Negative Capabiliy: Shifts and Ambivalences in “Iphigenia at Aulis”

Abstract

One key feature of Iphigenia at Aulis is the readiness with which the characters change their minds. This is appropriate to the location of the play by the Euripus, a strait well known for its shifts of current; indeed, its name was used proverbially of an unstable man. These shifts are reflected in an ambivalence that characterizes much of the play: definitive assessments of what characters are saying prove elusive. The poet John Keats identified the supreme quality in creative literature as «Negative Capability», the capability of being «in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts». If Euripides possessed this quality, it is inappropriate to form a conclusive judgement on whether Iphigenia’s turn-about speech is sincere, self-deluding or ironic: it could be all or any of these. This lack of definition is characteristic of the tragedy as a whole.