Three Landmarks in the Reception of theOresteiain Twentieth‐Century Drama

Abstract

The plays discussed in this chapter – Eugene O'Neill's trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra (MBE), T. S. Eliot's Family Reunion and Jean-Paul Sartre's The Flies ( Les Mouches ) – are among the most important and best-known 20th-century attempts to rewrite the Oresteia myth into contemporary contexts and concerns. The first play of the MBE trilogy, Homecoming , begins with an unmistakable nod to its Aeschylean counterpart, Agamemnon . The second play of the MBE trilogy, set two days after Ezra Mannon's death, begins with a “chorus” of six middle-class persons, who echo the common people's view of the exclusive Mannons. The trilogy's third and final part, which begins with yet another “Greek chorus” of common people, is set more than a year after the events of the first two plays.