Page:The Plays of Euripides Vol. 1- Edward P. Coleridge (1910).djvu/124

96. Help! ho! To the rescue all who near the palace stand! She hath hung herself, our queen, the wife of Theseus.

. Woe worth the day! the deed is done; our royal mistress is no more, dead she hangs in the dangling noose.

. Haste! some one bring a two-edged knife wherewith to cut the knot about her neck!

. Friends, what shall we do? think you we should enter the house, and loose the queen from the tight-drawn noose?

. Why should we? Are there not young servants here? To do too much is not a safe course in life.

. Lay out the hapless corpse, straighten the limbs. This was a bitter way to sit at home and keep my master's house! [Exit Messenger. . She is dead, poor lady, so I hear. Already are they laying out the corpse.

. Ladies, can ye tell me what the uproar in the palace means? There came the sound of servants weeping bitterly to mine ear. None of my household deign to open wide the gates and give me glad welcome as a traveller from prophetic shrines. Hath aught befallen old Pittheus? No. Though he be well advanced in years, yet should I mourn, were he to quit this house.

. 'Tis not against the old, Theseus, that fate, to strike thee, aims this blow; prepare thy sorrow for a younger corpse.

. Woe is me! is it a child's life death robs me of?

. They live; but, cruellest news of all for thee, their mother is no more.

. What! my wife dead? By what cruel mischance?

. About her neck she tied the hangman's knot.

. Had grief so chilled her blood? or what had befallen her?