THIS play is not only the most beautiful, the most pathetic and penetrating, among Euripides' extant works: it is also the most finely wrought and many-sided, therefore the most difficult for modern readers, who are almost compelled to discover in it puzzles nonexistent for the Athenians who awarded it the first prize in the festival of 428 B.C. Above all, we are uncertain what the deities of the play really mean: does or does not the poet offer them as equally authentic with his human personages? Aphrodite in the prologue, Artemis in the epilogue, agree in perfectly definite language that to Aphrodite's anger is due all the woe here depicted; nevertheless, whereas some of us accept this, others deny it. Let us, then, attempt to secure clarity of thought and poise in appreciation by postponing theology and studying what the chief human dramatis personae actually say, do, and suffer. All three—Phaedra, Hippolytus, and Theseus—engage our affection, respect, sympathy, and compassion undeniably though in varying degrees. But all are far from blameless, and seem at least in virtue of their own characters to account for all the pain and misunderstanding.

Let us begin with Hippolytus. Such a man—not perhaps he himself, for the notion of the chaste Hippolytus was familiar, and most opinions are nothing more than acceptance of the established—such a man would have been censured by nearly all fifth-century Greeks for his outlook in general, not (of course) for his horror at the Nurse's disclosure. Theseus' attack, in a novel case, would have found the support of nearly everyone in the theatre.“ Thou consort with gods as a man set apart? Thou chaste and innocent? Those boasts I disallow: gods are not foolish, nor am I. Now vaunt thyself, thou fleshless dietarian; and, loyal to St. Orpheus, play the devotee awed by the reek of copious scriptures! For thou art caught, ha!” It is all here, every gibe that the “plain blunt man” has always flung at the “superior person” : the taking religion so seriously, the sanctimonious air, the niggling about special food and fussy little “devotional” books, the lofty language that cloaks grossness of life. So might a master of fox-hounds, when stung to the extreme, taunt a son given over to “the millinery of ritualism”.