The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes
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About this ebook
The Cure at Troy is Seamus Heaney's version of Sophocles' Philoctetes. Written in the fifth century BC, this play concerns the predicament of the outcast hero, Philoctetes, whom the Greeks marooned on the island of Lemnos and forgot about until the closing stages of the Siege of Troy. Abandoned because of a wounded foot, Philoctetes nevertheless possesses an invincible bow without which the Greeks cannot win the Trojan War. They are forced to return to Lemnos and seek out Philoctetes' support in a drama that explores the conflict between personal integrity and political expediency.
Heaney's version of Philoctetes is a fast-paced, brilliant work ideally suited to the stage. Heaney holds on to the majesty of the Greek original, but manages to give his verse the flavor of Irish speech and context.
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His poems, plays, translations, and essays include Opened Ground, Electric Light, Beowulf, The Spirit Level, District and Circle, and Finders Keepers. Robert Lowell praised Heaney as the "most important Irish poet since Yeats."
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Book preview
The Cure at Troy - Seamus Heaney
THE CURE AT TROY
A VERSION OF SOPHOCLES’
Philoctetes
SEAMUS HEANEY
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Start Reading
Books by Seamus Heaney
Copyright
In memory of Robert Fitzgerald
poet and translator
1910–1985
‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.’
W. H. AUDEN
CHARACTERS
ODYSSEUS
NEOPTOLEMUS
PHILOCTETES
CHORUS
Attendants to Neoptolemus, at least three:
CHORUS LEADER
SENTRY
MERCHANT (in disguise)
HERCULES (in person of chorus leader)
THE CURE AT TROY was first performed at the Guildhall, Derry, on 1 October 1990.
The cast included:
ODYSSEUS
Seamus Moran
NEOPTOLEMUS
Sean Rocks
PHILOCTETES
Des McAleer
CHORUS
Veronica Duffy
Siobhan Miley
Zara Turner
Directors
Stephen Rea and
Bob Crowley
Designer
Bob Crowley
Lighting designer
Rory Dempster
Music
Donal Lunny
A sea shore. Spacious fetch of sea-light. Upstage right (from audience’s point of view) rocks piled, cliff-face, grass tufts, stunted bushes. A cave mouth/archway visible up there, with small acting area at that level. A sort of strewn pathway, coming downstage, forking towards acting area. Access to cave mouth possible from this point. Access to second entrance of cave is offstage, right. If a volcano can be suggested in background, all the better; but it should not be overemphasized.
CHORUS discovered, boulder-still, wrapped in shawls. All three in series stir and move, like seabirds stretching and unstiffening. The prologue can be divided among the three voices. By the end of the prologue, CHORUS LEADER has positioned herself where she will speak as HERCULES at the end of the play.
CHORUS
Philoctetes.
Hercules.
Odysseus.
Heroes. Victims. Gods and human beings.
All throwing shapes, every one of them
Convinced he’s in the right, all of them glad
To repeat themselves and their every last mistake,
No matter what.
People so deep into
Their own self-pity, self-pity buoys them up.
People so staunch and true, they’re fixated,
Shining with self-regard like polished stones.
And their whole life spent admiring themselves
For their own long-suffering.
Licking their wounds
And flashing them around like decorations.
I hate it, I always hated it, and I am
A part of it myself.
And a part of you,
For my part is the chorus, and the chorus
Is more or less a borderline between
The you and the me and the it of it.
Between
The gods’ and human beings’ sense of things.
And that’s the borderline that poetry
Operates on too, always in between
What you would like to happen and what will –
Whether you like it or not.
Poetry
Allowed the god to speak. It was the voice
Of reality and justice. The voice of Hercules
That Philoctetes is going to have to hear
When the stone cracks open and the lava flows.
But we’ll come to that.
For now, remember this:
Every time the crater on Lemnos Island
Starts to erupt, what Philoctetes sees
Is a blaze he started years and years ago
Under Hercules’s funeral pyre.
The god’s mind lights up his mind every time.
Volcanic effects. Lurid flame-trembles, commotions and eruptions.
Then, a gradual, brightened stillness. The CHORUS are now positioned as lookouts attending the entry of ODYSSEUS