SOURCE: Hodge, James L. “Rhodope: By Any Other Name.” MLN 79, no. 4 (October 1964): 435-39.

In the following essay, Hodge provides an interpretation of Gyges and His Ring based on the name of the protagonist of the drama, Rhodope.

The question, “What's in a name?” may offer a new insight into the heroine of Friedrich Hebbel's drama, Gyges und sein Ring. Numerous interpretations of Rhodope—psychological, symbolic and other—have been advanced. Rhodope has been analyzed individually and as an integral part of the drama. She has been said to express the central message of the drama: the modesty of woman. She has been described as passionless and indestructibly virginal. She has been seen as representing the past and tradition, and she has also been seen as timeless, representing neither past, present nor future. Her death has been explained psychologically as a reaction to the dehumanizing execution of Kandaules, and...