Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/171

 ^SCHYLUS' CH0EP1I0R(E. 153 as a stranger with Pylades, craves admission into the palace ; Clytaemnestra comes out, and being informed by him that Orestes is dead, at which tidings Electra makes a show of lamentation, she invites *him to enter and be her guest. After a short prayer of the Chorus, enters Orestes' nurse, and makes a lament for her nursling ; the Chorus inspires her with a hope that he yet lives, and advises her to send -lEgisthus, for whom Clytaemnestra has dispatched her, not Avith, but without, his body-guard. As the moment of danger draws near, the Chorus offers a petition to Jupiter and Mercury that the deed may prosper. u3^gisthus enters, holding conversa- tion with the messenger, cannot yet quite persuade himself of an event so joyful to him as Orestes' death, and therefore hastens into the house, where, after a short prayer of the Chorus, we hear his dying cry. A servant rushes out, and gives the alarm before the door of the women's abode, to warn Clytaemnestra. She hears it, comes out, calls for a hatchet to defend herself ; but as Orestes without a moment's delay advances upon her with the bloody sword, her courage fails, and most affect- ingly she holds before him the breast at which she, his mother, suckled him. Hesitat- ingly he asks counsel of Pylades, who in a few lines urges him on by the most powerful considerations: after a brief dialogue of accusation and self- vindication, he drives her before him into the palace to slay her beside the corpse of ^gisthus. The Chorus, in a solemn ode, exults in the consummated retribution. The great doors of the palace are thrown open, and disclose, in the chamber, the slain pair laid together on a bed. Orestes orders the servants to unfold, that all may see it, the long trailing garment in which his father, as he drew it on and was muffled in its folds, received the murderous stroke of the axe: the Chorus beholds on it the stains of blood, and breaks out into a lamentation for Agamemnon's murder. Orestes, feeling that his soul is already becoming confused, avails himself of the time that is still left to vindicate his act : he declares that he will repair to Delphi, there to be purified from his blood-guiltiness, and forthwith flees, full of horror, before his mother's Furies, whom the Chorus does not yet see, and deem a phantom of his brain, but who leave him no more rest. The Chorus concludes the play with a reflection on the scene of murder thrice repeated in that royal house since the Thyestean banquet. The scene of Sophocles' Electra is also laid in front of the palace, but without Agamemnon's tomb. At day-break enter as from abroad, Pylades, Orestes, and his keeper, who on that bloody day had been his preserver. The latter gives him instruc- tions, as he introduces him to the city of his fathers : Orestes replies with a speech upon the commission given him by Apollo, and the manner in which he means to execute it, and then addresses a prayer to the gods of his native land, and to the house of his fathers. Electra is heard sobbing within ; Orestes wishes to greet her immediately, but the old man leads him away to present an offering at the grave of his father. Electra comes out; in a pathetic address to heaven she pours forth her griefs, and, in a prayer to the infernal deities, her unappeased longing for revenge. The Chorus, consisting of virgins of the land, approaches to administer consolation. Electra, alternating song and speech with the Chorus, makes known her unabatable sorrow, the contumely of her oppressed life, her hopelessness on account of Orestes' many lingerings, notwithstanding her frequent exhortations, and gives faint hearing to the encouraging representations made by the Chorus. Chi-ysothemis, Clytaem- nestra's younger, more submissive, and favourite daughter, comes with a grave- offering, which she is commissioned to bear to her father's sepulchre. An altercation arises between the sisters concerning their different sentiments: Chrysothemis tells Electra that v^gisthus, now absent in the country, has come to the severest resolu-