Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/174

 156 EURIPIDES' ELECTRA. tion 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 Clytagmnestra 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 -(S^schylus, 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 impro- bability of the ^schyiean 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 treat- ment 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 recon- noitres 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 ^schylus' 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, ^gisthus, 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. Clytaemnestra, for fear of evil tongues, has not gone with him : Electra ofiers 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 ^gisthus, and afterwards to betake himself to Clytsemnestra. The Chorus sings the Golden Earn, 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 chil- dren'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 over- come, and is going to kill herself. But immediately there comes a messenger, who, prolixly and with divers jokes, relates the manner of ^gisthus' 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 ^^gisthus 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. Clytsemnestra is seen approaching, Orestes is visited by scruples of conscience con- cerning 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