What happens in Prologue (Lines 1–130) of Medea?
The Prologue begins with the Nurse alone on stage, expressing a deep lament that quickly lays out the devastating backstory. She wishes the Argo had never set sail for Colchis, that the pines of Pelion had remained untouched, and that Jason had never sought the Golden Fleece — for that journey brought Medea to Greece. The Nurse recounts how Medea used her magic to assist Jason, betrayed her father and homeland, and followed him to Iolcos and then to Corinth. Now, Jason has left Medea for a politically advantageous marriage to Glauce, the princess of Corinth, leaving Medea and their two sons in a painful legal and emotional limbo. The Nurse is anxious about the explosive grief that Medea may unleash: she knows her mistress is not one to accept insults quietly. Creon's servant, the Tutor, arrives with the boys and confirms rumors that Creon plans to exile Medea and her children from Corinth. Medea's voice can be heard offstage — raw and disembodied, cursing herself, her children, and Jason's household. The Nurse urges the Tutor to keep the boys away from their mother, whose mood she likens to a stormy sea, capable of unpredictable and terrible violence.
Analysis
Euripides begins not with action but with a sense of mourning, and this choice is deliberate: the Nurse's monologue acts as a tragic counter-narrative, methodically deconstructing the heroic Argonaut myth by connecting every celebrated element — the ship, the quest, the hero — to its human toll. The repeated wish structure ("Would that… would that…") expresses regret as a rhetorical device, guiding the audience to perceive the entire play as a series of consequences rather than mere events.
The contrast between the Nurse's measured speech and Medea's anguished cries offstage is one of Euripides' most intentional tonal choices. Medea exists as a voice before she becomes a physical presence, which makes her both more intimidating and more sympathetic — a force of nature before she is developed as a character. The Nurse's comparison of Medea to a stormy sea ("her heart is violent; she will never put up with being treated badly") introduces elemental imagery that recurs throughout the play, positioning Medea in the realm of the inhuman sublime rather than the domestic space Jason attempts to confine her within.
The Tutor's rumors about the banishment decree create dramatic irony: the audience is aware of more than the children, and the children's innocence — as they play without concern — heightens the horror of what the Nurse already fears. Euripides subtly establishes the play's main legal issue: Medea has no legal status in Corinth, lacking a father and a home. Her statelessness is not a mere detail; it is the fundamental condition that empowers her to act without restraint.
Key quotes from Prologue (Lines 1–130)
“Would that the Argo's hull had never winged its way to the land of Colchis through the dark-blue Symplegades!”
The Nurse opens the play with this wish, framing the entire tragedy as the downstream consequence of the heroic voyage — a deliberate inversion of the Argonaut myth's celebratory tradition.
“Her heart is violent. She will never put up with being treated badly. I know her, and I am afraid she may think of something irrevocable.”
The Nurse warns the Tutor about Medea's temperament, establishing early that the catastrophe to come is not a surprise but a foreseeable eruption of a nature the household already understands and fears.
“O, I am miserable! O, the pain of it! Would that I could die!”
Medea's first words, delivered offstage, arrive as pure anguished sound before she is seen — Euripides using spatial staging to make her grief feel boundless and ungovernable.