Page images
PDF
EPUB

Ægisthus coming, and Orestes hastes back into the house to take him by surprise. Ægisthus inquires about the death of Orestes, and from Electra's equivocal replies is led to believe that his corpse is within the house. He therefore orders the doors to be thrown open to convince those among the people who bore his sway with reluctance, that there is no more hope from Orestes. The middle entry is thrown open, and discloses in the interior of the palace a covered body lying on a bed. Orestes stands beside it and bids Ægisthus uncover it: he suddenly beholds the bloody corpse of Clytemnestra, and finds himself lost past redemption. He desires to be allowed to speak, which, however, Electra forbids. Orestes compels him to go into the house, that he may slay him on the selfsame spot where Ægisthus had murdered his father.

The scene of Euripides' Electra lies, not in Mycenæ, but on the borders of the Argolic territory, in the open country, in front of a poor solitary cottage. The inhabitant, an old peasant, comes out, and in the prologue tells the audience how matters stand in the royal house; partly what was known already, but moreover, that not content to treat Electra with ignominy and leave her unwedded, they had married her beneath her rank to him; the reasons he assigns for this procedure are strange enough, but he assures the audience he has too much respect for her to debase her in reality to the condition of his wife. They are therefore living in virgin wedlock. Electra comes out, before it is yet day-break, bearing on her head, which is shorn in servile fashion, a pitcher with which she is going to fetch water; her husband conjures her not to trouble herself with such unwonted labours, but she will not be kept from the performance of her housewifely duties, and the two depart, he to his work in the field, she upon her errand. Orestes now enters with Pylades, and in a speech to his friend states that he has already sacrificed at his father's grave, but that he does not venture into the city, but wishes to look about for his sister, (who, he is aware, is married and lives hereabout on the frontier,) that he may learn from her the posture of affairs. He sees Electra coming with the water-pitcher, and retires. She strikes up a song of lamentation over her own fate and that of her father. The Chorus, consisting of rustic women, comes and exhorts her to take part in a festival of Juno, which she however,

in the dejection of her sorrow, and pointing to her tattered garments, declines. They offer to lend her a supply of holiday gear, but she is fixed in her purpose. She espies Orestes and Pylades in their lurking-place, takes them for robbers, and is about to flee into her cottage; upon Orestes coming forth and stopping her, she thinks he is going to kill her; he pacifies her and gives her tidings that her brother lives. Hereupon he inquires about her situation, and then the whole matter is drilled into the audience once more. Orestes still forbears to make himself known, but merely promises to do Electra's commission to her brother, and testifies his sympathy as a stranger. The Chorus think this too good an opportunity to be lost of gratifying their own ears also with a little news from town; whereupon Electra after describing her own miserable condition depicts the wanton and insolent behaviour of her mother and Ægisthus: this wretch, she says, capers upon Agamemnon's grave and pelts it with stones. The peasant returns from his work, and finds it not a little indecorous in his wife to be gossiping with young men ; but when he hears they are the bearers of intelligence from Orestes, he invites them into his house in the most friendly manner. Orestes, at sight of this worthy man, enters into a train of moral reflections, how often it does happen that the most estimable men are found in low families, and under an unpromising exterior. Electra reproves her husband for inviting them, knowing as he does that they have nothing in the house; he is of opinion that even were it so, the strangers would goodnaturedly put up with it; but a good housewife can always manage to get together all sorts of dishes, her stores will surely hold out for one day. She sends him to Orestes' old keeper, and former preserver, who lives hard by in the country, to bid him come and bring along with him something for their entertainment. The peasant departs with saws upon riches and moderation. Off flies the Chorus into an ode upon the expedition of the Greeks against Troy, prolixly describes all that was graven on the shield of Achilles which his mother Thetis brought him, but winds it up however with the wish that Clytemnestra may be punished for her wickedness.

The old keeper, who finds it right hard work to climb up-hill to the house, brings Electra a lamb, a cheese, and a skin of wine; hereupon he falls a weeping, not forgetting, of course,

to wipe his eyes with his tattered garments. In replying to Electra's questions, he relates how at the grave of Agamemnon he had found traces of an oblation together with a lock of hair, and therefore he conjectures that Orestes has been there. Hereupon ensues an allusion to the mode of recognition used by Eschylus, namely by the resemblance of the hair, the size of the foot-marks, the garment, which are demonstrated, all and several, to be absurd. The seeming improbability of the Eschylean anagnorisis perhaps admits of being cleared up; at all events one may easily let it pass; but a reference like this, to another author's treatment of the same subject, is the most annoying interruption, the most alien from genuine poetry that can possibly be. The guests come out; the old keeper reconnoitres Orestes with a scrutinizing eye, knows him, and convinces even Electra that it is he, by a scar on his eyebrow received from a fall in his childhood-so this is the superb invention for which Eschylus' is to be cashiered!-they embrace, and abandon themselves to their joy during a short ode of the Chorus. In a lengthy dialogue, Orestes, the old man, and Electra concert their plans. Ægisthus, the old man knows, has gone into the country to sacrifice to the Nymphs: there Orestes will steal in as a guest and fall upon him by surprise. Clytemnestra, for fear of evil tongues, has not gone with him: Electra offers to entice her mother to them by the false intelligence of her being in childbed. The brother and sister now address their united prayers to the gods and their father's shade for a happy issue. Electra declares she will make away with herself if it should miscarry, and for that purpose will have a sword in readiness. The old man departs with Orestes to conduct him to Ægisthus, and afterwards to betake himself to Clytemnestra. The Chorus sings the Golden Ram, which Thyestes stole from Atreus by the help of the treacherous wife of the latter, and how he was punished for it by the feast made for him with his own children's flesh, at the sight of which the Sun turned out of his course: a circumstance, however, concerning which the Chorus, as it sapiently adds, is very sceptical. From a distance is heard a noise of tumult and groans, Electra thinks her brother is overcome, and is going to kill herself. But immediately there comes a messenger, who, prolixly and with divers jokes, relates the manner of Ægisthus' death. Amidst the rejoicing of the

Chorus, Electra fetches a wreath with which she crowns her brother, who holds in his hand the head of Ægisthus by the hair. This head she in a long speech upbraids with its follies and crimes, and says to it, among other things," it is never well to marry a woman with whom one has lived before in illicit intercourse; that it is an unseemly thing when a woman has the mastery in the family," &c. Clytemnestra is seen approaching, Orestes is visited by scruples of conscience concerning his purpose of putting a mother to death, and concerning the authority of the oracle, but is induced by Electra to betake himself into the cottage there to accomplish the deed. The queen comes in a superb chariot hung with tapestry, and attended by her Trojan female slaves. Electra would help her to descend, but this she declines. Thereupon she justifies what she had done to Agamemnon by reference to the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and requires her daughter to make her objections; all which is in order to give Electra an opportunity of holding a captious, quibbling harangue, in which, among other things, she upbraids her mother with having sat before her mirror, and studied her toilette too much while Agamemnon was away. Clytemnestra is not angry, although Electra plainly declares her purpose of putting her to death if ever she should have the power; she inquires about her daughter's confinement, and goes into the cottage to perform the ceremonies of purification. Electra accompanies her with a sarcastic speech. Then we have a choral ode upon retribution, the cry of the murdered woman within the house, and the brother and sister return stained with blood. They are full of remorse and despair at what they have done, afflict themselves by repeating to each other their mother's lamentable speeches and gestures; Orestes will flee into foreign lands, Electra asks "who will marry me now?" The Dioscuri, their uncles, appear in the air, vituperate Apollo for his oracle, command Orestes, in order to secure himself from the Furies, to go and have himself tried by the Areopagus; they also prophesy his further destinies. They then ordain a marriage between Electra and Pylades, her first husband to be taken with them to Phocis and handsomely provided for. After reiterated wailings, the brother and sister take a life-long farewell of each other, and the play comes to an end.

It is easy to perceive, that Æschylus has grasped the subject on its most terrific side, and borne it back into the domain of the gloomy deities, in which he so much delights to take up his abode. Agamemnon's grave is the murky centre, whence the avenging retribution emanates; his gloomy ghost, the soul of the whole poem. The very obvious exterior imperfection, of the play's dwelling too long on one point without perceptible progress, becomes in fact a true interior perfection it is the hollow stillness of expectation before a storm or earthquake. It is true there is much repetition in the prayers, but their very accumulation gives the impression of a great unheard-of purpose, to which human powers and motives alone are inadequate. In the murdering of Clytemnestra and in her heartrending speeches, the poet, without disguising her crimes, has gone to the utmost verge of all that he had a right to demand of our feelings. The crime which is to be punished is kept in view from the very first by the tomb, and at the conclusion is brought still nearer to the eye of memory by the unfolding of the fatal garment: thus Agamemnon, even after full revenge, is murdered, as it were, afresh before the mental eye. Orestes' betaking himself to flight betrays no undignified remorse or weakness; it is only the inevitable tribute which he must pay to offended Nature.

How admirably Sophocles has managed the subject I need only remark in general terms. What a beautiful preface he has made, in those introductory scenes to that mission of Clytæmnestra's to the tomb with which Eschylus begins at once! With what polished ornament he has invested the whole, for example in the story of the games! How skilfully he husbands the pathos of Electra-first, general expressions of woe, then, hopes derived from the dream, their annihilation by the intelligence of Orestes' death, new hopes suggested by Chrysothemis only to be rejected, and, last of all, the mourning over the urn! The noble spirit of Electra is finely set off by the contrast with her tamer sister. Indeed the poet has given quite a new turn to the subject by directing the interest principally to Electra. A noble pair he has made of this brother and sister; allotting to the female character invincible constancy and devotedness, the heroism of endurance; to the male, the beautiful vigour of a hero's youthful prime. To this the old man

R

« PreviousContinue »