Derek Mahon: IX: At the Gate Theatre

Allusion to Classical figure Medea, Phaedra, comic Muse, Euripides, Dionysus, Semele

Relationship to Classical text Mahon is interested in the ‘resistance offered by the medium’ of tragic theatre, when adapting works for the modern stage. Recognising Euripides own innovations within tragic convention, by blurring the distinction between Tragedy in Satyr Play in works such as The Bacchae, he draws a parallel with what he regards as a contemporary theatrical tradition in crisis.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The poem opens with a long quotation from Mahon’s 1996 adaptation of Racine’s Phèdre (1677) and towards the end there is a quotation from his own Bacchae, after Euripides (1991: ‘Bring on ivy and goatskin, pipe and drum,/ for Dionysus son of Semele is come’). He also refers to works of Shakespeare and Ibsen – inheritors of the tragic tradition.