Exeunt Orestes and Pylades on left to Tomb of Agamemnon; Attendant back through the Distance side-door. Enter from Palace Electra moaning and weeping.
MONODY
Electra in Lyric Monody. The light, the air, the loathed house and bed she sleeps on, all are witnesses of her ceaseless misery and woe, orphaned as she is of a father foully slain. She calls on the Curses, the Furies and other dread Powers who watch over evil slaughter to send Orestes, she can no longer bear up with sorrow's great burden cast into the balance. {120}
Enter by the Orchestral door Chorus of Argive Maidens to condole with Electra.
LYRIC CONCERTO (FOR PARODE)
Cho. Why mourn for ever the guileful slaughter of thy Father, accursed deed?—Electra. I know your kind and tender friendship, yet will never be dissuaded.—Cho. Yet what groans and prayers can raise thy sire from the doomed pool of Hades? you go from woes bearable to woes beyond bearing.—Elec. It is weak to forget parents so lost; rather for me the nightingale that ever wails 'Itys,' or Niobe weeping in stone.—Cho. Thou art not the only one who feels sorrow: there are thy sisters, and another now mourning in a youth obscure, but who will one day return to save.—Elec. Ah! him I yearn for, but he mocks my messages, and promises yet never comes.—Cho. Take heart: Time is a calm and patient deity; trusting in Zeus you will find neither Orestes nor the God of Acheron forgetful.—Elec. Yet meanwhile the larger portion of my life is gone; orphaned, un-wed, an alien stranger I serve in the house where I was wont to reign.—Cho. Ah! that sad day! Guile devised the blow and lust struck it!—Elec. Oh, most horrible day, most horrible night! the foul banquet! the dread forms of death he met with at their accursed hands, he who was my life!—Cho. But take care: excess of grief makes you utter what may bring you into trouble.—Elec. I know, but will never cease from uttering woe on woe: leave me, I am beyond soothing, and will never pause to count my tears.—Cho. It is with pure good will, as if a mother, I beg you not to heap ills on ills.—Elec. Is misery limited? is it noble to neglect the dead? if they escape without penalty fear of the Gods will be swept from the earth. {250}
EPISODE I
Chorus now changing to Blank Verse. We meant well, but do as you will, we will follow you.—Elec. I am indeed ashamed; but remember the trouble I am in: to be hated by my mother, house-mate with my father's murderers; with Aegisthus sitting on my father's throne by day and pouring libations on the hearth he violated; my mother not living in fear of the Erinnys, but making a red-letter day of the day my father died: I, alas! keep his birth day in solitary feast. I am bitterly chidden when caught weeping, and threatened when news comes of Orestes: all hope is far.—Aegisthus is from home, or she dared not have indulged her grief even thus far. {327}
Enter her sister, Chrysothemis, bearing funeral offerings. She remonstrates with Electra for uselessly wailing, instead of adapting herself to her fate.—Elec. retorts that she has learned her lesson by rote. She advises to hate when there is strength to back hatred, yet she will not join in working revenge.—Electra covets not her choice of ease and wealth, and to be called her mother's child, while it is open to her to be her father's!—Cho. moderates: each may learn something from the other.—Chrysoth. is accustomed to Electra's want of charity and would not now have accosted her except to warn her of new evils: they mean to get her out of the country and shut up in a dungeon where she shall never see the light of day.—A rapid stichomuthic dialogue follows as to temporizing and resisting, and then Chrys. is going to do her errand.—Elec. enquires what this is, and learns that Clytaemnestra, disturbed by a dream, is sending propitiatory libations.
A rumor ran {417}
That she had seen our father's presence come
(Yes, thine and mine) a second time to light,
And then that he upon the hearth stood up,
And took the sceptre which he bore of old,
Which now Aegisthus bears, and fixed it there,
And from it sprang a sucker fresh and strong,
And all Mycenae rested in its shade.
This tale I heard from some one who was near
When she declared her vision to the Sun;
But more than this I heard not, save that she
Now sends me hither through that fright of hers.