May 2002

Trasidei Gymraeg or Is There A Classical Tradition in Welsh Language Drama?
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, The Open University

In the 20th century attempts at language purification, interest in Welsh mythology, and a turning away from earlier Welsh Puritanism (or Protestantism) have accompanied influences ranging from ancient Greek classics to modern French symbolists in the making of a Welsh literary and dramatic revival – in English and I Welsh. Other dominant trends have been the love of nature, the boldness of imagery, and the lilt of language, best represented in the free-metered works of W. J. Gruffydd and the more classical poetry of T. Gwynn-Jones. Realistic drama was developed by R. G. Berry, D. T. Davies and W. J. Gruffydd while a more symbolic and psychological dramatic literature followed with the works of Huw Lloyd Edwards, T. Parry, and Gwilym R. Jones. The poet and dramatist Saunders Lewis has perhaps enriched Welsh critical writing more than any other and has influenced many contemporary theatre and television playwrights, while the Eisteddfod tradition remains, of course, a vigorous cultural force in contemporary Wales .

But of course this burst of activity does not come without its complications, and the issue of the use of the Welsh language within Wales is still exceptionally thorny. Stephen Logan (a lecturer in English at Cambridge University ) has recently categorized five types of people who respond to the Welsh language differently ( The Times Educational Supplement. April 26 th 2002 . 20): 1. Welsh speakers who never use English (and, yes, they do exist); 2. Welsh speakers who freely use English (I guess that I fall into this category); 3. English speakers who cannot speak Welsh; 4. English speakers who rarely speak Welsh, despite having a degree of competence in it; 5. People equally fluent and active in Welsh and English. I would add one more category: 6. Welsh speakers who never speak Welsh , always opting to use English (and yes, they exist too). Much of the diversity in the use of Welsh can be linked to a geographic breakdown: south (east) Wales, the industrialized part of the country, was particularly prone to Anglicisation in the latter part of the nineteenth century and even as late as the 1950s children in that part of Wales were discouraged parentally, politically and culturally from speaking Welsh. Logan has tried to understand how the diverse language situation arose, noting that,

J.R.R. Tolkien, a great philologist of complex national identity who used Welsh as a source of names and cultural-linguistic motifs in The Lord of the Rings , was well aware of the greatness of the Welsh language; aware too of how little its greatness is recognized by the English, whose discussions of Wales, he said, can sometimes smack of nationalistic complacency. . . . J.R. Green [also] asserts in his Short History of the English People (1874) that, by the 14 th century, when England was producing its first great upsurge of poetry since Beowulf , Welsh poetry was already at a point of technical sophistication reminiscent of the age of Pope.

But if Logan is unsatisfied with the recognition accorded to Welsh literature, including drama, by the English, then I think that he also has to acknowledge the apathy shown to that same literature (through historical accident perhaps) by many (the majority) of the English-speaking stratum of modern Welsh society. Great Welsh language literature exists; even great (‘classic') Welsh language drama exists and some of it has been translated into English and produced on stage, although today it is often subsumed beneath a (very healthy) outpouring of modern theatre writing in Welsh and English (the work of Ed Thomas provides a good example) which, for me, too often smacks of ‘in-your-face' Americanized screenplays, and which consciously reject the formal structure of Welsh poetry and its themes and influences (Medieval and Classical) championed by earlier twentieth century Welsh language dramatists which gave Welsh drama its great renaissance.

What I want to do in this short study (which merits far more attention in the future) is to question to what extent Greek drama has had an impact on the Welsh dramatic conscience throughout the twentieth century. I do not want to focus here on performances per se, but on the notion of classicism found either directly in Welsh language plays (via translation from Greek or English) or indirectly (through re-workings or versions). Moreover, I want to look at the work of one specific dramatist, namely John Saunders Lewis who, in his poetic dramas, drew time and again on ancient Greek poetic prototypes (although this aspect of his work is often glossed over in modern Welsh scholarship). These are merely snapshots of a much bigger picture of course, but in a future project I hope to expand on the basic outline offered here. I am going to work in reverse chronological order, highlighting the most recent forays into Greek drama in the Welsh language in order to climax with a definitive moment (in my opinion) that prepared the way for these (few) Welsh renditions of ancient poetic plays – the creation of Saunders Lewis' verse drama Blodeuwedd in 1948.

Modern Welsh theatre is vibrant; there is a particularly healthy scope of new writing being produced in both Welsh and English, while even English language companies such as Cardiff-based Mappa Mundi are doing stalwart work in producing accessible and intelligent versions of Shakespeare (and even Moliere, but not, alas, Greek drama – as yet). It is lamentable then that Wales has not wholeheartedly embraced Greek drama in its modern performance culture (in fact, historically, Wales has turned a blind eye to the Classical Tradition in general; very few of the Welsh gentry in the eighteenth century, for example, ever bothered with building Palladian-style houses or embarking on a Grand Tour, although there were notable exceptions). In contrast to the regular outpourings of Greek drama offered by, say, Scottish writers and theatre companies it has to be said that Greek drama in contemporary Wales (in English or Welsh) is very thin on the ground. In recent years valiant efforts have been made to stage more Greek drama, and Welsh theatre companies in particular seem to value the idea of performing Greek Tragedy highly; although few actually get round to doing it. The renowned Welsh-language Cardiff-based company Dalier Sylw produced a very weighty proposal for the staging of four large-scale Greek dramas which was offered to the funding body of the Arts Council of Wales in the Spring of 1999 (the production team was composed of Bethan Jones, Geoff More, Ceri Sherlock and myself. Dalier Sylw, incidentally, was set up in Cardiff in 1988 by Peter Edwards, Sion Eirian, Bethan Jones and Eryl Phillips to answer the need for a welsh language theatre company in the capital city).

Under the working title Grecian 2000 , Dalier Sylw planned to present a yearlong string of events in Wales to mark the Millennium celebrations, arguing that what better way to mark this momentous occasion than with a festival of Greek drama – the old and the new intertwined. It was proposed that there should be a new English language version of Racine's Phedre , a new Welsh language treatment of Euripides' Trojan Women (both of which should tour Wales to large and small scale venues), an English language (but colloquial) Lysistrata (performed in the open air in a promenade production around the civic centre of Cardiff) and a large scale Welsh language production of Gareth Miles' new working of the Oresteia, entitled Clutymnestra (Klytaimnestra) to be played in Cardiff only. Dalier Sylw were thinking big and proposed that these four major productions be strung together with a year's supply of lectures, street theatre events, educational projects and workshops on the theme of ancient Greece . Unfortunately the Arts Council of Wales rejected the application and the project was dropped. To this day Miles' Clutymnestra remains unperformed.

The Clutymnestra Project (as it was originally termed) has its genesis as far back as 1994 when Dalier Sylw began working with the successful Welsh language playwright Gareth Miles on a re-working of Greek myth. Over the successive years Miles and Dalier Sylw's Artistic Director, Bethan Jones, workshopped ideas and themes with a succession of talented performers until the major strand of the play was worked through: a re-telling of the Oresteia , in Welsh verse, which concentrated exclusively on the female characters. Consequently, the later workshops were run with only actresses who were encouraged, in conjunction with the dramatist, to explore ideas of women in tragedy and myth and in Greek art and society.

In fact, as an offshoot of the Clutymnestra Project , Dalier Sylw became involved with an international Greek Drama project run under in 1997 staged a version of Sophocles' Electra (with scenes interspersed from O'neill's Mourning Becomes Electra ) in a bilingual Welsh-Czech treatment at Cardiff's Chapter Arts Centre. Using movement, dance and experimental staging techniques this Electra was a hard-hitting production which often underplayed language in favour of visual semiotics, but was, nonetheless, a rare outing for Greek tragedy on a Welsh stage.

Dalier Sylw's main foray into the staging of a Greek tragedy proper occurred in 1991 with a bilingual English/Welsh repertory production of Euripides' Bacchai staged in an abandoned factory in Cardiff and directed by Ceri Sherlock. It was here that Gareth Miles had his first taste of Greek drama, although here he produced a direct translation rather than a treatment based upon the English version by Ian Brown (both translators worked together in tandem, pouring over earlier English translations and commentaries since neither had studied ancient Greek). Miles' translation was a strict, rhythmic verse version, often following Euripidean modes as closely as Welsh would allow, although Miles, Brown and Sherlock decided that the choral odes should only be performed in the original Greek. On the whole, reviews were good, but that printed in Y Fanner (The Banner) of 25th October 1991 was ecstatic:

‘Drama oedd hon oedd yn canolbwyntio ar y corfforol a'r emosiynol o'r cychwyn cyntaf...nid wyf erioed wedi gweld drama debyg nac ychwaith yn dychmygu y gwnaf eto am amser maith maith.....Perfformiad y Corws fydd yn aros hiraf yn y cof. Yn dilyn traddodiad trasiedau Groegaidd nhw oedd yn cynnal y ddrama....Fe adewais y 'theatr' yn crynu, wedi cael ysgytwad a gwefr anhygoel. Mae Ceri Sherlock yn sicr yn gwybod sut i arbrofi'n llwyddiannus â'i gynulleidfa a chyflawni campwaith theatrig'.

[This play concentrated on the physical and the emotional from the first … I've never seen a play like it and I can't imagine that I ever will, certainly not for some time to come. It is the performance of the chorus that will linger in my memory. Following the tradition of the Greek chorus, they were central to the drama. I left the ‘theatre' quaking, I've never been so intensely shaken. Ceri Sherlock certainly knew how to experiment successfully with his audience and achieve a theatrical masterpiece.]

Miles' translation used a blend of artificially lyrical (sometimes old fashioned) Welsh juxtaposed with a hard-hitting colloquialism. Welsh is a language which opens itself up to poetry extremely well and Wales has a very ancient elegiac tradition. Welsh is essentially a tragic language: it can be economical or flowery, colloquial or high flown, coarse and vulgar or refined and moralizing (some might say that Welsh is Biblical. There is, in fact, a particular strand of the language that can be called Chapel Welsh). Welsh is a language that whips up the emotions in its vocabulary and in its rhythms and Miles' translation of Euripides maximized on the poetic potential of the language.

Of course, Miles' translation did not appear out of a vacuum; throughout the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s a sporadic series of poetic Welsh translations of Greek tragedies had been undertaken within University Welsh Departments and published by Cardiff University Press. In 1991, for example, John Henry Jones translated Aeschylus' Agamemnon and Euripides' Alcestis, although the most noteworthy translations had been undertaken by Euros Bowen, beginning in 1972 with her version of Sophocles' Oidipos Brenin (Oedipus the King) and followed in 1979 by Oidipos yn Colonos (Oedipus in Colonus). In 1984 Bowen published her translation of Sophocles' Electra, followed by Philoctetes in 1991. Not a classicist herself, Bowen closely followed the classic Jebb translations of the Sophoclean tragedies, augmenting with close readings of his accompanying commentaries. It is disappointing to learn that these learned and often beautiful translations have received very few performances, and those which have been given have tended to be confined to university drama departments (at Bangor, Aberystwyth and Cardiff) where acting courses frequently include performances in Welsh.

The watermark for Welsh translations of Greek tragedy is, without doubt, W.J. Gruffydd's remarkable translation of Sophocles' Antigone of 1950. It is regarded as the definitive (and first) poetic translation of a Greek drama and was clearly the inspiration and drive behind Euros Bowen's later Sophoclean translations. Gruffydd (1881-1954), a writer of prodigious energy, had received a classical education at Oxford , a fact that shows up in the confidence of his translations. Here is a poet who understands the constructions of the Greek language, and who manages to find an effortless simulation in Welsh (I want at this point to thank Beth Robert for working through all the subsequent translations with me; two heads are better than one with Welsh poetry). To give a brief example of Gruffydd's text:

C ôr

O, belydr haul,

Decaf o bob rhyw wawl ar Thebau seithborth

Amrant yr euraid ddydd,

Yn torri gwawr uwch ffrydiau Dirce!

Gyrraist ar ruthr ffo ac ar gyflymach rhawd

Y drud tarianwyn,

O Argos a ddaeth yn gyfarfog.

[Chorus: O hail sun, the brightest one of all that shines on seven-gated Thebes . Hail to the dawn breaking over Dirce's banks! You drove with rushing force and with even greater strength the white-shielded troops, from Argos they came heavily armed.]

This, the opening of the first choral ode, is a very complex passage, involving alliteration, the invention of compound words and a strict meter. It does perfect justice to the Sophoclean text while satisfying the Welsh ear at a very high level.

In his preface to the published version of Antigone Gruffydd attempts to outline his purpose in translating Sophocles and notes his own limitations and prejudices, explaining that he had (during his Oxford years) broken away from the traditional literature that an educated Welshman was expected to know, that is to say, English Shakespeare and the Welsh Bible. He explains, addressing himself to ‘y darllenydd Cymreig' (the Welsh reader , not the welsh audience/viewer/playgoer) in a very loft Welsh:

Mae'n debyg y bydd y darllenydd Cymreig sydd heb fod yn gyfarwydd â'r clasuron yn cael peth anhawster i ddeall ac I werthfawrogi Antigone , er ei bod ar lawer ystyr yn nes I'n hamgyffred ni na'r rhan fwyaf o ddramâu Groeg. Yr wyf yn cofio'n dda fy mhembleth i, lawer blwyddyn yn ôl, pan ddeuthum i ddarllen gwaith y Groegiaid, a theimlo wedym yr un dyryswch uwchben dramâu'r Ffrancwyr, Corneille a Racine . Agorwyd porth dealltwriaeth i mi gan weithred ddeallol sy'n perthyn yn nes I'r bywyd Crisnogol efallai nag I feirnaidaeth lenyddol, - sef hunan-ymholiad. Gofynnais i mi fy hun ai fy chwaeth gynhenid i, fy newis greddfol rhwng y da a'r gwael mewn llenyddiaeth, a'm gwnâi'n amrhod i dderbyn ac i fwnhau trasiediau Aeschylus, Soffocles, Euripides, Racine a Corneille, ai ynteu ryw ragfarn gudd wedi ei meithrin gan yr unig fath o lenyddiaeth yr oeddwn gynefin â hi.

[The Welsh reader who is unfamiliar with classics might have some difficulty grasping and appreciating Antigone , even though it is more in our reach than many other Greek plays. I remember well my frustration, many years ago, when I came to read Greek literature and also feeling the same frustration when I came to read the French plays of Corneille and Racine. The gates of understanding were opened to me more by a medium more closely related to Christianity than by poetry criticism – self-questioning, I asked myself if it was my taste or my own intuitive choice between good and bad literature that made me unprepared to accept and enjoy the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Corneille and Racine, or was it some hidden prejudice nurtured in me by the only literature that was familiar to me.]

When it came to translating Sophocles, Gruffydd found the task relatively straightforward, since Greek verse, he discovered, bore a resemblance to early Welsh poetic constructions, while the compound words so familiar in Greek poetry were constants in Welsh verse too. He found the choral odes in particular a specific source of delight and admiration:

Iaeth farnoddol y ddadl. Nid iaeth pob dydd ydyw, ond iaeth y gellir yn deg ei chymharu ag iaeth y Gogynfeirdd Cymreig, Gwalchmai neu Gyneddelw neu Ruffudd ap Maredudd, iaeth ddethol addurn y traddodiad llenyddol. Ni ellais i, mwy na chyfiethwyr eraill, ei hatgynrychu yn ei llawnder a'i chyfoeth, ond gellir cael syniad egwan ohoni yn y Corawdau. . . . Yn ei dechreuad, oesodd pell yn ôl, i addoliad y duwiau y perthynai'r ddrama, ac, yr oedd y ddawns yn rhan hanfodol o hynny. Dyna'r rheswm sylfaenol am y Côr, a dyna paham y ceir yn Antigone salm i Dionysus ynghanol y chwarae. Ond yn natblygiad y ddrama, gwnaed defnydd newydd o'r Côr i esbonio agwedd y ‘dyn y stryd' at y problemau a gyflwynid, i egluro unrhyw bwnc nad oedd eisoes yn glir yn y gweithrediad, ac i wneuthur sylwadau cyffredinol arno .

[The [tragic] language is poetical. It is not the language of daily life, but it can be compared to the very early Welsh bardic poetry, of Gwalchmai or Gyneddelw or Ruffudd ap Maredudd, the selective, decorative, poetical tradition. I, no more than other translators, can produce, not in its complexity, the original poetry, although something of the original is achieved in [my] choruses. . . . In the beginning the plays were created for the praise of the gods, and dance was an intrinsic part of this – hat is the basic reason for a chorus and why, in Antigone , we have a psalm to Dionysus in the middle of the play. But during the development of the play the chorus it put to a new use to represent and express the attitude of ‘the man in the street', the problems he encounters, to explain any unclear topics and to make more general comments.]

Unfortunately Gruffydd's Antigone has only received sporadic stagings, again in University drama departments, following its premiere at Aberystwyth. This is not surprising since up until the 1920s drama had been very slow to develop in Wales ; in fact, there was very little dramatic performance tradition at all. Even the popular folk-theatre known as “Anterliwt” or Interludes (see, A Study of Three Welsh Religious Plays. Trans. Gwenan Jones. Bala 1939 ), had been suppressed by the activities of the Methodist Revival in the 1800s and again in the early 1900s. Calvinist, Baptist and Methodist Protestantism effectively destroyed Wales' rich oral heritage of myth and magic, suppressing the old tales of wonder and heroism, of gods, goddesses, battles and passions beneath the weight of Old Testament fundamentalism. Greek myths – pagan and often pornographic – were not embraced in the chapels; the Classical Tradition was eschewed from the pulpits.

In addition, the nineteenth century Eisteddfod tradition codified and purified a performance tradition of its own, inventing a Protestant Christian ideology of public recitation, choral speech and song (although throughout late nineteenth century English was the dominant tongue in the National Eisteddfod – W. J. Gruffydd dubbed it “our old cannon fallen into the hands of the enemy” ). Although some kind of romantic nationalist theatre began to make itself known in Wales in the late nineteenth century, it was not until the plays of Ibsen became popular in Britain that a Welsh dramatic movement emerged (as it did in England). Plays such as W.J. Gruffydd's “Beddau'r Proffwydi” (The Graves of the Prophets), first performed in 1913, severely criticized the establishment, particularly the oppressive, hypocritical chapel hierarchy that had done so much to stifle Welsh intellectual and artistic expression. (On the Chapel tradition and early C20th Welsh drama see E.C. Stephens, “A Century of Welsh Drama” in D. Johnston, ed., A Guide to Welsh Literature1900-1996. 1998. 233 ff.)

John Saunders Lewis (1893-1985) lamented that “ Wales became superficial and materialistic; idolatrous, throne-loving, because she ceased to think in terms of the Sacrament” (in “Baner ac Amserau Cymru”, July 1926). The greatest influence of all the Welsh writers upon the conscience of Welsh-speaking Wales, Lewis is remembered as a dramatist, poet, literary historian, critic, one of the founders of Plaid Cymru in 1925, and its president from 1926-39. Born in Merseyside, an area to which thousands of Welsh people had emigrated and which remained a stronghold of Welsh culture during the first half of this century, Lewis served in the army in the Great War, but was a conscientious objector during WW II, encouraging others to act against the conscription of Welsh youth to fight to preserve England's territorial empire (although some evidence – often ignored in Welsh scholarship – strongly suggests that he had decidedly Nazi sympathies). His radio lecture of 13 February 1962 marks a turning point in the attitude of the Welsh literate toward their language and their culture. In his lecture Tynged Yr Iaith (Fate of the Language), Lewis called upon Welsh speakers in particular to take action to halt the alarming decline in their ancient language. It was a stirring call to arms: “to make it impossible to conduct local or central government business without the Welsh language.” The effects of the talk were dramatic, even revolutionary, and the long chain of events that followed the lecture, beginning with the sit-down at Trefechan Bridge, Aberystwyth in February, 1963 by members of the newly-formed Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Society) began the movement to gain respectability as well as legal status for the Welsh language fully impressive credentials.

Lewis believed that an individual was obligated to take action in defiance of his moral principles and that this could be best expressed through drama, his main creative medium, although one of the weakest of the literary forms of Wales. In 1934, he wrote that, “ Wales was Christian and Catholic even before she was Welsh, and I see the mark of her Catholic formation upon the whole of her history and culture”. It is this Catholicism that runs throughout Lewis's work: he was proficient in Latin, French and Italian literature as well as English and Welsh, and was heavily influenced by his readings in those works that emphasized the importance of tradition in passing along and upholding moral and cultural values, especially through the family. These values, along with his ever-present concern for moral responsibility, led to his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1932.

Wales had been part of the culture of Europe in the Catholic Middle Ages when Classical (Latin) poetry had mirrored an ideal social order. For Lewis, the restoration of such order was possible for a Wales freed from its English shackles and able to participate once more in the literary traditions of a greater (and more Catholic) Europe . "I have no hesitation," he wrote in 1934, "in saying that Welsh literature was one of the three great literatures of medieval Europe ." (See A.R. Jones & G. Thomas, eds., Presenting Saunders Lewis . 1983)

In addition, Saunders Lewis strongly believed in the creation of a Welsh aristocracy, a literate society of Roman Catholic aesthetics speaking the ancient language unseen in Wales since the fall of the Old Gentry in the mid sixteenth century. He used the high culture of Medieval monasticism and on pre-Christian Greece and Rome to speak to his ‘aristocratic' Welsh society and, while not translating Greek drama directly into the Welsh tongue. Inspired by a handbook on Greek philosophy written in Welsh by D. James Jones, Saunders Lewis began to laud the Greek conception of the poet or writer as a teacher and sage and held particularly high in his estimation the poet-lawgiver Solon and the tradition of philosophical didactism. His admiration for the plays of Euripides (and subsequently of Corneille and Racine) inspired him to create what could be termed “Celtic Tragedy”. Watching Sybil Thorndike's London performance as Medea, he noted, “It was Mrs. Thorndike's Medea that gave me the first idea of a kindred character in Welsh legend”. He began to draw on the themes and characters of Welsh myths and historical events which led him ultimately to Blodeuwedd (1948) and Siwan (1954). In his foreword to Blodeuwedd Saunders Lewis wrote that, “Byddai'n help I'w deall hi a deall y cymeriadau petai'r gynulleidfa Gymreig mor gyfarwydd a'r Mabinogi ag odd cynulleidfa'r dramawyr Groegiadd a'u hen chwedlau hwy” [It would be helpful to understand [the play] and to understand the characters if the Welsh audience were as familiar with the Mabinogion as a Greek audience were with their old tales]. In the verse-drama Blodeuwedd , taken from the Welsh medieval Mabinogion , Saunders Lewis explored the tragedy of the female protagonist's rootless condition (a woman created by magic from flowers), the legend of marital infidelity providing contemporary significance. He continued his use of medieval romance in his Siwan ( Joan , also known as The King of England's Daughter ), also dealing with adultery, but his own version ends with reconciliation, forgiveness, and marital harmony – the essential condition for the well-being of society as a whole. Both Blodeuwedd and Siwan are regarded as the canonical examples of Welsh language drama and receive regular performance treatments (sometimes in English translation) in Welsh theatres, on Welsh television, in Welsh film and Welsh radio.

The heroine Blodeuwedd is so powerfully conceived that she easily puts one in mind of the great female characters of Greek tragedy; she has in her aspects of Klytaimnestra, of Phaedra, but particularly of Medea. The concept of being a foreigner, alienated from her surroundings is a theme stressed throughout Blodeuwedd, and is shared in the Medea too. Early on in the play Blodeuwedd states her precarious position:

O, ni ddeelli fyth,

Fyth, fyth, fy ngofid I, na thi na neb.

‘Wyddost ti ddim beth yw bod yn unig.

Mae'r byd it ti yn llawn, mae gennyt dref,

Ceraint a theulu, tad, mam a brodyr,

Fel nad wyt ti yn ddieithr yn y byd.

Mae'r man y troediodd dynion yn gffannedd,

A Gwynedd oll, lle bu dy dadau gynt,

Yn aelwyd iti, yn gronglwyd adeiladwyd

Gan gendlaethau dy hynafiaid di;

‘Rwyt ti'n gatrefol yn dy wlad dy hun

Megis mewn gwely a daenwyd er dy fwyn

Gan ddwylo cariad a fu'n hir yn d'aros;

Minnau, nid oes I mi ddim un cynefin

Yn holl ffyrdd dynion; chwilia Wynedd draw

A Phrydain drwyddi, nid oes ddim un bedd

A berthyn imi, ac mae'r byd yn oer,

Yn estron imi, heb na chwlwm car

Na chadwyn cenedl. Dyna sut yr olnaf –

Ofni fy rhyddid, megis llong heb lyw

Ar for dynoliaeth.

[Oh you will never, never, never understand my grief. You don't know what it is to be alone. For you the world is full, you have a home, friends, family, mother, father, and brother, so that you're not a stranger in the world. For you the place where men have trodden is homely, and all Gwynedd, where your forefathers have been, is a hearth to you, a roof that was built by generations of your ancestors; you are at home in your own land as in a bed that was spread out for you by loving hands that had long awaited you. But I have no home in all the ways of men; search through all Gwynedd and all Britain and you'll never find one grave that belongs to me, and the world is cold, is foreign to me, without any tie of family or nation to bind me. That's I'm afraid – I'm afraid of my freedom, like a ship astray on the oceans of mankind.]

Throughout the drama Saunders Lewis plays on the Euripidean idea of the inevitable clash between serch ( eros , destructive illicit love, passion, sex) and cariad ( agape , pure love that transcends sex). Blodeuwedd is a tragic figure who inspires pity and revulsion; she is amoral, the ultimate temptress, a Circe-like figure who pledges oblivion as a gift to men who fall for her charms. In one of Saunders Lewis' most passionate verses, Blodeuwedd ensnares the anti-hero Gronw, promising (or threatening) to,

Oeri'r gwaed a difa fflamau chwant.

Ond dewis rhyngom, gyfaill, rhyngddynt hwy,

Foesau diogel, dof gwareiddiad dyn

A holl rhferthwy fy nghusanau i.

A meddwl cyn it ddewis. Gyda hwy

Cei sicrwydd car a chyfaill a chywely

A bwrw oes ddigynnwrf ar dy stad,

A'th gladdu ym meddrod dy hynafiad moesol

A'th blant I ddwyn dy elor. Gyda mi

Nid oes yn ddiogel on funed hon.

A'm caro I, rhaid iddo garu pergyl

A holl unigedd rhyddid. Yn ei oes

Ni chaif gyfeillion, ni ddaw plant I'w hebrwng

I'w fedd di-sathr. Ond cawod drom fy ngwallt

I lenwi ei synnwyr dro, a'm bronnau I

I'w guddio ef ennyd rhag murmuron byd,

A'r eilad fydd ei nefoedd … Dewis di.

[cool the blood and put out desire's flames. But choose between us, friends, between them, the safe, tame ways of man's civility and the torrent of my kisses. And think before you choose. With them the security of family and friend and wife and placid life on your estate, and a burial in the sepulchre of your righteous ancestors with your children to carry your bier. With me no security except this point of time. Whoever loves me must love danger and all the loneliness of freedom. In his time he'll have no friends, children will not escort him to his secluded grave. But the heavy flood of my hair will fill his senses for a while, and my breasts hide him from the murmurs of the world, and the instant shall be his heaven … Choose.]

Like Phaedra, Blodeuwedd's passion is intrinsic to her nature, but not willed or wanted by her, she cannot exactly be judged guilty. Though the desires she incarnates are dangerous and anti-social, Blodeuwedd maintains our sympathy as much as Phaedra does in the Hippolytus . Finally, having committed adultery and murder, Blodeuwedd, like Medea, shuns the world of mortals and returns to her other-worldly roots. Medea, of course, is reunited with the Sun, and Blodeuwedd is transformed into an owl; her mocking laughter is turned into the bird's screech. As the final stage direction reads:

A allan dan chwerthin o hyd. Yna paid y chwerthin a chywir sgrech hir tylluan.
[She goes out still laughing. Then the laughter stops and the screech of an owl is heard.]

Saunders Lewis' contribution to Welsh culture has been to create a sense of tragic drama drawing heavily on Greek tragedy (and thus far removed from the chapel tradition) and to employ a verse suited to and suitable for telling the tragic stories on the stage. As he noted of his use of verse in Blodeuwedd , “ceisias beri I'r iaith lenyddol a'r mesur di-odl awgymu dulliau a rhithmau siarad pobl a fo'n meddwl yn ddwys ac yn teimlo I'r byw wrth siarad. Barddoniaeth sgwrs yw barddoniaeth drama” [I attempte to make the literary language and the unrhymed meter suggest the modes and rhythms of the speech of people who think and feel deeply when they talk. Poetic conversation is poetic drama]. Saunders Lewis' tragic verse drama, combined with the masterful translation of Antigone by W.J. Gruffydd of the same period, created the templates for the later translations and treatments of Greek tragedy by Bowen, Jones and Miles. That these later works receive such little attention in terms of performance can only be regretted, and probably points to the notion that new dramatic writing is admired more than the skill of translating. Nevertheless, a small corpus of translated plays is now in existence; perhaps more will follow. Someday they might be performed alongside the contemporary works of new Welsh writing which are dominating the Welsh drama scene; let's hope so.