She replies:
... For I have sunk to such a depth of grief,
That yearning took me hitherward to come
And tell to earth and heaven my lady’s plight.
[Way’s translation]
It is noteworthy, however, that despite this statement her opening monologue had not in fact been addressed to earth or sky. Since Ibsen the soliloquy has been tabooed on the modern stage. Yet inasmuch as people do at times talk aloud, when alone, it would seem that the present-day reaction had gone too far and that monologues, under proper psychological conditions, might sometimes be allowed. Furthermore it must be supposed that among impulsive southern races, like the Greeks and Romans, soliloquizing would be more common than with us, and in consequence it would naturally claim a larger part in their drama. Nevertheless, we have seen that, until Euripides, the playwrights restricted its use to such instances as could be motivated with some degree of naturalness. Of these motives it must be allowed that the least satisfactory was that founded on an appeal to the elements. Of course most commentators have refused to recognize this as a mere expository convention and have expatiated upon the innate feeling for and sympathy with nature among the Greeks. But as for myself I fear that this explanation has been pressed unduly. Euripides, I am sure, felt self-conscious in utilizing a device so threadbare and patent. My conviction is based on the retroactive way in which he employed the motive here in the Medea, on the fact that he often preferred to introduce monologues without any motive than to resort to one so bald and artificial as this, and especially on the guilty phrase which he slips into the heroine’s soliloquy in his Iphigenia among the Taurians (vss. 42 f.):
What visions strange the night hath brought to me
I’ll tell to ether, if doing so brings help.
Though it is unsafe to set too much value upon the jibes of the comic poets, yet it is not without interest to observe their attitude in this matter. Philemon placed a close parody of this Medea passage in the mouth of a boastful cook:[370]
For yearning took me hitherward to come