"get-up" might excite the compassion of audience or judges, it turns out that the costume on which the applicant has set his heart is that in which Telephus the Mysian, in the tragedy which bears his name, pleads before Achilles, to beg that warrior to heal, as his touch alone could do, the wound which he had made. The whole scene should be read, if not in the original, then in Mr Frere's admirable translation. Dicæopolis begs Euripides to lend him certain other valuable stage properties, one after the other: a beggar's staff,—a little shabby basket,—a broken-lipped pitcher. The tragedian grows out of patience at last at this wholesale plagiarism of his dramatic repertory:—
"Eur. Fellow, you'll plunder me a whole tragedy!
Take it, and go.
Dic. Yes; I forsooth, I'm going.
But how shall I contrive? There's something more
That makes or mars my fortune utterly;
Yet give them, and bid me go, my dear Euripides;
A little bundle of leaves to line my basket.
Eur. For mercy's sake! . . But take them.—There they go!
My tragedies and all! ruined and robbed!
Dic. No more; I mean to trouble you no more.
Yes, I retire; in truth I feel myself
Importunate, intruding on the presence
Of chiefs and princes, odious and unwelcome.
But out, alas! that I should so forget
The very point on which my fortune turns;
I wish I may be hanged, my dear Euripides,
If ever I trouble you for anything,
Except one little, little, little boon,—
A single lettuce from your mother's stall."—(F.)
This parting shot at the tragedian's family antecedents
