A peasant

Medea's children

Slaves and slave-women, attendants of the King, etc.

MEDEA (1822)

TRANSLATED BY THEODORE A. MILLER, PH.D.

ACT I

_Before the walls of Corinth. At the left, halfway up stage, a tent is pitched; in the background lies the sea, with a point of land jutting out into it, on which is built a part of the city. The time is early morning, before daybreak; it is still dark.

At the right in the foreground a slave is seen standing in a pit digging and throwing up shovelfuls of earth; on the opposite side of the pit stands MEDEA, before a black chest which is strangely decorated with gold; in this chest she keeps laying various utensils during the following dialogue.

MEDEA. Is it, then, done?

SLAVE. A moment yet, my mistress.