Again, the favourite charge against Euripides, that he delights in quasi-judicial disputes, is brought in here also. The accusation is generally unfair. Critics have been so eager to condemn this poet that they forget the trial scene of the Eumenides, the altercation between Œdipus and Creon in the Œdipus at Colonus and various other passages in the earlier tragedians. If a dispute occurs at all, it is in accordance with the genius of Greek tragedy to set it out in formally opposed speeches. One might as well complain of Hamlet’s soliloquies. But in the Hecuba there is more than this. The queen has a gusto not merely for eloquent appeals or invective, but for self-conscious rhetoric, “Filled with lament, not destitute of tears,”[516] is abominable. One is not surprised to learn that the queen is interested in professional teachers of rhetoric,[517] and one remembers that Gorgias, the greatest of them, paid his first visit to Athens a year or two[518] before this play was produced.
The whole piece in its tone and method is far below the best of Euripides’ work. Certain things are undoubtedly excellent—the famous chorus[519] already mentioned, and above all the speech[520] of Polyxena and the narrative of her death.[521] The whole work has not enough calibre. The pathos has no subtlety; the characterization is machine-made; the style, though clear and even elegant—one must allow that the first speech[522] of Polymestor, as a piece of conversational Greek, is unobtrusively perfect—has remarkably few of those feats[523] of idiom which delight us elsewhere.
Polyxena is charming, but a slight sketch only compared with the Medea and the Phædra who have preceded her. Agamemnon the cautious prince, Odysseus the opportunist, Polymestor the brutally wicked barbarian, are characters whom dozens of Euripides’ contemporaries could have produced with ease. Talthybius the herald, still more shadowy, claims remembrance by his naïve conceit.[524] Hecuba herself is hardly better. True, the poet has shown admirably how she progresses from weakness to frightful strength under the pressure of injustice, but without any very sympathetic psychology we fall short of genuine tragedy and touch only melodrama. And she is more than a little grotesque. Her strange passion for rhetorical studies we have already noted. She has, moreover, a taste for inopportune theorizing,[525] even concerning theology.[526] Her griefs themselves command our respect, and she can in one or two flashes of inspiration speak of them in language[527] not unworthy of Shakespeare himself; but there is too much repetition of merely melancholy adjectives, and though there should be only one emotion in us towards a woman who has lost all her children, we can hardly retain it when she reminds us that they were fifty in number.[528]
The apparition of the murdered Polydorus is an interesting element in the action. First, we view the early part of the drama with greater sympathy for the queen, knowing as we do the new horror which awaits her. Secondly, it is necessary that Hecuba should know how Polydorus died. Though but vaguely affected by the vision at first,[529] when parts of it are fulfilled, she remembers and believes definitely in the rest, and knows that Polymestor is the murderer.[530]
The Andromache (Ἀνδρομάχη) is perhaps the next[531] extant play in the order of time. It was not originally brought out at Athens.[532]
The action takes place before the house of Neoptolemus, prince of Phthia in Thessaly; at one side of the orchestra is the shrine of Thetis. Andromache delivers the prologue. After the fall of Troy she became the prize of Neoptolemus to whom she has borne a son, Molottus. Later the prince married Hermione, daughter of the Spartan king Menelaus. Andromache has hidden the child and herself taken sanctuary in the shrine of Thetis; the boy’s father is from home, having gone to Delphi to ask Apollo’s pardon for demanding reparation for Achilles’ death. Andromache now sends a fellow-slave to ask the aid of Peleus, king of Phthia and her master’s grandfather. Soon she is joined by the chorus, a company of Phthian women who sympathize but urge submission. Hermione enters, and after a spiteful altercation, in which she tries in vain to make the captive leave her sanctuary, departs with threats. Menelaus enters, leading Molottus; he offers Andromache her choice: will she submit to death, or see the boy slain? Andromache gives herself up, whereupon Menelaus announces that, while she must die, Molottus lies at the mercy of Hermione. By this treachery Andromache is goaded into the most bitter invective to be found in Euripides. The chorus dwell upon the folly of domestic irregularities such as those of Neoptolemus. Next Menelaus leads forth Andromache and Molottus for death, when Peleus hurries in and releases them. After a violent quarrel Menelaus throws up his daughter’s cause and departs. Peleus leads the captives away while the chorus sing his youthful exploits. From the palace comes Hermione’s nurse: deserted by her father and dreading her husband’s vengeance the princess is seeking to destroy herself. Next moment Hermione rushes out in distraction and the nurse is attempting to calm her when Orestes enters, explaining that he has called to inquire after his cousin Hermione. She begs him to take her away to Menelaus before her husband returns. Orestes agrees, reminding her that she has in the past been betrothed to him; now Neoptolemus shall pay for his insults by death at Delphi. After their departure the chorus sing of the gods who built but abandoned Troy, and of Orestes’ vengeance upon Clytæmnestra. Peleus returns, having heard of Hermione’s flight. In a moment arrives a messenger who tells how Neoptolemus has been murdered by Delphians at the instigation of Orestes. The body is borne in, and Peleus laments over it until interrupted by the goddess Thetis, his bride of long ago. She comforts him with a promise of immortality. Andromache is to marry Helenus, king of Molossia,[533] and her son is to be ancestor of a dynasty in that land.
Certain remarkable difficulties in the plot must be faced.
First is the breakdown of Menelaus in the presence of Peleus. The first half of the play has exhibited his unswerving resolve to destroy Andromache and her child. Every conceivable argument save one has been addressed to him in vain. That one argument is physical compulsion, and Peleus certainly does not offer it.[534] After a storm of mutual abuse the Spartan withdraws from the whole situation, muttering an excuse which is scarcely meant to be taken seriously: he is in a hurry to chastise an unfriendly state.[535] He goes just far enough to embitter his enemies to the utmost and not far enough to redeem his threats; and he retires without a word to his daughter after committing her to a deeply dangerous project. Menelaus has faults, but crass stupidity is not one of them; on the contrary he is reviled as the type of base cunning. Why, then, does he act with such utter futility at a crisis which anyone could have foreseen?
In the second place, when was Neoptolemus murdered? Orestes declares that the prince will be slain at Delphi, and at once departs with Hermione. After a choric song Peleus comes back, and almost at once receives the news of his grandson’s death. When Orestes utters his prophecy the messenger from Delphi can hardly be more than a mile from the house. Has he already committed the murder as a prelude to an innocent and irrelevant pilgrimage to Dodona? And, if so, why does he reveal, or rather not reveal, the fact? And why has he risked himself in Phthia when the news of his crime may at any moment be revealed?[536]
Thirdly, there is a grave difficulty in the structure, independent of Menelaus’ conduct and the dating of Orestes’ crime. The play seems to fall into two halves with but a slight connexion—the plight of Andromache and the woes of Neoptolemus’ house.