History Theatre / Medea

The most well known adaptation is perhaps the 1969 Italian film by Creator/PierPaoloPasolini, starring soprano Maria Callas as Medea.

** At the end Jason lives, but his children are slaughtered along with his prospective family. Medea [[CruelMercy lets him live on purpose]].

* IGaveMyWord: Not that Jason keeps it. Medea points out throughout the play that he has broken his marriage oath to her.

* LightIsNotGood: Medea is the granddaughter of the sun god gets to exit on an appropriately sun-themes chariot, and, while sympathetic and having good reason for her actions, she is very ruthless in her revenge.

** In Seneca the Younger's version of the play, there is no chariot carrying Medea away and, correspondingly, no deus ex machina. The play ends just after she kills her children laughing in Jason's face. Because, really, if you're going the whole nine yards like she is, how much do you care about getting out?
*** The chariot is definitely present in Seneca's play though, see line 1025 ("With wingéd speed am borne aloft through realms of air. ⁠[Mounts her car and is borne away.]").

* SlaveToPR: Jason remarries because of how being with Medea harms his reputation. According to him, he is trying to give Medea and the children a better social standing as well, but Medea is just too obsessed with marital fidelity to see he is actually helping her.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: One of the Chrous tries to warn Medea against praying for death, "Because that prayer will be answered."

Euripides' adaptation of the myth of Jason and Medea starts when the couple have returned to Corinth after all their adventures, quests, and battles. Medea, being not only a genius schemer but something of a sorceress, abandoned/betrayed her family and people to be with Jason and help him succeed, even when it required arranging her brother's death. Now they have two young sons together. She has [[LoveMartyr suffered horribly]] for love of him. So now that the adventure's over, it's time for TheHero and his MagicalGirlfriend to settle down and live HappilyEverAfter, right?

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: One of the women try to warn Medea against praying for death, "Because that prayer will be answered."

[[caption-width-right:340:Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Medea in Catulle Mendès's eponymous play, based on Euripides'. (ArtNouveau poster c. 1898, by Creator/AlphonseMucha)]]

[[quoteright:340:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/medee2_7343.jpg]]

* TemptingFate: Creon, when he states that Medea´s hate will not affect him.

* DarkerAndEdgier: There are versions of the myth that predate the play where the children aren't killed by their mother, but by a mob of Corinthians, either in protest against Medea's foreign presence or in revenge for Creon and Glauce's murder. There's another tradition, too, where Medea kills her children by accident. For a dedicated pursuer of shock-value of Euripides, though, these traditions hadn't gone nearly far enough - so he makes Medea kill her own children in cold blood. No mention is made in the play of Jason's son Thessalos surviving, as happened in most traditions. It's possible that the Athenians hated this ending for its brutality - out of the three tragedians that competed that year in the Dionysia, Euripides and his Medea (along with 3 other plays) came last.

* MoralDilemma: Medea wants to not just punish Jason but keep her honor by taking revenge on him, and believes that anything less would be horrible cowardice - but then she determines the best form of revenge is killing one's children, and she still loves her children. She ultimately decides to kill them anyway.

MostWritersAreMale, and what male cannot understand the hardship and dangers of dealing with a jealous and angry ex-girlfriend? What makes Creator/{{Euripides}}' play so interesting is that the protagonist is not TheHero but the PsychoExGirlfriend--and she's {{justified|Trope}}.

WhatAnIdiot! Jason has created the original WomanScorned, and for the GreekChorus, it's only a question of whom she intends to kill--herself, or Jason. She chooses -- [[TakeAThirdOption neither]]. Medea [[MurderTheHypotenuse kills the new girl]] and Glauce's father (King Creon, not be confused with Creon of the Thebes tetralogy), who arranged the marriage, but decides simply killing Jason would be too good for him. A conversation with the as-yet-childless Aegeus teaches her the cruelest, most painful, most unbearable punishment to inflict on a man--the death of his children. She takes their two children off-stage and kills them... but she struggles with it a bit first.

* LaserGuidedKarma: The major theme of the play is that Jason brought down every inch of Medea's wrath upon himself through his own actions, no matter how brutal they were.

* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler:To the extent she can be considered the villain, Medea ends the play having had pretty much had every bit of revenge she wanted, and with the implication the gods sided with her.]]