Content Warning: The source material features violence, rape, suicide, and sexual practices that may be disturbing to some readers.

Hippolytus, the son of the Athenian king Theseus and an Amazon woman, lovingly invokes the natural world around Athens. He is preparing to go hunting and prays to his patron goddess Diana (the Roman version of the Greek goddess Artemis) to give him success.

Hippolytus announces his departure, declaring that he is “called to the woods” (82). Phaedra, Theseus’s wife, now enters. She addresses Crete, her home before she came to Athens to marry Theseus. Her husband has disappeared, Phaedra complains. He has descended to the Underworld to help his friend Pirithous carry off Proserpina, the goddess of the dead.

Phaedra is also suffering because of “another deeper source of trouble” (99). This is understood to be Phaedra’s desire for her stepson Hippolytus. Phaedra finds that she can no longer carry out her normal duties, and even longs to spend her days with the animals in the forest. She remembers her mother, Pasiphae, who fell in love with a prize bull that belonged to her husband, Minos. Consummating this forbidden love, Pasiphae bore the terrible Minotaur, a monster that was half-man and half-bull.