Chapter 15

For thee, my Queen, this garland have I twinedOf blossoms from that meadow virginal,Where neither shepherd dares to graze his flock,Nor hath the scythe made entry: yet the beeDoth haunt the mead, that voyager of spring,’Mid Nature’s shyest charm of stream and verdure.There may no base man enter; only he,Who, taught by instinct, uninstructed else,Hath taken Virtue for his star of life,May pluck the flow’rets of that pleasance pure.Come, Queen belovèd, for thy shining hairAccept this wreath from hands of innocence!To me alone of all mankind is givenConverse to hold and company with thee,Hearing thy voice, although thy face be hid.To the end of life, as now, may I be thine![468]

For thee, my Queen, this garland have I twined

Of blossoms from that meadow virginal,

Where neither shepherd dares to graze his flock,

Nor hath the scythe made entry: yet the bee

Doth haunt the mead, that voyager of spring,

’Mid Nature’s shyest charm of stream and verdure.

There may no base man enter; only he,

Who, taught by instinct, uninstructed else,

Hath taken Virtue for his star of life,

May pluck the flow’rets of that pleasance pure.

Come, Queen belovèd, for thy shining hair

Accept this wreath from hands of innocence!

To me alone of all mankind is given

Converse to hold and company with thee,

Hearing thy voice, although thy face be hid.

To the end of life, as now, may I be thine![468]

This passion for natural beauty as the background of emotional life recurs throughout. The Trœzenian women as they enter tell of their informant—not “someone talking near the place where men play draughts,” as in theMedea, but a woman in a picture:—

Where waters leap,Waters that flow (men say) from the far-off western sea,Down the rock-face,And gush from the steepTo a deep placeWhere pitchers may dip far down—thence hath come a message to me.[469]

Where waters leap,

Waters that flow (men say) from the far-off western sea,

Down the rock-face,

And gush from the steep

To a deep place

Where pitchers may dip far down—thence hath come a message to me.[469]

Phædra in her delirium sees visions of unfettered life “beneath the poplars, amid the deep grass,” she fancies herself cheering on the hunting hounds through the pine-glades, and yearns to feel in her grasp “the iron-pointed shaft”—words to which we come back with deeper pain when in almost the same language Hippolytus, now himself delirious, longs to let out his tortured life with a “two-edged spear”.[470]When she enters the house to seek death, the chorus pour forth their yearning for escape from the sin and sorrow of this life to romantic regions where all is grace and unstained peace:—[471]

In yon precipice-face might I hide me from sorrow,And God, in his love, of the air make me free!Ah, to speed with the sea-gulls—alight on the morrowWhere Eridanus mingles his waves with the sea!There for ever the sisters of Phaethon languish,For grief of his fate bowing hush’d o’er the stream;Like eyes in the gloaming, the tears of their anguishUp through the dark water as amber-drops gleam.Or far let me wing to the fäery beachesWhere the Maids of the Sunset ’neath apple-boughs dance,And the Lord of the Waters his last purple reachesHath closed to the mariner’s restless advance;Where from Atlas the sky arches down to the streamingOf the sea, and the spring of Eternity flowsWhere the mansion of Zeus on earth’s bosom is dreaming’Mid life like a lily and bliss like a rose.

In yon precipice-face might I hide me from sorrow,

And God, in his love, of the air make me free!

Ah, to speed with the sea-gulls—alight on the morrow

Where Eridanus mingles his waves with the sea!

There for ever the sisters of Phaethon languish,

For grief of his fate bowing hush’d o’er the stream;

Like eyes in the gloaming, the tears of their anguish

Up through the dark water as amber-drops gleam.

Or far let me wing to the fäery beaches

Where the Maids of the Sunset ’neath apple-boughs dance,

And the Lord of the Waters his last purple reaches

Hath closed to the mariner’s restless advance;

Where from Atlas the sky arches down to the streaming

Of the sea, and the spring of Eternity flows

Where the mansion of Zeus on earth’s bosom is dreaming

’Mid life like a lily and bliss like a rose.

Theseus himself expresses this sense of the fragile beauty of life in lines[472]which recall the unearthly charm of Sophocles:—

ὄρνις γὰρ ὥς τις ἐκ χερῶν ἄφαντος εἶ,πήδημ’ ἐς Αἵδου κραιπνὸν ὁρμήσασά μοι.

ὄρνις γὰρ ὥς τις ἐκ χερῶν ἄφαντος εἶ,

πήδημ’ ἐς Αἵδου κραιπνὸν ὁρμήσασά μοι.

Even Artemis the unloving can tell of life’s charm surviving death itself in some wise, an immortality of beautiful remembrance.[473]Throughout, the poet has used all his power to invest the theme with loveliness of phrasing. Elsewhere, skilful as his writing is, he often gives us what is practically prose; theHippolytusis his nearest approach to the manner of Sophocles.

Nor is the likeness confined to verbal expression. The theology is, or claims to be, the theology of Sophocles. The traditional Olympians are accepted as persons, with the powers and purposes which current belief attributed to them. This is the view which Sophocles accepts and expounds. Euripides who certainly did not accept it, here expounds it—in his own way and with deadly results. Many times Euripides questions the very existence of these deities, but now he sees fit to accept them for a moment, and depicts life as lived under such rulers. Men and women can feel and recreate the beauty of this world, but these gods time and again dash all into pitiful fragments. “The world is ruled by stupid fiends, who spend eternity thwarting one another. Do we dwell in a universe or a grinning chaos?”

Is this all? Very far from it. Almost all the action of the tragedy could be accounted for—had we not this disconcerting divine explanation—on purely “human” lines, though what “human” means is, as the poet plainly perceives, no less difficult a question than that of theology. But at least the sorrows of Trœzen scarcely need the banefulpersonsof Olympus. For the three sufferers are, after all, not blameless. They share that casual sinfulness—for we cannot avoid the use of question-begging words—which is the lot of man. Hippolytus errs (in Greek eyes) by his complete aversion from sexual passion; he errs in all eyes by the arrogance with which he proclaims it. His famous speech[474]is too long for a spontaneous burst ofresentment; it becomes a frigid piece of self-glorification. It is precisely this arrogance which stings Phædra to the thought of revenge.[475]Theseus, in spite of the pathetic blindness with which he imputes[476]his misery to some ancestor’s sin, is the original cause of it. Hippolytus is the offspring of his youthful incontinence.[477]Then, when he has “settled down,” it is precisely his respectable marriage which brings the consequence of his early amour to fruition; his son and his young wife are of nearly the same age. As for Phædra herself, the passion which she feels need not be attributed to a personal goddess. Lawlessness is in her veins; her mother and sister have both sinned:[478]Crete, “the Isle of Awful Love,”[479]brands its name upon line after line of the play. For this predisposition to unchastity many of Euripides’ contemporaries, as of our own, would have blamed her heartily. The poet himself does not, as his splendidly sympathetic treatment of her shows; but neither does he feel any need to lay the blame upon Aphrodite. Phædra’s offence, her contribution to disaster, lies in her early toying with her passion, when she founded a shrine of the love-goddess in Hippolytus’ name;[480]in her accompanying Theseus (apparently without a struggle) to Trœzen and the society of the prince; in her determination to punish Hippolytus for his bitter pride.

To banish “the gods” and attribute sin to “heredity,” is that not merely to substitute one word for another? Yes, but the poet herein has his eye fixed on formal theology. Well aware that the glib invocation of “heredity” or “environment” is no more conclusive than “the will of the gods,” he yet insists that sin is a matter of psychology. We must study human nature if we mean to understand and conquer sin. If we regardAphrodite or Artemis aspersonsexternal to ourselves and of superhuman power we lose all hope of moral improvement in our own hearts. But if we accept these devastating powers as forces in human nature, we may hope by study and self-discipline in some degree to control them.

Thus the drama is full of subtly wise psychology: it is an interesting comment on much that has been written about “realist” play-writing that theHippolytus, which contains some of the most romantic poetry in Greek literature, is also as sincere and profound in characterization as the work of Ibsen himself. Theseus and his son we have already considered; Phædra and her nurse require deeper study. The latter is a masterpiece among the “minor” characters of Euripides. Her tenderness for the young queen and passionate desire at all costs to win her peace; the dignity which life and its contemplation can give even to coarse-fibred[481]natures; her feeling for the deepest pathos of life—these things constitute a great dramatic figure. It is to her that the poet gives his most poignant expression of that mingled pain and beauty which we discussed a moment ago:—

But if any far-off state there be,Dearer than life to mortality;The hand of the Dark hath hold thereof,And mist is under and mist above,And so we are sick for life and clingOn earth to this nameless and shining thing.For other life is a fountain sealed,And the deeps below us are unrevealed,And we drift on legends for ever![482]

But if any far-off state there be,

Dearer than life to mortality;

The hand of the Dark hath hold thereof,

And mist is under and mist above,

And so we are sick for life and cling

On earth to this nameless and shining thing.

For other life is a fountain sealed,

And the deeps below us are unrevealed,

And we drift on legends for ever![482]

She, too, it is who in words[483]of almost equal beauty urges Phædra to yield to her passion:—

Thy love—why marvel thereat? ’Tis the taleOf many. Wouldst thou lose thy life for love?Good sooth! A guerdon strange, if lovers nowAnd evermore must meet such penalty!Who shall withstand the Cyprian’s rising flood?Yield to her spell: she comes in gentleness;Make high thy pride and stand on niceties,She flings thee pell-mell into ignominy.Amid the sky she walks, amid the surgeOf the sea-billows. All things live from her.The seed is hers and hers the yearning throeWhence spring we all that tread the ways of earthAsk them that con the half-forgotten seersOf elder time, and serve the Muse themselves.They knew how Zeus once pined for Semele,How for love’s sake the Goddess of the DawnStooped from her radiant sphere to CephalusAnd stole him to the sky. Yet these abideIn Heaven, nor shun the converse of the gods,Bowing, belike, to conquering circumstance.And wilt notthou? Nay, if this law thou spurnest,Thy sire, when he begat thee, should have writSome compact countersigned by gods unknown!

Thy love—why marvel thereat? ’Tis the tale

Of many. Wouldst thou lose thy life for love?

Good sooth! A guerdon strange, if lovers now

And evermore must meet such penalty!

Who shall withstand the Cyprian’s rising flood?

Yield to her spell: she comes in gentleness;

Make high thy pride and stand on niceties,

She flings thee pell-mell into ignominy.

Amid the sky she walks, amid the surge

Of the sea-billows. All things live from her.

The seed is hers and hers the yearning throe

Whence spring we all that tread the ways of earth

Ask them that con the half-forgotten seers

Of elder time, and serve the Muse themselves.

They knew how Zeus once pined for Semele,

How for love’s sake the Goddess of the Dawn

Stooped from her radiant sphere to Cephalus

And stole him to the sky. Yet these abide

In Heaven, nor shun the converse of the gods,

Bowing, belike, to conquering circumstance.

And wilt notthou? Nay, if this law thou spurnest,

Thy sire, when he begat thee, should have writ

Some compact countersigned by gods unknown!

The nurse makes moral weakness into a very religion,[484]and Phædra’s heart, one would suppose, is finally broken when, to this appeal that the gods themselves are against her, is added proof that man is utterly unable to understand. “If thy life had not been in such danger,” says the nurse, “and thou hadsthappened to be a chaste woman, I should not thus lead thee on,”[485]and again: “Thy duty, to be sure, forbids sin; but, as things are, be advised by me”.[486]This hideous purring is perhaps Phædra’s bitterest shame. No one can understand, except the prince who seems so utterly remote. Hippolytus, after her death, can say[487]

Unchaste in passion, chaste in soul was she;Me hath my passionless purity dishonoured.

Unchaste in passion, chaste in soul was she;

Me hath my passionless purity dishonoured.

What does Phædra herself say? Is there any reply to the dreadful eloquence of her old attendant? There is only one reply conceivable, and she offers it: “Whatever gods may do, or men think, I must so act as to be able to respect myself”.[488]Euripides insists that the centreof ethics lies in man himself. For Phædra there is no soul on which she can rely but her own; the conflict must be fought out within herself. The great speech[489]in which she tells her spiritual history to the chorus without any reserve or faltering, is the kernel of the tragedy. We realize how empty of all comfort life can be for those who resolutely reject outworn creeds and turn to seek for a better. Here is no thought, no hint, of a saviour; the puny soul must struggle alone with an uncomprehended universe. Æschylus had found a saviour in Zeus;[490]Euripides can see no comfort in gods who are less virtuous than men. In this speech, too, we note for the first time a portrayal of moral temptation and a clear conception of conscience. Sophocles understands well how duty can brace the soul to heroic life or death, but for him the sanction of duty lies in the will of external deities. For Euripides conscience is sufficient as a rule of conduct.

Phædra is a masterpiece of characterization. Whatever we are to guess of the earlier[491]picture, she is here a noble and spirited woman, who cannot help her instincts but who can and will dispute their power over her life. She is, of course, not perfect—if she were she would be no fit subject for drama—and the manner in which Euripides has caused the action to hinge precisely upon her weaknesses, without lessening our respect and affection, is one of the most improving studies provided by dramatic art. The little crevices of circumstance by which wrong-doing—the destruction of Hippolytus—creeps into her soul are beautifully indicated. She is wasted by fasting,[492]a state conducive to keener perception and weaker will. She has been brought—without any attempt on her part, so surely she may indulge in the disastrous joy[493]—from Athens to the little town where the prince lives. Her husband, as it chances,[494]is fromhome and her life is left empty for “long, long thoughts”.[495]When she dwells upon her passion the recollection of her mother’s and her sister’s fate half attracts while it half repels.[496]Her passionate nature insists on revealing some part of her distress to the keen eyes of the nurse, who forthwith joins the claims of old affection[497]to this new secret pain. So it is that she is half-conquered by what she will not do:—

Nay, in God’s name, forbear! Thy words are vileBut wise withal. Love in my soul too wellHath mined his way. Urge sin thus winninglyAnd passion sweeps my fears into the gulf.[498]

Nay, in God’s name, forbear! Thy words are vile

But wise withal. Love in my soul too well

Hath mined his way. Urge sin thus winningly

And passion sweeps my fears into the gulf.[498]

But the nurse will not forbear, and the comforting promise of a charm which shall “still this disease,”[499]as Phædra perhaps half-suspects,[500]is an undertaking to win Hippolytus. The dread strain of illness, passion, and shame have turned the woman for a moment into a nervous child.[501]Thus it comes about that without disgrace, without forfeiture of her conscience, Phædra moves towards the dread moment[502]at which she hears the outcry of Hippolytus. Then after all the anguish, she listens to his intolerable endless speech! Such is the situation in which murder is conceived. In this way Hippolytus’ σωφροσύνη has certainly been his undoing.[503]

We are told[504]that this play is a second version of the theme, and that it was calledThe Crowned Hippolytus(from the lovely address to Artemis) to distinguish it from the first, calledThe Veiled Hippolytus. This version (now lost) is said to have contained “improprieties”which the poet afterwards removed. This refers to the attitude of Phædra, who showed less reserve in her passion than in the later play. She invoked the moon-goddess, perhaps to aid her in winning Hippolytus, and boldly pointed to the infidelities of Theseus as an excuse for her own passion.[505]The reproaches[506]which Aristophanes lays upon Phædra refer perhaps only to this earlier version, but his most famous gibe[507]is upon a line[508]of our text,

ἡ γλῶσσ’ ὀμώμοχ’, ἡ δὲ φρὴν ἀνώμοτος,

“My tongue hath sworn; my soul abides unsworn.” This seems to give us the measure of the comic poet’s criticism; he blames Euripides for this sentiment, and yet Hippolytus even in his most desperate trouble will not clear himself by breaking his oath. One cannot, however, refrain from pointing out that even if he had broken it, Theseus would not have believed him,[509]and that Hippolytus realizes this.[510]

TheHecuba(Ἑκάβη) is the next play in order of date; it was performed about 425B.C.[511]This tragedy was enormously popular throughout antiquity, as the great volume of the scholia proves. It was one of the three plays—the others werePhœnissæandOrestes—used as an Euripidean reading-book in the Byzantine schools.

The scene is laid in Thrace, where the Greeks are encamped after the fall of Troy; the background is a tent wherein captive Trojan women are quartered. The ghost of Polydorus, Priam’s youngest son, tells how he has been murdered by the Thracian king, Polymestor; he has appeared in a dream to his mother Hecuba. On his departure, Hecuba enters, and soon learns that herdaughter Polyxena is to be sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles. Odysseus comes to fetch the maiden, who welcomes death as a relief from slavery. Soon Talthybius enters, summoning Hecuba to bury Polyxena, whose noble death has filled the Greeks with admiration. Hecuba sends a woman to fetch sea-water for the obsequies, and this messenger returns with the body of Polydorus. Hecuba exclaims that the murderer is Polymestor: her dream has told her. Agamemnon enters, and she induces him to connive at her taking vengeance upon the Thracian, his ally. Next she sends for Polymestor and his children, and (after a beautiful ode on the last hours of Troy), they arrive. Polymestor is induced to go with his little sons within the tent, where they are slaughtered and he himself blinded. His cries bring back Agamemnon, who rejects the pleas of Polymestor. The Thracian, in his despair, prophesies the strange end both of Agamemnon and of Hecuba. He is dragged away, and the drama ends with preparations for the voyage to Greece.

This tragedy, let it be said plainly, is on the whole poor and uninteresting.[512]It has been frequently noted, for example, that the plot is “episodic,” that it falls into two divisions, the story of Polyxena and the vengeance upon Polymestor, which are really two small dramaswith no genuine connexion. To this it has been replied that the spiritual history of Hecuba supplies unity to the whole; that these episodes bring out her development from a victim into a fiend.[513]But this is scarcely satisfactory. For the two parts are developed so completely along their several lines, they have so little dependence upon one another, that they could stand apart; and that is the real test. Further, the poet himself is uneasy. He is anxious to make some sort of connexion, but it is curiously adventitious. His device, that the corpse of Polydorus is discovered by the woman sent for water wherewith to bathe the body of Polyxena, has won too high praise. An attempt to strengthen it, or rather to draw attention to its neatness, is supplied in the conversation between Hecuba and Agamemnon:[514]“How did he die?” “By the hands of his Thracian host.” ... “Who brought his body hither?” ... “This woman. She found it upon the sea-shore.” “Was she looking for it, or busied with some other task?” The last question is absurd; Agamemnon has no reason to ask it. Other little hooks,[515]less obtrusive than this, are provided here and there to connect the two parts. If the play were an unity they would not be needed.

Again, the favourite charge against Euripides, that he delights in quasi-judicial disputes, is brought in here also. The accusation is generally unfair. Critics have been so eager to condemn this poet that they forget the trial scene of theEumenides, the altercation between Œdipus and Creon in theŒdipus at Colonusand various other passages in the earlier tragedians. If a dispute occurs at all, it is in accordance with the genius of Greek tragedy to set it out in formally opposed speeches. One might as well complain of Hamlet’s soliloquies. But in theHecubathere is more than this. The queen has a gusto not merely for eloquent appeals or invective, but for self-conscious rhetoric, “Filled withlament, not destitute of tears,”[516]is abominable. One is not surprised to learn that the queen is interested in professional teachers of rhetoric,[517]and one remembers that Gorgias, the greatest of them, paid his first visit to Athens a year or two[518]before this play was produced.

The whole piece in its tone and method is far below the best of Euripides’ work. Certain things are undoubtedly excellent—the famous chorus[519]already mentioned, and above all the speech[520]of Polyxena and the narrative of her death.[521]The whole work has not enough calibre. The pathos has no subtlety; the characterization is machine-made; the style, though clear and even elegant—one must allow that the first speech[522]of Polymestor, as a piece of conversational Greek, is unobtrusively perfect—has remarkably few of those feats[523]of idiom which delight us elsewhere.

Polyxena is charming, but a slight sketch only compared with the Medea and the Phædra who have preceded her. Agamemnon the cautious prince, Odysseus the opportunist, Polymestor the brutally wicked barbarian, are characters whom dozens of Euripides’ contemporaries could have produced with ease. Talthybius the herald, still more shadowy, claims remembrance by his naïve conceit.[524]Hecuba herself is hardly better. True, the poet has shown admirably how she progresses from weakness to frightful strength under the pressure of injustice, but without any very sympathetic psychology we fall short of genuine tragedy and touch only melodrama. And she is more than a little grotesque. Her strange passion for rhetorical studies we have already noted.She has, moreover, a taste for inopportune theorizing,[525]even concerning theology.[526]Her griefs themselves command our respect, and she can in one or two flashes of inspiration speak of them in language[527]not unworthy of Shakespeare himself; but there is too much repetition of merely melancholy adjectives, and though there should be only one emotion in us towards a woman who has lost all her children, we can hardly retain it when she reminds us that they were fifty in number.[528]

The apparition of the murdered Polydorus is an interesting element in the action. First, we view the early part of the drama with greater sympathy for the queen, knowing as we do the new horror which awaits her. Secondly, it is necessary that Hecuba should know how Polydorus died. Though but vaguely affected by the vision at first,[529]when parts of it are fulfilled, she remembers and believes definitely in the rest, and knows that Polymestor is the murderer.[530]

TheAndromache(Ἀνδρομάχη) is perhaps the next[531]extant play in the order of time. It was not originally brought out at Athens.[532]

The action takes place before the house of Neoptolemus, prince of Phthia in Thessaly; at one side of the orchestra is the shrine of Thetis. Andromache delivers the prologue. After the fall of Troy she became the prize of Neoptolemus to whom she has borne a son, Molottus. Later the prince married Hermione, daughter of the Spartan king Menelaus. Andromache has hidden the child and herself taken sanctuary in the shrine of Thetis; the boy’s father is from home, having gone toDelphi to ask Apollo’s pardon for demanding reparation for Achilles’ death. Andromache now sends a fellow-slave to ask the aid of Peleus, king of Phthia and her master’s grandfather. Soon she is joined by the chorus, a company of Phthian women who sympathize but urge submission. Hermione enters, and after a spiteful altercation, in which she tries in vain to make the captive leave her sanctuary, departs with threats. Menelaus enters, leading Molottus; he offers Andromache her choice: will she submit to death, or see the boy slain? Andromache gives herself up, whereupon Menelaus announces that, while she must die, Molottus lies at the mercy of Hermione. By this treachery Andromache is goaded into the most bitter invective to be found in Euripides. The chorus dwell upon the folly of domestic irregularities such as those of Neoptolemus. Next Menelaus leads forth Andromache and Molottus for death, when Peleus hurries in and releases them. After a violent quarrel Menelaus throws up his daughter’s cause and departs. Peleus leads the captives away while the chorus sing his youthful exploits. From the palace comes Hermione’s nurse: deserted by her father and dreading her husband’s vengeance the princess is seeking to destroy herself. Next moment Hermione rushes out in distraction and the nurse is attempting to calm her when Orestes enters, explaining that he has called to inquire after his cousin Hermione. She begs him to take her away to Menelaus before her husband returns. Orestes agrees, reminding her that she has in the past been betrothed to him; now Neoptolemus shall pay for his insults by death at Delphi. After their departure the chorus sing of the gods who built but abandoned Troy, and of Orestes’ vengeance upon Clytæmnestra. Peleus returns, having heard of Hermione’s flight. In a moment arrives a messenger who tells how Neoptolemus has been murdered by Delphians at the instigation of Orestes. The body is borne in, and Peleus laments over it until interrupted by the goddess Thetis, his bride of long ago. She comforts him with a promise of immortality. Andromache is tomarry Helenus, king of Molossia,[533]and her son is to be ancestor of a dynasty in that land.

Certain remarkable difficulties in the plot must be faced.

First is the breakdown of Menelaus in the presence of Peleus. The first half of the play has exhibited his unswerving resolve to destroy Andromache and her child. Every conceivable argument save one has been addressed to him in vain. That one argument is physical compulsion, and Peleus certainly does not offer it.[534]After a storm of mutual abuse the Spartan withdraws from the whole situation, muttering an excuse which is scarcely meant to be taken seriously: he is in a hurry to chastise an unfriendly state.[535]He goes just far enough to embitter his enemies to the utmost and not far enough to redeem his threats; and he retires without a word to his daughter after committing her to a deeply dangerous project. Menelaus has faults, but crass stupidity is not one of them; on the contrary he is reviled as the type of base cunning. Why, then, does he act with such utter futility at a crisis which anyone could have foreseen?

In the second place, when was Neoptolemus murdered? Orestes declares that the prince will be slain at Delphi, and at once departs with Hermione. After a choric song Peleus comes back, and almost at once receives the news of his grandson’s death. When Orestes utters his prophecy the messenger from Delphi can hardly be more than a mile from the house. Has he already committed the murder as a prelude to an innocent and irrelevant pilgrimage to Dodona? And, if so, why does he reveal, or rather not reveal, thefact? And why has he risked himself in Phthia when the news of his crime may at any moment be revealed?[536]

Thirdly, there is a grave difficulty in the structure, independent of Menelaus’ conduct and the dating of Orestes’ crime. The play seems to fall into two halves with but a slight connexion—the plight of Andromache and the woes of Neoptolemus’ house.

The late Dr. Verrall’s theory[537]of the play explains all these things together. Menelaus has come to see that it is to his interest that his daughter should be the wife of the Argive rather than of the Phthiote prince. He and Orestes therefore concoct a plan to this end. Two things must be achieved: Neoptolemus must be removed, and Hermione, passionately as she loves her lord, must be induced to accept his assassin. The cunning of Menelaus fastens upon the failings of his son-in-law as the path to success. First, he has offended the Delphians, and thus Orestes finds it easy to compass his death. Second, he has caused bitterness in his own house by his connexion with Andromache. Menelaus, while Orestes is at Delphi, urges Hermione into action which her jealousy approves but which her intellect (when it is allowed to speak) must and does condemn. The Spartan has no intention of killing the captives, but he sees to it that Hermione is, in the eyes of Peleus and his subjects, irretrievably committed to such an intention, which will beyond doubt incense Neoptolemus most bitterly—or would, were he still alive as Hermione supposes. Then, when she has committed herself, he calmly bows to the outburst of Peleus and leaves her ready to snatch at anyhope in her hysterical despair. At this moment, carefully awaited by the plotters, Orestes appears. He has already murdered Neoptolemus, and is now ready to take Hermione away. But this is not enough. She must appear to come by her own suggestion, and it must appear that she has known at the moment of her elopement what has happened at Delphi. As she hurries from the scene he utters, apparently in consolation of her (though really she is out of hearing), so that it may lodge in the minds of the chorus, a prophecy of Neoptolemus’ fate. Later, she is to be reminded by her father and her new suitor how completely she is involved in suspicion of complicity. Thus she will be thrown into the arms of Orestes, and whatever blame there is will be laid upon Delphi.[538]

This view should in its essentials be adopted. Every dramatist commits faults; but these apparent faults in theAndromacheprove too much. They tend to show not that Euripides is here inferior in construction and psychology to Sophocles, but that he is insane. Few readers could compose a speech like that of Andromache beginning ὦ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποισιν ἔχθιστοι βροτῶν, or like the messenger’s narrative. But we could all manage the exit of Menelaus better. There is one great general objection to Verrall’s theory. Is it not much too subtle? If readers have always missed the point, would not spectators do so even more certainly? Verrall, in answer, points to a passage in the GreekArgument: τὸ δὲ δρᾶμα τῶν δευτέρων, which he takes to mean “this play is one of the sequels”.[539]He believes that the audience had a sufficient knowledge of the earlier part of the story to follow theAndromachewith no perplexity. Whether this knowledge was given by an earlier play of Euripides is not of course certain, but may be regarded as likely.

We next note a feature of equal importance—the atmosphere. Every reader observes strange anachronismsof sentiment and allusion—Hermione’s outburst[540]against women who destroy the confidence between husband and wife, Peleus’ comments on Lacedæmonian society,[541]and the like, which have no relevance to the “Homeric age” of the Trojan war. But the whole tone of the play is unheroic; even if these special features were removed it would remain quite unlike a Sophoclean drama. Euripides has, in fact, written a play about his own generation with a definite purpose. He takes stories from myths as the foundation of his plays, but his interest is in his own time. In spite of “thy mother Helen” and “the hapless town of the Phrygians,” his work concerns essentially fifth-century Athenians. Hence the almost complete absence of poetic colour, which is only found in the conventional lyrics and the goddess of the epilogue, who is no more in tune with the rest of the piece than a fairy-queen would be at the close ofA Doll’s House. His chief concern is the danger to family life involved in the practice of slave-holding. Neoptolemus loses his life, and Hermione consents to the wreck of her own happiness, simply because of Andromache’s position in the home. She is the fulcrum which the astute villains employ; without her Hermione would never have been manageable.

In harmony with this realistic spirit is the character-drawing. None of the personages is of heroic stature, but all are amazingly real, however disagreeable. The two conspirators, Menelaus and Orestes, of course, do not reveal their natures plainly. The latter, as far as this incident alone is concerned, might strike one as almost featureless; but there cling to him significant little fragments from the earlier history of Hermione. A sinister faithfulness actuates him. In spite of his repulse he has not forgotten his affection for Hermione, not even her last words of renunciation.[542]Nor has he ceased tobrood on the insults of Neoptolemus—perhaps nothing in the play is more effective than the gloomy triumph with which he flings back the hated word: “and the matricide shall teach thee”.... Menelaus, as a study in successful villainy combined with the domestic virtues, is quite perfect in his kind;ces pères de famille sont capables de tout. But it is upon the three victims, Hermione, Andromache, and Peleus, that the poet has lavished his skill most notably. Each has precisely the virtues and the failings which are fit to make them answer with the precision of machinery to each string pulled by the Spartan diplomatist. Peleus may be relied upon to provide Menelaus with an excuse for retiring when he wishes, and to utter wild language which can be used to prove that he is responsible for Hermione’s flight.[543]Andromache, earning and receiving our pity for her past woes and her present anguish, yet alienates us by her arrogance and a certain metallic brutality in repartee and invective which again are invaluable to the men whose puppet she is. That she should not cower before Hermione or her father is natural, but that is not the point; her trampling tactlessness[544]is a positive disease. She is indeed (except in her love for Molottus) as callous as Menelaus. This is a point of absolutely fundamental import. That interview early in the play, which might have been priceless to both women, ends only in the hopeless embitterment of Hermione. The latter is the best-drawn character of all. Swayed by strong primitive impulses, jealousy and fear, without any balance of mind or emotion, curiously liable to accept the domination of a stronger personality, she is fatally suited to the machinations of her father. When she first appears, it is fairly plain that she has come to suggest a compromise to Andromache.[545]What she wishes is not blood, but servility. Spiteful and vulgar, she cannot forgive the captive for the effortless dignity which she has inherited from Trojankings. Hers is no vision of a murdered rival: how petty yet how horribly natural it is—she wishes to see Andromache scrubbing the floor![546]But vulgar and spiteful as she is, the princess can be wrought upon, as the later part of the action shows, and if only to self-respect Andromache had added tact and sympathy Hermione would have been her passionate friend before thirty lines had been spoken. The pathos of the scene lies above all in the misunderstanding which pits the two women against one another, where they should have combined against the callous craft which was using them both for the ends of politics.

The deities whom we find in this play need detain us only a moment. Thetis is no more than sweetening for the popular taste. Soothing and beautiful as are her consolations to the aged sufferer, such a personage has no real concern with a drama so utterly secular. As for Apollo, it is here plainer than usual that his name is nothing but a convenient short term for the great priestly organization at Delphi. That there is a genuine divine person who has aided Orestes and punished Neoptolemus we cannot believe. The only touch of religious awe to be found lies in the messenger’s report. When the assassins are fleeing before their courageous victim, “from the midst of the shrine some one raised an awful voice whereat the hair stood up, and rallied the host again to fight”.[547]It is this same speaker, however, who thus sums up his account of the whole event: “And thus hath he that gives oracles to others, he who for all mankind is the judge of righteousness, thus hath he entreated the son of Achilles who offered him amends. Like a man that is base hath he remembered an ancient grudge. How, then, can he be wise?” To the simple Thessalian confronted for the first timewith doubts of Olympian justice, such phrasing is natural. For Euripides the conclusion is that Apollo does not exist at all. “Apollo” does not take vengeance upon the blasphemer at the time of his offence, but waits unaccountably till his second visit, when he comes to make amends and when by an accident, fortunate for the god, a conspiracy of villainous men happens to make his enemy their victim.[548]

In keeping with all this is the literary tone of the work. The lyrics are of little interest to a reader, though one[549]of them markedly sums up the situation and forces home the moral. For the rest, the dialogue is utterly unheroic and unpoetical but splendidly vigorous, terse, and idiomatic; in this respect theAndromacheis equal to the best work of Euripides. Could anything of its kind be more perfect than the first speech of Hermione[550]—this mixture of pathetic heart-hunger, of childish snobbery and petulance, this terribly familiar instinct to cast in the teeth of the unfortunate precisely those things for which one formerly envied them, these scraps of ludicrously inaccurate slander against “barbarians” picked up from the tattle of gossiping slaves, and the heavy preachments about “the marriage-question” which cry aloud their origin from the lips of Menelaus? In

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