Page:Euripides (Donne).djvu/133

Rh Pylades, as a reward for his long-enduring friendship, is to marry Electra.

Should this drama, in virtue of its happy conclusion, be accounted, along with the "Alcestis" and the "Helen" of Euripides, a tragi-comedy? In one respect the "Iphigenia at Tauri" stands apart from these plays. In the former, there is something approaching to the comic in the person of Hercules; in the latter, something even risible in the garb of Menelaus, and in his conversation with the old woman who is hall-porter in the palace of Theoclymenus. The drama, however, that has now been examined, is from its beginning to its end full of action, excitement, suspense, dread, and uncertainty. The doom of a race, as well as individuals, is at stake; and the prospect of the principal characters is gloomy in the extreme, until their rescue by a deity delivers them from further suffering. Both "Iphigenias" derive much of their attractions for all times and ages from the deeply domestic tenor of the story. "How many 'Iphigenias' have been written!" said Goethe. "Yet they are all different, for each writer manages the subject after his own fashion."