I attended your husband, the King, to the edge of the field where lay the body of Polynices"4 and "Myself...I followed with them to the princess's room"5. By distinguishing their positions, it doesn't leave room for any uncertainty in the account but makes it more credible.

The intensity of the speech further accentuates the climatic points, Euripides ...

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