Page:Euripides and his age.djvu/218

214 are the sort of listeners that are suited to thoughts rather than words, and their own answer at the end comes not like a real comment but like a note of music. When she finishes, defending her resolve to die rather than sin:

 O'er all this earth To every false man that hour comes apace When Time holds up a mirror to his face, And marvelling, girl-like, there he stares to see How foul his heart.—Be it not so with me!

They answer:

 Ah, God, how sweet is virtue and how wise, And honour its due meed in all men's eyes!

"A commonplace?" "A not very original remark?" There is no need for any original remark; what is needed is a note of harmony in words and thought, and that is what we are given.

At a later stage in the play we shall come on another fixed element in the tragedy, the Messenger's Speech. It was probably in the ritual. It was expected in the play. And it was—and is still on the stage—immensely dramatic and effective. Modern writers like Mr. Masefield and Mr. Wilfred Blunt have seen what use can be made of a Messenger's speech. Now for the understanding of the speech itself,