THE MALE CHARACTERS OF EURIPIDES
Imagine the effect in London in 1940 of a cunningly constructed play in which Frederick the Great, or the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, however ludicrously cast, boasts of cities ravaged. And yet the strange effect which such a play would certainly have produced is no sure guide to what the Athenians thought of the Helen, or for that matter, to what Euripides intended by it. His aim, surely, whatever it was, must have borne some relation to the mood of that tragic year. In pursuance of that aim the character of Menelaus is deliberately debased, or playtully burlesqued.
We have however, drifted from the analysis. Our ‘miles gloriosus’ (Grube's phrase) makes appeal to Theonoe with perfect tactlessness. He who wept before the portress (L. 456) will shed no tears. The dead Proteus is on his side. Hades, too, who owes him something for his bloody contributions at Troy, is likely to help him. If Theonoe is just, she too will help him. As Grube says, in a real tragedy 'this sort of speech would anger rather than placate? Orestes, by a not dissimilar rhetorical method, angers and hardens old Tyndareus. This, however, is not real tragedy, and Theonoe is willing to aid.
Over the rest of the play, the plotting scene, which might be a parody of similar scenes in the Ion, in the Electra and elsewhere, and over the vivid story of the sea-fight we may pass. Theoclymenus, a simpler and younger Thoas, is not seriously characterised. Euripides seems to be hastening on to the last pleasure of writing his messenger speech. He has finished with the king of Sparta. He has said his last bitter word against the folly of war (I. II5I-II64). He has decided to close conventionally and allow the Dioscuri to resolve the Egyptian situation. The comedy is over and the uxorious Spartan is at sea. Difficult though it is to catch the spirit of this play, the characterisation of Menelaus is consistent with that which has already filled two serious dramatic situations. Enslavement to his wife made Menelaus jealous. His pathetic self-glorification is the pose of a man who feels inferior before a woman. His preoccupation with his rags, and his haste to array himself becomingly, to the grave danger of his incognito rôle of shipwrecked mariner, underline the same fault. Helen, of course insisted, and she dominated him as she dominated Theo-clymenus.
Four years later Euripides wrote the Orestes. It will be more convenient to deal with Menclaus as he appears in that play when the characterisation of Orestes, to which that of Menelaus is subordinate, is under review. In the Orestes, Menelaus' lack of moral depth, his weakness and sophistry are used as a background for his nephew's paranoia, and one characterisation cannot be separated from the other. The portrait in the Orestes has, however, some reference to that of the Troades. Hecuba's fears have been justified, and even the brief and losing battle which Menelaus fought with conscience in the earlier play has now no part nor echo in him. He is a beaten and a demoralised man. Like Nana in Zola, Helen corrupts every being she touches. She has corrupted Menelaus, and when he appears in the Orestes any strength he ever had in him is gone. The woman's authentic marks are on his character.
The detail will appear in a later chapter.
Meanwhile there remains a final scene to consider. Menelaus appears in the Iphigenia in Aulis. The piece is not one of Euripides' best efforts. At least in part it is of doubtful authenticity, and it is difficult to account for the popularity it enjoyed in the ancient world. Aristotle mentions the play without the author's name," a clear proof that, to his readers and contemporaries, the Iphigenia, par excellence, was Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis.
And this was in spite of the fact that Aeschylus and Sophocles both wrote upon the theme. Euripides' treatment must clearly have commended itself to his public, and their choice, perhaps, was a mark of the age. It may be imagined that Aeschylus grappled sombrely with the problem of theology. His theme would have been the justification of God, and his climax, perhaps, the rescue of the human victim by some such word as came to Abraham in the Hebrew storya as he stood with uplifted knife above his son. In Sophocles the tragic figures would have moved across the stage a trifle larger than human, bearing burdens rather beyond the strength of a degenerate age, a little remote, for all the reality of their passion and their suffering. Both conceptions were out of date. The shallow age of the sophists was no place tor the speculations of Aeschylus.
The purity of taste which enjoyed the beauty of Sophocle was passing. Men were hungry for something closer to life as they lived it, and Euripides fed them. That is why this play enjoyed a popularity rather beyond its merits. It is very significant that Racine, when he undertook the task of fitting the story to the requirements of the French Classical drama, found it necessary to ennoble Agamemnon and to omit Menelaus altogether. His character, as Racine saw it, admitted of no improvement. A Silver Age, in short, was setting in when the Iphigenia in Aulis presented itself for Athenian approval and found acceptance. His 'delicate and almost homely character drawing together with the touch of youthful romance reveals how truly Euripides was the precursor of the New Comedy and of the Greek novel.
Menelaus appears at 1. 303, a compound of the brute of the Andromache and the sophist of the Orestes. The old retainer, slipping off through the morning with the note from Agamemnon designed to stay Clytemnestra's coming, is gripped by a heavy hand at the camp gate. It is Menelaus. Sleepless for Helen, and feverish for the coming of the altar's victim, he has haunted the coast road for tidings. The slave re-enters, pro-testing, with his captor. He says with dignity, 'Menelaus, this is outrage which befits thee not' (I. in A. 303). Euripides is fond of a theatrical contrast between aristocratic baseness and humble worth. 'Back,' cries the other, 'you are too faithful to your lord.' "A fair reproach you make against me”, replies the slave.
The argument goes on, Menelaus urgent for the letter, and threatening blows and blood, the serving-man protesting and resisting. This is not Tennyson's 'stern black-bearded king with wolfish eyes'. It is a fox of a man, a spy, a cheat, a bully. The scene is barely tragic.
Agamemnon, aroused by the din, appears at his tent door, and the written evidence of his double-dealing, now in Menelaus' hands, is thrust fraternally before him. Quarrels between the great were Homeric, and not without their humour, as the First Book of the Iliad witnesses, but there is a Euripidean difference in the quarrel which follows between the two Atridae. Agamemnon and Achilles quarrelled like warriors, and Euripides must have had the famous altercation in mind.
Agamemnon and Menelaus wrangle like sophists. The long epic tirades are replaced in the tragedy with line by line duel of words. Eu kekópukevoaL, cries Agamemnon, marking the manner of his brother's argument -'Pretty arguments!' As though accepting the sarcasm Menelaus launches into a bitter attack upon his brother's place-seeking:
“Hast forgotten how thou fain wouldst lead the Greeks to Ilium's shore, Feignedst not to wish the thing, but in thine heart didst crave it sore,
How to all men wast thou lowly clasping hands of amity,
Keeping open doors for whoso of the folk would seek to thee.”
(I. in A. 337-340. Way)
The speech is not without its anachronisms. Agamemnon has courted favour by affability, but once in office he has played the mighty king. Then, when the winds blew contrary, he appealed to his brother:
"What shall I do? didst thou ask me. What device and whence appears,
That of lordship I be not bereft nor lose my fair renown?'
(I. in A. 356, 357. Way)
He had accepted Calchas' solution. Now, an immoral weakling, with no thought for his country, he is wavering. 'He needeth wisdom who would men command. This from Menelaus!
It is splendid irony.
If Menelaus has touched his brother's true weakness he hears as much in reply. The Spartan's uxoriousness was a large and open target, and for thirty lines Agamemnon fills it full of holes. It is Agamemnon's most noble speech. There is virtue, he rightly claims, in turning repentant from evil councils.
What is Menelaus' infatuation to him? What the foolish oath of Tyndareus? (How Euripides peeps out!) Menelaus is left thrashed and whining of his friendlessness. Aiai, he cries,
pilous ap' orri keksunu ralas; This again from Menelaus!
All Hellas was waiting, with a thousand ships, to win his worthless Helen back.
Hereupon the Messenger appears. The princess has arrived, and it is too late to save her. Her father recognises the fact and is in despair. Agamemnon is never so human as in his broken speech after the Messenger's departure. It is the first genuinely
tragic note in the drama, or is capable, at least, of that interpretation.
Lo now, what vantage cleaves to lowly birth!
For such may lightly ease their hearts with tears
And tell out all their grief.
The same pangs touch
The high-born: but our life is tyrannized
By dignity: we are the people's thralls
So it is with me, for I shame to weep And yet shame not to weep, wretch that I am.
O me the pity of it! I hear her pray-
'Ah father wilt thou slay me?...
Orestes at her side shall wail the grief Unmeaning, deep with meaning, of the babe.
(I. in A. 446-450, 462-466 passim. Way)