The Love of the Nightingale

The Love of the Nightingale is a play by Timberlake Wertenbaker, commissioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company and first performed in 1988 at The Other Place, Straford. It is an adaptation of the Ancient Greek legend of the rape of Philomela by her brother-in-law Tereus, and the gruesome revenge undertaken by Philomela and her sister Procne. The play takes a feminist look at the ancient tale.

The King of Athens, Pandion I, fights a war with Thebes over land. The King of Thrace, Tereus, helps out Pandion, and in return, Pandion allows Tereus to marry Procne, one of his two daughters. Procne obeys reluctantly. She is not attracted to her taciturn soldier of a husband, and she dreads being parted from her beloved and spirited sister Philomele. When she reaches Thrace, she struggles to adjust to life, as the women assigned to her have none of the cultural interests she has grown up with in Athens. She asks Tereus to return to Athens and bring her sister, Philomele, to come and see her, as she is the only one who understands her.

Tereus travels to Athens and takes Philomele on his ship. From an early stage, there are danger signals that Tereus is sexually attracted to his sister-in-law. Though Philomele herself is initially unaware of his interest, both her older servant and chaperone Niobe and the sailors can see the warning signs. After a while, Tereus starts finding ways to slow down their journey, to give him more time to try to seduce Philomele. As she finally realizes his intentions, she desperately reaches out to the Captain of the ship, a quiet, gentle man, in hopes of escape. But when Tereus finds them together, he angrily kills the Captain. In order to make her weak and vulnerable, Tereus now informs Philomele untruthfully that Procne has died during his absence. When Philomele continues to resist his advances, he rapes her. Later, due to her determination to rebel and inform her sister, who she has worked out by now is not dead, he cuts out her tongue.

On his return home, Tereus informs Procne that Philomele was drowned on the journey. Five years pass.

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