The Male Characters Of Euripides by
E M Blaiklock
If the Hecuba is in fact a conflation of two plays, the Polyxena, the suggested source of the first section of the drama, may be presumed to have ended on this victorious and Sophoclear note. Whatever the construction of the play, it is obvious tha Euripides had some clear intention. It is absurd to dismiss the structural puzzles of either this play or the Hercules Furens with the hard words of a Schlegel or a Swinburne. It is more profitable to seek the author's meaning. In the Hecuba Euripides is proceeding, surely, with the development of some such theme as this. Suffering, he appears to say, can bring to birth some of the choicest fruits of the human spirit. In that doctrine he is not very far from Saint Paul. What life can do can be met by the strength of man, and met triumphantly, but victory does not always go that way. There are fields of conflict, declares the pessimist in him, in which evil, employing with precision and ferocity its vast reserves, overwhelms the opposition of the good, ruins and makes dark. That is the theme of the second half of the Hecuba.
Instead of Polyxena's body, the sea-washed remains of Polydorus are brought in. They are lying shrouded before the broken mother's feet when Agamemnon comes. Miss Matthaci suggests that he bears the marks of strain upon him. He is impatient and worried when Hecuba floods him with her incoherent clamours and outcries' (1l. 743-748). Quite insensitive, he supposes that she is asking for her freedom!
What seekest thou? Wouldst have thy days Free henceforth?
Sooth thy boon is lightly won.
(Hecuba 754, 755. Way)
Freedom for Hecuba! Only a man unable to feel, incapable of viewing life from any angle but his own selfishness and stupidity could imagine liberty a welcome gift, a boon to be desired for such a stripped and naked soul, reft as Hecuba was of home, family, fatherland:
Tís apúveL uol; noía yévva,
Toía Sè TóNIs;
фройбо про, фробо тадє
Troiar, n savrnu n keivar
(Hecuba I59-163).
Freedom was of small use to such age and destitution. It is light on Agamemnon that he thinks it is. Revenge is a sweeter gift. In a long speech Hecuba appeals for it. It is pointed out that her plea falls into two portions. She addresses herself in the first to Agamemnon's sense of justice. Let him consider the fundamental laws which the barbarian Polymestor has violated.
He has killed a guest, killed him deliberately, and what is more,
IIO
THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES
left this body unburied. Remembering that even the king had admitted her deep misery (l. 78s) she begs for pity :
Pity me:-like a painter so draw back, Scan me, pore on my portraiture of woes.
A queen was I, time was, but now thy slave;
Crowned with fair sons once, childless now and old.
Cityless, lone, of mortals wretchedest.
Woe for me!-whither wouldst thou withdraw thy foot.
(Hecuba 807-812. Way)
Justice and pity form no potent arguments for Agamemnon.
He draws back and the action marks the end of the first section of the appeal. Hecuba, her stricken mind set on vengeance, abandons the dignity and high moral tone of her prayer.
Satire creeps into the speech when she complains that she has never been taught the art of Persuasion, that ruling power over men. Gorgias, it is to be remembered, had appeared in Athens only two years before. Would she had Persuasion! She might, indeed, by its aid make this worse appear the better argument.
And shameless argument it is, based on her daughter's humilia-tion. Euripides, elsewhere, shows Orestes appealing in a last extremity in Helen's name, and drawing back from the touch of her memory. There is no accent of hesitation in Hecuba's ten lines. In crude, plain language, such as the like of Agamemnon understand, she details Cassandra's services to the master of her person, and calls the king to avenge the brother of the woman he has appropriated, his kinsman, ironically enough.
"This sacrifice of dignity and pride, says King 'marks the supreme humiliation in the tragedy of Hecuba.' It marks more.
It is a moral collapse, and the beginning in Hecuba of something akin to madness. Grube takes a more lenient view.
"This genuine affection for his captive', he says, "is (as distinguished from lustful desire) a new feature in his (Agamem-non's) character, and one as typically Euripidean as the affection which Clytemnestra feels for her daughter in the Electra.....
Agamemnon in this play is delightfully human. Agamemnon says nothing himself to justify this kindlier interpretation, and Hecuba could hardly put the relationship of Cassandra and her captor on a lower plane that she has just done in the drama.
Stooping thus to conquer she becomes bestial.
Agamemnon's reply reveals the pitiable weakness of the man. Neither his speech nor the bitterly sarcastic reply of his old captive needs much comment:
A. I am stirred to pity, Hecuba, both of thee, Thy son, thy fortune, and thy suppliant hand;
And for the God''s and justice sake were fain
Thine impious guest should taste for this thy vengeance,
So means were found thy cause to speed, while I Seem not unto the host to plot this death For Thracia's king for thy Cassandra's sake.
in me thou hast one fain
To share thy toil, and swift to lend thee aid, But slow to face the Achaeans murmurings.
H. Ah, among mortals is there no man free!
To lucre or to fortune is he slave:
The city's rabble or the law's impeachment Constrains him into paths his soul abhors.
But since thou fearest, dost overrate the crowd, Even I will set thee free from this thy dread.
(Hecuba 850-856, 861-869. Way)