The sight moves all to pity or remorse, save only Orgilus, whose bitter sarcasm, when rebuked by Ithocles, turns to a dreadful thirst for revenge. But the afflicted girl recks nothing of this. Loss of sleep and a voluntary fast have combined with her heavy sorrows to produce the inevitable
result; her depression has deprived her of her reason and she is sinking into her grave:
“There’s not a hair
Sticks on my head, but, like a leaden plummet,
It sinks me to my grave: I must creep thither;
The journey is not long.”
“Her fancies guide her tongue,” but the burden of her talk is the subject of marriage, child bearing, infidelity, and true love. Her resolve to die by starvation is certainly the project of a disordered brain, though Mr. Saintsbury treats it as if it were not, and censures the character as unnatural![90:1] Assuming that
“There is no peace left for a ravished wife
Widowed by lawful marriage,”
she declares that her blood shall