Greek tragedy

by Gilbert Norwood

One incident in the Electra is of particular interest to the historian of literature. The pædagogus seeks to convince Electra that the mysterious visitor to Agamemnon’s tomb is her brother. He offers certain evidences which she contemptuously rejects. There can be no doubt that this scene is a criticism of the Recognition in Æschylus’ Choephorœ. The severed lock of hair, the footprint, and the embroidered cloth, appear in both scenes. Electra rejects all these clues. How can the hair of an athletic man resemble the soft tresses of a woman? Is not a man’s foot larger than a woman’s? Will the full-grown Orestes wear the same garment as an infant? But Euripides’ attack is probably mistaken.[659] We may suppose that Æschylus could have seen these objections; and it is quite possible that tradition told of physical peculiarities in the Pelopid family. As for the embroidered garment, Æschylus does not call it so. It may well have been a cloth preserved by Orestes. However this may be, we have here the most distinct example of Euripides’ criticism of an earlier poet.

Helen[660] (Ἑλένη), or Helena, was produced in 412 B.C. The scene represents the palace of Theoclymenus, the young Egyptian king, with the tomb of his father Proteus. Helen relates that Hera gave Paris a phantom in place of the true Helen. While Greeks and Trojans fought for a wraith, she herself has lived in Egypt, waiting for Menelaus. Theoclymenus now seeks her hand; she has taken sanctuary in Proteus’ tomb. Teucer enters to consult Theonoe, the king’s prophetess-sister. On seeing Helen he barely refrains from shooting her, but realizing his “mistake” talks with the stranger, revealing that Menelaus and “Helen” have apparently been lost at sea. Helen sends him off and breaks into lamentation for Menelaus, but is advised by the chorus of captive Greek maidens to consult the omniscient Theonoe. She agrees, and they accompany her into the palace. Menelaus enters, a pitiable shipwrecked figure. He has left “Helen” and his comrades in hiding, and is looking for help. When he knocks at the palace-door the portress repels him with the warning that the king is hostile to Greeks because Helen is within his house. Menelaus is thunderstruck, but determines to await Theoclymenus. The chorus and Helen return in joy, for Menelaus, they learn, still lives. Menelaus comes forward; after a moment his wife recognizes and would embrace him, but he repels the stranger. One of his companions arrives announcing that “Helen” has vanished. As he ends his tale he sees the true Helen, who he supposes has played a practical joke; but Menelaus falls into her arms. They plot escape, but realize that all depends upon the omniscient Theonoe; she comes forth, and, explaining that she has a casting-vote in a dispute which to-day takes place in Heaven between Hera and Aphrodite, decides to aid the suppliants. When she has withdrawn it is arranged that Menelaus shall pretend he is the sole survivor, Menelaus being drowned; Helen is to gain permission to offer funeral-rites at sea. The chorus raise a beautiful song concerning Helen’s woes and the Trojan war. Theoclymenus enters and is easily hoodwinked. After an ode on Demeter’s search for Persephone, the plotters are sent on their way by the king. The chorus sing of Helen’s voyage and pray the Dioscuri to convoy their sister. A messenger hurries in and tells of the escape; the Egyptian crew has been massacred by Menelaus’ followers. Theoclymenus would take vengeance upon his sister, but is checked by the Dioscuri, who explain that all has occurred by the will of Zeus.

Two aspects of this play are unmistakable and apparently incompatible. The plot closely resembles that of the Iphigenia in Tauris; the style and manner of treatment are curiously light. What can have been Euripides’ purpose in repeating, after so short an interval, a copy of that grim masterpiece, and to execute it in this light-hearted fashion? The Helen is in no possible sense a tragedy. At the point where the audience should be spell-bound by suspense and dread—the cajoling of the king—we are relieved from all oppression by the facility with which the captives succeed. Theoclymenus is an imbecile who gives them all they need with his eyes shut. The earlier action is robbed of all power by the superhuman attributes of Theonoe. How can, or need, Helen have any doubts concerning her husband with an all-knowing friend at hand? The central datum, that only a phantom fled to Troy and returned therefrom with Menelaus, is utterly destructive of tragic atmosphere. In the Recognition-scene the possibility of pathos is drowned in absurdity: the messenger suddenly turns to find his mistress smiling at his elbow and greets her with relief: “Ah, hail, daughter of Leda, here you are after all!”[661] Teucer’s scene, besides providing a palmary instance of bad construction (for his function is merely to cause Helen anxiety about her husband’s fate, which one might have expected to arouse her curiosity earlier in the course of these seventeen years), is in itself absurd. After coming all this distance to consult Theonoe about his route, he is sent away happy (without seeing the prophetess) by Helen’s suggestion, “You will pick out your way as you go along”.[662] Equally curious is the diction. Brilliantly idiomatic as are the iambics, they are almost everywhere light, loose in texture, almost colloquial. Such things[663] as φέρ’ ἦν δὲ δὴ νῷν μὴ ἀποδέξηται λόγους;—ἣν γὰρ εἴχομεν θάλασσ’ ἔχει—εἷς γὰρ ὅ γε κατ’ οὐρανόν, and the silly jingle on λόγῳ θανεῖν, are typical of the whole atmosphere. Even the lyrics glow with prettiness rather than beauty; lovely as are the Naiad[664] and the Nightingale[665] they mitigate in no degree the flimsiness of the whole.

Theonoe herself, in an outrageous passage,[666] brings the mockery to a climax: “This very day among the gods there is to be strife and conference concerning thee before the throne of Zeus. Hera, who was thine enemy before, is kindly to thee now, and would bring thee safe to thy home-country with this thy wife, so that Greece may learn how Paris’ love, the gift of Cypris, was but a mockery. But Cypris would fain deny thee thy home-return, that it may never come to light how in Helen’s case she bought the prize of beauty with bridals that were naught. And the decision lies with me, whether, as Cypris wishes, I shall destroy thee by revealing thy presence to my brother, or whether I shall join Hera and save thy life.” We should be ill-advised to take this in all earnest as a ludicrous blasphemy. It is graceful trifling. But what is Theonoe—a dread goddess to whom the queen of Heaven sues for aid, or a kind-hearted woman whose strong common-sense might, perhaps, in a circle like that of the dolts and poseurs who fill the stage, raise her to the repute of superhuman wisdom? She is not all playful. When the honour of her dead father is in question, she stirs the heart by her passionate solemnity:—

Aye, all that lie in death must meet their bond,

And they that live; yea, all. Beyond the grave

The mind, though life be gone, is conscious yet

Eternal, with th’ eternal Heav’n at one.[667]

This stands, together with Hecuba’s outburst[668] in the Trojan Women, as the most explicit statement of personal religion in the extant plays of Euripides. In the midst of this farrago of fairy-tale and false sentiment, it is doubly startling. The drama is neither tragedy, nor melodrama, nor comedy, nor farce. What are we to think of it?