Book of illustrations : Ancient Tragedy

Son. Ah! she hath left my youth – {417}          My mother, my loved mother is no more —          Left me my sufferings to deplore,              Left me a heritage of woe:                  Who shall my sorrows soothe?              Thou too, my sister, thy full share shalt know                  Of grief, thy heart to rend.          Vain, O my father, vain thy nuptial vows,                  Brought to this speedy end:          For when my mother died in ruin sank our house! {425}

The Chorus [in calm blank verse] call on their king to command himself and bear what many have had to bear before. —Admetus knows he must: this calamity has not come without notice. He rouses himself to give orders as to the preparations for burial: the mourning rites shall last a whole year, and shall extend throughout the whole region of Thessaly: the very horses shall have their waving manes cut close, and no sound of flute or instrument of joy shall be heard in the city. {445}

The corpse is slowly carried out, and at last the Stage is vacant. Then the Chorus address themselves to a Choral Ode in memory of the Spirit now passed beneath the earth: the evolutions as usual, carrying them with each Strophe to one end of the Orchestra, and with the Antistrophe back to the Altar.

CHORAL INTERLUDE II

Strophe I

            Immortal bliss be thine, {446}          Daughter of Pelias, in the realms below,            Immortal pleasures round thee flow,          Though never there the sun's bright beams shall shine.            Be the black-brow'd Pluto told,            And the Stygian boatman old,          Whose rude hands grasp the oar, the rudder guide,            The dead conveying o'er the tide, —          Let him be told, so rich a freight before            His light skiff never bore;            Tell him that o'er the joyless lakes          The noblest of her sex her dreary passage takes.

Antistrophe I

            Thy praise the bards shall tell,          When to their hymning voice the echo rings,            Or when they sweep the solemn strings,          And wake to rapture the seven-chorded shell:            Or in Sparta's jocund bow'rs,            Circling when the vernal hours          Bring the Carnean Feast, whilst through the night            Full-orb'd the high moon rolls her light;          Or where rich Athens, proudly elevate,            Shows her magnific state:            Their voice thy glorious death shall raise,          And swell th' enraptured strain to celebrate thy praise.

Strophe II

            O that I had the pow'r,          Could I but bring thee from the shades of night,            Again to view this golden light,          To leave that boat, to leave that dreary shore,            Where Cocytus, deep and wide,            Rolls along his sullen tide!          For thou, O best of women, thou alone            For thy lord's life daredst give thy own.          Light lie the earth upon thy gentle breast,            And be thou ever blest!            While, should he choose to wed again,          Mine and his children's hearts would hold him in disdain.

Antistrophe II

            When, to avert his doom,          His mother in the earth refused to lie;            Nor would his ancient father die          To save his son from an untimely tomb;            Though the hand of time had spread            Hoar hairs o'er each aged head:          In youth's fresh bloom, in beauty's radiant glow,            The darksome way thou daredst to go,          And for thy youthful lord's to give thy life.            Be ours so true a wife!            Though rare the lot, then should we prove          Th' indissoluble bond of faithfulness and love.EPISODE II

Enter on the Stage through the distance-entrance [Left Side-door] the colossal figure of Hercules. Here is the turning-point of the play: which has the peculiarity of combining an element of the Satyric Drama (or Burlesque) with Tragedy, the combination anticipating the 'Action-Drama' (or 'Tragi-Comedy') of modern times. Accordingly the costume and mask of Hercules are compounded, of his conventional appearance in Tragedy, in which he is conceived as the perfection of physical strength toiling and suffering for mankind, and his conventional appearance in Satyric plays as the gigantic feeder, etc. The two are harmonized in the conception of conscious energy rejoicing in itself, and plunging with equal eagerness into duty and relaxation, while each lasts.

Hercules hails the Chorus and enquires for Admetus. They reply that he is within the Palace, and [shrinking, like all Greeks, from being the first to tell evil tidings] turn the conversation by enquiring what brings the Demi-god to Pherae —in stichomuthic dialogue it is brought out that Hercules is on his way to one of his 'Labors' – that of the Thracian Steeds; and (so lightly does the thought of toil sit on him) it appears he has not troubled to enquire what the task meant: from the Chorus he learns for the first time the many dangers before him, and how the Steeds are devourers of human flesh.

Herc. A toil you tell of that well fits my fate, {517} My life of hardship, ever struggling upward.

Admetus now appears, in mourning garb: after first salutations between the two friends, Hercules enquires what his trouble is, which gives scope for a favorite effect in Greek Drama – 'dissimulation.'

Herc. Why are thy locks in sign of mourning shorn? {530} Adm. 'Tis for one dead, whom I to-day must bury. Herc. The Gods avert thy mourning for a child! Adm. My children, what I had, live in my house. Herc. Thy aged father, haply he is gone. Adm. My father lives, and she that bore me lives. Herc. Lies then thy wife Alcestis mongst the dead? Adm. Of her I have in double wise to speak. Herc. As of the living speakst thou, or the dead? Adm. She is, and is no more: this grief afflicts me. Herc. This gives no information: dark thy words. {540} Adm. Knowst thou not then the destiny assign'd her? Herc. I know that she submits to die for thee. Adm. To this assenting is she not no more? Herc. Lament her not too soon: await the time. Adm. She's dead: one soon to die is now no more. Herc. It differs wide to be, and not to be. Adm. Such are thy sentiments, far other mine. Herc. But wherefore are thy tears? What man is dead? Adm. A woman: of a woman I made mention. Herc. Of foreign birth, or one allied to thee? {550} Adm. Of foreign birth, but to my home most dear.

Hercules is moving away for the purpose of seeking hospitality elsewhere: Admetus will not hear of it, and, when Hercules loudly protests, puts aside his opposition with the air of one whose authority in matters of hospitable rites is not to be disputed. He orders attendants to conduct Hercules to a distant quarter of the Palace, to spread a sumptuous feast, and bar fast the doors, lest the voice of woe should affect the feasting guest. When Hercules is gone the Chorus are staggered by such a mastery of personal grief as this implies. But Admetus asks how could he let a guest depart from his house?

              My affliction would not thus {575}          Be less, but more unhospitable I.

But why, the Chorus ask, conceal the truth? – His friend, answers Admetus, would never have entered, had he known. Some may blame him, he continues, but his house simply knows not how to do dishonor to a guest. – Admetus returns into the Palace, to his funeral preparations: the Chorus are moved to enthusiasm by this forgetfulness of self in hospitable devotion; their enthusiasm breaks out in an Ode celebrating the glories of their king's hospitality in the past, and ending in a gleam of hope that it may yet do something for him in the future. {588}

CHORAL INTERLUDE III

Evolutions, etc., as usual.

Strophe I

          O liberal house! with princely state {589}            To many a stranger, many a guest,          Oft hast thou oped thy friendly gate,            Oft spread the hospitable feast.          Beneath thy roof Apollo deign'd to dwell,            Here strung his silver-sounding shell,            And, mixing with thy menial train,          Deigned to be called the shepherd of the plain:            And as he drove his flocks along,            Whether the winding vale they rove,            Or linger in the upland grove,          He tuned the pastoral pipe, or rural song.

Antistrophe I

          Delighted with his tuneful lay, {601}            No more the savage thirsts for blood;          Amidst the flocks, in harmless play,            Wantons the lynx's spotted brood;          Pleas'd from his lair on Othrys' rugged brow            The lion seeks the vale below:            Whilst to the lyre's melodious sound          The dappled hinds in sportive measures bound;            And as the vocal echo rings,            Lightly their nimble feet they ply,            Leaving their pine-clad forests high,          Charm'd by the sweet notes of his gladdening strings.

Strophe II

          Hence is thy house, Admetus, graced            With all that plenty's hand bestows;          Near the sweet-streaming current placed,            That from the lake of Boebia flows;          Far towards the shades of night thy wide domain,            Rich-pastured mead and cultured plain,            Extends, to those Molossian meads          Where the sun stations his unharnessed steeds;            And stretching towards his eastern ray,            Where Pelion, rising in his pride,            Frowns o'er th' Aegean's portless tide:          Reaches from sea to sea thy ample sway.

Antistrophe II

          And thou wilt ope thy gate e'en now, {625}            E'en now wilt thou receive this guest;          Though from thine eye the warm tear flow,          Though sorrow rend thy suffering breast,          Sad tribute to thy wife, who, new in death,          Lamented lies thy roof beneath!          Nature in truth has thus decreed:          The pure soul must bear fruit of reverent deed.          Lo, all the pow'r of wisdom lies          Fix'd in the righteous bosom: hence          Rests in my soul this confidence —          The good shall yet safe from their trials rise. {636}EPISODE III

The Central Gates open and the Funeral Procession slowly files out and begins to fill the Stage. Admetus beside the bier of Alcestis is calling on the Chorus (as representing the citizens of Pherae) to join in the invocations to the dead – when suddenly another Procession appears on the Stage [entering by the Right Side-door, as from the immediate neighborhood]: it is headed by the father and mother of Admetus, both of whom have reached the furthest verge of old age, and who with difficulty totter along, while attendants follow them bearing sumptuous drapery and other funeral gifts. The scene settles down into the 'Forensic Contest,' a fixed feature of every Greek Tragedy, in which the 'case' of the hero and the opposition to it are brought out with all the formality of a judicial process, the long rheses representing advocates' speeches, the stichomuthic dialogue suggesting cross-examination, and the Chorus interposing as moderators.

Pheres in the tone of conventional consolation speaks of the virtues of the dead, and the special virtue of Alcestis's sacrifice, which has saved her husband's life, and himself from a childless old age; it is meet then that he should do honor to the corpse. Attendants of Admetus advance to receive the presents: Admetus waves them back and stands coldly confronting his father. At last he speaks. His father is an uninvited guest at this funeral feast, and unwelcome: the dead shall never be arrayed in his gifts. Then was the time for his father to show kindness when a life was demanded: and yet he could stand aloof and let a younger die! He will never believe himself the son of so mean and abject a soul.

          At such an age, just trembling on the verge {677}          Of life, thou would'st not, nay, thou dared'st not die          For thine own son; but thou couldst suffer her,          Though sprung from foreign blood: with justice then          Her only as my father must I deem,          Her only as my mother. Yet this course          Mightst thou have run with glory, for thy son          Daring to die; brief was the space of life          That could remain to thee: I then had lived          My destin'd time, she too had lived.

Yet Pheres had already had his share of all that makes life happy: a youth amid royal luxury, a prosperous reign, a son to inherit his state and who ever did him honor. But let him beget him new sons to cherish his age and attend him in death: Admetus's hand shall never do such offices for him. And this is all that comes of old age's longing for death: let death show itself, and the old complaints of life are all silenced!

Cho. Forbear! Enough the present weight of woe: {710} My son, exasperate not a father's mind.

To this long rhesis Pheres answers in a set speech of similar length. Is he a slave to be so rated by his own son? And for what? He has given his son birth and nurture, he has already handed over to him a kingdom and will bequeath him yet more wide lands; all that fathers owe to sons he gives. What new obligation is this for Greece to submit to, that a father should die for his son?

          It is a joy to thee {730}          To view the light of heaven, and dost thou think          Thy father joys not in it? Long I deem          Our time in death's dark regions: short the space          Of life, yet sweet! So thought thy coward heart          And struggled not to die: and thou dost live,          Passing the bounds of life assign'd by fate,          By killing her! My mean and abject spirit          Dost thou rebuke, O timidest of all,          Vanquish'd e'en by a woman, her who gave          For thee, her young fair husband, her own life! {740}          A fine device that thou mightst never die,          Couldst thou persuade – who at the time might be          Thy wife – to die for thee!

If such a man takes to heaping reproaches on his own kin he shall at least hear the truth told him to his face!

Cho. Too much of ill already hath been spoken: {750}

          Forbear, old man, nor thus revile thy son.

Admetus says if his father does not like to hear the truth he should not have done the wrong.

Pher. Had I died for thee, greater were the wrong.  Adm. Is death alike then to the young and old?  Pher. Man's due is one life, not to borrow more.  Adm. Thine drag thou on and out-tire heaven's age!  Pher. Darest thou to curse thy parents, nothing wrong'd?  Adm. Parents in dotage lusting still to live! {760}  Pher. And thou – what else but life with this corpse buyest?  Adm. This corpse – the symbol of thy infamy!  Pher. For us she died not; that thou canst not say!  Adm. Ah! mayst thou some time come to need my aid!  Pher. Wed many wives that more may die for thee!  Adm. On thee rests this reproach – thou daredst not die!  Pher. Sweet is this light of heav'n! sweet is this light!  Adm. Base is thy thought, unworthy of a man!  Pher. The triumph is not thine to entomb my age.  Adm. Die when thou wilt, inglorious wilt thou die. {770}  Pher. Thy ill report will not affect me dead.  Adm. Alas, that age should outlive sense of shame!  Pher. But lack of age's wisdom slew her youth.  Adm. Begone, and suffer me to entomb my dead.  Pher. I go: no fitter burier than thyself           Her murderer! Look for reckoning from her friends:           Acastus is no man, if his hand fails           Dearly to avenge on thee his sister's blood.  Adm. Why, get you gone, thou and thy worthy wife:           Grow old in consort – that is now your lot —           The childless parents of a living son:           For never more under one common roof           Come you and I together: had it needed,           By herald I your hearth would have renounced.

Pheres and his train withdraw along the Stage [to the Right Side-door]. The interrupted Funeral Procession is continued, filing amidst lamentations of the Chorus, down the steps from the Stage into the Orchestra: there the Chorus join it and the whole passes out [by the Right Archway] to the royal sepulchre in the neighbourhood.

Stage and Orchestra both vacant for a while.

STAGE EPISODE8

Enter the Stage [by one of the Inferior Doors of the Palace] the Steward of Admetus: he has stolen away to get a moment's respite from the hateful hilarity of this strange visitor – some ruffian or robber he supposes – on whom his office has condemned him to wait, and thereby to miss paying the last offices to a mistress who has been more like a mother to him. The guest has been willing to enter, and though he saw the mourning of the household, he did not allow it to make any difference to his mirth:

                      Grasping in his hands {804}          A goblet wreath'd with ivy, fill'd it high          With the grape's purple juice, and quaff'd it off          Untemper'd, till the glowing wine inflamed him;          Then binding round his head a myrtle wreath,          Howls dismal discord: – two unpleasing strains          We heard, his harsh notes who in nought revered          Th' afflictions of Admetus, and the voice          Of sorrow through the family that wept          Our mistress. Yet our tearful eyes we showed not,          Admetus so commanded, to the guest. {814}

He starts as he feels on his shoulder the huge hand of Hercules, who has followed him, and now appears on the Stage goblet in hand, wreathed and attired like a reveller in full revel. Hercules good-humouredly scolds him for letting a remote family bereavement hinder him from showing a sociable countenance to his lord's guest. He lectures him on the easy ethics of the banquet-hour:

          Come hither, that thou mayst be wiser, friend: {832}          Knowst thou the nature of all mortal things?          Not thou, I ween: how shouldst thou? hear from me.          By all of human race death is a debt          That must be paid; and none of mortal men          Knows whether till to-morrow life's short space          Shall be extended: such the dark events          Of fortune, never to lie learn'd or traced          By any skill. Instructed thus by me {840}          Bid pleasure welcome, drink; the life allow'd          From day to day esteem thine own; all else          Fortune's.

The Steward receives his lecture with a bad grace: he knows all that – but there is a time for all things. His manner raises Hercules' suspicions that Admetus has been keeping something back:

Herc. Is it some sorrow which he told not me? {866} Stew. Go thou with joy: ours are our lord's afflictions. Herc. These are not words that speak a foreign loss. Stew. If such, thy revelry had not displeased me.

The secret is not long kept against the questioning of Hercules. When the truth comes out Hercules drops the goblet: he might have known all from so grief-worn a face! All the lightness of the reveller disappears, and the godlike bearing returns to Hercules' figure as he catches the full dignity of his friend's hospitable feat: he is fired to essay a rival deed of nobility.

          Now, my firm heart, and thou, my daring soul, {894}          Show what a son the daughter of Electryon,          Alcmena of Tirynthia, bore to Jove!          This lady, new in death, behoves me save,          And, to Admetus rendering grateful service,          Restore his lost Alcestis to his house.          This sable-vested tyrant of the dead          Mine eye shall watch, not without hope to find him          Drinking th' oblations nigh the tomb. If once          Seen from my secret stand I rush upon him,          These arms shall grasp him till his panting sides          Labour for breath; and who shall force him from me          Till he gives back this woman? {906}

If he fails to find Death elsewhere he will descend to the dark world of spirits itself, rather than fail in making a fit return to his friend:

                    Whose hospitable heart {913}          Receiv'd me in his house, nor made excuse          Though pierc'd with such a grief; this he conceal'd          Through generous thought, and reverence to his friend.          Who in Thessalia bears a warmer love          To strangers? Who, through all the realms of Greece?          It never shall be said this noble man          Received in me a base and worthless wretch!

Exit [through the Stage Right Side-door] in the direction of the tomb.

Stage and Orchestra vacant for a while.

EPISODE V

Return of the Funeral Procession, headed by the Chorus who remain in the Orchestra; the rest file up the steps onto the stage, Admetus last. The Episode is technically a 'Dirge' between Admetus, whose speeches fall into the rhythm of a Funeral March, and the Chorus, who speak in Strophes and Antistrophes of more elaborate lyric rhythm, often interrupted by the wails of Admetus.

Admetus reaching the top of the Steps from the Orchestra stands face to face with the splendid facade of his Palace. Hateful entrance, hateful aspect of a widowed home! How find rest there, in the heavy woes to which he is now doomed? It is with the dead that rest is found: his heart is in their dark houses, where he has placed a loved hostage torn from him by fate! {931}

Chorus [in Strophe]. Nevertheless he must go forward; he must hide him in the deepest recesses of his Palace with his grief, the helpless groans that yet will nothing aid her whom he will never see more! {938}

Admetus cries that that is the deepest wound of all! Would he had never wedded! To mourn single is pain endurable; to see children wasting with disease, to see death invading the nuptial bed – that is the pang unbearable! {950}

Chorus [in Antistrophe]. Fate is resistless: shall sorrow then have no bounds? Other men have known what it is to lose a wife: and in one or other of innumerable forms misery has found out every son of mortality. {956}

Admetus begins to speak of the life-long mourning for the lost – but the thought is too much for him; why did they hold him back when he would have cast himself into the gaping tomb, and gone the last journey with his love? {963}

The Chorus [in Strophe] think of one they knew who lost a son in the flower of his age, an only son and well worthy of tears: yet he bore his lonely burden like a man, and – courage! his hair is white and he is nearing the end. {969}

Admetus moves a few steps forward and the Procession, advances towards the portal: but the contrast catches his thought between this and another procession towards the same threshold, when, amidst blazing torches of Pelian pine and bridal dances, he led his new wife by the hand, and shouts wished their union happy. Now wails for shouts, black for glistening raiment, and before him the solitary chamber! {983}

Chorus [in Antistrophe]. Trouble has come upon their master all at once, in the midst of prosperity, and on one unschooled in misfortune. But if the wife is gone the love is left. Many have had Admetus's loss: but his gain let him remember: a rescued life. {988}

As if this jarred upon his mind, Admetus turns round and addresses the Chorus, his whole tone changed [the dirge measures giving place to blank verse].

Adm. My friends, I deem the fortune of my wife          Happier than mine, though otherwise it seems. {990}          For nevermore shall sorrow touch her breast,          And she with glory rests from various ills.          But I, who ought not live, my destined hour          O'erpassing, shall drag on a mournful life,          Late taught what sorrow is. How shall I bear          To enter here? To whom shall I address          My speech? Whose greeting renders my return          Delightful? Which way shall I turn? Within          In lonely sorrow shall I waste away,          As, widowed of my wife, I see my couch, {1000}          The seats deserted where she sat, the rooms          Wanting her elegance. Around my knees          My children hang, and weep their mother lost:          The household servants for their mistress sigh.          This is the scene of misery in my home:          Abroad the nuptials of Thessalia's youth          And the bright circles of assembled dames          Will but augment my grief: how shall I bear          To see the lov'd companions of my wife!          And if one hates me, he will say: Behold {1010}          The man who basely lives, who dared not die,          But giving, through the meanness of his soul,          His wife, avoided death – yet would be deem'd          A man: he hates his parents, yet himself          Had not the spirit to die. These ill reports          Cleave to me: why then wish for longer life,          On evil tongues thus fallen, and evil days!

Admetus sinks down on the threshold and buries his face in his robe. The Chorus gather up the feeling of the situation in a full Choral Ode, celebrating the natural topics of consolation; the stern laws of Necessity, the fair memory of the dead.