362 ([return])
[ According to that most profound maxim of Aristotle, that in tragedy a very bad man should never be selected as the object of chastisement, since his fate is not calculated to excite our sympathies.
363 ([return])
[ Electra, I. 250-300.
364 ([return])
[ When (line 614) Clytemnestra reproaches Electra for using insulting epithets to a mother—and “Electra, too, at such a time of life”—I am surprised that some of the critics should deem it doubtful whether Clytemnestra meant to allude to her being too young or too mature for such unfilial vehemence. Not only does the age of Orestes, so much the junior to Electra, prove the latter signification to be the indisputable one, but the very words of Electra herself to her younger sister, Chrysothemis, when she tells her that she is “growing old, unwedded.”
Estos’onde tou chronou
alektra gaearskousan anumegaia te.
Brunck has a judicious note on Electra’s age, line 614.
365 ([return])
[ Macbeth, act i., scene 5.