Part 9 (2/2)
”O Zeus, thou art a worse friend than I deemed. Though a mortal, I exceed thee in worth, G.o.d though thou art, for I have never abandoned my son's children. Thou canst not save thy friends; either thou art ignorant or unjust in thy nature.”
As they are led out to slaughter, Amphitryon makes what he is sure is a vain appeal to Heaven to send succour. At that moment the hero himself appears. Seeing his family clad in mourning, he inquires the reason. At first his intention is to attack Lycus openly, but Amphitryon bids him wait within; he will tell Lycus that his victims are sitting as suppliants on the hearth; when the King enters Heracles may slay him without trouble.
When vengeance has been taken Iris descends from heaven, sent by Hera to stain Heracles with kindred bloodshed. She summons Madness who is unwilling to afflict any man, much less a famous hero. Reluctantly consenting she sets to work. A messenger rushes out telling the sequel. Heracles slew two of his children and was barely prevented from destroying his father by the intervention of Athena. He reappears in his right mind, followed by Amphitryon who vainly tries to console him. Theseus who accompanied Heracles to the lower world hurries in on hearing a vague rumour. To him Heracles relates his life of never-ending sorrow. Conscious of guilt and afraid of contaminating any who touch him, he at length consents to go to Athens with Theseus for purification. He departs in sorrow, bidding his father bury the slain children.
Like the _Hecuba_, this play consists of two very loosely connected parts. The second is decidedly unconvincing. Madness has never been treated in literature with more power than in Hamlet and Lear. Besides Shakespeare's work, the description in the mouth of a messenger, though vivid enough, is less effective, for ”what is set before the eyes excites us more than what is dropped into our ears” as Horace remarks.
But the point of the play is the seemingly undeserved suffering which is the lot of a good character. This is the theme of many a Psalm in the Bible; its answer is just this--”Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.”
In 415 Euripides told how Hecuba lost her last remaining child Ca.s.sandra. The plot of the _Trojan Women_ is outlined by Poseidon and Athena who threaten the Greeks with their hatred for burning the temples of Troy. After a long and powerful lament the captive women are told their fate by the herald Talthybius. Ca.s.sandra is to be married to Agamemnon. She rushes in prophesying wildly. On recovering calm speech she bids her mother crown her with garlands of victory, for her bridal will bring Agamemnon to his death, avenging her city and its folk.
Triumphantly she pa.s.ses to her appointed work of ruin.
Andromache follows her, a.s.signed to Neoptolemus. She sadly points out how her faithfulness to Hector has brought her into slavery with a proud master.
”Is not Polyxena's fate agony less than mine? I have not that thing which is left to all mortals, hope, nor may I flatter my mind heart with any good to come, though it is sweet to even to dream of it.”
This despair is rendered more hopeless when she learns that the Greeks have decided to throw her little son Astyanax from the walls.
Menelaus comes forward, gloating at the revenge he hopes to wreak on Helen. On seeing him Hecuba first prays:--
”Thou who art earth's support and hast thy seat on earth, whoever thou art, past finding out, Zeus, whether thou art a natural Necessity or man's Intelligence, to thee I pray. Moving in a noiseless path thou orderest all things human in righteousness.”
She continues:--
”I praise thee, Menelaus, if thou wilt indeed slay thy wife, but fly her sight, lest she snare thee with desire. She catcheth men's eyes, sacketh cities, burneth homes, so potent are her charms. I know her as thou dost and all who have suffered from her.”
Hecuba and Helen then argue about the responsibility for the war. The latter in shameless impudence pleads that she has saved Greece from invasion and that Love who came with Paris to Sparta was the cause of her fault. Hecuba ridicules the idea that Hera and Artemis could desire any prize of beauty. It was l.u.s.t of Trojan gold that tempted Helen; never once was she known to bewail her sin in Troy, rather she always tried to attract men's eyes. Such a woman's death would be a crown of glory to Greece. Menelaus says her fate will be decided in Argos.
Talthybius brings in the body of Astyanax, over which Hecuba bursts into a lament of exceptional beauty and then pa.s.ses out to slavery.
In this drama Euripides draws upon all his resources of pathos. It is a succession of brilliantly conceived sorrows. Ca.s.sandra's exulting prophecy of the revenge she is to bring is one of the great things in Euripides. In this play we have a most vivid picture of the destructive effects of evil, an inevitable consequence of which it is that the woman, however innocent she may be, always pays. Hecuba drank the cup of bereavement to the very last drop.
The _Electra_, acted about 418, is characteristic. Electra has been compelled to marry a Mycenean labourer, a man of n.o.ble instincts who respects the princess and treats her as such. Both enter the scene; the man goes to labour for Electra, ”for no lazy man by merely having G.o.d's name on his lips can make a livelihood without toil”. Orestes and Pylades at first imagine Electra to be a servant; learning the truth they come forward and question her. She tells the story of her mother's shame and Aegisthus' insolence which Orestes promises to recount to her brother, ”for in ignorant men there is no spark of pity anywhere, only in the learned.” The labourer returns and by his speech moves Orestes to declare that birth is no test of n.o.bility. Electra sends him to fetch an old Tutor of her father to make ready for her two guests; he departs remarking that there is just enough food in the house for one day.
The old Tutor arrives in tears; he has found a lock of hair on Agamemnon's tomb. Gazing intently on the two strangers, he recognises Orestes by a scar on the eyebrow. They then proceed to plot the death of their enemies. Orestes goes to meet Aegisthus is close by sacrificing, and presently returns with the corpse, at which Electra hurls back the taunts and jeers he had heaped on her in his lifetime. She had sent to her mother saying she had given birth to a boy and asking her to come immediately.
Orestes quails before the coming murder, but Electra bids him be loyal to his father. Clytemnestra on her arrival querulously defends her past, alleging as her pretext not the death of Iphigeneia but the presence of a rival, Ca.s.sandra. Electra after refuting her invites her inside the wretched hut to offer sacrifice for her newly born child, where she is slain by Orestes. At the end of the play the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, bid Pylades marry Electra, tell Orestes he will be purified in Athens and prophesy that Menelaus and Helen, just arrived from Egypt, will bury Agisthus real Helen never went to Troy, a wraith of her being sent there with Paris.
The startling realism of this drama is apparent. The poverty of Electra, the more certain identification of Orestes by a scar than by a lock of hair, the mention of Ca.s.sandra as the real motive for the murder of Agamemnon all indicate that Euripides was not content with the accepted legend. His Clytemnestra is a feeble creation even by the side of that of Sophocles.
Stesichorus in a famous poem tells how Helen blinded him for maligning her; she never went to Troy; it was a wraith which accompanied Paris.
Such is the central idea of a very strange play, the _Helen_. The scene is in Egypt. Teucer, banished by his father, meets the real Helen; to her amazement he tells of her evil reputation and of the great war before Troy, adding that Menelaus is sailing home with another Helen.
The latter enters, to learn that he is in Egypt, where the real Helen has lived for the last seventeen years. Warned by a prophetess Theonoe that her husband is not far off, Helen comes to be reunited to him.
A messenger from the coast announces that the wraith has faded into nothingness.
Helen then warns Menelaus of her difficult position. She is wooed by Theoclymenus, king of the land, brother of Theonoe. Menelaus in despair thinks of killing himself and Helen to escape the tyrant. Theonoe holds their fate in her hands; Helen pleads with her; ”It is shameful that thou shouldest know things divine, and not righteousness.” Menelaus declares his intention of living and dying with his wife. The prophetess leaves them to discover some means of escape which Helen devises.
Pretending that Menelaus is a messenger bringing news of her husband's death at sea, she persuades the tyrant to provide a s.h.i.+p and rowers that Helen may perform the last rites to the dead on the element where he died. At the right moment the Greek sailors overpowered the rowers and sailed home with the united pair.
Very commonly real drama suffers the fate which has overtaken it in this piece; it declines into melodrama. Here are to be found all the stock melodramatic features--a bold hero, a scheming beauty, a confidante, a dupe, the murder of a s.h.i.+p's crew. Ma.s.singer piloted Elizabethan drama to a similar end. Given an uncritical audience melodrama is the surest means of filling the house. Reality matters little in such work; the facts of life are like Helen's wraith, when they become unmanageable they vanish into thin air.
<script>