page_title: River Lethe in popular culture
section_title: Plays
hierarchical_section_title: River Lethe in popular culture / Plays
caption_attribution_description: English: Eurydice (Lynne Lee) finds her father (Mark Surya) lying unconscious after he has dipped himself in the Lethe for a second time, in a Shimer College performance of Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice in April 2013. Surrounding the father and daughter are the three stones: Big Stone, Small Stone, and Loud Stone. The performance was held in the Cinderella Lounge at Shimer, on the second floor of the building at 3424 S. State St. in Chicago.
context_page_description: In Classical Greek, Lethe literally means "forgetfulness" or "concealment" and is related to the Greek word for "truth": a-lethe-ia, meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment". The River Lethe in Greek Mythology has appeared many times in popular culture since the times of ancient Greece.
context_section_description: In William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, Antony, on seeing the murderers' hands red with Caesar's blood, observes: 
  "Here didst thou fall; and here thy hunters stand,/Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson'd in thy Lethe" (III.i.215).
  
   Additionally, the character of Sebastian refers to Lethe in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night:
   "Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep; If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!" (IV.ii.61).
  
  In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Hamlet's father's Ghost says to the prince,
   "I find thee apt, And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, Wouldst thou not stir in this." (Act 1, scene V).
   
  In Antony and Cleopatra, Sextus Pompey talks of Antony's supposed military inertia, hoping that 
  "Epicurean cooks / Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite, / That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour / Even till a Lethe'd dullness-" (II.i.24-27).
  In John Webster's play The White Devil, the duke Brachiano in his death throes says to Vittoria, whose husband he conspired to murder, along with his own wife:
  Brac. I have drunk Lethe. Vittoria? / My dearest happiness? Vittoria? (IV.ii.129-30)
  
  In Samuel Beckett's radio play Embers, the main character Henry describes conversing with his dead wife: 
  "that's what hell will be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead".
  In Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, the river Lethe is a central theme of the play. All the shades must drink from Lethe and become like stones, speaking in their inaudible language and forgetting everything of the world.
  Metastasio's opera libretto Artaserse references the River Lethe in one of Artabano's arias, Su le sponde del torbido Lete, originally set to music for a tenor voice by Leonardo Vinci. In the aria, Artabano sings of the recently murdered Serse as waiting for revenge on the banks of the turbid Lethe.
  In Haydn's opera Orlando Paladino, Orlando is so consumed by his unrequited love for Angelica that it drives him to insanity and in order to rid him of his insanity, and the sorceress Alcina sends him to the underworld and orders Caronte to bathe him in the waters of the River Lethe to make him forget about Angelica and regain his sanity.
  In Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, the character John Styx drinks the waters of Lethe in a deliberate attempt to forget things. His forgetfulness is a significant factor in the plot of the last act.
  In the musical Jasper in Deadland, a character representing Hades named Mr. Lethe tries to enlist the help of Jasper to get water from the river to the living world so people will forget about their lives.
caption: Eurydice's dead father falls unconscious after dipping himself in the Lethe, in a performance of Ruhl's Eurydice at Shimer College.
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