CHAPTER 5
HELEN'S HUSBAND
Laissez à Ménélas racheter d'un tel prix
Sa coupable moitié dont il est trop épris.
RACINE, Iphigénie.MENELAUS figures prominently among the victims of Euripides
realism. Realism, in its dealings with the base and vicious, naturally becomes satire. 'L'auteur', writes M. Méridier, 'a ôté à ses personnages la grandeur héroique qu'ils tenaient de la tradition, pour mettre en lumière leurs faiblesses avec un réalisme presque cruel. Ce parti-pris de réalisme qui répond à une des tendances profondes d'Euripide, n'est nulle part plus sensible qu'ici? He is writing of the Andromache in which Menelaus appears as l'époux ridicule, le fanfaron, le pleutre'.
This satiric side of the poet's work must be recognised. It was an innovation on the tragic stage and accounts for much of Euripides' unpopularity. Recognition of the vein of satire formed, of course, the basis for all Verrall's interpretations, but even an age which is not impressed by
Verrall's more imaginative flights must accept the fact of Euripides non-conformity. It is notable, indeed, that the rebel spirit, the refusal to accept established things, produced the greatest teacher of that stormy generation, and its greatest writer of comedy. In tragedy, quite strangely, it produced the perverse genius of the third of the great Athenian dramatists.
This point has been stressed by way of introduction because Menelaus in Euripides is never without that wry twist which his creator's dislike insists on giving him. He represents or was made to represent an object of Euripides' contempt. Part of this is due to the realist's impatience with the romantic. The tragedian who could mar the romance of the Sixth Book of the Iliad in lines given to Andromache herself was not likely to spare the King of Sparta. He steadfastly refused to be sentimental over injured husbands. Theseus and Xuthus are both rather sorry figures, who pave the way for their own troubles by those male views of sex-morality with which Euripides has little patience. Menelaus, of course, was guilty of no moral fault against his wife. He was grossly sinned against. It pleased Euripides, however, to provide him with a fault which fills his character. In all the five plays in which he appears, Menelaus can be best understood in his baseness, his vanity, and his selfishness, if we suppose that the poet had fixed upon uxoriousness as his mainspring of action, his 'faculté maîtresse as Taine puts it. He is the Des Grieux of Greek literature, ever in pursuit of his Manon, be it across the sea, and only to be adequately explained by his Manon's influence upon him.
The poet's mood, of course, varies. Circumstances have sadly marked, if not marred, twenty years of his work. It is impossible for a sensitive and thinking man to dissociate himself from the events of his day, and a Spartan war was certain to be reflected in the character of a Spartan king. The Nibelungenlied could hardly have been dramatised in London or New York in 1942 without a Vansittart touch. Neither Arminius nor Frederick on the same stage could escape his military descendants. This is especially true of Menelaus' first appear-ance. It was in the Andromache which, however it is dated, was undoubtedly written and acted in a year full of trouble made in Lacedaemon, and all the exasperations of war. The tragedian's main object in the play is to damage the enemy for the satisfaction of his own spirit or the reprimanding pro-Spartan groups, the existence of which is clear enough from Aristophanes. The drama is a political pamphlet in which an alien king has no manner of chance to disentangle himself from the hostilities of war-time thinking. This ulterior purpose is so strong and pervading that it vitiates all humanity. Menelaus, as he appears in the play, is no creation of the poet's pondering over the ways of man, and the subtleties of the human heart. His lines are those of a bitter cartoon. For all this the fatal blemish is the dominating quality of his character.
As he was weak with Helen, so is he weak before Helen's daughter. His cruelty and mendacity are for her sake. As in the Orestes, he appears as the weak and contemptible man whose virtue has been sapped away by lifelong habits of surrender to the will of a worthless woman.
The drama of character became possible when two actors first appeared upon the stage. Euripides had a very vivid appreciation of this fact, and was in the habit of pairing his characters with some care. He uses the contrast of character in the Andromache to damage Menelaus in two stages. First he is set over against the quiet nobility of the victim of his boasted Trojan victory. By this time, under Helen's fostering or without it, he has come to regard himself as the winner of that famous conflict. Achilles and Agamemnon, after all, were gone.
Secondly, in ultimate derision, the great conquistador is shown in contrast with the doughty old Peleus, prepared to beat him out of Thessaly, if need be with a stick.
Menelaus appears at
309 after a very vivid scene has set the Spartan woman in high relief. He has found Andromache's child and has brought him from his hiding-place to force the unhappy woman from the altar sanctuary. One line in his first cruel speech reveals the whole of him. "Woman,' he gloats jubilantly, 'you have been proved less keen of wit than Mene-laus.' Far from being ashamed, he is naively delighted at his victory over a woman. Circumvention of the female wit was a rare and heralded event in his tricked, deluded life. Andromache answers with an irony which would not have been lost
HELEN'S HUSBAND
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on Hermione, "Q 86fa, 86fa! (Andr. 319). The fifty lines of stinging, bitter reproach which follow are lost upon his Spartan mind. He answers, ludicrously likening his Trojan achievement to his bold championing of Hermione's cause. His scale of dollies knew own, bashesea fresota wheel che
upon his wits:
Woman, these are but trifles, all unworthy Of my state royal,—thou say'st it,and of Greece.
Yet know, when one hath set his heart on aught, More than to take a Troy is this to him.
I stand my daughter's champion, for I count
No trifle robbery of marriage right.
(Andr. 366-371. Way)
The littleness of Menclaus' woman-ridden character duly • exposed, the next scene proceeds to flay his Spartan faith.
Andromache has left the altar for her child's sake only to find the life she strove to save handed to the tender mercy of Hermione. Menelaus, unabashed before her scorn, exults in his perfidy. The poet is blackening the chimney. There is no restraint in his art, and the whole scene is designed to lead up to the famous speech against Sparta (Il. 445-463). Menelaus has no answer, but we need not suppose him out of countenance.
As Professor Grube writes, 'he rather delights in his evil reputation, and we can imagine him actually enjoying this outburst, even to the last insult: "a very gorgon when fighting a woman"? Topyòs onlins! Indeed, if we have fixed correctly upon the guiding preoccupation of Menelaus character as Euripides conceived it, the word may have touched his vanity.
A triumph indeed, for such as him, if women change to stone at the mere turn of his helmeted head. A lyric lament between Andromache and Molossus follows, interrupted brutally by Menelaus. Such as they, captives from an enemy town, are fitting food for death. He spurns the very child from his feet, covering cruelty with the excuse of Troy's blood-letting. At this, with some abruptness, Peleus enters in angry protest.
The fifty lines of stinging, bitter reproach which follow are lost upon his Spartan mind. He answers, ludicrously likening his Trojan achievement to his bold championing of Hermione's cause. His scale of dollies knew own, bashesea fresota wheel che
upon his wits:
Woman, these are but trifles, all unworthy Of my state royal,—thou say'st it,and of Greece.
Yet know, when one hath set his heart on aught, More than to take a Troy is this to him.
I stand my daughter's champion, for I count
No trifle robbery of marriage right.
(Andr. 366-371. Way)
The littleness of Menclaus' woman-ridden character duly • exposed, the next scene proceeds to flay his Spartan faith.
Andromache has left the altar for her child's sake only to find the life she strove to save handed to the tender mercy of Hermione. Menelaus, unabashed before her scorn, exults in his perfidy. The poet is blackening the chimney. There is no restraint in his art, and the whole scene is designed to lead up to the famous speech against Sparta (Il. 445-463). Menelaus has no answer, but we need not suppose him out of countenance.
As Professor Grube writes, 'he rather delights in his evil reputation, and we can imagine him actually enjoying this outburst, even to the last insult: "a very gorgon when fighting a woman"? Topyòs onlins! Indeed, if we have fixed correctly upon the guiding preoccupation of Menelaus character as Euripides conceived it, the word may have touched his vanity.
A triumph indeed, for such as him, if women change to stone at the mere turn of his helmeted head. A lyric lament between Andromache and Molossus follows, interrupted brutally by Menelaus. Such as they, captives from an enemy town, are fitting food for death. He spurns the very child from his feet, covering cruelty with the excuse of Troy's blood-letting. At this, with some abruptness, Peleus enters in angry protest.
Menelaus is to find that the Spartan sophistry which made him free with another’s chattels has found a questioner.