Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/170

152 ^SCHYLUS' CHOEPHOROE. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I. §§ 2, 3, 4. A. W. SCHLEGEL'S COMPARISON OF THE CHOEPHOECE OF yESCHY- LUS WITH THE ELECTRAS OF SOPHOCLES AND EURIPIDES. The relation which Euripides bears to his two great predecessors will be set in the clearest light by a comparison between their three plays, which happily are still extant, upon the same subject, namely, Clytaemnestra's death by the avenging hand of Orestes. The scene of ^schylus' Choephoroe is laid in front of the royal palace; the tomb of Agamemnon appears on the stage. Orestes enters with his trusty Py lades, and opens the play (which unhappily is somewhat mutilated at the beginning) with a prayer to Mercury and a promise of revenge to his father, to whom he consecrates a lock of his hair. He sees a procession of females clad in mourning attire issuing from the palace ; and thinking he recognizes his sister among them, he steps aside with Pylades, to reconnoitre them before he shows himself. The Chorus, consisting of captive Trojan maidens, in a speech accompanied by gestures of woe, reveal the occasion of their mission to Agamemnon's tomb, namely, a frightful dream of Clytasmnestra's : they add their own dark presentiments of vengeance impending over the blood-guilty pair, and bewail their lot in being obliged to serve unrighteous lords, Electra con- sults the Chorus whether she shall do the bidding of her hostile mother, or pour out the ofifering in silence, and then by their advice she too addresses a prayer to infernal Mercury and the soul of her father, for herself and the absent Orestes, that he may appear as the avenger. During the pouring out of the libation, she and the Chorus make a lament for the departed hero. Presently, discovering the lock of hair, of a colour resembling her own, and foot-prints round about the tomb, she lights upon the conjecture that her brother has been there; and while she is beside herself with joy at the thought, he steps forward, and makes himself known. Her doubts he completely overcomes by producing a garment woven by her own hand ; they abandon themselves to their joy ; he addresses a prayer to Jupiter, and makes known how Apollo, under most terrible menaces of persecution by his father's furies, has called upon him to destroy the authors of Agamemnon's death, in the same manner as they had destroyed him, namely, by subtilty. Now follow odes of the Chorus and Electra, consisting partly of prayers to the deceased king and to the infernal deities, partly calling to mind all the motives to the act enjoined ipon Orestes, and, above all, the murder of Agamemnon. Orestes inquires about the vision which induced Clytsemnestra to send the offerings, and is informed that she dreamed she had a child in the cradle, which child was a dragon which she laid to her breast, and suckled with her own blood. He, then, will be this dragon; and he explains more particularly how he will steal into the house as a disguised stranger, and take both ^gisthus and herself at unawares. With this intention he departs, accompanied by Pylades. The subject of the ensuing ode is, the boundless audacity of mankind, and especially of women in their unlawful passions ; which it confirms with dreadful examples from mythic story, and shows how avengincj Justice is sure to overtake them at last. Orestes, returning