But another problem interests Euripides even more
than this. What kind of man was it—above
all, what kind of woman can it have been, who would
do this deed of mother-murder, not in sudden fury
but deliberately, as an act of “justice,”
after many years? A “sympathetic”
hero and heroine are out of the question; and Euripides
does not deal in stage villains. He seeks real
people. And few attentive readers of this play
can doubt that he has found them.
The son is an exile, bred in the desperate hopes and
wild schemes of exile; he is a prince without a kingdom,
always dreaming of his wrongs and his restoration;
and driven by the old savage doctrine, which an oracle
has confirmed, of the duty and manliness of revenge.
He is, as was shown by his later history, a man subject
to overpowering impulses and to fits of will-less
brooding. Lastly, he is very young, and is swept
away by his sister’s intenser nature.
That sister is the central figure of the tragedy.
A woman shattered in childhood by the shock of an
experience too terrible for a girl to bear; a poisoned
and a haunted woman, eating her heart in ceaseless
broodings of hate and love, alike unsatisfied—hate
against her mother and stepfather, love for her dead
father and her brother in exile; a woman who has known
luxury and state, and cares much for them; who is intolerant
of poverty, and who feels her youth passing away.
And meantime there is her name, on which all legend,
if I am not mistaken, insists; she is A-lektra,
“the Unmated.”
There is, perhaps, no woman’s character in the
range of Greek tragedy so profoundly studied.
Not Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra, not Phaedra nor
Medea. One’s thoughts can only wander towards
two great heroines of “lost” plays, Althaea
in the Meleager, and Stheneboea in the Bellerophon.
G.M.
[Footnote 1: Most of this introduction is reprinted,
by the kind permission of the Editors, from an article
in the Independent Review vol. i. No.
4.]
CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY
CLYTEMNESTRA, Queen of Argos and Mycenae; widow
of Agamemnon.
ELECTRA, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.
ORESTES, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, now
in banishment.
A PEASANT, husband of Electra.
AN OLD MAN, formerly servant to Agamemnon.
PYLADES, son of Strophios, King of Phocis; friend
to Orestes.
AEGISTHUS, usurping King of Argos and Mycenae,
now husband of
Clytemnestra.
The Heroes CASTOR and POLYDEUCES.
CHORUS of Argive Women, with their LEADER.
FOLLOWERS of ORESTES; HANDMAIDS of CLYTEMNESTRA.
The Scene is laid in the mountains of Argos.
The play was first produced between the years
414 and 412 B.C.
ELECTRA
