Here, as in most cases, the development of Greek tragedy moves almost straight from Aeschylus to Euripides, with Sophocles standing aside. The character of Orestes, in particular, contains here in germ just the ideas that are so subtly developed in Euripides. The first study is grander, tenderer, and more heroic; the second, of course, more detailed and varied and more finely poignant. There is a typical difference between the two poets in the way in which Orestes’ last scruples are overcome. In Euripides a whole scene is given up to it. Orestes is shaken by the first sight of his mother in the distance, and actually rebels against the god or devil who has commanded him to kill her, till he is overborne by the scorn and passion of Electra’s more bitter nature. In Aeschylus Orestes’ scruple breaks out in the midst of the Invocation and is swept away, not specially by Electra, but by the whole great swelling rhythm of that litany of revenge.
Of the other characters, Electra in Euripides bears the main weight of the tragedy on her own shoulders. In Aeschylus she is much less minutely and without doubt less cruelly studied: almost all her words are beautiful, and she keeps a kind of tenderness even in her prayers of hate. She hates her oppressors and her father’s enemies; but the hate is based on love, and it has not eaten into her nor left her poisoned. Clytemnestra, though she appears only for two short scenes, preserves still the almost superhuman grandeur which was hers in the Agamemnon. Her simplest word has power to arrest the attention; and while she is present other people seem small and their emotions ordinary. Her own emotions lie deep and complex, fold behind fold. It is shallow to dismiss her as a hypocrite, feigning grief at the death of the son whom she fears. The hypocrisy is there, but so is the sorrow; so are all kinds of unspoken memories and hopes and depths of experience. Always the thing she says, fine as it is, leaves the impression that there is something greater that she does not care to say. Even when she calls for the axe of battle to face her son, she has room for a thought beyond the immediate fight for dear life: “To that meseemeth we are come, we two!” That touch is like Euripides, but on the whole this heroine was a figure not in Euripides’ style and perhaps not within his range. He made a Clytemnestra deliberately and utterly different.
The date of Sophocles’ play is unknown. But the Choëphoroe was produced in 458 BC, and Euripides’ Electra in 413. The forty-five years that separate them were years of very rapid artistic development. The Choëphoroe has both an archaic beauty and a stark grimness of speech which divide it from its two companions. There are fewer details, and attention is never long distracted from the central horror. At point after point of the action it is easy to show how the two later poets refined and developed the plain lines of Aeschylus, and exerted themselves to make the story more human and more probable. The comparison tempts one to reflect how little such technical improvements really matter, and how dangerously near to nothingness, in the last resort, are the ingenuities of realism. This play produces its illusion quite sufficiently by its mere grandeur and intensity. Yet, judged on its own archaic level, it shows remarkable skill in construction, just as, amid its story of relentless revenge, it conveys a great sense of compassion. The prologue itself is very skilful. With the last lines of the Agamemnon still ringing in our minds we see, as the play opens, a young man standing with shorn hair beside a grave mound; and half the story is told in a flash. Nor, apart from the marvellous invocation scene itself, would it be easy to find in Greek drama another play with such varied moments as the prayer of Electra, the entry of the poor, loving, half-ridiculous Nurse, the sudden onrush of the single terrified slave calling for help to the Women’s House; above all, the amazing scene at the end with the bloodstained robe, the gathering of the unseen Furies, the last struggle of Orestes’ reason, and the flight of the would-be Saviour as one Accursed, never to rest again. The final words of the Chorus ask the question which is to be answered, or at least attempted, in the Eumenides.
Dramatis Personae
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Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra
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Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra
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Clytemnestra, formerly wife to Agamemnon, now wedded to Aigisthos
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Aigisthos, son of Thyestes, blood-foe to Agamemnon, and now Tyrant of Argos
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Pylades, son of Strophios, King of Phôkis, friend to Orestes
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The Old Nurse of Orestes
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A Slave of Aigisthos
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Chorus of Bondmaids in the House of Clytemnestra and Aigisthos
The Libation Bearers
The scene represents the Grave of Agamemnon, a mound of earth in a desolate expanse. The time is afternoon. Orestes and Pylades in the garb of travellers, with swords at their sides, are discovered. Orestes’ hair is cut short, that of Pylades streams down his back. Both look grim and travel-stained. Orestes holds a long tress of hair in his hand.2
| Orestes |
O Warder Hermês of the world beneath, |
