Greek tragedy

by Gilbert Norwood

Whom does Sophocles himself approve, the king or his opponent? Neither. Attention to the plot will make this clear. The peripeteia or “recoil” is the revelation that the gods are angered by the pollution arising from the body, and that owing to their anger grave peril threatens Creon’s family. It is this news which causes his change of purpose. Polynices is therefore buried by the king himself despite his edict. These facts show that ultimately both Antigone and Creon are wrong. Heaven is against Creon, as he is forced at last to see—Antigone’s appeal to the everlasting unwritten laws is in this sense justified. But Antigone is wrong also. She should have left the gods to vindicate their own law. Such a statement may seem ignobly oblivious of religion, human nature, and the courage which she shows. But it is not denied that Antigone is noble and valiant: she may be both, yet mistaken and wrong-headed. One is bound to consider the facts of the plot. Why is she at first undetected yet compelled by circumstances to perform the “burial”-rites twice? Simply to remind us that, if Creon is resolved, she cannot “bury” Polynices. The king has posted guards, who remove the pious dust which she has scattered; and this gruesome contest could continue indefinitely. She throws away her life, and with no possible confidence that her brother will in the end be buried. It is precisely this blindness of hers which makes the tragedy—her union of noble courage and unswerving affection with inability to see the crude facts of a hateful situation. Her obstinacy brings about the punishment of Creon’s obstinacy, for Eurydice’s death is caused by Hæmon’s, and Hæmon’s by Antigone’s. Had she not intervened all these lives would have been saved. The whole action might have dwindled to a mere revolting incident: the king’s barbarity, the anger of the gods, and the king’s submission. The tragedy would have disappeared: it is Antigone’s splendid though perverse valour which creates the drama.

A difficulty of structure has been found[311] in the fact that Creon, despite his haste to free Antigone, tarries for the obsequies of Polynices. Why does he not save the living first? This “problem” arises merely from our insistence on the overwhelming importance of Antigone and our disregard of the real perspective. The explanation is simply that Creon has just been warned of the grave danger to the whole State and his family from the anger with which the gods view his treatment of Polynices—an offence which Tiresias emphasizes far more than that against Antigone; and the community, nay, even the several persons of Creon’s family, are more important than one woman.

The lyrics of this play are among the finest in existence. The first ode expressing the relief of Thebes at the destruction of the ravening monster of war, the third which describes the persistence of sorrow from generation to generation of the Theban princes, the brief song which celebrates the all-compelling influence of love, with its exquisite reminiscence of Phrynichus,[312] the last lyric, a graceful invocation to the God Dionysus, and above all, the famous ode upon man and his quenchless enterprise, all these are truly Attic in their serene, somewhat frigid, loveliness.

The Electra[313] (Ἠλέκτρα) has by most[314] critics been regarded as next in time to the Antigone. The scene shows the palace of Agamemnon now inhabited by his murderers, Clytæmnestra and her lover Ægisthus. Orestes, son of Agamemnon, returns to avenge him by slaying his own mother Clytæmnestra; he is accompanied by Pylades, his friend, and by an old slave. Chrysothemis, daughter of Agamemnon and sister of Electra, is sent by Clytæmnestra to appease the ghost of Agamemnon, but is persuaded by Electra to pray his help for Orestes. The slave of Orestes brings false news to the palace that Orestes has been killed in a chariot-race at Delphi, so that the queen is relieved from fear of vengeance. Chrysothemis returns, joyfully announcing Orestes’ arrival—she has seen a lock of his hair on the tomb; but her sister replies that he is dead. While Electra mourns for her brother he himself brings in an urn, pretending to be a messenger who has conveyed home the ashes of Orestes. Electra’s lamentation over it reveals who she is, and Orestes makes himself known. Then the men go inside to slay Clytæmnestra, while Electra remains watching for Ægisthus. After the slaughter he arrives and triumphantly orders the body to be carried forth, but when he uncovers it he finds the corpse of Clytæmnestra. He is then driven within to death.

The Choephorœ, the Electra of Sophocles, and the Electra of Euripides supply the only surviving instance in which the three tragedians handled the same story; at present it is enough to note the differences between the method of Sophocles and that of the Choephorœ. For Æschylus the slaying of Clytæmnestra is a question of religion and ethics, for Sophocles it is a matter of psychology, the emotional history of Electra. He is content to take the religious facts for granted, and then to proceed with no misgivings to a purely human drama. The play begins amid the bright, cheerful surroundings of dawn and ends with happiness. When Orestes comes forth, his sword wet with his mother’s blood, he is entirely satisfied and untouched by any misgivings, simply because the question of matricide has been settled for him by Heaven. He is a personified theory of Olympian religion. His words to Electra after the queen is dead: “In the house all is well, if Apollo’s oracle spoke well,”[315] are the summary of Sophocles’ religious point of view. Carefully and confidently referring the question of this matricide to a higher judge than Man, he proceeds to his actual business. Equally marked is the difference between the closing sentence of the Choephorœ, “Where then will end the fatal fury, when pass into closing calm?”[316] and that of the later work: “O house of Atreus, through how many sufferings hast thou come forth at last in freedom, crowned with good by this day’s enterprise!”[317] For Sophocles the deed is done and behind us; for Æschylus it lives to beget new sorrows.

Electra dominates the action, scarcely leaving the scene after her first entry. Though not a great character-study, she impresses us by the pathos of her situation and by the splendid expression of her emotions; her lament over the funeral urn is perfect in the rhetoric of sorrow. Almost motionless throughout the long and varied action; the mark for successive onslaughts of insult, misery, surprise, grief, hatred, and joy, she is thrown into relief by all who approach her, especially Chrysothemis, whose princely robes add emphasis to the heroic meaning of the sordid dress worn by her royal sister. She is a simple character and needs little ornament; her devotion, patience, and courage are plain to behold. But we should note the masterly, yet unobtrusive way in which her feelings towards Clytæmnestra are portrayed. Hating her steadily as the slayer of Agamemnon, she cannot quite forget (as does Euripides’ heroine) that Clytæmnestra is her mother. After her outburst of reproach against the queen she has enough flexibility of mind to own[318] that she is in a way ashamed of it—a simple touch which shows Sophocles a master, not a slave, of his own conceptions. A more subtle indication of her spirit is shown in Electra’s speech to Chrysothemis urging her to aid in the deed of vengeance. All she proposes is that they should slay Ægisthus. But there is an undercurrent of emphasis which shows[319] that she intends the death of Clytæmnestra also.

The other personages are mostly well-drawn. Orestes is commonplace, but the other four are distinctly imagined. The tiny part of Ægisthus admirably reveals the malicious upstart; Chrysothemis is another Ismene, with more energy and lightness. The Pædagogus reminds one of the guard in the Antigone by his quaint witticisms—“if I had not been watching at the door from the first, your plans would have entered the house before your bodies”.[320] Clytæmnestra, too, is admirable. More closely akin to an Euripidean than to an Æschylean character, she defends herself elaborately and gives way to fits of ill-temper and petty rancour; but she has some maternal feeling left—witness the confusion of emotions with which she greets the news of Orestes’ death.

The sorrows and character of Electra form one of the two great features of this tragedy. The other is the stage-craft. First there is a distinct element of intrigue, that is, of plot as contrived not by the poet but by the characters. Not only do the avengers gain access to the house by a false story; this much is to be found already in the Choephorœ. There are two distinct visitors to the house: the Pædagogus with his tale of the fatal race, and Orestes bringing the funeral urn. It is to this duplication—for otherwise Clytæmnestra would have been present when the urn was brought—that we owe the splendid scene of the Recognition, with its introductory lament by Electra. Again, as in Æschylus the nurse sent by Clytæmnestra is induced to change her message to Ægisthus in a way vital to the conspirators, so here Chrysothemis is caused by her sister to invoke the aid of Agamemnon against the queen instead of seeking to assuage his wrath. Further, whereas Ægisthus might have entered the house and been slain without more ado, Electra, by telling him that the messengers have brought the very body of Orestes home, induces the king to summon them forth with the corpse; thus the end of the play is rendered vigorous (indeed melodramatic) by his triumphant unveiling of the body which proves to be that of the queen.