The late Dr. Verrall’s theory[537] of the play explains all these things together. Menelaus has come to see that it is to his interest that his daughter should be the wife of the Argive rather than of the Phthiote prince. He and Orestes therefore concoct a plan to this end. Two things must be achieved: Neoptolemus must be removed, and Hermione, passionately as she loves her lord, must be induced to accept his assassin. The cunning of Menelaus fastens upon the failings of his son-in-law as the path to success. First, he has offended the Delphians, and thus Orestes finds it easy to compass his death. Second, he has caused bitterness in his own house by his connexion with Andromache. Menelaus, while Orestes is at Delphi, urges Hermione into action which her jealousy approves but which her intellect (when it is allowed to speak) must and does condemn. The Spartan has no intention of killing the captives, but he sees to it that Hermione is, in the eyes of Peleus and his subjects, irretrievably committed to such an intention, which will beyond doubt incense Neoptolemus most bitterly—or would, were he still alive as Hermione supposes. Then, when she has committed herself, he calmly bows to the outburst of Peleus and leaves her ready to snatch at any hope in her hysterical despair. At this moment, carefully awaited by the plotters, Orestes appears. He has already murdered Neoptolemus, and is now ready to take Hermione away. But this is not enough. She must appear to come by her own suggestion, and it must appear that she has known at the moment of her elopement what has happened at Delphi. As she hurries from the scene he utters, apparently in consolation of her (though really she is out of hearing), so that it may lodge in the minds of the chorus, a prophecy of Neoptolemus’ fate. Later, she is to be reminded by her father and her new suitor how completely she is involved in suspicion of complicity. Thus she will be thrown into the arms of Orestes, and whatever blame there is will be laid upon Delphi.[538]
This view should in its essentials be adopted. Every dramatist commits faults; but these apparent faults in the Andromache prove too much. They tend to show not that Euripides is here inferior in construction and psychology to Sophocles, but that he is insane. Few readers could compose a speech like that of Andromache beginning ὦ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποισιν ἔχθιστοι βροτῶν, or like the messenger’s narrative. But we could all manage the exit of Menelaus better. There is one great general objection to Verrall’s theory. Is it not much too subtle? If readers have always missed the point, would not spectators do so even more certainly? Verrall, in answer, points to a passage in the Greek Argument: τὸ δὲ δρᾶμα τῶν δευτέρων, which he takes to mean “this play is one of the sequels”.[539] He believes that the audience had a sufficient knowledge of the earlier part of the story to follow the Andromache with no perplexity. Whether this knowledge was given by an earlier play of Euripides is not of course certain, but may be regarded as likely.
We next note a feature of equal importance—the atmosphere. Every reader observes strange anachronisms of sentiment and allusion—Hermione’s outburst[540] against women who destroy the confidence between husband and wife, Peleus’ comments on Lacedæmonian society,[541] and the like, which have no relevance to the “Homeric age” of the Trojan war. But the whole tone of the play is unheroic; even if these special features were removed it would remain quite unlike a Sophoclean drama. Euripides has, in fact, written a play about his own generation with a definite purpose. He takes stories from myths as the foundation of his plays, but his interest is in his own time. In spite of “thy mother Helen” and “the hapless town of the Phrygians,” his work concerns essentially fifth-century Athenians. Hence the almost complete absence of poetic colour, which is only found in the conventional lyrics and the goddess of the epilogue, who is no more in tune with the rest of the piece than a fairy-queen would be at the close of A Doll’s House. His chief concern is the danger to family life involved in the practice of slave-holding. Neoptolemus loses his life, and Hermione consents to the wreck of her own happiness, simply because of Andromache’s position in the home. She is the fulcrum which the astute villains employ; without her Hermione would never have been manageable.
In harmony with this realistic spirit is the character-drawing. None of the personages is of heroic stature, but all are amazingly real, however disagreeable. The two conspirators, Menelaus and Orestes, of course, do not reveal their natures plainly. The latter, as far as this incident alone is concerned, might strike one as almost featureless; but there cling to him significant little fragments from the earlier history of Hermione. A sinister faithfulness actuates him. In spite of his repulse he has not forgotten his affection for Hermione, not even her last words of renunciation.[542] Nor has he ceased to brood on the insults of Neoptolemus—perhaps nothing in the play is more effective than the gloomy triumph with which he flings back the hated word: “and the matricide shall teach thee”.... Menelaus, as a study in successful villainy combined with the domestic virtues, is quite perfect in his kind; ces pères de famille sont capables de tout. But it is upon the three victims, Hermione, Andromache, and Peleus, that the poet has lavished his skill most notably. Each has precisely the virtues and the failings which are fit to make them answer with the precision of machinery to each string pulled by the Spartan diplomatist. Peleus may be relied upon to provide Menelaus with an excuse for retiring when he wishes, and to utter wild language which can be used to prove that he is responsible for Hermione’s flight.[543] Andromache, earning and receiving our pity for her past woes and her present anguish, yet alienates us by her arrogance and a certain metallic brutality in repartee and invective which again are invaluable to the men whose puppet she is. That she should not cower before Hermione or her father is natural, but that is not the point; her trampling tactlessness[544] is a positive disease. She is indeed (except in her love for Molottus) as callous as Menelaus. This is a point of absolutely fundamental import. That interview early in the play, which might have been priceless to both women, ends only in the hopeless embitterment of Hermione. The latter is the best-drawn character of all. Swayed by strong primitive impulses, jealousy and fear, without any balance of mind or emotion, curiously liable to accept the domination of a stronger personality, she is fatally suited to the machinations of her father. When she first appears, it is fairly plain that she has come to suggest a compromise to Andromache.[545] What she wishes is not blood, but servility. Spiteful and vulgar, she cannot forgive the captive for the effortless dignity which she has inherited from Trojan kings. Hers is no vision of a murdered rival: how petty yet how horribly natural it is—she wishes to see Andromache scrubbing the floor![546] But vulgar and spiteful as she is, the princess can be wrought upon, as the later part of the action shows, and if only to self-respect Andromache had added tact and sympathy Hermione would have been her passionate friend before thirty lines had been spoken. The pathos of the scene lies above all in the misunderstanding which pits the two women against one another, where they should have combined against the callous craft which was using them both for the ends of politics.
The deities whom we find in this play need detain us only a moment. Thetis is no more than sweetening for the popular taste. Soothing and beautiful as are her consolations to the aged sufferer, such a personage has no real concern with a drama so utterly secular. As for Apollo, it is here plainer than usual that his name is nothing but a convenient short term for the great priestly organization at Delphi. That there is a genuine divine person who has aided Orestes and punished Neoptolemus we cannot believe. The only touch of religious awe to be found lies in the messenger’s report. When the assassins are fleeing before their courageous victim, “from the midst of the shrine some one raised an awful voice whereat the hair stood up, and rallied the host again to fight”.[547] It is this same speaker, however, who thus sums up his account of the whole event: “And thus hath he that gives oracles to others, he who for all mankind is the judge of righteousness, thus hath he entreated the son of Achilles who offered him amends. Like a man that is base hath he remembered an ancient grudge. How, then, can he be wise?” To the simple Thessalian confronted for the first time with doubts of Olympian justice, such phrasing is natural. For Euripides the conclusion is that Apollo does not exist at all. “Apollo” does not take vengeance upon the blasphemer at the time of his offence, but waits unaccountably till his second visit, when he comes to make amends and when by an accident, fortunate for the god, a conspiracy of villainous men happens to make his enemy their victim.[548]
In keeping with all this is the literary tone of the work. The lyrics are of little interest to a reader, though one[549] of them markedly sums up the situation and forces home the moral. For the rest, the dialogue is utterly unheroic and unpoetical but splendidly vigorous, terse, and idiomatic; in this respect the Andromache is equal to the best work of Euripides. Could anything of its kind be more perfect than the first speech of Hermione[550]—this mixture of pathetic heart-hunger, of childish snobbery and petulance, this terribly familiar instinct to cast in the teeth of the unfortunate precisely those things for which one formerly envied them, these scraps of ludicrously inaccurate slander against “barbarians” picked up from the tattle of gossiping slaves, and the heavy preachments about “the marriage-question” which cry aloud their origin from the lips of Menelaus? In
δεῖ σ’ ἀντὶ τῶν πρὶν ὀλβίων φρονημάτων
πτῆξαι ταπεινήν, προσπεσεῖν τ’ ἐμὸν γόνυ,
σαίρειν τε δῶμα τοὐμόν, ἐκ χρυσηλάτων
τεύχεων χερὶ σπείρουσαν Ἀχελῴου δρόσον,