Set in ancient Greece, around the year 600 B.C.E., The Mysteries: a verse play is inspired by a story from Plutarch’s Life of Solon that focuses on the competing drives of peace versus war and the social unrest caused by debt slavery in the ancient world. Considine offers a structural adaptation with a play of competing influences, deception, and violence, investigating layers of themes that raise questions for our modern times as well.
A cast, with Solon as the primary character, weaves a drama that begins with two prologue speakers—a Modern Woman and an Ancient Greek Woman—establishing the context: any talk of the war that has just ended between Athens and Megara is punishable by death.
As a sign of the new era of peace ushered in by the signing of a treaty, the Eleusinian Mysteries for the cult of Demeter and Persephone are reinstated. As a historical note, the Eleusinian Mysteries were considered one of the most important of all the secret Greek rites; they offered the promise of a more favorable afterlife and served as an affirming rite for women centered on fertility. The nine-day Mysteries required fasting, a procession outside the city of Athens, and various acts of initiation, culminating with a revelation that must absolutely be kept secret.
Meanwhile, the idealist poet side of Solon seeks freedom from his life in Athens, but he is pinned against his wishes by the urging of the Oracle and his cousin Pisistratus to remain in the city. This sets the play in motion with dynamic shifts in internal conflict and the strivings around Solon’s stifled urges, which go haywire in desperate attempts to assert his dominance over the circumstances between the two warring groups. We’re in a time of transition where reason is moving into a more important role in Greek culture, leaving the mythic traditions of the past for a logic-based society.
Who can say what is forbidden? Who can say what can’t be said? He will lead the youth of Athens. That’s more urgent work for a poet than tales of sunken cities and dolphins.
— Pisistratus to Solon
The tensions in the play generate from paradox and a fascinating character study of Solon. The Mysteries is a vital retelling for the current age. It’s often by revisiting the classics that we relearn the pitfalls and triumphs of our relatively unchanging human nature. The verses resonate with our current world’s state of unrest and the rapid rise of technology in recent times. How far have we really advanced in moving beyond the barbarous and the politically convenient? It also begs a look through the lens of the patriarchal co-opting of the autonomy of women and their life-affirming, sacred rites. The prologue features the Modern Woman, after all.
Go squander your soul in busyness and scheming. — Persephone
The Mysteries holds a cautionary message against moving away from one’s integrity by bowing desperately to social pressures and using deceptive aims. It reminds us that the refusal to properly honor the cyclical and the regenerative perspective of life can lead to ruin. And thus, societies rise and fall all over again.