1. What background facts do we learn from the Nurse's opening speech?
2. Whom do the members of the Chorus represent?
3. Medea's plan for revenge is not clearly announced until fairly late in the play. How does she formulate in her mind the decision to kill the children?
4. According to the Chorus, which sex is cruel and deceitful toward the other? Why have poets said otherwise?
5. Euripides produced this play about the fury of a mistreated foreign woman in 431 BCE, just as Athens, at the height of its oppressive empire (Athenian "allies" were subject states), began its fatal war with Sparta. What does the fate of Medea and of those who mistreat and oppress her say to its own time? Might it shed any light on the problem of terrorism in our own time? What happens to the characters of both when one human being treats another as Jason treats Medea? What happens to Medea when she gets her terrible revenge?
6. Does this play inspire "pity [for unmerited suffering] and fear [for the suffering of someone like ourselves]" as Aristotle says tragedy should do? Or does it simply horrify us? Support your response.