Hecuba (play) - Plot

Plot

In the play's unconventional opening, the ghost of Polydorus tells how when the war threatened Troy, he was sent to King Polymestor of Thrace for safekeeping, with gifts of gold and jewelry. But when Troy lost the war, Polymestor treacherously murdered Polydorus, and seized the treasure. Polydorus has foreknowledge of many of the play's events and haunted his mother's dreams the night before.

At dawn, Hecuba mourns her great losses and worries about the portents of her nightmare. The Chorus of young slave women enters, bearing fateful news. One of Hecuba's last remaining daughters, Polyxena, is to be killed on the tomb of Achilles as a blood sacrifice to his honor (reflecting the sacrifice of Iphigenia at the start of the war).

Odysseus enters, to escort Polyxena to an altar where Neoptolemus will shed her blood. Odysseus ignores Hecuba's impassioned pleas to spare Polyxena, and Polyxena herself admits she would rather die than live as a slave. In the first Choral interlude, the Chorus lament their own doomed fate, cursing the sea breeze that will carry them on ships to the foreign lands where they will live in slavery. The Greek messenger Talthybius arrives, tells a stirring account of Polyxena's strikingly heroic death, and delivers a message from Agamemnon to bury Polyxena. Hecuba sends a slave girl to fetch water from the sea to bathe her daughter's corpse.

After a second Choral interlude, the body of Polydorus is brought on stage, having washed up on shore. Hecuba at first glance thinks it is Polyxena, but upon recognizing her son whom she thought safe, reaches new heights of despair.

Hecuba rages inconsolably against the brutality of such an action, and resolves to take revenge. Agamemnon enters, and Hecuba, tentatively at first and then boldly requests that Agamemnon help her avenge her son's murder. Agamemnon reluctantly agrees, as the Greeks are still waiting for a favorable wind to sail home.

Polymestor arrives with his sons. He inquires about Hecuba's welfare, with a pretense of friendliness. Hecuba reciprocates, concealing her knowledge of the murder of Polydorus. Hecuba tells Polymestor she knows where the remaining treasures of Troy are hidden, and offers to tell him the secrets, to be passed on to Polydorus. With blind greed, Polymestor listens intently.

Hecuba convinces him and his sons to enter an offstage tent where she claims to have more personal treasures. Enlisting help from other slaves, Hecuba kills Polymestor's sons and stabs Polymestor's eyes. He re-enters blinded and savage, hunting as if a beast for the women who ruined him.

Agamemnon re-enters angry with the uproar and witnesses Hecuba's revenge. Polymestor argues that Hecuba's revenge was a vile act, whereas his murder was done to preserve the Greek victory and dispatch a young Trojan before he reached fighting age. The arguments take the form of a trial, and Hecuba delivers a rebuttal exposing Polymestor's speech as sophistry. Agamemnon decides justice has been served by Hecuba's revenge. Polymestor, again in a rage, foretells the deaths of Hecuba by drowning and Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra. Soon after, the wind finally rises again, the Greeks will sail, and the Chorus goes to an unknown, dark fate.