I

This dissertation has been

microfilmed exactly as received 6 7 -4 2 1 4

DECKER, Philip Hunt, 1932-

THE USE OF CLASSIC MYTH IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DRAMA, 1900-1960: A STUDY
OF SELECTED PLAYS.

Northwestern U niversity, Ph.D., 1966

Speech-Theater

University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan

 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

THE USE OP CLASSIC MYTH IN

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DRAMA, 1900-1960:

A STUDY OF SELECTED PLAYS

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of Theatre

By
PHILIP HUNT DECKER

Evanston, Illinois

August 1966
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to the members of my

Graduate Committee, Professors Charlotte I. Lee and Lee

Mitchell, and particularly to my adviser, Professor Walter

B. Scott, Jr., who guided me through the preparation of

this dissertation. The advice and assistance of these and

other faculty members at Northwestern University throughout

my years of graduate study are deeply appreciated.

I am also indebted to the staffs of the Northwestern

University Library and the MacMurray College Library for the

assistance which they gave me, and especially to Miss

Victoria Hargrave, Mr. Richard Pratt, and Mrs. Glenna

Kerstein, who were most helpful in securing materials from

other libraries.

In addition, I am grateful to my typist, Mrs. Myron

Madsen, for the accuracy and efficiency with which she typed

the final draft.

Finally, I owe a great debt to my loyal friend, Mrs.

Cecil Franseen, who has spent countless hours reading and

rereading the manuscript; her incisive criticisms have been

greatly appreciated. My largest debt is to my wife, without

whose continued help and encouragement this study could

never have been completed.

ii
 TABLE OP CONTENTS

Page

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS...................................... ii

Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION ................................. 1

II. THE ATREIDAE MYTH AND D R A M A S ................ 12

Part 1: The Atreidae M y t h ............... 13

Part 2s The Atreidae Dramass Section 1 . 38
Richard LeGallienne's Orestes> myth
without m e a n i n g ................... 40
Part 3s The Atreidae Dramas: Section 2 . 55
Robert Turney's Daughters of Atreus:
myth, love, and forgiveness I T~. . 56
Robinson Jeffers' The Tower Beyond
Tragedy: myth and the doctrine of
i n h u m a n i s m ......................... 83
Part 4: The Atreidae Dramas: Section 3 . 115
Jack Richardson's The Prodigal: myth
and the a n t i - h e r o ................. 116
Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes
Electras myth and psychological
fate .............................. 146
Kenneth Rexroth's Beyond the Moun­
tains: myth and the salvation of
l o v e ................................ 188
Part 5: The Atreidae Dramas: Section 4 . 216
William Alfred's Agamemnon: myth and
moral responsibility . T ............ 217
T. S. Eliot's The Family Reunion:
myth and the expiation of sin" . . . 248

III. THE PHAEDRA-HIPPOLYTUS MYTH AND DRAMAS ... 292

Part 1: The Phaedra-Hippolytus Myth . . . 293

Part 2:The Phaedra-Hippolytus Dramas . . 299
Robinson Jeffers' The Cretan Woman:
myth and the doctrine of inhumanism
r e v i s i t e d ......................... 300

iii
Chapter Page
H . D .'s Hippolytus Temporizes: myth
and ideal beauty . 7*~. I 7~... 335
Kenneth Rexroth1s Phaedra: myth and
the power of human l o v e ..... 367

IV. THE ALCESTIS-ADMETUS MYTH AND DRAMAS . . . . 398

Part 1: The Alcestis-Admetus Myth . . . . 399

Part 2: The Alcestis-Admetus Dramas . . . 404
Carlotta Montenegro's Aloestis: myth
and womanly v i r t u e ........... 405
Laurence Housman's The Wheel: myth
and the oneness of life 7 ... 434
T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party:
myth and the two ways toward salva-
t i o n .......................... 467

V. C O N C L U S I O N ............................. 523

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................ 547

iv
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
 Nearly every culture known to man has evolved its

own body of myth, legend, and folklore. In some societies,

this collection of material has remained unknown to and

unexamined by outsiders; while others, especially those

which have achieved a high degree of civilization, have

embodied their myths and legends in great artistic achieve­

ments which have had far-reaching effects on countries and

peoples of later periods. No aggregate of legendary mater­

ial has had more influence upon the literary history and

accomplishments of the western world than that of ancient

Greece and Rome. This study is a critical examination of

selected twentieth-century English and American dramas

which are based on stories drawn from classic mythology.

In the next few pages I will define certain terms

of the title and limits of the study; explain certain basic

assumptions and methods of procedure used in this investi­

gation; briefly note what has already been done in the

field, and attempt to justify this particular examination;

explain the organization of the dissertation; and, finally,

suggest certain basic questions which this study attempts

to answer.

Twentieth-century anthropologists, psychologists,

philosophers, literary critics, and others have produced

2
lengthy and complicated analyses of the nature of myth,"*"

hut such studies are outside the limits of this disserta­

tion. Some simple definition of myth is obviously necessary

for a study of this kind, however, and in order to arrive

at one it is helpful to note how various writers in this

century have explained the nature of myth.

Webster1s New International Dictionary states that

myth is

a story, the origin of which is forgotten, that ostensi­

bly relates historical events, which are usually of
such character as to serve to explain some practice,
belief, institution or natural phenomena. Myths are
especially associated with religious rites and beliefs,
so that mythology is generally reckoned a part of
religion. . . .*■

Lewis Spence says that

a myth is an account of the deeds of a god or super­

natural being, usually expressed in terns of primitive
thought. It is an attempt to explain the relations of
man to the universe, and it has for those who recount
it a predominantly religious value; or it may have

The following titles are only a few of the many

studies of this kind: Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a
Thousand Faces (New York: Pantheon Books, 194-9); Richard
V*. Chase, Quest for Myth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1549); C. G. Jung, Psychology of the
Unconscious (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., Inc., 1916);
Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1^57); Dmitrii Merezhkovshii, The
Secret of the West, trans. W. A. White (New York: Harcourt,
Brace and do., Inc., 1931); and Otto Rank, The Myth of the
Birth of the Hero (New York: Robert Brunner, Pubis., 1952).
2
Webster's New International Dictionary of the
English Language (2nd ed.; Springfield, Mass.: G& C
Merriam Co.7 Pu5l., 1961), p. 1622.
 4

arisen to "explain" the existence of some social

organization.. a custom, or the peculiarities of an
environment.1

The Oxford Classical Dictionary defines myth and

separates it from related forms of literature such as

legend and folklore.

^Viyth la/ a prescientific and imaginative attempt to

explain some phenomenon, real or supposed, which ex­
cites the curiosity of the myth-maker, or perhaps more
accurately is an effort to reach a feeling of satis­
faction in place of uneasy bewilderment concerning
such phenomena. It often appeals to the emotions
rather than the reason and, indeed, in its most typ­
ical forms seems to date from an age when rational
explanations were not generally called for. . . .
Myths therefore deal, principally with the doings
of gods, their ritual and their relationships to one
another, or else with natural phenomena in some
striking way and they are characteristically aetio-
logical, having for their aim to furnish an explana­
tion of something. If the main characters of the
story are human, or supposedly so, and the tale con­
cerns their doings in battle or other adventures, it ^
is usual to speak, not of myth but of saga or legend.

The PCD adds that folk-tales vary from myth in that they

are written for "pure amusement," and have "no basis in

speculation or fact"} frequently all these forms— myth,

legend, and folk-tales— are combined within a single story.3

One of the clearest detailed statements concerning

the nature of myth was made several decades ago by Arthur

Fairbanks. "Myths," according to Fairbanks, "are the

Lewis Spence, An Introduction to M;

Yorks Farrar and Rinehart, n. d.), pp. 11-
p
The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxfords The
Clarendon Press, 1949)> PP» 594-95-
3Ibid.
 5

stories of the acts of superhuman beings, often improbable

to us, but believed to be true by those who related them."

Accordingly, the

narrative form is essential. While myths deal with

the gods, they are not expressions of worship (prayer
or psalm) nor statements of belief (creeds). Even
when they describe the gods, they do it indirectly, in
connection with some story of their acts. So when they
deal with the constantly recurring processes of nature,
the description aims to be narrative of what happened
once in the mythical past. . . . Thus in treating the
objects of religion as well as in treating the processes
of nature, the narrative form is essential to myth.
The content of the myth may be religious, or scientific,
or historical; it is a myth only when it is put into
the form of a story to interest and amuse.
Though many of these narratives deal with facts
of nature, the figures in them are all persons, ordi­
narily superhuman persons. . . . Not yet having devel­
oped the power of abstraction, primitive peoples treat
physical processes as due to personal will, so the
attempt to describe them inevitably becomes a narrative
of the acts of personal beings. In the myth-making
period the Greeks were quite in this stage of civiliza­
tion, nor did they ever entirely outgrow it. . . .
That the characters in myth are superhuman, at
least in some particular, seems a necessary supposition
in order to account for an interest in the story. The
direct statement of evident fact would not be a myth.
Only when it is referred to some being other than
human, or when some such personality is brought into
the narrative, does it receive this name. The dis­
tinction would not have been recognized in the myth­
making period. Looking back, however, we can distin­
guish partially between direct and mythical state­
ments . . . .
Finally the myths, in spite of many irrational,
even absurd elements, were believed to be true so long
as they continued to be genuine myths. . . . That
myths should in a measure correspond to recognized
facts, is perhaps necessary in order that they may be
considered true. They are located in regions quite
familiar to the original hearers. They reproduce the
characters of the people who tell them, as Odysseus
represents one type of Greek in his shrewdness and in
his persistent endurance. Something of historical
fact may be detected in the story of the Trojan war.
. . . These facts are assumed as the setting of myth;
they remain incidental and in the background, still
 6

they are none the less necessary for the credibility

of myths.
Between fact and fiction the myth draws no line,
since all is told as fact and believed as fact. It
belongs to the very nature of myth, however, that it
is the product of an imagination in no wise trammeled
b^ actual experience. . . . This reality of . . .
/the/ mythical world . . . was reconciled with the
world of everyday life by means of a very simple
expedient— by referring it to an earlier age. What­
ever the actual age of a myth, it was referred to the
period ending with the Trojan war— a period of which
nothing could be demonstrated false for it was "by
hypothesis" different from the world of actual ex­
perience.1

Myth may, then, be described as a form of litera­

ture which embodies the following traits; (1) it is pre­

sented in story form; (2) its principal figures are super­

human, either gods or human beings with some supernatural

qualities; (3) it is not the work of one author but the

product of many hands; (4) it is set in the remote past;

(5) it is for a time believed to be true by those who tell

it; and (6) it is presented to explain phenomena which

cannot be accounted for by rational means, and is therefore

closely connected with religion. Other characteristics

might be mentioned, but this list includes the basic ones

and should be adequate to explain the nature of the term

myth as it is used in this study. The adjective classic

in the title of this dissertation indicates simply that the

myths considered here are products of the ancient Greek

culture.

■^Arthur Fairbanks, The Mythology of Greece and Rome

(New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1907)7 PP* 1-6.
 7

As the editors of the Oxford Classical Dictionary

pointed out, myth, folklore, and legend are frequently

combined within a single story. Such is the case in cer­

tain of the tales which this work will examine, and no

attempt will be made to separate the truly mythical from

the merely legendary. If a sizeable portion of the story

is myth, the entire story will be considered as such.

The very nature of mythology presents certain

problems. First, it is generally recognized that myth can

be so universal in application that it is possible to find

mythical elements of a sort in almost any work of fiction.

Therefore, this investigation will be limited to those

twentieth-century English and American plays in which the

use of myth as subject-matter is obvious or to dramas by

authors who claim to have based their work on particular

classic myths.

Secondly, it must be noted that myths have no

prototypes and consequently several versions of the same

story may exist. Tatlock says:

The religion and mythology of the Greeks was not

a fixed and unchanging thing; it varied with different
localities and changed with changing conditions. For
when we speak of Greece we do not speak of a nation in
the strict sense— that is, a people under one central
government— but of the Greek race: "Wherever the
Greeks are, there is Greece." So the mythological
stories grew and changed as they passed from Asia Minor
to Greece, or from Greece to the islands of the Aegean
Sea, to Italy and Sicily. Moreover, the independence
of the individual in the Greek states, where men
thought for themselves and no autocratic government or
powerful priesthood exerted undue restraint, fostered
variety and permitted artists and poets so to modify
 8

traditions as to express something of their individual

ideas. This added infinitely to the richness of myth­
ology and art. . . . Finally, since mythology is not
based on authority, but grows from the soul of the
people, it necessarily follows that as Greek life and
thought grew and developed, as social customs changed,
as art was perfected and poetry and philosophy grew
less simple, the telling of the myths and their inter­
pretation changed and developed. Mythology was a
living, growing thing, impossible to seize and fix in
a consistent system. It must be regarded as a mass
of legend, handed down through the people and poets of
generation after generation, continually reflecting
the developing life and soul of a great and vital race.
When different versions of a story are found, one is
not necessarily more authentic than another.

It is, nevertheless, necessary to be familiar with the main

outlines of the myths as they existed in the ancient Greek

culture, in order to recognize significant alterations which

are the product of modern writers. Since no "originals"

exist, it seems logical (and expedient as well) to turn to

several of the best handbooks of mythology published in

recent years for the story outlines. Where important vari­

ants in the myth exist, these will be noted.

Several recent studies which examine the use of

mythology in m o d e m drama have compared such twentieth-

century plays with the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and

o
Euripides. This dissertation will attempt to avoid such

^Jessie M. Tatlock, Greek and Roman Mythology (New

York: The Century Co., 1917), pp. xxii-xxiv.
2
Two of the best examples of this type of investi­
gation are Jarka Marsano Burian, "A Study of Twentieth-
century Adaptations of the Greek Atreidae Dramas" (unpub­
lished Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1955); and
Bert Mallett-Prevost Leefmans, " M o d e m Tragedy: Five
Adaptations of Oresteia and Oedipus the King" (unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1953)•
 9

comparisons, for two reasons: first, a comparison of

modern drama with, the work of any classic playwright assumes

that the twentieth-century author used the Greek work as

his primary source of the legendary material. Although

this may "be true in many instances, and although classic

drama has undoubtedly had a profound influence on certain

modern dramatists, it is often impossible to determine the

author's main source. The considerable number of plays

which are based on myths not included in the extant Greek

dramas suggests that m o d e m playwrights have gone to a

variety of sources. Second, examinations which have com­

pared m o d e m plays to classic drama have tended to judge

the twentieth-century work in terms of the Greek plays.

Although it may be interesting to compare the dramatic out­

put of two different periods of history, the works of one

should never be judged by the standards of another. Many

writers have found similarities between the fifth century

B. C. and the twentieth century A. D., but there are more

variations than resemblances between the two periods.

M o d e m drama cannot be like the works of Aeschylus, or

Sophocles, or Euripides, because it is a product of its

own environment. It must, therefore, be judged in terms

of that environment.

A sizeable collection of English and American dramas

based on classic mythology exists, but it has never been

studied in any detailed way. Most critical articles and

 10

books have dealt either with individual plays or their

authors, although an occasional chapter has compared

briefly a few of these dramas.1 Several dissertations have

been produced on the use of mythology in m o d e m French and

German drama, and two studies have compared certain English

and American plays based on myth to the works of playwrights

2
of other nationalities. No single study, however, has

been devoted to a detailed analysis of any sizeable group

of contemporary English and American dramas based on

classic myth.

As the bibliography of this dissertation illus­

trates, an examination of all twentieth-century English and

American plays which use myth as their subject matter is

impossible; there are simply too many of them. Consequent­

ly, I have limited this study to an analysis of selected

plays based on the Atreidae myth, the Phaedra-Hippolytus

myth, and the Alcestis-Admetus myth. There are three rea­

sons for the choice of these particular stories: (1) they

are more self-contained than most other myths and are there­

fore easier to isolate and discuss as separate entities;

(2) they have been used more frequently than any

"^See, for example, the final chapters of Douglas

Bush, Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English
Poetry (New York: Pageant Book Co., 1957), and Gilbert
Highet, The Classical Tradition ("Galaxy Books": New York:
Oxford University Press, 1957).
2
Supra, p. 8, n. 2.
 11

others;'1’ and (3) the plays fashioned from these legends

include some of the most interesting m o d e m English and

American plays based on classic myth. The choice of these

myths should, therefore, make the study adequately repre­

sentative.

Each chapter of this study will examine a group

of plays based on one of the three myths. Within each

chapter my investigation will move from those dramas which

make the most literal use of the myth to those which handle

it most freely.

In a general way this study is intended to suggest

answers to certain basic questions. These include:

(1) Why have twentieth-century English and American drama­

tists used classic myth as subject matter for their dramas?

(2) What myths have been used in the current century by

these authors? (3) Why have these particular myths been

chosen rather than others? (4) How have the myths been

altered and for what purposes? and (5) What results have

been achieved by the use of myth?

It is true that Helen and Odysseus appear as the

central figures in a relatively large number of twentieth-
century English and American plays, but these plays are
based upon such a variety of events from the lives of their
central characters that they are impossible to compare in
any sensible way. Plays based on the Medea-Jason myth and
the Psyche-Eros myth are almost as numerous as those men­
tioned above.
CHAPTER II: THE ATREIDAE MYTH AND DRAMAS
 Part 1: The Atreidae Myth

Before an inquiry can he made into the ways in

which any classical myth has been used by modern play­

wrights, examination of the myth itself is necessary.

Careful attention should be paid to the incidents and

character relationships of the myth as well as to signifi­

cant variants. As William Smith comments, "A review of the

legends . . . helps the reader to become more aware of the

traditional nature of the material, ... as well as its

degree of stability, or the extent to which it acquired

definitive form."1 Only in this way can the reader realize

how a twentieth-century playwright has used and changed a

mythical story to make it meaningful to his contemporary

audience.

Perhaps I should preface my examination of the myth

with a few comments as to the sources which I have con­

sulted and why these sources were chosen. Instead of turn­

ing to Greek literature, I have used contemporary diction­

aries and handbooks of classical mythology. There were

two reasons for doing this. First, it was the simplest

Biography* Mythoiogy,
and Co., 1866), p. bb

13
 14

way to gain a comprehensive knowledge of the myths with

which I wished to deal since myth in Greek literature is

generally fragmented. Second, and more important, there

is, in most cases, no way to tell what works were consulted

hy modern playwrights. Probably all, or nearly all, turned

to Greek drama, but many include details which are not

found in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Certainly some turned to Homer and no doubt many inspected

the myth in other sources, contemporary as well as ancient.

The sources, then, become insignificant. The only matter

of importance is that the authors seem to have had a con­

siderable knowledge of the mythical stories with which

they worked. I believed that as long as I had a similar

knowledge, the source of that knowledge might justifiably

be contemporary classical dictionaries.1

As mentioned in chapter one, this study begins with

an examination of the Atreidae myth and the twentieth-

century English and American plays which have been based

on this story. The legend of the Atreidae has been one of

the most attractive to writers throughout the history of

the western world. It continues to appeal today and there

are in English almost twice as many plays based on this

^ h e reader will -undoubtedly realize that Greek

myths were built up over a number of centuries. Different
details of a myth date from different periods of Greek
history. For example, part of the Atreus legend is Homeric,
part pre-Homeric, part may even be post-Homeric. The date
of these details is irrelevant to a study of this nature.
 15

particular story as on any other classical legend.

The Atreidae myth deals with the history of a

family curse which works itself out through several genera­

tions. The myth is then, hy its very nature, more complex

than many others. Although most plays based on the myth

focus on the latter part of the entire story, frequent

reference is made to earlier generations and therefore a

fairly complete knowledge of the history of the household

is required. This is further complicated by the fact that

'•any investigation into the details of the legends relevant

to the Atreus drama reveals variant accounts, obscure moti­

vations, and contradictions.”^

The Atreidae myth begins with the history of one of

the most famous mythical figures, Tantalus, the son of Zeus

(or of Tmolus, the god of Mount Tmolus in Libya) and the

2
nymph Pluto. Tantalus was King of Phyrgia, or of Lydia,

1Smith, A Smaller Classical Dictionary, p. 88.

2
This account of the Atreidae myth is based on an
examination of the following sources: Catherine B. Avery
(ed.), The New Century Classical Handbook (New York:
Appleton-Cen-fcury-Crofxs, Inc., 1952;; M. Cary et a l .
(eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1949): Larousse Ejnoyclopedia of Mythology
(New York: Prometheus Press, I960); Charles Mills &ayley7
The Classic Myths in English Literature and Art (new ed.
rev. and enl.; New York: Ginn & Co., 193$); Dan S. Norton
and Peters Rushton, Classical Myths in English Literature
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, I § 5 2 ) ; H. <!r. Rose,
Gods and Heroes of the Greeks (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.,
1957): H. J. itose. Handbook of Greek Mythology (New York:
E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1959); Gusxav Scnwab, Gods and
Heroes: Myths and Epics in Ancient Greece (New Yorlci
Pantheon Books, Inc., 1946); William Smith, A Classical
Dictionary of Biography, Mythology and Geography (London:
John Marroy, 1883).
 16

or of Argos or Corinth, and a man of great wealth and

power. He was the father of Pelops, Niobe, and Brotius.

Either because of his ancestry, or because the gods

were fond of him, Tantalus was allowed to sit at the table

of the gods and Zeus "communicated his divine counsels to

him."^ But because Tantalus was not a god, he became a

victim of great pride and in one way or another abused

the privileges which he had received. The crimes of

Tantalus are variously reported. Avery, Gustav Schwab,

and others suggest that he committed a series of crimes,

while Smith and H. J. Rose believe that the legend should

contain only one crime but acknowledge that different

crimes have been attributed to Tantalus by different authors.

According to these various accounts Tantalus was guilty of

one or more of the following: (1) he revealed to other

mortals the secrets of the gods which were communicated to

him by Zeus; (2) he stole ambrosia and nectar from the gods

in order to gain immortality; (3) he asked Zeus to make

him immortal; (4) in order to test the omniscience of the

gods, Tantalus killed his son, Pelops, cut up the child's

2
body, boiled the pieces, and served them to the gods;

■^Smith, A Classical Dictionary, p. 742.

2
When the dish was set before the gods only Demeter,
distraught with grief over the disappearance of her daugh­
ter, Persephone, ate the flesh. Zeus then ordered the body
thrown into a cauldron from which it was drawn forth whole.
Only a piece of the left shoulder, the flesh which Demeter
had eaten, was missing and this was restored with ivory.
 17

(5) he lied -to Hermes and took an oath in the name of

Zeus that he told the truth; (6) he, not Zeus, stole

Ganymede; (7) he denied that the sun was a god and claimed

it was only a fiery mass.'*'

Although the accounts of the crimes of Tantalus

vary, the accounts of his punishment do not. Tantalus was

consigned to everlasting punishment in Tartarus where he

stands in water which reaches his chin but from which he

cannot drink. Above his head hangs rich fruit, but each

time he reaches for the fruit, a breeze blows it out of

reach. In addition, just above Tantalus is a huge rock

which seems always on the point of falling and crushing

him. Tantalus suffers from eternal thirst, hunger, and

fear.

Pelops, Tantalus' son, who was restored to life at

the command of Zeus, was so beautiful that he was carried

off by Poseidon and kept by that god on Mount Olympus.

Eventually Pelops returned to his father's kingdom in Lydia

but was driven out by a neighbor, the king of Troy. When

he left the kingdom he journeyed to that part of Greece

which he later named the Peloponnesus, and there met and

fell in love with Hippodamia, daughter of Oenomaus, King of

Pisa and Elis.

Either because Oenomaus had an incestuous love for

"brlose points out that these last two crimes are

clearly later additions to the myth.
 18

his daughter, or because an oracle had declared that he

would be killed by his son-in-law or by one of Hippodamia* s

children, he was reluctant to have his daughter marry. In

order to avoid the marriage, Oenomaus challenged each of

Hippodamia’s suitors to a chariot race. Since the horses

of Oenomaus had been given to him by his father Ares, and

were, therefore, faster than the horses of any mortal, he

felt confident about the outcome of the race and he gave

each of the young men a head start. The challenge included

the stipulation that should Oenomaus overtake the suitor he

be allowed to kill the young man. At least a dozen suitors

had accepted Oenomaus' challenge and died as a result.

Pelops, however, was more fortunate than the other

admirers of Hippodamia for he had not only winged horses

and a golden chariot which had been given him by Poseidon,

but he was also an excellent driver, a skill which he had

learned at the hands of that same god. Nevertheless,

Pelops took no chances, and either directly or through

Hippodamia, he bribed Myrtilus, Oenomaus1 charioteer, to

remove the axle pin from Oenomaus1 chariot and substitute

for it one of wax, In return, Pelops promised Myrtilus

that he would receive half of Oenomaus' kingdom. Myrtilus

accepted the bribe and Oenomaus was thrown from the chariot

and killed. In the last moments of his life he cursed

Pelops and his descendants.

Either because Myrtilus tried to collect his reward,
 19

or to rape Hippodamia, or "because Pelops wished to hide

his treachery, he hurled Myrtilus into the sea. As he

fell, Myrtilus placed a curse on Pelops' children. In a

short time, then, a curse had twice been placed on the

House of Pelops. One of these, although it is not clear

which, was the cause of all the difficulties of the suc­

ceeding generations. Since Myrtilus was the son of Hermes,

most authorities seem to feel that his was the more power­

ful of the two curses. In an attempt to avoid the curse,

or curses, Pelops sought purification from Hephaestus and

erected a temple to Hermes to appease that god, but to no

avail.

Pelops ascended the throne of his father-in-law

and in time became ruler of the entire peninsula which he

named Peloponnesus. He had numerous children, of whom the

most important are Atreus, Thyestes, and the bastard

Chrysippus. Chrysippus was said to be his father's favor­

ite son and this infuriated Hippodamia. Either alone or

with the help of Atreus and Thyestes, she killed Chrysippus.

As a result the two sons were exiled and Hippodamia fled

to Argolis where she committed suicide. When Atreus and

Thyestes left their homeland, they were invited by

Sthenelus, the king of Mycenae, to come to his kingdom,

and for a time they lived peacefully there. Atreus became

the father of Plisthenes by his first wife who died soon

after her child was born, and of Agamemnon, Menelaus, and

 20

Anaxibia by his second wife, Aerope.

A few years later Sthenelus and his son Eurystheus

died, leaving the throne of Mycenae vacant, and an oracle

declared that a Pelopid should rule. Either Atreus became

King at once, or for a period of time the brothers vied

for the crown; Atreus being supported by Zeus, and Thyestes

by Artemis.'*' In any event, a rivalry which was to last for

their lifetime sprang up between these two sons of Pelops.

Some tiihe before the death of Sthenelus, Atreus had

been given a golden lamb. Unknown to Atreus, the animal

had been sent by Hermes as a device to avenge the death of

Myrtilus, for Hermes believed that Atreus would not sacri­

fice the lamb to Artemis as he had sworn to do and would,

therefore, anger that goddess so that she would punish him.

Atreus, however, kept his pledge, but saved the fleece of

the lamb and had it stuffed and mounted. Either by royal

decree, or by an agreement with Thyestes (who had already

secretly stolen the lamb), it was established that whoever

possessed the lamb was the rightful ruler. Shortly after

the death of Eurystheus, Thyestes had seduced Aerope and

with her aid had stolen the golden lamb. Now Thyestes made

known the fact that the lamb was in his possession and

claimed the throne of Mycenae for his own.

In order to regain the throne, either Atreus

■^Schwab adds that Thyestes ruled the southern part

of Argolis.
 21

suggested that Thyestes should return the throne to him

if the sun reversed its course, or Zeus sent Hermes to ask

Thyestes if he would give up the kingdom if the sun re­

versed its course. Thyestes agreed, and with the aid of

Zeus and Eris, the sun traveled from west to east for one

day. Atreus took the throne and Thyestes was forced to go

into exile.

Thyestes thought of a plan to avenge himself on

Atreus. He sent Plisthenes, the son of Atreus, to kill

his father. Plisthenes was willing to comply with Thyestes'

request, for he had "been raised as Thyestes' son and be­

lieved Thyestes to be his father. Even Atreus did not

know this child. Plisthenes was no match for Atreus, how­

ever, and the older man killed the boy. Only after

Plisthenes was dead did Atreus realize what he had done.

Either as a result of Plisthenes' death, or because

he had discovered the adultery of Aerope with Thyestes,

Atreus planned his own means of revenge. He pretended to

be reconciled with Thyestes and invited his brother to re­

turn to Mycenae, promising to share the kingdom with him.

Thyestes returned and was welcomed at an elaborate banquet

at which, unknown to him, he dined on the flesh of his own

sons whom Atreus had killed and dismembered. When Atreus

revealed the truth to Thyestes, he cursed the House of

Atreus and all of its descendants and went into exile once

more, this time to Sicyon. There, according to one version

 22

of the legend, an oracle told Thyestes that he might gain

an avenger if he would ravish his own daughter, Pelopia,

while she was sacrificing at night to Athena. Thyestes

followed the guidance of the oracle. Because it was night,

Pelopia did not recognize her father, but in the struggle

she seized his sword and kept it as a means of later

identifying her assailant.

Because of Atreus' crimes against Thyestes, a

famine befell Mycenae, and an oracle told Atreus that he

must seek out Thyestes and ask him to return to Mycenae if

he wished to rid his country of its blight. Atreus went to

Sicyon to find Thyestes and while there he met and fell in

love with Pelopia, Thyestes' daughter. Believing her to be

the daughter of Theoprotas, the king of Sicyon, Atreus

asked that ruler for Pelopia's hand. Theoprotas consented

to the request without revealing the true parentage of the

girl; nor was Atreus aware that Pelopia was already pregnant.

The child which she carried had been conceived as a result

of her having been raped by Thyestes, though of course she

did not know the identity of the child's father. When the

child, Aegisthus, was born, Pelopia left him on a mountain

to die, but Atreus, thinking the child was his own, rescued

the boy and reared him as his own son.

Finally Atreus found his brother, returned with

him to Mycenae, and then placed Thyestes in jail. After

some years, Atreus summoned the youth Aegisthus and

 23

commanded him to kill Thyestes while he slept. Aegisthus

intended to do so, hut just as he was about to strike

Thyestes, the old man awoke. He recognized the weapon

which Aegisthus held as the sword which Pelopia had taken

from him on the night he ravished her and thereby identi­

fied Aegisthus as his own son. Thyestes sent for his

daughter, who killed herself upon hearing that her child

had been sired by her own father.

Thyestes and Aegisthus plotted to avenge themselves

on Atreus. Aegisthus carried his sword, which had been

bloodied, to Atreus as proof that he had obeyed the King's

command. Atreus thanked the gods for the favor and while

he was sacrificing, Aegisthus and his father killed the

King. At last Thyestes became the ruler of Mycenae.

Following the murder of Atreus, Agamemnon and

Menelaus, his two most famous sons, went to the court of

Oeneus, King of Aetolia, and remained there until Agamemnon

regained his father's throne. The account of the manner

in which Agamemnon was restored to the throne varies. One

version states that Agamemnon slew his uncle to avenge his

father's death and would have slain his cousin as well, but

the gods spared Aegisthus so that the curse on the House

could be perpetuated and he went to rule his father's old

kingdom in the south of Argolis. Another version claims

that Agamemnon returned to Mycenae and forced Thyestes into

exile, and that Aegisthus fled at the same time. A third

 24

variant suggests that Tyndareus, the Zing of Sparta, forced

Thyestes to give up his throne to Agamemnon; and finally, a

fourth version states that Agamemnon came peaceably to the

throne at the death of Thyestes. In one way or another,

then, Agamemnon became King of Mycenae and the most power­

ful man in Greece.

Agamemnon made war on Tantalus, the King of Pisa,

and killed him and his child. He then forced Tantalus'

widow, Clytemnestra, to marry him. Clytemnestra was the

daughter of Tyndareus, King of Sparta, and his wife Leda,

and the half-sister of Helen.1 Clytemnestra's brothers

would have avenged her, but Agamemnon appealed to Tyndareus

and was purified by him of the death of Tantalus.

Clytemnestra gave birth to four children by Agamemnon:

Orestes, Electra, Iphigenia, and Chrysothemis. Menelaus,

meanwhile, had wooed and won Clytemnestra's half-sister,

Helen. Tyndareus was so pleased with his sons-in-law that

he gave his kingdom to Menelaus.

For a few years Menelaus and Agamemnon led peaceful

lives. This calm was short lived, however, for one day

three of the goddesses were involved in an argument which

would have an effect upon all the princes of Greece. In

^ h e relationship of the children of Leda is con­

fusing because she lay with both her husband and with Zeus,
in the form of a swan, on the same evening. As a result of
these unions, four children were produced: two daughters,
Helen and Clytemnestra, and twin sons, Castor and Polydeukes.
Generally Helen and Polydeukes are said to be the offspring
of Zeus, while Clytemnestra and Castor were sired by
Tyndareus.
 25

order to end their argument, the goddesses asked Paris, the

son of Priam, King of Troy, to determine which of the

three was the most beautiful. He awarded the prize to

Aphrodite because she had offered him the most beautiful of

mortal women as a bribe; Aphrodite then arranged to have

him steal Helen, the wife of Menelaus.

When Helen was abducted, Menelaus reminded the

other princes of Greece, who had been Helen's suitors,

that they had agreed to aid whomever Helen married in case

trouble befell her husband as a result of the marriage.'*'

The leaders of Greece banded together to form an expedition­

ary force which would sail to Troy and return Helen to her

husband, and they chose Agamemnon as their leader.

After two years of preparation, the Greek fleet

assembled at the coastal town of Aulis. The Greeks were

prevented from sailing, however, either because of a calm

or because of violent contrary winds. Calchas, a seer,

announced that Artemis had caused the condition which kept

the ships from sailing because Agamemnon had angered her.

One version of the myth states that Agamemnon had killed a

stag which was sacred to Artemis; a second version, that he

boasted that the goddess could not shoot better than he;

b e c a u s e of Helen's great beauty, many powerful

noblemen had vied for her favors. Tyndareus feared to give
his daughter to any one of these young men lest the others,
in their anger at not being chosen, turn on him. Odysseus
suggested that Tyndareus make all Helen's suitors pledge
their loyalty to whomever became her husband.
 26

and still another variant, that Agamemnon had vowed, in

the year that Iphigenia was born, to sacrifice the year1s

most beautiful product to Artemis, but had not kept his

vow.'*' Whatever the crime, Calchas reported that only the

sacrifice of Iphigenia would placate the goddess. Odysseus

suggested that Agamemnon send a message to Clytemnestra

telling her to send Iphigenia to Aulis where she would be

given to Achilles as his bride. Urged on by Menelaus,

Agamemnon wrote to his wife. Later, however, Agamemnon had

misgivings and would have changed his course, but Odysseus

told him that the soldiers had heard Calchas1 prophecy and

that the expedition would, as a result, be jeopardized if

Agamemnon failed to complete his plan. Iphigenia arrived,

unexpectedly accompanied by her mother. When Clytemnestra

learned the truth, she pleaded with her husband but to no

avail. The sacrifice was performed, the winds changed, and

the fleet sailed for Troy leaving behind a sorrowing and

embittered Clytemnestra.

The Trojan War lasted ten years. During the war

Agamemnon was involved in a number of events which are re­

counted in Greek mythology. None of these events have any

direct bearing on the myth which I am examining, however,

nor are they important in terms of the plays which this

work studies. I shall, therefore, omit any consideration

^There is yet another variant, that the crime,

which was either of the first two mentioned, was committed
by Menelaus rather than by Agamemnon.
 27

of Agamemnon's part in the war.

In the tenth year of the battle, the Greeks crushed

the forces of Troy and leveled the city. At once the

Greeks began to make preparations for the voyage home,

taking with them the spoils of war. Agamemnon took as his

concubine Cassandra, the daughter of Priam. Some time be­

fore the Trojan War began, Apollo had fallen in love with

Cassandra and had promised to give her the power of prophecy

if she would return his love. She agreed and he gave her

prophetic powers. Cassandra, however, refused to keep her

part of the bargain. Apollo was unable to take back his

gift, but as a means of revenge he decreed that no one

would believe her prophecies.1 Cassandra predicted the

downfall of Troy as well as many other events, and before

leaving Troy she predicted the death of Agamemnon and her

own death as well. When all preparations had been completed,

the Greeks sailed for home.

As mentioned previously, when Agamemnon gained the

throne of Mycenae, Aegisthus, the son of Thyestes and the

cousin of Agamemnon, returned to his father1s old kingdom

in the south of-^Argolis. Since Aegisthus and Agamemnon

were enemies, Aegisthus had not sailed with the Greeks to

^ h e r e is a variant of this part of the legend which

claims that Cassandra received the power of divination as a
child. While her parents were worshipping Apollo, a serpent
licked the ears of Cassandra and her brother Helenus, and as
a result both gained prophetic powers. This variant, how­
ever, does not account for the fact that no one believed
Cassandra.
 28

Troy. Some time after the fleet had left the shores of

Greece, Aegisthus went to Argos^ with plans to seduce his

cousin’s wife. Conditions were ripe for Aegisthus' suc­

cess for several reasons: (1) rumors had circulated that

the Greek warriors had taken concubines and Clytemnestra

was jealous; (2) Aegisthus had sent away the person

appointed by Agamemnon to spy on Clytemnestra and report

her actions; (3) even before Clytemnestra was born,

Aphrodite had decreed that the daughters of Tyndareus

would be unfaithful because the King had neglected her

(Aphrodite's) worship; (4) the sacrifice of Iphigenia had

enraged Clytemnestra. As a result Clytemnestra hesitated

only briefly before she gave herself to Aegisthus. Soon

the two began to plan how they might murder Agamemnon on

his return. To ensure the success of their plan they set

up a system of beacon fires which would announce the end of

the Trojan War and give them time to make final preparations

before the Greeks landed on their native soil.

Soon after the beacon flames announced the end of

the war with Troy, Agamemnon's ship landed at Nauplia where

2
Aegisthus was waiting to welcome the king. Agamemnon was

■^In Homer, Agamemnon was driven off course by bad

weather and landed in Aegisthus' kingdom; later it was his
own kingdom at Mycenae, or Argos, "which, being much the
more important place in classical times, is constantly con­
fused with it " (Rose, Gods and Heroes of the Greeks, p. 70).

^Supra.
 29

one of the few Greek leaders to he able to sail directly

to his homeland. Most of the Greek ships were blown so

far off course during the return trip that they were forced

to land in foreign ports. Together Agamemnon and Aegisthus

traveled to the palace in Mycenae where Clytemnestra

greeted her husband with elaborate ceremony. Before

Agamemnon could step from his chariot, Clytemnestra had

her handmaidens place rich purple tapestries from the

chariot into the palace. She told her husband that the

feet of a leader as great as he should not touch the ground

and she pleaded with him to walk on the tapestries. Although

Agamemnon believed such an act should be reserved only for

the gods and feared they would be offended if he usurped a

privilege belonging to them, he finally allowed Clytemnestra

to have her way and he entered the palace. Clytemnestra

invited Cassandra to follow Agamemnon, but the Trojan prin­

cess made no reply.

After Clytemnestra had gone into the palace,

Cassandra broke into a frenzied, seemingly irrational speech

in which she recited the history of the whole Atreidae clan,

cryptically foretold Agamemnon's death, and mentioned one

who would one day avenge his death. The Greeks, believing

Cassandra had been driven insane by suffering, gave no heed

to her prophecies. Finally, appealing to the gods to make

her death swift, she entered the palace.

Clytemnestra waited to act until Agamemnon and his

 30

concubine had entered the ceremonial bath. Then she

immobilized the pair with a large net,1 stabbed her hus­

band, and then Cassandra. Homer, however, claimed that

it was Aegisthus who killed Agamemnon; after Agamemnon

was dead, Clytemnestra removed his head with a huge axe

and then killed Cassandra with the same weapon.

At once Clytemnestra announced to her people that

she had killed her husband because of his ruthless sacri­

fice of Iphigenia and because he had returned home with a

concubine. A brief struggle followed between the forces

of Aegisthus and those of Agamemnon, but Aegisthus1 fol­

lowers were soon victorious and Clytemnestra and her

2
paramour took control.

Agamemnon^ children, Orestes, Electra, and

Chrysothemis, escaped the fate of their father, although

the manner of Orestes1 departure from Mycenae is variously

reported. The most common version of the myth suggests

that immediately following Agamemnon1s murder, Electra

Speculation exists as to whether the net appeared

as a detail of the earliest versions of the myth, or
whether it was used only metaphorically. It is included
in Avery1s and Schwab1s account of the legend, but is
omitted by the PCD.
2
"Whatever the estimate of Clytemnestra, whether
as a strong and purposeful woman whose character was dis­
torted by the ways she had suffered, or as a monster who
was a disgrace to womankind, she was a fearless, intelli­
gent, and arresting character. She arranged the plot to
kill Agamemnon and did not flinch when it came time to
carry it out. She ruled Argos with never an apology for
the manner in which she obtained her power 11 (Avery, p. 309) •
 31

secretly took her brother from the palace and entrusted

him to the care of an old family tutor with instructions

that the tutor take the child to Stophius, King of Phocis,

whose wife, Anaxibia, was Agamemnon's sister. There

seems to be some evidence that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus

intended to murder Orestes but were thwarted in their

efforts. Other versions of the legend suggest the follow­

ing alterations in this part of the myths (1) Orestes was

sent to Phocis prior to Agamemnon's return, perhaps by

Clytemnestra herself; (2) Orestes was saved not by Electra

but by his tutor who disguised his own son to resemble

Orestes so that Aegisthus would kill that child rather

than Orestes; (3) Orestes was raised by Tyndareus and Leda

following the murder of Agamemnon. Regardless of the

manner of Orestes' escape, it is clear that he was taken

from his home at an early age and raised by foster parents.

Electra, however, remained with her mother.

Although for the next seven years Clytemnestra and

Aegisthus ruled the kingdom of Mycenae, life for the pair

was not happy. Aegisthus lived in constant fear lest

Orestes some day return and avenge his father's death,

and Clytemnestra was frequently troubled by hideous dreams

which seemed to symbolize her death at Orestes' hands.

Electra, too, gave the couple no peace. She frequently

reminded her mother that she was guilty of adultery and

murder and at times even publicly condemned Clytemnestra.

 32

Furthermore, Electra knew the whereabouts of Orestes, con­

tinually sent messages to her brother reminding him of the

duty he owed his father, and constantly proclaimed that

Orestes would return and avenge their father's murder.

As a result of her behavior, Electra was kept in a

state of poverty and filth. At one time she had been be­

trothed to Castor, Clytemnestra's brother, but Castor died

before the marriage could take place. When the news of her

intended's death spread through the land, all the young

princes of Greece sought to marry the girl. Aegisthus re­

fused to allow Electra to marry, however, for he feared

that she might give birth to a son who would someday avenge

his grandfather. Aegisthus would, in fact, have killed

Electra, but Clytemnestra would not allow such a deed for

she believed in the law of the gods which stated that a

man must not murder a blood relative. Some versions of

the myth add that in order to degrade Electra, Aegisthus

married her to a peasant. The peasant, however, did not

consummate the marriage for he respected the princess and

feared her brother.

During the time that Orestes was in exile, he ques­

tioned frequently whether he should avenge his father's

murder. Electra's messages continually reminded him of

his duty to his father, yet the god's decree strictly for­

bade the crime of matricide and Orestes could avenge

Agamemnon only by killing Clytemnestra. Finally, Orestes

 33

went to Delphi to consult the oracle. There he was told

it was Apollo's will that he slay Clytemnestra and

Aegisthus. In the eighth year after Agamemnon's death

Orestes returned secretly to Mycenae, accompanied "by

Pylades, who had been his constant companion in Phocis.

Orestes went first to the grave of his father

where he gave offerings and prayed to his father's ghost

to aid him. Shortly afterwards, Orestes sought out

Electra and revealed his identity to her. Together they

planned the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Orestes

was still somewhat troubled, for the murder of one's own

mother was a heinous crime. Electra and Pylades, however,

reminded him that Apollo had ordered him to do the deed.

Without further hesitation, Orestes and Pylades gained

entrance to the palace by pretending to be messengers

from Phocis bearing news of Orestes' death. Once within

the palace walls Orestes wasted no time in carrying out his

pxan. He sought out the Queen and with the aid of Pylades

he killed her, calling on the gods to witness that he was

obeying the command of Apollo. Minutes later Aegisthus

also fell victim to Orestes' sword.^

Although the fate of Aegisthus could be "justified

J. Rose states that in the Homeric tradition,

the Atreidae myth ends at this point— no Furies haunt
Orestes, there is no question of his guilt. The rest of
the myth as it appears here comes from a non-Homeric,
perhaps earlier, tradition.
 34

as the proper fate of an adulterer,"'*' the Furies descended

at once on Orestes for the crime of matricide. As a re­

sult, he fled from land to land suffering pain and periods

of madness. After a lengthy period of wandering, either

because he felt he had been purified, or because he had

once more consulted the Delphic oracle and received in­

structions from Apollo, he journeyed to Athens and there

took refuge in the temple of the goddess Athena.

Athena afforded Orestes protection and appointed

the court of the Areopagus to determine his guilt or inno­

cence. In the trial, which was the first of its kind,

Orestes was supported by Apollo, while the Furies prose­

cuted the young man. Athena acted simply as an impartial

judge. After the court had heard each side and each man

of the jury had registered his vote, it was discovered that

an equal number of votes had been cast for each side in

the case. Athena broke the tie by deciding in favor of

Orestes, feeling that he had already suffered severely

for his crime and was purified of any guilt. Athena also

persuaded the Furies to give up their role as avengers of

blood guilt and to become the Eumenides or "kindly ones."

They agreed and took up residence in a cave on the side of

the Acropolis. It became their job to protect suppliants

and to increase the fertility of the soil.

Orestes' acquittal lifted the curse which had for

^very, p. 789.
 35

so many generations plagued his ancestors. As Norton and

Rushton comment, "Orestes by the purity of his intention

and by the agonies of his remorse had atoned not only for

his own sins but for all the sins of the House of Atreus."^

There are, however, several variants of the method by

which Orestes was finally absolved of his crime. Some

versions of the myth include all the variants as a series

of episodes through which Orestes passed in order to be

purified. Others suggest that these episodes are true

variants and that the whole myth should include only one

method of purification, either trial or some other means

of expiation. If all episodes are used, there is some

question of their proper sequence. Gayley, for example,

suggests that Orestes' journey to Tauris (which will be

briefly reported in the next paragraphs) occurred before

the trial at Athens.

The most frequently accepted version of the myth

indicates that Athena was unable to appease all the Furies

2
and consequently some of them continued to haunt Orestes.

In desperation Orestes returned once more to the oracle at

Delphi. There he was told that he must make a voyage to

Tauris in Scythia, steal the sacred image of Artemis from

the temple in which it was kept, and return the image to

^Norton and Rushton, p. 94.

2
Still another variant of the myth is that Orestes
gave the Furies blood by biting off one of his own fingers.
As a result,the Furies, who had appeared black, suddenly
became white.
 36

Attica. Even though Orestes knew that it was the custom

of the Tsirians to sacrifice all foreigners who landed on

their shores, he and his cousin Pylades at once set out

for that land. Almost before the pair had landed they

were captured by the natives and taken before the priest­

ess of Artemis to be prepared for sacrifice.

It is necessary to recall at this point that when

contrary winds kept the Greek fleets from sailing to Troy,

Agamemnon found it necessary to sacrifice his daughter

Iphigenia to appease the wrath of Artemis. Just as the

blade reached Iphigenia's throat, however, the goddess

snatched her away and substituted a deer disguised as

Agamemnon's daughter. Artemis transported the young girl

to Tauris where Iphigenia was made a priestess of Artemis

and placed in charge of the temple which contained the

sacred image of that goddess. It was Iphigenia's task to

prepare for sacrifice all foreigners who landed on the

shores of Tauris.

When Orestes and Pylades were brought before the

priestess, she was delighted, for she thought to avenge

herself on the Greeks by sacrificing these two young men.

But as she talked to them she realized how strong was her

love for her homeland and she decided to help the two es­

cape. As Iphigenia revealed her plan for escape to

Orestes, she discovered his true identity. After a brief

reunion the three made their way to the shore where, with
 37

the aid of Athena, they escaped in the ship which had

brought Orestes and Pylades to Tauris, taking with them

the sacred image.

Although there are numerous variants of their

voyage, Orestes, Pylades, and Iphigenia finally returned

to Greece and Orestes was absolved of his crime of matri­

cide. The sacred image was installed in the temple of

Artemis in Attica and at Delphi the trio were reunited

with Electra, who shortly thereafter married Pylades.

Orestes returned to Mycenae where he won back his father1s

throne from Aletes who had usurped it in Orestes' absence.

Later in his life Orestes murdered Neoptolemus so

that he could marry Neoptolemus' widow, Hermione, who

originally had been betrothed to Orestes. Later still

Orestes became the King of Sparta and Arcadia. Finally

he left Mycenae and went to Arcadia where he founded the

city of Orestia. Orestes died there of a snake bite when

he was very old.

 Part 2: The Atreidae Dramas: Section 1

As indicated in the first chapter, my examination

of the mythic dramas included in each part of this study

moves from those plays which make the most literal use of

the classic legend to those which handle the mythic materi­

als most freely. In order to further clarify certain simi­

larities and differences which exist within the Atreidae

dramas, I have divided the eight plays examined in this

chapter into four groups. The reader will find, I believe,

that plays within any one group are similar in the degree

of freedom with which they treat the Atreidae myth, while

a significant difference in approach exists between the

works of one group and those of another. The first divi­

sion contains only one drama, Richard LeGallienae's

Orestes, a play which demonstrates the simplest use which

twentieth-century Anglo-American playwrights have made of

classic myth. LeGallienne uses the legend in a most lit­

eral manner. He includes most of the incidents which are

found in that part of the Atreidae myth upon which the

play is based, and adds little of his own to the work.

As a consequence, the play lacks a controlling thesis.

At least one other American Atreidae drama of this type

38
exists, Burton Crane's The House of Atreus;'*' but since

both of these works are devoid of artistic merit, an

examination of LeGallienne's play will be sufficient to

indicate the characteristics as well as the deficiencies

of mythic dramas of this type.

^Burton Crane, The House of Atreus (Boston;

W. H. Baker, 1952).
 Richard LeGallienne1s Orestes: Myth without Meaning

Richard LeGallienne1s Orestes, a two-act play in

■blank verse, was published in 1910. It was written,

according to LeGallienne, at the request of William

Faversham who wished to produce a "music-drama on the

story of Orestes, to the accompaniment of Massenet's

music— music originally written for Leconte de Lisle's

'Les E r i n n y e s ' I t is difficult to know how much the

Massenet music may have controlled or restricted what

LeGallienne did with the Orestes legend. Apparently the

music had some effect on the structure of LeGallienne's

work, for he comments: "In making this version, I have

. . . been somewhat circumscribed by the necessity of

following the lead of the music, particularly in the first

act, which I desire the reader to regard as a prologue,

2
and subsidiary to the second act, which is the real play."

The phrase "music-drama" would indicate, nevertheless,

that the work might be justifiably evaluated as a piece of

^Richard LeGallienne, Orestes (New York: Mitchell

Kennerley, 1910), unnumbered page in the preface.

2Ibid.

40
 41

dramatic literature without reference to the music.^

LeGallienne also tells us that he "followed

Aeschylus, for the dramatic action; but the interpretation

of the characters, and the words which I have put into

2
their mouths, are entirely my own." An examination of the

play will reveal that this statement is not strictly true.

The author knew considerably more of the details of the

myth than are found in Aeschylus' Oresteia, and LeGallienne1s

lines occasionally sound very much like third-rate Marlowe

or a bad nineteenth-century English translation of Greek

drama.

Orestes is set before the palace of the Atreidae

in Argos, and as the curtain rises the Furies are seen to

be passing silently back and forth across the stage in the

dim pre-dawn light. Soon the day begins, the Furies dis­

appear, and a chorus of old men enters. The chorus is

never functional, however, having only three brief lines

in the entire play. Two old men, Talthybios and Eurybates,

who might be considered the chorus leaders, handle in dia­

logue all those speeches which might be given the chorus.

In two pages of dialogue the old men describe the course

of the war in Troy. The exposition ends with a prayer to

^This statement is further substantiated by the fact

that Massenet's music is not an operatic score, but simply
"incidental music." (Eric Blom ^ed^7, Grove's Dictionary of
Music and Musicians /5"th ed.; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.,
19517,'"?: "ess:)—
^LeGallienne, unnumbered page in preface.
 42

Zeus, "god of eternal justice," to guide "safe the good to

its good end" (5).1 A watchman enters to announce that he

has sighted the "beacon fires which signal the destruction

of Ilium by the Greeks. When the old men voice their

doubts, Clytemnestra enters to assure them that the message

is true.

The second scene of the first act begins as

Talthybios and Eurybates herald the return of Agamemnon.

Clytemnestra welcomes home her husband and he responds

with a brief, official-sounding speech. In three lines of

dialogue she persuades Agamemnon to enter the palace on

the purple tapestries which she has spread for him. He does

so and Clytemnestra follows, only to return to the stage

momentarily to tell Cassandra that she is welcome. After

Clytemnestra exits, Cassandra agonizes over her fate as

unheeded prophetess, and predicts what the future will

bring for the House of Atreus. Interestingly enough, she

makes only one brief reference to the past history of the

House'. Cassandra enters the palace and almost immediately

the cries of Agamemnon ring out. The Queen throws open

the palace door, sword in hand and her robe stained with

blood, and tells the chorus that she has murdered her hus­

band to avenge Iphigenia and because she has fallen in love

■^The number in parentheses is the page number of

the text, previously cited, on which the quotation may be
found. This system will be followed throughout the study.
with Aegisthus. Although Cassandra has prophesied her

own death, Clytemnestra makes no reference to her. The

old men answer that they accept only Orestes as their king

and charge the Queen with sending the boy as a bond-slave

to Phokis. She answers that Orestes is not a bond-slave,

but "is in the pious care of an old kinsman" (20).

Aegisthus enters and Clytemnestra turns to him, "takes

his hand and looks proudly into his face" (21). "Here is

your King, Aegisthus,— and my lord'." she says, and

Talthybios responds with the curious line, "You will

remember— when Orestes comes" (21).

The second act occurs ten years later. Again the

scene is Argos, with the palace on stage left and the

grave of Agamemnon opposite. Orestes and Pylades enter

and Orestes makes a sacrifice to his father, briefly re­

counts his life of the past ten years, and explains that

he is here at Apollo's command. Electra comes to pour

libations on her father's grave. Strangely, Orestes fails

to recognize his sister, but Pylades recognizes her at

once and they hide behind nearby rocks. Electra prays to

her father's spirit and asks him to send her brother to

rid the throne of Argos of its effeminate luxury.

Clytemnestra enters and in one of the few interesting

scenes of the play tells Electra that it is well to honor

a dead father but that she ought also to respect her

mother. The Queen explains that Electra cannot know what

hell it is to share the bed of a man one does not love.

 44

Electra spits out her hatred of Aegisthus and an argument

ensues which reaches its high point when Clytemnestra

threatens to marry Electra to a man of peasant stock.

After her mother leaves the stage, Electra turns once more

to the grave and this time sees the locks of hair which

Orestes has left as tribute. Pylades and Orestes appear

and a recognition scene takes place. Orestes proves his

identity by means of the locks of hair, a child's robe

which Electra had woven for him many years before, and a

scar on his forehead which he had received as a boy. The

recognition scene permits Orestes to explain to his sister

in a series of lengthy and confusing speeches his motives

for returning to Argos. Orestes then reveals his plan to

gain entrance to the palace by pretending to be a merchant

of Phokis who has come to report the death of the son of

Agamemnon. At once the plan is put into action.

Clytemnestra appears, Orestes tells the lie, and everyone,

including the chorus (which has spoken only one line up to

this point) laments the death of Orestes. The Queen invites

the young man to enter the palace and Electra is left alone

to receive Aegisthus. When he arrives, Electra tells him

the lie and, after a short dispute over whether Atreus or

Thyestes was more wronged by his brother, Aegisthus enters

the palace. Within seconds the death cries of Aegisthus

are heard and Orestes emerges to announce that there is

"one dog the less in Argos" (41). Almost immediately,

 45

however, Orestes questions his ability to kill his mother.

Both Pylades and Electra offer words of encouragement and

by the time Clytemnestra enters, Orestes seems to have re­

gained his courage. The scene between Orestes and his

mother follows. Clytemnestra pleads with her son to re­

member that she is his mother, but Orestes answers that it

is too late to use that argument. Finally, Orestes drives

his mother into the palace, and there is a dreadful pause

on stage while the audience waits to hear the cries of

Clytemnestra. At last Orestes returns, "shaken and ex­

hausted" (47). He begins to question his deed as "feller

that the deed /it would avenge" (48) and as if in response,

the Furies appear. Electra and Pylades are no longer of

any help to the young man and he ends the play with this

speech:

0 what are you, you webbed and taloned things

That steal like smoke about me and about'.
See you these shapes, or are they, Pylades,
Nightmares and goblins of the tortured mind?
My eyes are filled with blood, and rending fires
Blaze in my brain— still they swarm about me...
Is this to do the bidding of the gods'.
Horrors', they are my mother's vengeful hounds. (50)

This synopsis shows clearly that LeGallienne uses

the myth in a literal way. He adds the reference to

Clytemnestra's sending Orestes as a bond-slave to Phokis,

but since the play makes nothing of this change and since

Clytemnestra refutes it, this alteration is insignificant.

The emphasis which LeGallienne puts on Clytemnestra's love

for Aegisthus is the only noteworthy addition. In the

myth Clytemnestra is motivated by a desire to avenge her

daughter, and by her jealousy of Cassandra. She believes

herself to be an instrument of divine retribution.

Aegisthus seduces Clytemnestra and she keeps him because

he is useful to her, but no mention is made of any romantic

attachment. In the next few pages we will note what effect

this addition has on the play.

The most obvious defect of Orestes lies in

LeGallienne's inability to give the action of the drama

any meaning beyond the events themselves. This failure

is primarily the result of two things, Orestes' confusing

motivation, and the completely ambiguous ending of the play.

It is impossible to know what motivates Orestes'

return to Argos and his decision to murder his mother and

her paramour. Frequently it appears that Orestes' acts are

directed almost entirely by supernatural agents. Soon

after his entrance in the second act he tells us that he

comes at the prompting of his father's ghost and the orders

of the god Apollo (23). Later in the act, in the speeches

which conclude the recognition scene, he goes even further

in this direction by suggesting that he and all men are

simply tools of the gods;

 47

Electra, life is strange and terrible,

A web woven by unseen fingers in the grave,
And stained by dreadful doings not our own;
The deed of fathers that destroy their sons
And make their daughters fair and flitting things.
Voices and dreams and phantoms, things of air
And the time dust, rule all this stable show
Of granite and grandeur that we call the world:
And we young creatures know not what we do,
Save that we do the bidding of a dream;
And know not where we go, save that we take
The pathway pointed by some shadowy hand. (31)

Perhaps the supernatural framework is most clear when,

still later in the same scene, Orestes says:

And my whole body, as I came to man,

Grew more and more a horrid instrument
To work the retribution of the gods. (33)

Orestes’ attitude toward the gods is itself con­

fusing. Before the murder of Clytemnestra he seems always

to believe that man must do as the gods bid, but after the

murder, Orestes says:

Pylades, think you that the gods know all?

Methinks the work of gods too dread a thing
For shuddering hands of perishable clay. (47)

This speech and others might, nevertheless, be

acceptable if the supernatural framework for Orestes'

motivation were retained throughout the play. Unfortunately,

it is not. LeGallienne confuses the issue by introducing

lines which seem to treat the young man's motives in a

quasi-psychological way:

But there were other hauntings— voices in my blood

Calling for vengeance, dreadful urgings-on
Within the very marrow of my bones. (33)

And at other moments Orestes seems to act within a human,

self-determined framework of fate:

 48

Yea, sister, such a grief for such a wrong

Needs not the urgence of a threatening god:
It is enough to have a father slain,
Electra for a sister, and one's land
Beneath the bloody heel of brazen lust. (34)

The reader becomes thoroughly confused, unable to decide

whether this is a play about a young man who followed the

laws of the gods and learned the folly of his ways or

whether about a man who is talking out his neuroses.

Perhaps the ending demonstrates even more clearly

LeGallienne's inability to give the action of the play any

coherent meaning. As noted earlier, the drama ends just

after Orestes has first seen the Furies and has begun to

question the justice of his act and the wisdom of the gods.

But nothing is resolved. No reason is given for the pun­

ishment Orestes must endure after his act of vengeance, nor

are we given any hint as to what the final outcome of

Orestes' action will be. The play is, then, little more

than a rearrangement of certain basic details of the

Atreidae myth, a rearrangement which lacks any central idea

upon which it might focus.

There are other elements which contribute to this

defect in the play. Generally there seems to be no attempt

to reinforce the role which fate plays in the drama.

Clytemnestra fails to see herself as an instrument of

divine retribution and kills for what appear to be selfish

motives: the wish to avenge Iphigenia and the desire to

get rid of a husband she does not love so that she can live
 49

forever with, a man whom she does love. Moreover, neither

the chorus nor the Furies is any help in establishing a

framework of fate in which the action might occur. The

chorus is not actually a chorus at all, but simply two

old men who are used almost exclusively for the purpose of

exposition. LeGallienne is so unskilled in the use of this

element that in the second act, when the chorus can no

longer be used to spout expository lines, it almost dis­

appears from the play altogether. Even the Furies, who

are never allowed to speak, are no help. The reference

to the "Fury-haunted air" (20) of Argos, and the appear­

ance of the Furies at the beginning of the play seem to

be nothing more than theatrical tricks.

Although the other flaws which Orestes exhibits

are perhaps less damaging to the over-all artistic merit

of the work, they are of equal importance for a study of

this kind, because they are representative of the flaws

which are found in most twentieth-century dramas based on

classic myth. Perhaps the most important of these has to

do with the reduction in stature of the mythical figures.

In the myth, nearly all the figures, with the exception of

Aegisthus, are people of heroic proportion. Their crimes

are as magnificent as their deeds of heroism and they seem

somehow set apart from ordinary mortals. LeGallienne

tends to romanticize and even domesticate the characters of

the legend. At times this may make the characters more

 50
believable, but the gain in realism can hardly make up for

the loss of tragic stature.

The most obvious example of romanticism is the

emphasis placed on the love of Clytemnestra for Aegisthus.

It is presented as a major motive for her murder of

Agamemnon, and in the second act she attempts to justify

her deed by explaining to Electra that Electra cannot know

what life is like for a woman who must share the bed of a

man she does not love. After Aegisthus' death she refers

to him as "beautiful Aegisthus," and as her "sunlit tower

of a man" (42). Finally, when Clytemnestra realizes she

cannot escape Orestes' sword, she says:

Yes, take me to him then, for I would sleep

By that kind side, where only have I found
In this short wintry watch of cruel days,
Some sweetness of the bitter thing called life—
I love Aegisthus, loving him shall die,
And dying, seek his arms beneath the ground. (46)

Not only does such a speech reduce the stature of

Clytemnestra, but, as Burian points out, "the general ir­

relevance of these sentiments to the main action of the

play is compounded by their specific irrelevance, for

nothing in the play suggests any qualities Aegisthus might

possess to warrant Clytemnestra's praises."^ Indeed, the

opposite seems true, for Aegisthus allows Clytemnestra to

kill her husband unaided, while Electra's constant word

for Aegisthus is "effeminate."

■^Jarka Marsano Burian, "A Study of Twentieth-

century Adaptations of the Greek Atreidae Dramas" (unpub­
lished Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1955), p. 88.
 51

Orestes is described in almost equally romantic

terms. At his entrance he seems as interested in the flow­

ers and the wonders of nature as he is in avenging his

father's murder:

0 Pylades, is this my father's grave?

The man that made me out of rocks and dreams—
My father, Pylades, does he lie here?
This warrior that has changed to little flowers'.

How strange yon daisy, such a peaceful thing,

The children's toy, dare bloom there unafraid,
And the soft grass move idle in the wind. (22-23)

LeGallienne has obviously transmuted Orestes into a poet,

and unfortunately a bad one. LeGallienne compounds his

error, perhaps unwittingly, by adding a diseased psyche to

Orestes' personality. When Clytemnestra pleads with the

young man to remember that she is his mother, he answers:

Nay', bare your breast to him /Aegisthu^7 down

there in hell,
Who with his lecherous kisses long ago
Defiled the milky purpose of that flower;
A witchcraft fairness, sweet and soft for sin,
A lover's toy, a wanton honey-guide
To snare the soul of manhood down to death—
No breast for honest babes . . . (44)

No character in dramatic literature could have much stature

left after such a speech.

Other shortcomings of Orestes can be discussed

more briefly. One of these is LeGallienne's tendency to

overlook the dramatic possibilities which seem inherent in

the incidents of the myth. There is, for example, consider­

able opportunity for the use of dramatic irony in the first

1Ibid., p. 44.
 52

act of the play, particularly in Clytemnestra's speeches.

But LeGallienne never takes advantage of his opportunity.

Clytemnestra either speaks the truth or tells such out­

right lies that the possibility for irony dissolves.

Never is Clytemnestra allowed the kind of pregnant double-

talk which we might expect from such a character, particu­

larly when she welcomes Agamemnon home.

Equally unfortunate is the handling of the scene

in which Clytemnestra urges her husband to tread the

tapestries which she has strewn in his way. Once

Clytemnestra makes her request, it takes her only two

single-line speeches to persuade Agamemnon to do as she

asks. The scene is over before it has had a chance and

once again LeGallienne has thrown away a potentially dra­

matic moment.

LeGallienne reveals his ineptness in another way

when he resorts to cheap theatrical tricks which have little

or no relevance to any meaning which the play might have.

I have already mentioned the curious use of the Furies at

the beginning of the play. Another example of irrelevant

melodrama occurs in the scene in which Orestes presents

himself to Clytemnestra as a messenger from Phokis. Just

after Orestes introduces himself, Clytemnestra munnurs in

an aside, "Where have I seen those strange grey eyes

before'." (36), a line which she repeats just before she

enters the palace at the end of the scene.

 53

LeGallienne has a penchant for using Greek dramatic

conventions, hut too often allows them to degenerate into

gimmickry or uses them with no real justification. He in­

cludes a chorus in his play, hut only makes use of the two

old men for exposition in the first scene. This is a

trifling and inept corruption of the convention. And he

retains the Greek custom of having death-scenes occur off­

stage, even though this creates some awkward and unnecessary

pauses in the action.

It is unfortunate that so many American and British

playwrights who use myth seem to feel that they are

obliged to deal with it in verse. Few of them are poets;

even fewer are dramatic poets. Orestes is full of ohvious

poetic devices, and might more profitably have been written

in graceful prose than in verse which depends too much on

alliteration and assonance, heavy rhythms, and artificial

reversal of word order. The poetic devices become so

obvious the play seems almost a parody of itself.

Old evil hands about the ancient doors,

And in the sunlight sable shadows steal,
And at the windows watching spectres stand. (8)

My very thews and sinews dreamed of him,

And slew and slew and slew him in my sleep, (33)

I do believe you do you know not what,

And you the victim are as well as I. (46)

LeGallienne's Orestes is clearly an unsuccessful

play, but an examination of it is useful for a number of

 54

reasons. First, it is an example of one way in which

English-speaking playwrights have used classic myth, and

it demonstrates vividly the dangers of using the mythic

elements in a literal way without giving the action of

the play any thematic content. It also shows some weak­

nesses which are present in nearly all m o d e m mythic

drama: the romanticizing of the legend, the introduction

of extraneous psychological motives, the use of melodra­

matic lines and actions which are irrelevant to the central

meaning of the play, the pointless retention of some Greek

dramatic conventions, and the use of pseudo-poetic

dialogue.
 Part 3: The Atreidae Dramas: Section 2

The second group of plays in this chapter includes

two works: Robert Turney's Daughters of Atreus, and

Robinson Jeffers' The Tower Beyond Tragedy. Both authors

are considerably less literal in their approach to the

myth than LeGallienne; both have seen fit to make a number

of modifications of the legendary material in order to give

meaning to their plays. For the most part, however, the

changes which each author makes are minor, and do not sig­

nificantly alter the events of the story. Only in the

last segment of the work by Jeffers do we find the kind of

major alteration of the mythic materials which character­

izes the plays in the third group of this chapter.

55
 Robert Turney's Daughters of Atreus:

Myth, Love, and Forgiveness

Daughters of Atreus, a three-act prose drama

written by Robert Turney, was published and produced in

the fall of 1936. The play was Turney's first attempt at

writing for the theatre and was, apparently, the culmina­

tion of an idea which he had carried with him for fifteen

years.^ Although most of the professional critics of the

day agreed that the production of Daughters of Atreus was

hopelessly inept, many, and some of the best, found con­

siderable merit in Mr. Turney's play. Joseph Wood Krutch,

writing in The Nation, commented that Turney had "achieved

a near miracle." "For one thing," Krutch continued, the play

is astonishingly effective both as drama and as

theatre . . . and yet I am not sure that this dramatic
effectiveness considered merely by itself is as re­
markable as the fact . . . that the whole seems so
relevant in meaning and so immediate in its emotional
appeal. I should hardly have supposed it possible
that so old a tale could be retold with so little
obvious reworking and yet again be felt through with
such unmistakable freshness. It is seldom thatpl am
moved in the theatre as on this occasion I was.

Sean O'Casey too was impressedwith Daughters of Atreus

^Time, October 26, 1936, p. 48.

^Joseph Wood Krutch, "What's Hecuba to Him?" The

Nation, October 31, 1936, p. 530.

56
 57

and in a letter to George Jean Nathan tells of his attempt

to call public attention to the drama:

I found this to be a play'. I forget whether or no

you mentioned it to me when I was in New York, but I
find you do in a recently published article. It is,
in my opinion, one of the best things I have read
for a long time. I wrote an article called "I Spy
a Pine Play" about it, but the papers here in London
weren't interested, so I got the article back. The
English theatre is a deceased theatre.

Only Edith Isaacs found the play to be without any merit

whatsoever. Her review dismissed all the production ele­

ments as inartistic, inharmonious, or inept; and diagnosed

"the fundamental cause" of "so much error" as the play-

2
wright's inability "to handle a work of this magnitude."

The audiences apparently agreed with Kiss Isaacs' evalua­

tion, for the play closed after seven performances.

Unlike LeGallienne, Turney has attempted to give

the action of his drama a meaning with relevance for the

twentieth-century theatre-goer. As a result, although

his play remains faithful to the basic story-line of the

myth, Turney is considerably less literal in his approach

to the mythic materials than LeGallienne. The setting

and characters are still Greek and the people of the drama

perform the same basic actions as their prototypes, but

Turney has felt free to change details of the story and to

Sean O'Casey, quoted in George Jean Nathan, "Art

of the Night," The Saturday Review of Literature, October
17, 1936, p. 19” 1 have been unable to find any record of
the article to which O'Casey refers.
p
Edith J. R. Isaacs. "Unwritten Plays," Theatre
Arts Monthly, XX (December, 1936), 924.
 58

make additions to the legend when he deemed it appropriate.

Daughters of Atreus begins shortly after the Greek

fleet has gathered at Aulis. Polymnia, Klytaimnestra's

nurse and now nurse to Klytaimnestra's children, enters

the courtyard of Agamemnon's palace bearing the cradle of

Orestes. She is followed by the other handmaidens of the

court. The women's gossip establishes Polymnia's identity

and allows her to remind the other women that she, too, is

a slave. "Close your heart to bitterness," she says, "and

peace will come. Those who give their service joyously

are always free."^ While the women talk, the sounds are

heard of Elektra and Iphegeneia at play. Polymnia insists

that Elektra come inside the palace to rest. When the girl

objects, Polymnia reminds her that she is weaker than her

sister who is "half-child, half-woman" (6). It quickly be­

comes clear that Elektra is stubborn and fractious, with a

sense of isolation; while Iphegeneia is placid and trac­

table. As the sisters review Polymnia's past life Elektra

comments that she hates men who make war, even her grand­

father, Tyndareus, who killed Polymnia's husband and son

and made Polymnia a slave. When Iphegeneia reminds Elektra

that their own father fights like other men, Elektra counters

that she does not hate him; since he is the king, he only

■Robert Turney, Daughters of Atreus (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1936), p. 5.
leads men into battle but does not fight.

Klytaimnestra, a woman of "great dignity" (10),

enters, and Iphegeneia runs to meet her. Elektra, however,

remains with Polymnia and tells the nurse that Klytaimnestra

loves her elder daughter more than she does Elektra. After

brief comments about the Greek fleet's being still at Aulis

and about domestic matters of the court, ambassadors from

the Norse and from Egypt are announced and are received by

Klytaimnestra. She deals effectively with Vortigern, the

barbarian from the North, allowing his people no passage

through Mycenae. After Vortigern leaves, Cheops, the

Egyptian, suggests an alliance against Crete between

Agamemnon's court and Egypt. Klytaimnestra, who admits that

her kingdom may not be as strong as she had suggested to

Vortigern, answers that she would favor such an alliance be­

cause Aegisthos, the enemy of Agamemnon's house, dwells in

safety and favor at the Cretan court. She goes on to give

the background of the feud which exists between her husband

and Aegisthos, explaining that Atreus, in vengeance for his

ravished wife, "slew his brother's children on the holy day

of Artemis, upon which day all living things are sacred . . .

(18). Klytaimnestra adds that the feud between the houses

of Aegisthos and Agamemno n will go on until one house has

ceased to exist. Elektra reacts violently to her mother's

story; she expresses fear that her father may be killed,

but she is finally quieted by Polymnia. A messenger

 60

interrupts Klytaimnestra's interview witli Cheops, bring­

ing word from Agamemnon that Iphegeneia is to come at

once to Aulis where she will be the bride of Achilles.

Although the messenger tells Klytaimnestra that Agamemnon's

orders were that Iphegeneia should come alone, Klytaimnestra

will have none of this and begins to prepare for the jour­

ney. The scene ends as Iphegeneia tells Polymnia how

happy she is.

The second scene of the first act takes place at

Aulis, where Agamemnon and Achilles are discussing the

sacrifice which must be made to Artemis. Agamemnon ex­

plains that he would avoid sacrificing Iphegeneia if he

could, not only because she is his daughter, but also be­

cause he does not wish to hurt Klytaimnestra. When

Achilles offers his arms to save the girl, Agamemnon re­

fuses, explaining that he cannot plunge all Greece into

civil war, and since he asks his people to give their kin

in wartime he must be willing to sacrifice his.

Agamemnon1s only hope is that Artemis will accept some

other expiation.

Kalchas enters and announces that the gods are

implacable; the crime which Atreus committed has gone too

long unpunished. He explains that the entire state has

been undermined by this crime, and that "religion is no

longer vitally a part of life" (26). The people must be

shown, Kalchas says, "that none— no matter what his

 61

station— may defy the laws by which our race has lived”

(26). When Agamemnon offers himself as sacrifice, Kalchas

reminds him that the sacrifice must be pure.

Klytaimnestra, Iphegeneia, and the court retainers

enter. Almost at once Klytaimnestra realizes that some­

thing is wrong, and without hesitation Kalchas explains

the sacrifice which the gods demand. Klytaimnestra can­

not believe what she hears and she draws her daughter

close to her as she appeals first to her husband, then to

the priest, and finally to the soldiers who surround the

group. When Agamemnon explains the political reasons for

the sacrifice, Klytaimnestra answers that even animals

protect their young, and that Helen is little better than

a whore and not worth such a sacrifice. Achilles joins

Klytaimnestra in her pleas at this point and in a lengthy

anti-war soliloquy he accuses the Greek leaders of warring

only for spoils, not for holy reasons. Kalchas explains

to Iphegeneia that to give herself willingly would be a

heroic deed. Achilles calls for his men and as the two

opposing forces are on the verge of fighting, Iphegeneia

makes her way between them and declares her willingness

to die for such a holy cause. Amid the protests of

Agamemnon and the cries of Klytaimnestra, Iphegeneia

mounts the steps toward the sacrificial altar and dis­

appears. An off-stage chant is heard, followed by a

moment of silence. Suddenly a breeze lifts the robes of

 62

Kalchas, and the soldiers begin preparations for sailing.

When Agamemnon turns to Klytaimnestra and asks her for

some word of god-speed, she can only answer, "I will

await your coming" (38).

Act II of the play occurs about eight years later.

Again the scene begins with Klytaimnestra1s handmaidens

gossiping to one another. We learn that Klytaimnestra

has taken Aegisthos as her lover. Polymnia and Elektra

enter; Polymnia dismisses the women and attempts to com­

fort Elektra who has cried out that she would like to be

away from this house and at peace. When Elektra asks

Polymnia why her mother welcomes her father's former

enemy, Aegisthos, Polymnia gives her only equivocations

which do not satisfy the girl. Again Elektra sobs out

her frustration because no one loves her, and again

Polymnia attempts to comfort her.

Orestes enters and looks for the beacon light

which will announce the end of the Trojan War. He and

his sister discuss their father, but are interrupted by

the entrance of the Queen. Klytaimnestra sends Orestes

to bed and calls Elektra to her. She takes the child,

lifts her face and looks at her in silence, and then mut­

ters, "All his" (45). Elektra turns and leaves, only par­

tially masking the resentment which she feels toward her

mother.

A long scene follows in which Polymnia attempts

 63

to tell her mistress how she should behave, but

Klytaimnestra will pay no heed. Klytaimnestra reveals

her hatred for men, particularly for Agamemnon, and the

following dialogue occurs:

Polymnia: Each of us weaves and what we weave

is but ourselves.

Klytaimnestra: We are not the weavers of our lives,

not we. But threads thrown back and
forth by other hands.

Polymnia: What others do has power upon no soul

but theirs. Our hearts are blinded
by our minds, which see reflections
in a shield, but fail to see the thing
reflected there— ourselves. (47-48 )

When Klytaimnestra adds that her source of life is hatred,

Polymnia answers that she must learn to accept those things

which she cannot change.

The discussion between the two women is interrupted

by Aegisthos, and Polymnia leaves the pair alone. When

Aegisthos attempts to make love to Klytaimnestra, she re­

bukes him for spending too much time in luxurious pursuits.

She reminds him that it was not her love for him but her

hatred of Agamemnon that caused her to send for him, and

that their love came later. When Klytaimnestra tells her

lover that he must be strong if he is to help her, he

answers that it will be long before Agamemnon returns.

Finally Klytaimnestra submits to Aegisthos' embrace and

as she does so, Elektra enters the chamber and sees them

together. With hatred in her voice, she announces that

the signal light has been sighted. As Elektra leaves,

 64

Polymnia enters with the same news and is horrified to

hear the Queen already planning the murder of her husband.

Polymnia pleads with her mistress, but nothing can shake

her determination. Finally, Klytaimnestra tells her

nurse that it is already too late, for she carries

Aegisthos1 child. Polymnia exits in despair.

Once more Klytaimnestra turns to Aegisthos, but as

their discussion continues she realizes that he will be of

little help to her. He suggests that they flee the king­

dom and forget hate and murder; finally, he tells

Klytaimnestra that he will take no part in her evil scheme.

The Queen responds by abruptly dismissing him and Aegisthos

realizes he has simply been a pawn of revenge, but says

that he will remain to keep Klytaimnestra safe. Ignoring

Aegisthos, Klytaimnestra seizes an ax and mounts the steps

at the back of the stage, a "priestess of destruction" (56).

The second scene of this act begins with two brief

domestic vignettes, in one of which a captain reveals his

love for one of Klytaimnestra's women, while in the other

the women of the court gossip about Kassandra. Elektra

and Orestes, in robes of state, enter with Polymnia to

await Agamemnon's arrival. Elektra is unable to understand

why Polymnia seems so disturbed. When Agamemnon's soldiers

are seen in the distance, Klytaimnestra enters and tells

the children to go to meet their father. After the

children leave, Polymnia tries once more to reason with

 65

the Queen, but in vain.

Agamemnon enters the palace and Klytaimnestra

greets him elaborately. Agamemnon presents Kassandra to

the Queen with the comment that she must be gentle with

her "for she was deemed a prophetess inviolate and sacred

there in Troy" (66). As Klytaimnestra helps her husband

to remove his armor, Kassandra makes a series of brief

speeches in which she prophesies the death of Agamemnon

and the fate of Elektra and Orestes. Then, in a lengthy

soliloquy, Kassandra offers what I take to be the essen­

tial message of the play. The stage direction at this

point reads: "Suddenly, across fifty centuries, her

indescribable eyes look into the audience and through them

down incalculable vistas of time" (70). Kassandra says:

0 men and women1 . All you countless generations yet

to be b o m , who sweeping through the air or moving
over the water and under it shall yet accomplish but
this end’ . Put by your swords*. It is yourselves you
kill. Lift up your faces to the sky'. It is your
heritage'. About your foreheads are the everlasting
stars. Within you God himself has life. 0 men and
women; 0 thorn tree and the small sweet-voiced birds;
the surging ocean; the vast pulsation of the universe;
all things living and unliving— you are the indivisible
God. Even you whose bitter mouths proclaim war's
glory for a tainted gain, even you most pitifully are
gods self-exiled into darkness. 0 you who live and
breathe now and all those who are yet to know the
splendor of this -universe'. Hear me'. The laws of the
universe are implacable. Implore the wide arc of
heaven, and silence shall answer you. Alas'. Who
shall love mankind if men love not each other? (70-71)

Agamemnon exits to his bath and the women of the court and

Agamemnon's attendants depart, leaving Klytaimnestra,

Kassandra, Elektra, and Polymnia. Kassandra tells the

 66

Queen that she is most to be pitied, then sadly follows

Agamemnon out while Klytaimnestra exits on the other side

of the stage. Elektra runs to Polymnia in fear and Polymnia

attempts to take her away, but before she can do so

Klytaimnestra crosses the stage holding the ax and the net

which she has prepared. Polymnia pulls Elektra off-stage,

but the girl runs back again and goes to the central doors

only to find them bolted. Suddenly the sounds of the mur­

der ring out and Elektra runs to the front of the stage

and falls, covering her ears to shut out the awful cries.

Just at that moment Orestes is brought on and Elektra

quickly gives directions to his attendant to take the boy

far from Mycenae.

Klytaimnestra enters and at first, in her delirium,

she takes Elektra for Iphegeneia, but she quickly recovers

and keeps Elektra from entering the murder chamber.

Aegisthos and his men burst into the room and are told

that the murder is accomplished. Then Klytaimnestra

clutches her belly and screams, "There are more dead than

should have been" (76). She faints and is carried out.

Elektra enters the murder room and then returns to the

stage, torn with grief, murmuring, "Father'.— Father'." (76).

Eleven years or more elapse between the end of

the previous scene and the beginning of Act III. As the

act begins, two young girls are discussing the Spring

Festival which will be held that evening. Klytaimnestra's

 67

women enter, and we learn that they will not take part in

the festival "because Polymnia is gravely ill. Orestes

and Pylades appear and Orestes talks to the women, pre­

tending to be the son of a warrior who fought with

Agamemnon. He claims not to know the events which have

occurred at Mycenae since Agamemnon's return and the women

tell him of Agamemnon1s murder and of Elektra's being

forced to live as a slave. The young men exit to seek

the Princess.

Elektra enters from the other side of the stage.

"The years of grief and brooding have borne heavily upon her.

She is haggard and wan" (80). The women try to convince

her to give up her mourning and join them in the Spring

Festival, but she can only brood about revenge. The King

and Queen enter; both have aged and Klytaimnestra seems

little more than a "marionette that carefully moves where

her own will-power directs" (83). At once Elektra mounts

the palace steps and calls the people to avenge Agamemnon.

It is apparent that she has done this many times and no

one pays much heed to her. The royal couple exit and

their attendants follow, leaving Elektra alone on stage

with Orestes and Pylades, who had entered quietly only

moments before.

Orestes recognizes Elektra but at first pretends

to be a friend whom Orestes has sent to Mycenae for news

of his sister. As they talk Elektra begins to realize

 68

that her brother and this stranger must be similar in age

and appearance. Soon Orestes reveals his true identity,

but Elektra is unwilling to believe him. She is convinced

only after a lengthy recognition scene in which he shows

her the chain and robe which he wore as a boy and recalls

incidents from their childhood.

Elektra tells Orestes that it was Klytaimnestra

who committed the murder, not Aegisthos as he had thought.

Orestes is skeptical, but finally accepts the fact that

his sister knows the truth. Elektra tells her brother

that the murder must be accomplished that night, for the

celebration of the Spring Festival will provide them with

an opportunity which they will not soon have again.

Rapidly, they work out the details of their revenge. Then

Elektra disappears into the palace and Pylades, who has

been listening in silence takes advantage of her momentary

absence to express his distress and disapproval. "You and

Elektra both have made a wasteland of your minds and in

the center nourish hate . . . " (88-89) Pylades says. "Do

you avenge your father or yourself? . . . The trouble is

that you have dwelt on hate so long you scarcely dare to

love" (89-90).

Elektra returns with the ax with which Agamemnon

was murdered and Orestes takes it and swears to avenge

his father's death. The scene ends as the two complete

the details of their plot.

 69

The last scene of the play begins with a brief

scene between the captain who appeared in Act II and the

handmaiden who is now his wife. They deplore the alli­

ance which Aegisthos has made with Vortigern. As they exit,

Melissa, another of Klytaimnestra*s attendants, and a doc­

tor enter from Polymnia's sick room. A discussion of the

nature of life and death follows in which we hear again of

the importance of love. "Death," the doctor says, "is a

universal good like sleep, and is as sweet to our old

age. . . . Y o u will not weary of your happiness, but still

be glad to rest. Take all the best from life; live kindly

day by day and have no fear. Make every moment sweet with

gentleness and so your life with beauty and with love will

ripen to its end" (95).

Klytaimnestra and Aegisthos enter and talk quietly

about Polymnia. Klytaimnestra says of her old nurse,

"Still having lost the all that made her life, she did

not give her soul to bitterness" (97). After the doctor

exits, Klytaimnestra turns to Aegisthos and admonishes him

for the alliance he has made with the Norsemens "We are

the guardians, the treasurers of generations yet to come.

How shall we justify the thing we did unless we guard the

treasure and the glory of our past as righteously as

Agamemnon would?" (97). Aegisthos answers her by claiming

that this alliance will bring peace to Mycenae and that

"the destiny of man is somehow peace and love" (98). He

 70

adds that the "end of those who trust in war /is/ to

perish from the earth" (98). Aegisthos leaves;

Klytaimnestra seems unconvinced.

While Polymnia prepares Klytaimnestra for bed she

tells her mistress about her life. Polymnia says that

she too had hated all men. When she became Klytaimnestra's

nurse, she had considered talcing revenge on Tyndareus by

killing the child; but as she held the baby she realized

it could take the place of the son she had lost and at

that moment all hate left her. A scene follows in which

Klytaimnestra instructs her women about the household

chores, but it is cut short when Polymnia becomes ill and

Klytaimnestra takes her to her chamber.

When Klytaimnestra returns she finds Elektra wait­

ing for her. Elektra pretends to desire a reconciliation

but in veiled terms is discussing the murder which is about

to take place. The Queen tries to draw her daughter to

her, but Elektra keeps her distance and says she might

rid herself of hate by telling her mother her reasons for

hating her. Klytaimnestra consents to the recital and

Elektra begins. The girl gradually becomes confused, how­

ever, and when Klytaimnestra asks Elektra if she has for­

gotten her sister, Elektra answers that she has not for­

gotten and that Iphegeneia must have been happy to die for

her father.

Klytaimnestra hears a cry off-stage. As she is

 71

going to investigate it, Orestes enters and the Queen

realizes what is happening. Klytaimnestra begs her chil­

dren not to kill her, and tells them that they will forever

regret killing someone whom they should have loved. Orestes

wavers, but Elektra urges him on and finally Klytaimnestra

runs into the garden with her pursuers close behind.

Klytaimnestra's waiting women enter to remove the accessories

of their mistress' toilet and then quietly exit. Elektra

and Orestes return, "trembling and broken. . . . They seem

to cower away from each other in horror, in loathing, even

while they are impelled toward each other by their fear

and suffering" (123). Elektra would help her brother,

would hold and love him, but he can only think of his

mother. Suddenly the Furies appear to him, but remain in­

visible to Elektra and the audience. Finally, like an old

woman, Elektra goes to her brother, puts her arms around

him, and cries out, "Oh, that the sea had me" (126). They

shrink down as the door to Polymnia's room opens and

Melissa enters. She calls back to the nurse that no one

is there and then she goes to the doorway, looks into the

night, and describes its beauty. The play ends asshe

says, "How full of light the heavens are'." (127).

This summary of Daughters of Atreus should make

clear that although Turney has retained the basic structure

of the Atreidae myth, he has made a number of alterations

in it. Perhaps the most obvious changes are the

 72

dramatist's additions to the legend. These include the

wealth of domestic detail which the play contains; the

appearance of certain characters, particularly Polymnia

and the doctor, who play no part in the myth itself; and,

most important, the attention which is given to making

clear the psychological motivation of each of the main

figures of the drama, especially Elektra. As Prank O'Hara

comments,

The play may he cast to ancient mold, hut the play­

wright' s workmanship has something distinctly of this
day in the way he so carefully lets us see the child
Elektra's feeling of inferiority and need for compen­
sation, even for over-compensation. There is her re­
sentment against the fact that Iphegeneia is the
mother's favorite. . . . There is her unconscious
reaction toward Orestes. . . . When her mother brings
Aegisthos to the court and with such obviousness takes
him into her affections, Elektra is once more left out
and begins to identify herself with the absent father.
Then when the mother finally murders the father, al­
most before the child's eyes, the identity becomes
completes it will be herself she vindicates in
avenging her father. . . . Although none of the vo­
cabulary of modern psychoanalysis is there, the play­
wright— with conscious purpose or else unconscious
absorption of the contemporary techniques-yhas given
us a personality study very much of today.

The only major omission which Turney makes in the

story is to reduce the significance of the supernatural

framework of the action. In the scene at Aulis, the sacri­

fice seems more the punishment for breaking a local ordinance

than expiation for some monstrous crime. And Agamemnon does

not submit because the sacrifice has been ordered by divine

^Trank Hurburt O'Hara, Today in American Drama

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), pp. 4-8-49.
 73

command, but because to fail in this obligation would bring

civil war to the state. Indeed, none of the major charac­

ters ever envisions himself as the agent of a divine power.

Klytaimnestra does at one point refer to the heritage of

hate which is a part of the House of Atreus, but Turney

never allows her to shift the responsibility for her ac­

tions to any force outside herself. Elektra and Orestes,

too, act out of entirely human motives. Even Apollo's

command is handled in the vaguest manner, and though

Orestes is confronted at the end of the play with Furies

which no one else can see, these seem more the figments of

a neurotic mind than supernatural creatures.

Turney makes two major adjustments in the myth

which are neither additions nor omissions: he shifts the

emphasis to make Elektra the major character in the re­

venge of Agamemnon's murder, and he completely alters the

character of Aegisthos. Although we are told before his

entrance that he is the enemy of Agamemnon, Aegisthos him­

self feels no hatred for the King. In fact, he refuses to

take part in Agamemnon's murder, saying that he will not

kill a man who has done him no harm. Aegisthos appears to

be little more than Klytaimnestra's lover, and she reminds

him during the play that it was she who had sent for him,

not he who had seduced her. Since Turney's play concerns

the "daughters of Atreus," the male characters must remain

subordinate.
 74

Other less important modifications may simply he

enumerated here. Pylades, instead of reminding Orestes

of Apollo's command, urges Orestes to give up the idea of

killing his mother. Agamemnon brings Kassandra with him

from Troy, but has not made her his concubine. Artemis

demands the sacrifice of Iphegeneia, not because Agamemnon

has committed a crime against her, but because Atreus com­

mitted his crime on a day that was sacred to Artemis.

Orestes pretends to be simply a son of one of the warriors

who fought with Agamemnon, not a messenger with news of

Orestes' death.

It is apparent that Turney's handling of the myth

is less literal than LeGallienne's. Some of the modifica­

tions which Turney makes in the legend are an attempt to

give a thematic meaning to the action of the drama. Most

of the remaining alterations are the result of the struc­

ture of his work, a structure which reveals Turney's in­

debtedness to Naturalism and to the "well-made play."

With these ideas in mind, it is time to evaluate Daughters

of Atreus.

Unlike LeGallienne, Turney has made every effort

to give significance to the mythic action which forms the

basis of Daughters of Atreus. The theme of the play is

essentially the value of love, understanding, and forgive­

ness as opposed to hatred and war. Although Polymnia is

 75

■the chief exponent of this theme, both in deed and in word,

Turney makes several of his characters espouse the doctrine

of self-effacing love and attempts to incorporate this

theme into the action of the play. Unfortunately, a worthy

idea does not necessarily heget a successful play.

Too frequently the handling of the theme in Turney's

play is didactic and undramatic. In the center of four of

the six scenes of the play, Turney has placed lengthy

soliloquies which baldly state the theme. Not only are

the speeches obvious in their intent, but too frequently

they are not germane to the action. In addition to

Kassandra's long second-act speech, which is the most

obvious statement of the play's thesis, there are two other

speeches which illustrate this defect. In the second scene

of the first act, after Klytaimnestra has appealed to all

those around her to save Iphegeneia from sacrifice, Achilles

sides with the Queen and addresses the people in these words:

0 grey-beards'. You of old have made your wars for

this or that; stirring with the threat of fire divine
or moving with an equal empty hope of glory restless
youths to hate and lust of blood; while women sit in
grief at home, and there behind the burning veil of
stars the very soul of God cries out in pain of it.
This earth is wide and fair and rich. There is enough
for every man that tills and sows and reaps, and gar­
ners what he reaps. What is this lust for storied
towers of gold, for ocean-polished stones and earth-
embedded gems? For this it is that draws you on and
not your wounded honour, as you claim. Is there a
quarrel, be it howsoever great, that justifies the
countless dead who, living, might have ministered to
men? (30)

In the third act Pylades makes much the same point when he
 76

urges Orestes to avoid killing his mother. The final di­

dactic statement of the theme is given by Aesculapios,

Polymnia1s doctor, in the last scene of the play:

Look out. The earth, the sea, the sky are full of
light. The trees spread out their fragile spring-
enchanted leaves to feel the wind. They have no win­
ter's thought. They hear the laughter of the waters
among the hills and answer the sound of its joy with
their delight. Their season of sleep is done and they
have life again. Before them is the summer's rich,
luxurious hope. They are content to live, and when,
in time, the storms of Autumn come, contented will
they rain their beauty down in showers of gold and
flaming leaves upon the breast of earth and give
themselves to sleep. And so should you find joy of
life and claim it for your own; nor fear a future
time. These eyes shall gladden other eyes; these
gentle hands clasp other hands; these lips find other
lips to kiss; this heart give life to other hearts;
before they pass at last to nothingness. My child,
there is no fear in death. The next year's leaves
sleep in the bud through all the winter's storms and
blossom with the spring; the earth is not bereft of
light because the glorious sun has for a season set.
Death is a universal good like sleep, and is as sweet
to our old age. Bor we are weary from the toil and
joy of life and ready for our rest—

You will not weary of your happiness, but still be

glad to rest. Take all the best from life; live
kindly day by day and have no fear. Make every moment
sweet with gentleness and so your life with beauty and
with love will ripen to its end. (94-95)

Another example of Turney's tendency toward di­

dacticism is his addition of two characters who are poorly

related to the action but whose speeches carry the burden

of the theme. Aesculapios' only function is to speak the

words just noted. Polymnia has at least a tenuous relation­

ship to the action, and she is not allowed to soliloquize;

but she is not a part of the myth, and since Turney has

chosen to keep his play within the framework of the legend,

 77

Polymnia's presence never seems quite necessary.

Didacticism is not the only difficulty. Pour

other characters who are essential to the action are

charged with helping to propound the thesis; but none of

them is equal to the task. In the first act we are not

adequately prepared for the speech which Achilles delivers

and instead of appearing as an unusually perceptive young

man, he seems to be nothing more than a young radical who

opposes all tradition. Kassandra's speech in the second

act loses its effect because Kassandra seems to be, by

twentieth-century standards, a severely disturbed individual,

and because there seems to be inadequate reason for her

speech. The situation becomes almost ludicrous when, in

the third act, Aegisthos is made the thematic spokesman.

Nothing about him has suggested that he has the wisdom or

the courage to voice such sentiments. Finally, Pylades'

handling of the theme seems to become philosophically

inconsistent, for he disapproves of matricide but fully

approves of Orestes' murder of Aegisthos. Surely a phil­

osophy of love and forgiveness, no matter on what moral or

ethical system it may be based, can hardly be so selective.

Finally, the play fails because the hatred and re­

venge which are so much a part of the action, overshadow

the theme which Turney wishes to give the drama. Those

who are able to love, to avoid hate, and to make peace

with themselves and with the world, seem able to accomplish

 78

very little in the world of the play. Burian also notes

this defect when he sayss

Despite the fact that Turney tones down the violence

of the action, omits the more horrible aspects of the
legend, and minimizes the atmosphere of evil, per se,
the resulting action still involves war, murder,
adultery, and matricide. A theme of love, kindness,
and understanding seem essentially naive and senti­
mental when opposed to these elements; it lacks the
intellectual and moral fibre or mettle necessary to
balance the elements of hate and evil which remain
in the action even after Turney's modifications.1

The fact that Daughters of Atreus is a play which

has been written along Naturalistic lines and according to

the "well-made play" formula gives the author certain ad­

vantages. He can provide necessary exposition for those

members of a m o d a m audience who are not familiar with the

legend, and can make the action of the myth more credible

in twentieth-century, realistic terms. It also makes the

story at least theatrically interesting. On the other

hand, this approach imposes some rather severe restrictions

on the material with which Turney works, and a number of

the critics who have written about Daughters of Atreus

have been quick to realize this fact. Gilbert Seldes

wrote in his review of the New York production of the play:

As for Mr. Turney's defects, I think a grave one

is his lack of an uplifted imagination. I know that
this is taking a rather high line, but anyone who
touches the Greek legend exposes himself to rather
elevated standards. Mr. Turney did not attempt to
belittle his characters, but I feel there was defin­
itely an intention to humanize them, somehow to make

^Burian, pp. 186-87.

 79

them attractive to us, "because they were— at times

at least— ordinary human beings like ourselves.

Edith Isaacs made much the same comment:

The idea of making the Agamemnon-Iphegenia /sic7-

Electra-Orestes story into one play is humanly inter-
esting and dramatically sound. But the story belongs
where it has lived for so long— on the heights of
poetry, a tale of great power, great wrong and tragic
penance. It is so proportioned that it can be handled
only on that scale, a limitation that makes it excep­
tionally difficult to refigure the characters, making
them as small and as human as ourselves. It is a job
to make a master poet-dramatist hesitate, and Robert
Turney, from the evidence his writing gives, has only
his pretensions to fit him for the task.2

The point is, that the Atreidae are not average

human beings, at least not when they are involved in the

actions described in the myth. As a result there is a

basic incongruity between the humanized, domesticated, at

times romanticized characters who are portrayed in the myth,

and the magnitude of their deeds. Furthermore, by focusing

on the female characters, the playwright only tends to

domesticate the action further. For these reasons, and

because Turney fails to make any dramatic use of the

diminished stature of his characters, the significance and

magnitude of the drama are reduced.

Other flaws in Turney's work can be examined more

briefly. Like LeGallienne, Turney sometimes resorts to

melodramatic effects which have little relevance to the

■^Gilbert Seldes, "Noble Plays . . . and Popular

Art," Scribners, C (December, 1936), 78.
p
Isaacs, Theatre Arts Monthly, XX (December, 1936),
924.
 80

meaning of the drama. The most obvious of these is, of

course, Klytaimnestra1s miscarriage caused by her murder

of Agamemnon. Turney also includes elaborate stage di­

rections for the use of color in scenery and costumes and

for other stage effects, all of which are either irrelevant

to the action or so obviously symbolic that they appear

amateurish.

Sometimes, too, Turney is guilty of poor crafts­

manship. For example, he is so anxious to make it un­

necessary for his audience to have any knowledge of the

myth that he sometimes writes dialogue which becomes much

too obviously expository. When Klytaimnestra is discus­

sing with Cheops the reasons why she favors an alliance

with Egypt, she goes into unnecessary detail about blood

feuds and the inherited duty of vengeance. Another instance

is the overworking of coincidence when Orestes returns to

Mycenae on the one day of the year when he can best carry

out his revenge.

Finally, Turney has somewhat the same difficulty

with the language of his drama as did LeGallienne.

Although Laughters of Atreus is written in prose, no

attempt is made to make the speech sound like realistic

conversation. Instead, Turney gives the language a

slightly archaic ring through his choice of words, through

the use of inverted word order and formal syntax, and by

writing lines which have an underlying iambic meter. At

 81

beat, the lines are no help in lifting the play above

the level of domestic drama; at worst, they seem stilted

and pretentious. Two speeches should demonstrate these

qualities:

Achilles: There is no silence that can hush her cry!

She is the flame of motherhood wind-
fanned— the never-ending cry of womankind. (31)

Pharon: Her name is like the music of the wind— the

ancient sea-perfumed wind that blows across
some harp-like tree'. (38)

Two other points might be made about the language

of the play. Forty times during the drama Turney has one

or another of his characters say "God'." or"Oh, God'." or

"In God's name." Although with effort it might be possible

to relate the repetition of this phrase tothe theme of the

play, the effect is to make most of the characters appear

to have very limited vocabularies, particularly when under

stress. Three times during the play Elektra has the fol­

lowing speech or one almost identical to it: "Oh, that I

were at peace among the dim forms and transparent shadows

at the bottom of the seal" (41). No additional meaning

is given the lines when they are repeated.

To summarize: Daughters of Atreus illustrates a

second basic way in which English-speaking playwrights

have used classic myth in our century, remaining faithful

to the outline of the legend, but altering some elements

in an attempt to give the action significance for our

 82

generation. Like Orestes, and like other plays which we

will examine, Daughters of Atreus involves a de-emphasizing

of the supernatural, the addition of psychological motiva­

tion for the characters' actions, a shift of focus from

the male characters to the female, and an absence of any

final resolution. Its chief flaws, again as in Orestes,

are its failure to give the work a theme which rises

naturally out of the action, a reduction of the figurative

size of the characters and the consequent loss of signifi­

cance in the play itself, the dependence upon irrelevant

theatrical devices, and the failure to find language which

will lift the play above the level of most twentieth-

century drama.
 Robinson Jeffers' The Tower Beyond Tragedy:

Myth and the Doctrine of Inhumanism

Robinson Jeffers' The Tower Beyond Tragedy first

appeared in 1925, in a collection of the author's verse

entitled Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems.^ Although

The Tower Beyond Tragedy was originally written in the

form of a dramatic poem, in 1932 the University of

California little Theatre staged the poem with great

2
success, and in 1941 a theatre group in Carmel, California,

performed it with Judith Anderson in the role of

Clytemnestra.^ Nearly ten years later, at the urging and

with the assistance of Miss Anderson (who by this time had

already won critical acclaim for her performance in the

title role of Jeffers' adaptation of Medea). Jeffers modi­

fied the script for theatrical production and The Tower

Beyond Tragedy, produced by the American National Theatre

and Academy to inaugurate its first season, opened on

^Robinson Jeffers, The Tower Beyond Tragedy, in

Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems (New York: Boni and
LlverigHtT 1325)'. -----------------
2
Lawrence Clark Powell, Robinson Jeffers: The Man
and His Work (Pasadena, Calif.: San Pasqual Press, 1940),
p. 56, n. I.

^Frederick I. Carpenter, Robinson Jeffers (New York:

Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1962), p. 49.

83
November 26, 1950.^ Critical reviews were mixed, and in

spite of Miss Anderson's presence in the cast the play

2
closed after 26 performances. In all fairness, however,

it must he added that it is not clear whether ANTA desired

or intended, at this point in its history, a long run.^

Since 1950, The Tower Beyond Tragedy has been revived

only once in New York, in an off-Broadway production

4
during the 1954-55 season.

The version of The Tower Beyond Tragedy dealt with

in this study is the dramatic poem published in 1925.

This is necessary because, to my knowledge, only one copy

of Jeffers' modified script for the original New York pro­

duction still exists; this copy, in manuscript form, is

5
owned by ANTA and is not available for loan. This has not

presented any great difficulty, however, since there are

only slight differences in form between the original dra­

matic poem and a typical dramatic script. Nearly all of

the poem is in dialogue; it includes numerous stage direc­

tions; and it is divided into three parts which correspond

^ o h n Chapman (ed.), The Best Plays of 1950-51

(New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., I§5l), p. o.

2Ibid., p. 331 .
^Ibid., p . 8 .

^Julia S. Price, The Off-Broadway Theater (New York

The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1962), p. 213.
5
Letter from Ruth Mayleas, Director, National
Theatre Service, American National Theatre and Academy,
New York City, July 10, 1964.
 85

to the three acts of a modern play.

The Tower Beyond Tragedy is, then, essentially a

dramatic work and may he examined as such. According to

Jeffers himself, and to the critics as well, the modifica­

tions made in the poem in order to present it on the New

York stage were relatively minor. Jeffers says that the

adaptation was "almost exclusively a matter of erasure.

Particularly Cassandra's lamentations have heen cut to the

hone."'1' The only other change, according to the author,

was the introduction at the end of the play of "a piece of

action— the hitter collapse of Electra— which is not in

2
the poem, nor in the Greek stories," but which is certainly

suggested in the original. The critics generally echo these

statements. George Nathan comments that though Jeffers

"observes . . . that he had the help of Judith Anderson,

his leading actress, in dramatizing his poem, the assistance

has not greatly altered the situation,"^ and George Weales

claims that the "adaptation consists of little more than

the invention of characters to speak the narrative lines of

the poem which is written, for the most part, in dialogue."^

■^Robinson Jeffers, "Tower Beyond Tragedy," New York

Times, November 26, 1950, Sec. 10, p. 3.

2Ibid.
^George Jean Nathan, The Theatre Book of the Year,
1950-51 (New Yorks Alfred A.Knopf, l$5l), p. 137.
^"Gerald Weales, American Drama. Since World War II
(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), p. 1$3.
 86

Although The Tower Beyond Tragedy has always been

one of Jeffers' most popular works ,1 a widely diverse

critical opinion exists concerning it. Rudolph Gilbert

2
called it "Jeffers' greatest work," and Morton Zabel

acclaimed it as Jeffers' "one masterpiece";^ even Mark

Van Doren considered it "undoubtedly one of the great

4
American poems." Lawrence Clark Powell, on the other

hand, in his study of Jeffers made this evaluation of the

works

Although The Tower Beyond Tragedy has been hailed by

some as this poei'' s chef d* oeuvre, it is, in my opinion,
one of the poorest poems he has written. Loaded with
twentieth-century philosophy, the old Greek plays are
further encumbered withj-unrelieved excessive emotions
and bombastic speeches.

George Jean Nathan wrote in his review of the New York pro­

duction:

The combination here of the dramatically good and the

dramatically bad is heavily weighted on the latter
side, and, while the minimum of good is of course in­
dependently to be sanctioned,gthe preponderance of bad
condemns the work as a whole.

Carpenter, p. 69.
2
Rudolph Gilbert, Shine, Perishing Republic, p. 102,
as quoted in Dorothy Nyren (comp.J, A Library of Elterary
Criticism: M o d e m American Literature (New York: Frederick
tJngar Publishing Co., I960), p. 260.

% o r t o n Dauwen Zabel, "The Problem of Tragedy,"

Poetry, XXXIII (March, 1929)» 338.

^ a r k Van Doren, as quoted in Carpenter, p. 69.

c;
Powell, p. 56.
fi
Nathan, The Theatre Book of the Year, 1950-51. p. 138,
 87

Although I am not concerned with comparing The Tower

Beyond Tragedy to Jeffers' other works, the following

analysis will indicate, I believe, that Jeffers' drama

suffers some of the same defects which were noted in

Orestes and Daughters of Atreus.

The Tower Beyond Tragedy is another example of

the second basic manner in which English and American

playwrights of our century have handled myth, and as such

resembles Daughters of Atreus in the degree of freedom the

author has taken with the legend. The setting and char­

acters of Jeffers' drama are still Greek in appearance,

and for at least the first two-thirds of the work, the

poet remains essentially faithful to the myth, making his

characters act in much the same ways as their prototypes.

Within this framework, Jeffers, like Turney, has felt

free to change details of the story and to make additions

to the legend in order to give his own meaning to the ac­

tion of the drama. In the last section, however, Jeffers

goes far beyond the action suggested by the myth, taking

much greater liberty with the material than Turney had.

But Jeffers does not make the severe modifications of the

myth which are characteristic of the plays in the next

section of this chapter. The Tower Beyond Tragedy is

placed at this point in the study, therefore, because it

most closely resembles Daughters of Atreus in its degree

of faithfulness to the myth and because it serves as a

 88

bridge between that play and those which will be examined

next.

The Tower Beyond Tragedy begins as Clytemnestra

welcomes Agamemnon home from Troy. Their embrace on the

palace steps is marred, however, by the cry of one of

Agamemnon's captives. When Clytemnestra asks her husband

about the identity of the slave girl who cried out, the

following dialogue ensues:

Agamemnon: Come up the stair. They tell me my

kinsman's
Lodged himself on you.

Clytemnestra: Your cousin Aegisthus? He was out of

refuge, flits between here and
Tiryns.
Dear: the girl's name?

Agamemnon: Cassandra. We've a hundred or so

other captives; besides two hundred
Rotted in the hulls,— they tell odd
stories about you and your guest:
eh? no matter:— the ships
Ooze pitch and the August road smokes
dirt, I smell like an old shepherd's
goatskin, you'll have bath-water?1

Clytemnestra leads her husband into the palace. After the

royal couple leaves the stage, Cassandra turns to the

people, recalls her life in Troy, and then in words which

the Myceneans cannot understand, she reports the murder of

Agamemnon.

Clytemnestra enters from the palace, the brooch on

her left shoulder broken and the fillets of her hair

^Robinson Jeffers, The Tower Beyond Tragedy, in

Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems (New York: The Mod-
ern Library, 1935), p. 24.
 89

unbound. She addresses the people, telling them that

she has made sacrifice for the great joy of this day, and

that the wise man dares not keep all good things which the

gods send him. She reminds the people that she has ruled

them for twelve years and that she is responsible for

them. At this point Cassandra interrupts the Queen with

the prophecy of Orestes' murder of his mother. Although

the mob cannot comprehend the prophetess' words,

Clytemnestra understands and she sends one of her soldiers

to quiet the woman.

The Queen continues her speech to the people,

repeating what she has said about the necessity of sacri­

fice and suggesting that Troy fell because the Trojans

failed to make adequate sacrifice for Helen's beauty.

Eventually, however, Clytemnestra begins to talk of

Agamemnon, explaining that he is not yet a man that the

gods love, but an "insolent, fierce, overbearing" king

"whose folly/ Brought many times many great evils/ On all

the heads and fighting hopes of the Greek force" (28).

She recalls Aulis, Agamemnon's offense to Artemis "out of

pure impudence" (28), and the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the

only child whom Clytemnestra loved, which was the result

of the king's foolish pride. Yet in spite of this and in

spite of his follies at Troy, the gods brought Agamemnon

home. Clytemnestra asks her people what sacrifice would

be enough for such a joy, and answers that though they

 90

dare not think of what the gods demand, she has dared.

The Queen ends her speech with these words:

Men of Argolis, you that went over the sea and

you that guarded the home coasts.
And high stone war "belts of the cities: remember how
many spearmen these twelve years have called me
Queen, and have loved me, and been faithful, and remain
faithful. What I bring you is accomplished. {29)

The people have become uneasy and now call for the

King. Clytemnestra answers that he will be brought to them

when he has bathed, brought to them on a litter since he

has now learned Asian ways and is too great a ruler to

walk. Suddenly Cassandra notices behind the Queen the

ghost of Agamemnon standing in the palace doorway, a ghost

that she alone can see. Although the prophetess struggles

against the ghost, she is finally overcome as Agamemnon’s

spirit enters her and takes command of her body.

Meanwhile, a Mycenaean captain has approached the

Queen and asks her to clarify her words, adding that a

slave has just come from the palace claiming that the King

is dead. Clytemnestra again addresses the people, telling

them that what they have heard is true; Agamemnon is dead.

Reminding her subjects that she is now the sole ruler of

Mycenae, Clytemnestra has Agamemnon's body brought out and

placed before the palace. Por a moment there is a shocked

silence and then the captain turns toward the Queen to ask

who murdered Agamemnon. Before Clytemnestra can answer,

the figure of Cassandra rises from the stone where she has

lain, and in the voice of Agamemnon whose spirit now

 91

possesses her, accuses Clytemnestra of the murder. At

once the Queen orders her soldiers to kill Cassandra, but

as one of the warriors advances toward her, the King's

voice calls the soldier by name and orders him to sheathe

his weapon. Unable to decide what to do, the young man

falls on his knees before Cassandra. Again the spirit of

Agamemnon accuses the Queen of the murder, and this time

Clytemnestra answers:

Truly soldiers,
I think it is he verily. No one could invent the
abominable voice, the unspeakable gesture,
The actual raging insolence of the tyrant. I am the
hand ridded the Argolis of him.
I here, I killed him, I, justly.l (36)

Cassandra turns toward the people and still in the voice

of Agamemnon urges them to take revenge on their Queen:

I say if you let this woman live, this crime go

unpunished, what man among you
Will be safe in his bed? The woman ever envies the
man, his strength, his freedom, his loves.
Her envy is like a snake beside him, all his life
through, her envy and hatred: law tames that
viper:
Law dies if the Queen die not: the viper is free then,
It will be poison in your meat or a knife to bleed you
sleeping. They fawn and slaver over us
And then we are slain. (36-37)

It is interesting to note the Aeschylian echo

which occurs in these lines. In Agamemnon, after
Clytemnestra has murdered her husband, she says to the
chorus:
"Here is Agamemnon, my husband, done to death, the
work of this right hand, a workman true."
(Aeschylus, Agamemnon, trans. Herbert Weir Smyth, Vol. II,
Aeschylus, ed7 Hugh tloyd-Jones, /Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 19637, p. 125.)
 92

But Clytemnestra, in spite of the insistent prodding of

the King's spirit and the fact that a few of her soldiers

Begin to oppose her, manages to hold the entire throng at

Bay By the force of her will, reminding the crowd that

Both she and they have reasons to avenge themselves on

Agamemnon; she has lost a daughter and they have lost

sons, Brothers, fathers, and husBands Because of Agamemnon's

stuBBorn pride. Finally, in a last attempt to maintain her

power over the crowd, Clytemnestra Begins to do a strip­

tease. As she slowly pulls away one garment after another,

she invites the men to cast lots for her Body. Throughout

the scene Agamemnon, through Cassandra, has Been urging the

soldiers to take Clytemnestra, "strip her and use her to

the Bones, wear her through, kill her with it" (42).

Finally, almost as if By prearrangement, Aegisthus and

his soldiers issue forth from the palace and Clytemnestra,

who has Been aBout to cut away her last vestige of modesty,

uses her knife on the soldiers standing closest to her.

With the appearance of Aegisthus and his soldiers,

it Becomes apparent that the murderers of Agamemnon have

gained the throne of Mycenae. The apirit of the King,

despairing over Clytemnestra's success, takes its leave of

Cassandra's Body with these wordss

And I have gone away down: knowing that no God in the

earth nor sky loves justice; and having tasted
The toad that serves women for heart. From now on may
all Bridegrooms
Marry them with swords. Those that have Borne children
Their sons rape them with spears. (44)
 93

Clytemnestra picks up the last words of this speech and

asks if she must now kill what she loves, her son. Almost

at once she turns to Aegisthus and offers to sacrifice her

children for him. He answers:

0 strongest spirit in the world.

We have dared enough, there is an end to it.
We may pass nature a little, an arrow flight,
But two shots over the wall you come in a cloud upon the
feasting Gods, lightning and madness. (44- 45 )

Aegisthus exits into the palace and Clytemnestra turns once

more to her people, announcing that they must choose be­

tween death or allegiance to their new rulers. Aegisthus

returns to the steps of the palace to tell Clytemnestra

that her children and their nurse are missing. At once the

Queen orders that they be sought out and killed, and that

tokens signifying their deaths be brought to her. Aegisthus

gives the order to his men, but commands that the children

be brought back alive. When Clytemnestra learns of this,

she upbraids Aegisthus and claims that the gods love what

men call crime. To prove her point she reminds him that

he is a product of crime, of the incest of Thyestes and

his daughter, Pelopia, and that the gods have made Pelopia' s

crime the king of Mycenae. Clytemnestra continues:

Here is the stone garden of the plants that pass

nature: there is no too much here: the monstrous
Old rocks want monstrous roots to serpent among them.
1 will have security. I'd burn the standing world
Up to this hour and being new. You think I am too much
used for a new brood? Ah, lover,
I have fountains in me. I had a fondness for the brown
cheek of that boy, the curl of his lip,
The widening blue of the doomed eyes . . . I will be
spared nothing. Come in, come in, they'11 have
news for us. (4-8-49)
 94

And together they enter the palace.

A rambling soliloquy by Cassandra follows, in

which the prophetess laments the lack of any steadfastness

in the world. The world lacks meaning, she concludes;

there is nothing to lay hold on:

No crime is a crime, the slaying of the King was a
meeting of two bubbles on the lip of the cataract,
One winked . . . and the killing of your children would
be nothing: I tell you for a marvel that the
earth is a dancer,
The grave dark earth is less quiet than a fool's
fingers,
That old one, spinning in the emptiness, blown by no
wind in vain circles, light-witted and a
dancer. (50)

Part I ends as Clytemnestra returns to ask Cassandra to

tell her where Electra and Orestes have gone. Cassandra

refuses, and then after Clytemnestra disappears once more

inside the palace, expresses the wish that she were with

the children on their northward journey; they, at least,

will find shelter on Mount Parnassus, but Cassandra's

spirit wanders through the history of time watching one

civilization after another as it emerges, prospers, and

dies.

The second part of The Tower Beyond Tragedy begins

with a long soliloquy by Cassandra. It establishes the

fact that eight years have elapsed between the two sec­

tions; but its main purpose is to give voice to the under­

lying theme of Jeffers' play. Cassandra recalls the

civilizations that have been and those that will come, and

asks her timeless spirit to curse each in its turn—

Athens, Corinth, Syracuse, Rome, Spain, Prance, England,

 95

and finally America ("A mightier to be cursed and a higher

for malediction") (53). The heart of the speech is

Cassandra's prayer, which states the central thesis:

Last of the lords of the earth, I pray you lead my

substance
Speedily into another shape, make me grass, Death,
make me stone,
Make me air to wander free between the stars and the
peaks; but cut humanity
Out of my being, that is the wound that festers in me,
Not captivity, not my enemies: you will heal the
earth also,
Death, in your time. (54)

As the prophetess completes her speech, a beggar

girl appears at the foot of the palace steps; at once

Cassandra recognizes the girl as Agamemnon 1s daughter,

Electra, who has returned to Mycenae to avenge her father's

murder. When Electra threatens Cassandra with death if

she tells Clytemnestra that her children have returned,

the Trojan princess promises to keep Electra's identity a

secret. Cassandra adds that she knows that Orestes now

waits in ambush for Aegisthus and says that Electra's

brother "would be fortunate if today were also/ The last

of his /life7n (57). Electra only answers that all three

must accept their destinies and that Orestes "has been for

years like one tortured with fire: this day will quench

it" (57).
Aegisthus comes from the palace on his way to hunt.

Seeing the beggar girl, he speaks kindly to her and tells

her the Queen may find service for her. Soon Clytemnestra

emerges from the palace to bid her husband farewell; as

 96

Aegisthus departs he mentions the beggar girl to

Clytemnestra, adds that the girl comes from Sparta, the

Queen's homeland, and urges Clytemnestra to be gentle

with her.

After Aegisthus leaves, Clytemnestra turns to the

beggar and asks to see her face. Electra keeps her face

hidden, however, until her mother loses patience with her

and sends her away. Then, as a cry rings out somewhere in

the city, Electra rises and reveals her true identity.

Clytemnestra is frightened by the unexpected appearance

of her daughter, but announces that she will not kill that

to which shehas given life. Electra pleads with Clytemnestra

to give her refuge, telling her mother that Orestes has

been killed in a court quarrel, and that she has begged

her way from Phocis to Mycenae. Although Clytemnestra

first feels that Electra's story about Orestes is a lie,

she soon begins to lament her son's death and warns her

daughters "never dare anything, Electra, the ache is

afterward/ At the hour it hurts nothing" (63).

Suddenly there is a commotion within the palace

and Orestes, sword in hand, advances from the palace door

toward his mother. Aegisthus is dead, and now Orestes

must kill "that woman/ The Gods utterly hate" (64).

Electra urges Orestes to kill Clytemnestra quickly, before

she has a chance to speak, but the Queen at once begins to

give her son reasons why he should not murder her. When he
 97

answers that "a God in his temple/ Openly commanded" (65)

the matricide, Clytemnestra suggests that the voice of

the god was only that of the priest. "They /ihe priests/

fool us," she says, "And the Gods let them" (65). The

Queen explains that she is ready to die, hut urges

Orestes to have one of his soldiers kill her, for she

fears the nightmare and madness which would descend upon

Orestes if he were to murder his mother. Finally she

ends her speech to Orestes by explaining that the stones

of the house have seen many crimes, but never one so un­

natural as this; she proposes that Electra kill her, for

a daughter killing a mother "is not unnatural" (67).

Orestes is clearly moved by his mother's words.

While Electra urges her brother to avenge their father's

murder and reminds him of Clytemnestra1s wickedness,

Orestes repeatedly asks himself (with obvious sexual

overtones), "/May l7 dip in my sword/ Into my fountain?"

(67). Just as it appears that Orestes has given up his

murder plan, Clytemnestra calls for her guards to rush

the pair; abruptly, Orestes whirls and kills the Queen.

Almost at once insanity overtakes him. Electra, now com­

pletely alone, turns to the Mycenaeans to proclaim that

Agamemnon's murder has been avenged and that Orestes is

now king. In his madness Orestes rises, and thinking

that Cassandra is his mother, kills her. As he descends

the palace steps and heads toward the gates of the city,
 98

Electra once more addresses the crowd and asks that they

allow her brother to pass. Then she turns to enter the

palace sayings

A house to rest in'. . . . Gather up the

dead: I will go in; I have learned strength. (71)

The final section of The Tower Beyond Tragedy is

devoted almost entirely to an interview between Electra

and her brother. Having regained his sanity, Orestes

returns to the palace at dawn on the day following the

murder in order to bid farewell to his sister. Electra,

however, believes that her brother must return to

Mycenae and take Agamemnon's place on the throne:

Beggars and the sons of beggars

May wander at will over the world, but Agamemnon
has his honor and high Mycenae
Is not to be cast. (75)

Orestes answers that he has conquered his madness

and outgrown the city, and mentions a dream which he has

had during the night, a dream in which he embraced Electra

"More than brotherwise . . . possessed, you call it . . .

entered the fountain— " (74). Electra at once believes

that it is this dream and the incestuous desire which

Orestes feels that forces him to leave Mycenae, and in a

last desperate attempt to convince her brother to rule

the country, she offers him her death or her body, be­

lieving that he will choose to assuage his guilt or

satisfy his desire. As Electra embraces her brother,

she begins to feel a desire for Orestes, but he pushes her

 99

away, explaining that neither choice pleases him.

It's Clytemnestra in you. But the dead are a

weak tribe. If I had Agamemnon 1s
W e ’d live happily sister and lord it in Mycenae—
be a king like the others— royalty and incest
Run both in the stream of the blood. (78)

But Orestes is not Agamemnon and Electra's dream can

never be fulfilled. In an attempt to temper his sister's

bitter disillusionment, Orestes explains why he cannot

remain in Mycenae. Since this is the clearest statement

of the play's theme, I quote Orestes' final speeches at

some lengths

. . . I have suddenly awakened, I will not waste

inward
Upon humanity, having found a fairer object.

I left the madness of the house, tonight in the

dark, with you it walks yet.
How shall I tell you what I have learned? . . .

I saw a vision of us move in the darks all that

we did or dreamed of
Regarded each other, the man pursued the woman, the
woman clung to the man, warriors and kings
Strained at each other in the darkness, all loved or
fought inward, each one of the lost people
Sought the eyes of another that another should praise
him; . . .
It is all turned inward, all your desires incest­
uous . . . .

Tonight, lying on the hillside, sick with those

visions, I remembered
The knife in the stalk of my humanity; Idrew and it
broke; I entered the life of the brown forest
And the great life of the ancient peaks,the patience
of stone, I felt the changes in theveins
In the throat of the mountain, a grain in many cen­
turies, we have our own time, not yours; and I
was the stream
Draining the mountain wood; and I the stag drinking;
and I was the stars,
Boiling with light, wandering alone, each one the lord
of his own summit; and I was the darkness
 100

Outside the stars, I included them, they were a part

of me. I was mankind also, a moving lichen
On the cheek of the round stone . . . they have not
made words for it, to go behind things, beyond
hours and ages,
And be all things in all time, in their returns and
passages, in the motionless and timeless center,
In the white of the fire . . . how can I express the
excellence I have found, that has no color but
clearness;
No honey but ecstasy; nothing wrought nor remembered;
no undertone nor silver second murmur
That rings in love's voice, I and my beloved are one;
no desire but fulfilled; no passion but peace,
The pure flame and the white, fierier than any passion;
no time but spheral eternity: . . .

What fills men's mouth1s is nothing . . . I have

fallen in love outward. (80-83)

As the play ends Electra enters the palace to fulfill her

own prophecy of suicide, and Orestes walks into the clear

dawn.

. . . men say that a serpent

Killed him in high Acadia. But young or old, few
years or many, signified less than nothing
To him who had climbed the tower beyond time,
consciously, and cast humanity, entered the
earlier fountain. (83)

This synopsis of The Tower Beyond Tragedy suggests

that Jeffers has made two major departures from the myth,

one of which seems characteristic of the ways in which

other twentieth-century writers have handled it, while the

other is very much Jeffers' own invention. The first of

these is the tendency to omit, or at least to reduce, the

supernatural framework of the action. Although there are

frequent references to God or the gods within the text of

the drama, perhaps more than in any other play discussed

 101

in this chapter, the action seems to spring almost entirely

from human volition, not from the will of Pate.

Clytemnestra never suggests that her murder of Agamemnon

is another step in the fulfillment of an ancient curse on

the House of Atreus, and although Orestes tells his mother

that he comes to avenge his father's death because a god

commands it, this seems to be more an excuse than a rea­

son. Orestes' final act, his falling "in love outward"

has no apparent relationship to the gods. In addition,

Jeffers fails to establish a consistent attitude toward

the supernatural. Clytemnestra's initial reference to the

gods and the sacrifice which they require is simply

double-talk in order to gain time. Her reaction to

Orestes' claim that he comes to kill her at a god's command

is one of derision, and she suggests that he has mistaken

the voice of a priest for that of a god. At other moments,

however, supernatural forces seem to play some part in

human life. As Clytemnestra stands on the steps holding

off the mob, one of her soldiers flings a spear which

misses her, and the following narrative line explains that

"some God, no lover of justice, turned it" (40). Near the

end of the play Electra says: "as for the Gods/ No one

can know them, whether they be angry or pleased, tall and

terrible, standing apart,/ When they make signs out of the

darkness . . ." (75). Electra's agnosticism is perhaps

the essential attitude toward the supernatural which Jeffers

 102

wants to establish.

The other major change which the play makes in

the Atreidae legend occupies most of the third section of

The Tower Beyond Tragedy. Orestes regains his sanity in

a matter of hours, and as a result of his wanderings in

the woods is converted to some kind of pantheistic mysti­

cism. When he comes to bid goodbye to his sister, she

attempts to make him accept the throne of Mycenae by

offering to kill herself or to give herself to him.

Orestes, however, has gone beyond humanity, beyond time,

and wishes only to return to the forest. As he does so,

Electra enters the palace to commit suicide. None c c

these events occur in the myth.

There are other modifications, but all are less

significant than those mentioned above. These include:

(1) Agamemnon returns home already apprised of Aegisthus*

presence in the Mycenaean palace, and having heard rumors

of his wife's infidelity. This fact and Agamemnon's

casual attitude toward the information suggests that

Jeffers wishes to minimize the earlier events of the

legend. (2) After Agamemnon's death, his spirit returns

to the palace steps and takes possession of Cassandra in

order to accuse Clytemnestra. (3) Electra joins Orestes

in his flight from Mycenae, and Clytemnestra, unlike her

prototype, orders soldiers to find her children and kill

them. In spite of this fact, a good deal is made in the

 103

play of Clytemnestra1s love for Iphigenia and Orestes.

(4) Cassandra does not die with Agamemnon as in the

legend, but is killed by Orestes after he has gone mad.

(5) Finally, Clytemnestra claims that she is willing to

die, but urges Orestes to have Electra or a soldier com­

mit the deed. In the following section I will examine

the use which Jeffers makes of these modifications.

Any evaluation of a Jeffers' poem must take into

account Jeffers' own preoccupations, upon which all his

work is based. R. W. Short, in an article in the Southern

Review, explains that:

Jeffers’ philosophy is simple. He believes that

matter, existing in eternity, passes through cyclic
changes having nothing to do with human interests,
humanity being but an accidental manifestation of
this matter. Sentiency marks man and animal apart
from insentient matter, but bestows no especial im­
portance upon them. Man, not realizing this situa­
tion, has'made inevitable mistakes, erected gods,
discovered false values, and herded into cities in­
stead of clinging to the land, which in some myster­
ious way has a sort of superiority over thinking
matter; but in view of man's temporary and accidental
existence, these mistakes, however gross, have no
more real importance than man himself. Since, how­
ever, man is condemned to think, to order his acts in
accordance with an act of choice, he had better turn
apart from other men, keep close to hard, cruel
nature, and fulfil in order the conditions of the
hawk and stone.

Later in the same article Short adds that Jeffers injects

^R. W. Short, "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," The

Southern Review, VII (Summer, 1941), 133.
 104

into this philosophy the

doctrine of pain. For some reason that must he com­

pletely personal, . . . Jeffers believes that man
achieves dignity only when he is being racked by-
physical pain, and greatness only when his physical
strength enables him to bear much torture, and
achieve indifference to the pain of others, before
he cracks . . . .

With these ideas in mind, it is not difficult to

comprehend the meaning of The Tower Beyond Tragedy.

Clytemnestra and Electra (symbolizing nearly all mankind

throughout history) are concerned with human knowledge and

human power; they are introverted, incestuous, and obsessed

with themselves. Cassandra recognizes their failure as she

does that of all civilizations, but she can find her own

salvation only in death. She symbolizes "that abstract

knowledge which understands this historic struggle /for

human powei^, but cannot profit by it." Only Orestes is

able to fall "in love outward." Because of the madness

which he has endured, he gains the ability to renounce all

humanity, all power and knowledge, and to achieve a one­

ness with the natural world. Orestes learns the lesson

which Jeffers preaches both in his verse and in his prose

writings:

There is no health for the individual whose attention

is taken up with his own mind and processes; equally
there is no health for the society that is always in­
troverted on its own members, as ours becomes more and
more, the interest engaged inward in love and hatred,

1Ibid.
2
Carpenter, p. 70.
 105

companionship and competition. . . . All past cul­

tures have died of introversion at last, and so will
this one, but the individual can be free of the net
in his mind. . . .
I have often used incest as a symbol to express
these introversions. . .

Although the poem itself does not explain exactly how

Orestes achieves transcendence, or precisely what his

mystical victory is, Jeffers himself has explained what

he thought Orestes achieved. The following quotation is

taken from Jeffers' apology for The Tower Beyond Tragedy

which appeared in the New York Times on the opening day

of the New York productions

I needed an excuse; I was a little ashamed to take

two or three Greek tragedies, change them considerably,
and make them into a poem. It seemed lazy and self-
indulgent. . . . So I was glad to have something of my
own to present at the end, though it is quite alien to
Greek thought.
This was the pantheistic mysticism of Orestes,
which comes to him like a religious conversion after
he has committed his criminal act of justice. The
house of Agamemnon is a wicked house, corrupted by
power, heavy with ancestral crime and madness; of all
its descendants only Orestes at last escapes the curse;
he turns away from human lust and ambition to the cold
glory of the universe.
A patriot may identify himself with his nation, or
a saint with God; Orestes, in the poem, identifies him­
self with the whole divine nature of things; earth,
man, and stars, the mountain forest and the running
streams; they are all one existence, one organism.
He perceives this, and that himself is included in it,
identical with it. This perception is his tower be­
yond the reach of tragedy; because, whatever may hap­
pen, the great organism will remain forever immortal
and immortally beautiful. Orestes has "fallen in love
outward," not with a human creature, nor a limited

^Robinson Jeffers, quoted in Douglas Bush,

Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry
(New Iork: Pageant Book Co., 1957), pp. 521-22.
 106

cause, "but with the universal God. 2.

This is my meaning in the poem . . .

The major defect in The Tower Beyond Tragedy is

Jeffers' inability to establish an organic relationship

between his theme and the action. It is as though the

author had propounded a philosophy of life, looked around

for an exciting tale which seemed to have some possibility

of containing this philosophy, and then simply put the two

together like a sandwich. Or, as Walter Kerr says, a good

playwright uses "the philosophy to explain the action of

the play, whereas Jeffers uses the action of the play to

2
explain his philosophy." As a result, The Tower Beyond

Tragedy seems much of the time to exist simply for the

sake of its action, and the rest of the time to be heavily

didactic. Most of the message of the play is contained in

Cassandra's soliloquy which begins the second part of the

drama, and in Orestes' final speeches. Cassandra's speech

is interesting enough in itself, but it has nothing what­

ever to do with the rest of the play. Orestes' closing

declaration seems unmotivated, and nothing that he has pre­

viously said or done suggests that he is capable of this

kind of transformation. In fact, the entire third part

seems gratuitous, for at the end of the previous section

■^Jeffers, New York Times, November 26, 1950,

Sect. X, p. 1.
P
Walter Kerr, "The Tower Beyond Tragedy,"
Commonweal, December 22, 1950, p. 279.
 107

Orestes goes off insane and Electra enters the palace,

seemingly quite satisfied with the way things have turned

out. Nothing suggests the artistic necessity of the third

"act." Or, looked at from the opposite point of view, "it

is unnecessary," as Oscar Cargill suggests, "that the

whole story of Agamemnon and his return and murder should

be played out."'*’ This inability to integrate theme and

action is a defect which is not, of course, peculiar to

Jeffers; but it is interesting to note that at least two

critics find that it mars nearly all of Jeffers1 poetry.

Barbara Polk maintains that Jeffers

was kept from artistic greatness because, with few

exceptions, he "used" his verse only as a vehicle
for . . . ideas. In my opinion the poetry does not
fail because it embodies these ideas; it fails because
it has been made subservient to them, created for
them, built around them.2

R. W. Short echoes this view when he states that Jeffers'

"conclusions never rise with inevitability out of the ma­

terials of the poem, but occur as intrusions or manipula­

tions of the author."^

The other difficulty in the handling of theme has

already been suggested: Orestes' (and Jeffers') failure to

make clear the nature of his transcendence. Orestes asks

■*"03car Cargill, Intellectual America (New York:

The Macmillan Co., 1941)"i p. 752.
2
Barbara Nauer Polk, "Robinson Jeffers Taken to
Task," The Catholic World, CLXXIX (July, 1954), 271.

^Short, The Southern Review, VII (Summer, 1941).

133.
 108

near the end of the play, "How can I express the excellence

I have, found . . (82). The answer seems to be that he

cannot, and as a result we are unable to comprehend his

realization. It is difficult to decide whether this re­

sults from Jeffers' attempt to combine tragic elements and

mystic philosophy, as Carpenter suggests,"1' or whether it is

essentially a stylistic problem as Lawrence S. Morris

?
would have us believe. Nevertheless, the lack of clarity

at this point in the work tends to diminish the signifi­

cance of the drama.

Fortunately, Jeffers is much more successful in

his depiction of characters than he is in developing his

theme. He has drawn Clytemnestra in such a way that she

retains much of the power and grandeur of her prototype.

Her ability to hold off the Mycenaean mob after they have

learned that she has killed their king, and her decision

to kill her children in spite of the fact that she loves

at least one of them, make her a memorable figure.

Electra is drawn on a somewhat smaller scale than

her mother. Like Clytemnestra, Electra has considerable

strength, and throughout the second act she is an adequate

rival to the Queen. An inconsistency becomes apparent,

however, when the Electra who enters the palace at the end

Carpenter, p. 125.
2
Lawrence S. Morris, "Robinson Jeffers; The Tragedy
of a Modern Mystic," The New Republic, May 16, 1928,
p. 389.
 109

of the second part of the poem is compared with the Electra

who appears in the third section. She appears satisfied

with the outcome of events as the second act ends; hut in

the final section she is willing to do anything, including

committing suicide or incest, in order to persuade Orestes

to take the throne. The only answer seems to be that

Electra has come to some realization which she (and

Jeffers) choose to keep a secret.

Since it is through Orestes that Jeffers chooses

to explain his play's meaning, it is unfortunate that

Orestes is the least effectively drawn character. Not only

does he seem inconsistent because of his inadequately-

explained realization; but he is also essentially weaker

than either of the two female characters who appear with

him. Clytemnestra has no difficulty in making Orestes

question the justification of the matricide which he and

Electra have planned. When he does kill, he does so almost

by accident, as if Clytemnestra's orders to her troops have

startled him and he has acted without thought. Added to

this is his insane murder of Cassandra, which does nothing

for him and seems designed only to dispose of a character

whose presence is no longer required by the playwright.

Jeffers, like LeGallienne and Turney, is at times

guilty of irrelevant theatricalism. The most obvious

examples of this are Clytemnestra's striptease and

Agamemnon's possession of Cassandra, particularly in the

 110

sexual way in which the spirit gains entrance to the body.

Although both of these are spectacular theatrical effects,

neither seems necessary. On the other hand, since the

first part of the work has little relationship to the

thesis, these two bits of theatricalism are less annoying

than they might be in a more integrated work. Both are

representative of Jeffers' approach to his material, with

its emphasis on sensuality and violence. The bizarre de­

tails of the action combined with Jeffers' inability to

integrate theme and plot make much of the play seem heavily

melodramatic. In this respect, Jeffers' use of the myth

looks forward to the more recent Atreidae dramas of Eugene

O'Neill and Kenneth Rexroth, which will be discussed in the

next part of this chapter. But whereas all three of these

playwrights make use of Freudian (or at least pseudo-

Freudian) psychology, Jeffers and Rexroth use incestuous

sexual relationships symbolically, while O'Neill's approach

is far more realistic.

For the most part Jeffers avoids the use of Greek

dramatic conventions, and the two which he does use are,

surprisingly, very much a part of his work.1 The setting

of the play, the exterior of the palace at Mycenae, is

^t should be added that a chorus of some sort was

used in the New York production of The Tower Beyond Tragedy.
Without the script for that performance of the work, how-
ever, it is difficult to know what use Jeffers made of this
convention. I have, therefore, omitted any consideration
of it here.
 Ill

reminiscent of the settings of nearly all Greek dramas,

hut it is demanded hy the action, and helps to unify the

play. Agamemnon's death occurs offstage as it would have

in the Greek theatre, hut again this is required hy the

dramatic action. Jeffers avoids the use of Greek conven­

tions when he feels they do not belong.^"

Robinson Jeffers is the first writer of those

examined here whose use of language is effective enough to

warrant a detailed consideration. Such consideration is,

however, not within the limits of this study and we must

content ourselves with a brief description of his verse.

I n The Tower Beyond Tragedy as well as in his other dra­

matic poetry, Jeffers' long verse line is "never far from

2
prose," yet, as Oscar Cargill has indicated, "some of the

verses form themselves on the tongue without our conscious

effort in tranquillity and we know the flavor of real

poetry."^ In addition, Jeffers' verse has great emotional

power. Although it must he admitted that at times the verse

seems uncontrolled and as a result sounds rhetorical and

bombastic, Jeffers at his best "seizes words by the throat

and shakes them until they tremble with his passion. His

lines are long, nervous, and restive, like the stallion he

■^Specifically, he places the murder of Clytemnestra

on stage.
p
William Benet, quoted in Cargill, p. 761.

^Cargill, p. 761.
 112

likes to describe."'*'

An examination of The Tower Beyond Tragedy reveals

that the verse may not be as free as it appears. A ten-

stress line seems to be basic, but the line has no recog­

nized pattern of metrical feet and alternates with lines

of different lengths, particularly five-stress lines. A

few passages taken at random from the poem will reveal this!
X X X X X
The beautiful girl with whom a God bargained for love,
X X X X X
high-nurtured, captive, shamefully stained
X X X X X
With the ship's filth and the sea's, rolled her dark
X X X X
head upon her shoulders like a drunken woman (25)

X X X X X X
Good spearmen you did not kill my father, not you
X X X
Violated my mother with the piercing
X X X X X
That makes no life in the womb, not you defiled
X X X X X
My tall blond brothers with the masculine lust
X X X
That strikes its loved one standing, (25)

X X X X X
She turned and entered the ancient house. Orestes
X X X X X
walked in the clear dawn; men say that a serpent
X X X X X
Killed him in high Arcadia. But young or old, few
X X X X X
years or many signified less than nothing
X X X X X
To him who had climbed the tower beyond time, con-
X X X X
sciously, and cast humanity, entered the earlier
x
fountain. (83)

■^Morris, The New Republic, May 16, 1928, p. 389.

 113

I am not sure that I can agree with Carpenter's view that

Jeffers' lines reproduce the rhythm of speech. It takes

considerable effort to sustain orally the ten-stress line,

but if the line is well read, it has considerable sweep

and grandeur.

The metric patterns of Jeffers' verse, coupled with

a skillful use of other poetic devices and an amazingly

large vocabulary (Powell estimates that it is one of the

largest of any "poet using the English language since

Shakespeare")^ produces a highly original and frequently

effective style. Jeffers is more successful as a poet

than as a dramatist, and one wonders if his characters do

not gain their grandeur primarily through their author's

use of language.

This analysis indicates that Jeffers' handling of

the Atreidae myth in The Tower Beyond Tragedy is similar to

Turney's and LeGallienne's in a number of ways. There are,

however, some important differences.

In The Tower Beyond Tragedy, as in Daughters of

Atreus and to a lesser extent in Orestes, the part which

the supernatural plays in the story has been de-emphasized;

instead, the characters are shown to have psychological

motivations. All three plays include considerable melo­

dramatic details and irrelevant theatrical devices, and all

^Powell, p. 129, n. 2.
 114

fail to successfully integrate theme with action.

Although both Turney and Jeffers have altered

various elements of the myth, Jeffers is freer in his

handling of the legend than Turney. Daughters of Atreus

remains faithful to the story line throughout, but in The

Tower Beyond Tragedy, Jeffers has added a new ending which

contrasts sharply with that of the myth. With this addi­

tion, Jeffers resolves the action while Turney and

LeGallienne do not.

Unlike the others, Jeffers makes Orestes the pro­

tagonist, although Clytemnestra and Electra are still

stronger and more interesting individuals. Finally, it

should be noted that Jeffers avoids the use of Greek dra­

matic conventions, and he uses language more effectively

than most American playwrights.

 Part 4: The Atreidae Dramas: Section 3

The third section of this chapter includes the

largest number of Atreidae dramas: Jack Richardson's

The Prodigal, Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra,

and Kenneth Rexroth's Beyond the Mountains. Although the

action of all three plays remains more or less within the

general framework of the myth, each of the authors uses

the legendary material with far greater freedom than

either Turney or Jeffers. Numerous and severe alterations

are made in the incidents which are borrowed from the myth,

and most of the characters who appear in these plays bear

little relationship to their prototypes.

115
 Jack Richardson's The Prodigal:

Myth and the Anti-hero

The most recent handling of the House of Atreus

myth made its appearance in the winter of I960. Jack

Richardson's The Prodigal, a two-act prose drama, was pro­

duced a t 'the Downtown Theatre, a small off-Broadway play­

house, in February, and was published shortly afterwards.

The play was written in 1958 while Richardson, then twenty-

two and newly graduated from Columbia University, was in

Germany on an Adenauer Philosophy Fellowship.'1' Richardson's

work, his first attempt at writing for the stage, was gen-
2
erally well received and ran for 167 performances. Since

its premiere, however, the play has been the subject of

scant critical attention. Only George Wellwarth, in his

recent book The Theatre of Protest and Paradox, gives The

Prodigal more than a sidelong glance. "It is," he says,

"undoubtedly the most brilliantly written new American play

■^Louis Kronenberger (ed.), The Best Plays of 1959-60

(New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., I960), p. 59.
2
Louis Kronenberger (ed.), The Best Plays of 1960-61
(New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1961), p. 368.

116
 117

to come out since the end of World War 11."^ Although

this opinion might be difficult to support, the drama is

one of the most interesting twentieth-century adaptations

of the Atreidae myth and as good as any discussed in this

study.

Richardson’s play reveals a third way in which

English-speaking playwrights have used classic myth in

this century. Although Richardson retains the framework

of the legend, he adjusts and adapts details far more than

any of the playwrights whom we have examined. Like Turney

and Jeffers, he has attempted to give meaning to the action

of his drama, but meaning which has considerably more rele­

vance to most members of a contemporary audience than that

embodied in Laughters of Atreus or The Tower Beyond Tragedy.

In order to do this, he has used the myth with much greater

freedom than Jeffers or Turney. The setting and characters

of The Prodigal remain Greek, at least in appearance, and

the characters perform at least some of the actions their

prototypes performed. The personalities of many of the

characters, however, as well as many details of the story

have been invented by Richardson and owe nothing to the

myth.

G e o r g e Wellwarth, The Theatre of Protest and

Paradox (New York: New York University ?ress, 1964),
p. 285.
 118

As the first scene of The Prodigal begins, Electra,

a girl of 15, is telling her governess, Penelope, about the

dream which she had the previous night, a dream of

Agamemnon's triumphant return to Argos. As the two women

discuss the dream it becomes apparent that the Greeks have

been victorious over the Trojans and that Argos awaits the

arrival of its king. The women are anxious for the return

of Agamemnon so that there will again be in Argos "men to

rule, . . . instead of the hysterical verse-spouting priests

Aegisthus has turned the elders of Argos into."^ But when

Electra adds that she would see both Aegisthus and her

mother cringe beneath her father* s sword because they have

made a "mockery of everything Agamemnon spent his life to

build" (3), Penelope cautions her to remain silent.

Orestes, in his early twenties, enters with Pylades.

(Although the script does not make this clear, Pylades is

apparently an Argive and has been a friend of Orestes since

childhood. No mention is ever made of Phocis.) It soon

becomes apparent that the two young men spend their time in

luxurious pursuits and give no thought to the way in which

Aegisthus runs the country or to what may happen to Argos

when Agamemnon returns. Penelope upbraids Orestes for

being "indifferent to the reputation of his country" (5 ),

and to the insults to his father's honor. Electra asks her

^Jack Richardson, The Prodigal (New York: E. P.

Dutton and Co., Inc., I960), p. 3.
 119

brother to deny these charges, but Orestes only laughs.

Penelope mutters that he would not talk or act as he

does if he had known his father. Orestes, "with the

exasperation of one who is forced to deal with an irre­

futable absurdity," replies:

Had I known my father? But who knows my father better

than I? True, he left when I was a boy and has been
gone for some ten years, but this has only served to
make him more familiar to me. For when he set off to
mutilate Trojans he left his legend behind, and how
is a man known but through his legend? Can laughter,
can intimacy, can touch tell more about a man, espe­
cially a king, than the personal myth he bequeaths to
us in death or absence? For example, when the war was
still going badly for us at Troy, I was brought stories
of my father's past epic accomplishments. I was told
how he, acting under the indubitable and humane princi­
ple that the seas should be free and orderly, took it
upon himself to clear the Mediterranean of pirates, and
how nearly a thousand of our citizens sank, as immortal
heroes, of course, to its bottom putting this principle
into effect. Was it not also related to me, in great
detail by yourself, Penelope, how, when he heard a
small island, I forget the name, was being ruled by a
petty tyrant with unsavory whims, he set off to bring
them a more liberal and morally antiseptic government?
I won't bother you with what principles he used there—
they seemed rather muddled when I heard them the first
time— but you must know their worth since a good five
thousand lives were paid for them. Then, when the war
turned in our favor, the pleasant story was brought to
me of how my sister, Iphigenia, was sacrificed by her
father so that his men, inspired by such a sacrifice,
would fight better for the principle which had set them
off again, sword in hand. This time it had to do with
a national insult and Helen's chastity. Helen's chas­
tity'. A contradiction in terms. But the score is still
not in on the numbers who died substantiating that poor
judgment of character. Not know my father? Why, I
even have a copybook filled with the trenchant sayings
he uttered while cracking Trojan heads. Not know my
father? All I need is the binder to wrap around his
principles and he is a closed, memorized, and under­
stood book. No, Penelope, I know my father only too
well. (6- 8 )
 120

Penelope mockingly asks Orestes if he finds Aegisthus 1

principles more sound, but Orestes replies that he is no

more interested in Aegisthus than in his father, that they

are equally foolish in his eyes. Electra, however, main­

tains the heroic image she has of Agamemnon in spite of

all Orestes says. Aegisthus is heard approaching, Electra

and Penelope exit, and Orestes and Pylades move to the

back of the stage.

Aegisthus, in his late forties, a "mixture of

effeminacy and strength" (12), and his priests enter.

After a brief interlude with the priests concerning the

metrics of one of Aegisthus 1 hymns, the priests exit.

Orestes and Pylades move forward and a brief scene follows

in which the two young men make fun of the priests and
their hymns. Aegisthus is not amused and asks Pylades to

leave so that he may have a private conversation with

Orestes. After Pylades exits, Aegisthus questions Orestes

about his future plans and secret dreams. Orestes answers

that his plans and dreams are harmless to Aegisthus and the

following dialogue ensues:

Aegisthus: And yet you stand aside and mock all I do.
Why?

Orestes: Really, Aegisthus, you should know better.

I have nothing against collective misery
being turned to someone's advantage and
called religion, but don't ask me to be
enthusiastic about it.

Aegisthus: You think you stand above such things?

 121

Orestes: Above, below, or to the side, what differ­

ence? I feel uncomfortable when included
in world schemes.

Aegisthus: You wish your freedom to be unique and

question everything?

Orestes: I wish my freedom to be indolent, unob­

trusive, and uninvolved.

Aegisthus: The only one of your kind? The solitary

questeri

Orestes: If you mean I ’m looking for something

better than the present, yes. But after
all I am young, Aegisthus. I should have
that right. (17)

But Aegisthus is tired of youth as an excuse for Orestes'

behavior for he feels that the young man is a constant

danger to everything that he (Aegisthus) has attempted to

do in Argos. In order to prove his point, Aegisthus re­

minds Orestes of the condition of Argos before reforms

were begun. These reforms involved instituting a kind of

fundamentalist religion that denies the possibility of

human perfection and teaches that all men are of equal

value to the world, and that the gods are angry gods, con­

temptuous of man and ready to answer his questions with

arbitrary blows of anger. Aegisthus finally explains to

Orestes that his refusal to side with his mother and her

paramour is not only a disturbance to the kingdom but now

dangerous, for Agamemnon's arrival is imminent and all

remember that Orestes is Agamemnon's son. Orestes answers

that he is bored by both Aegisthus and Agamemnon, and that

he will not interfere in their squabbles. Clytemnestra

 122

enters and Orestes starts to leave. When she stops him

to ask if they might not somehow regain the close rela­

tionship they once had, Orestes answers that he is no

longer a child; and at Aegisthus 1 request, the young man

departs. When he is gone, Aegisthus expresses his douhts

about Orestes to the Queen, but she replies that he

should fear Agamemnon, not his son. Aegisthus tells

Clytemnestra that he has already negotiated with Agamemnon’s

soldiers, and has found them weary of war and ready to rid

themselves of their leader. A brief love scene follows

during which Clytemnestra tells Aegisthus of a series of

premonitions which she has had of Agamemnon’s arrival.

He assures her that he is well prepared and adds that her

husband will, in fact, arrive before the day is out. The

priests enter to announce the arrival of the Zing and all

prepare for the homecoming.

The second scene of Act I begins as Aegisthus

welcomes Agamemnon to the palace. (We learn during the

scene that Agamemnon had made Aegisthus regent of Argos

when the Trojan War began.) After Aegisthus leaves,

Agamemnon turns to Cassandra, who, in this play, is a

prophetess but not at all mad, and asks whether his family

will remember him. She answers that they will know him

better than he thinks possible. Agamemnon has looked for­

ward to the moment of his return and says that his days as

a conqueror are over; he desires to remain at home to be a

 123

father and husband to his family. Cassandra, however,

wonders whether the conqueror of Troy can ever rest.

Clytemnestra, Orestes, and Electra enter. For a

moment there is an awkward pause and then Electra throws

herself into her father's arms. As Agamemnon greets

Orestes, however, he becomes aware that Orestes is not

the son he had expected. Orestes gradually becomes im­

patient with the pose he has assumed and finally blurts

out:

Oh, I'm tired of this farce. Who is this man leaning

on a staff and calling me his son? Agamemnon, my
father? What does he want here? His place is on
pedestals and at the head of inspired armies. No,
King of Argos, it is rather late to clasp me by the
arm and call me son. It is embarassing. This affec­
tionate scene can go on now without me. (40)

After Orestes leaves, Agamemnon asks why Orestes has be­

haved as he has. Clytemnestra answers that the boy is

simply not ready to acknowledge Agamemnon as king or father.

Electra tries to assure her father of Orestes' love, but

Clytemnestra loses patience with her daughter and asks her

to leave. Electra does so, but only after her father

urges her to obey.

After Electra has gone, Clytemnestra turns to her

husband to explain to him that she has changed and no longer

loves him as she once did. He answers:

Agamemnon: So my glorious victory brings me this.

I must have been comical to you speaking
of my fortune the way I did. I am glad
I could entertain you.
 124

Clytemnestra: You entertained me no more than the

news of Iphigenia's death did.

Agamemnon: I will not be reproached with that by

you. I could understand your anger if
it were sincere, but don't use your
daughter's sacrifice to excuse your
weak behavior.

Clytemnestra: Weak? Yes, I am that. I was never

strong enough to stand beside you on
mountain peaks and gaze with an imper­
sonal eye at the world which you molded
to suit your great ideas. The clearair
at such heights dizzies me. I belong on
lower ground, where seasons change and
where small desires and faults are
shared and understood. (44- 45)

Clytemnestra goes on to tell Agamemnon that he thought of

her only as a queen, never as a wife, and as a result she

has taken a lover during his absence. When Agamemnon asks

to meet the man, she answers that she is proud of her love

and will send him to Agamemnon. Her lover is, she says,

not afraid of Agamemnon, but she implores her husband not

to make a battlefield of Argos.

A brief conversation with Cassandra follows and

then Aegisthus enters to announce to Agamemnon that he is

not only Clytemnestra's lover, but is now ruler of Argos.

To support his claim Aegisthus brings in two of Agamemnon's

soldiers who explain to their leader that they have de­

cided to follow Aegisthus because they are tired of years

of fighting, and they fear that the years spent in battle

may mean nothing. The soldiers exit. Agamemnon is shocked

by what he has heard, and is now willing to listen to

Aegisthus. A discussion follows in which each man expounds

 125

his beliefs about the nature of man. The following speech

by Aegisthus sums up the arguments:

I don't doubt your love, Agamemnon. I am a poet and

not ashamed to use the word, for I share the feeling.
But there is a great difference between us. You love
man for what he might be; I for what he is. You glory
in his potential, to use your own phrase; I sympathize
with his existence as it is now and always will be.
You cry for the heroic; I have tears of verse for the
weak. You give him marble principles to live by; I
give him imagined reasons to live. You want to create
justice and control life; I teach him to accept the
fortuitous and relish obedience. In short, you have
seen man as a cause— a noble sight, no doubt of it—
but it is now time to look at him unadorned and
naked. (54-55)

Aegisthus admits, however, that he has no solution to their

difference of opinion. He tells Agamemnon that later in

the day there will be a sacrifice at which all Argive sol­

diers will burn their armor as an offering to the gods.

Aegisthus had hoped that Agamemnon would lead his soldiers

in this act, but now he realizes that the King will not

cooperate. Now the most that Aegisthus can do is to warn

Agamemnon not to interfere.

After Aegisthus leaves, Agamemnon turns to

Cassandra to ask why she has remained silent. She answers

that although she may know all of the past and most of the

future, she cannot arbitrate right and wrong; she knows

only that if Agamemnon challenges Aegisthus, Aegisthus will

kill him.

The first scene of the second act occurs on the

following day. As the scene begins, Cassandra pretends to

prophesy Pylades' future, telling him that in five years,

 126

as a result of an indiscretion with a socially prominent

young lady, he will become an unwilling husband and the

father of red-headed twins. The entrance of Orestes cuts

short the banter between the two. The young prince

announces that he is being sent on a long voyage at the

orders of Aegisthus. Orestes goes on to say that Pylades

is to accompany him and that they are to leave Argos the

next day. After Pylades exits, Cassandra tells Orestes

that some men in his position might consider the enforced

trip an insult. Orestes, however, refuses to see it in

these terms and the discussion turns to the relative merits

of Agamemnon and Aegisthus. Orestes claims that the only

difference between them is that Aegisthus is less preten­

tious in his views of man and is a better psychologist.

When Cassandra asks the Prince what he might do if he had

to choose between the two, he answers!

But, I don't have to. Between Aegisthus 1 creeping,

crawling, microscopic figure who's buffeted by the
gods and happy to be so, and my father's fumbling
giant of the future who steps in everybody's garden
and on everybody's toes with good intentions, the
only choice is anger or laughter. I've taken the
second. (68)

Cassandra's surprising response is that Orestes is going

to be a hero. When the astonished young man claims that

he has neither the desire nor the ability to become a hero,

Cassandra replies that it may be necessary for him to

change, adding that it "only takes one crashing moment to

destroy the mind's labored perspective" (70).

 127

Agamemnon enters, dressed in full armor, and sends

Cassandra to fetch his sword belt. When father and son are

alone, Agamemnon begins to tell Orestes of his plan to re­

gain the kingdom. When Orestes reminds him that he no

longer has any soldiers, Agamemnon replies that his son

will be his weapon. Somewhat taken aback by this, Orestes

again tells his father that he has no interest in the dif­

ferences that exist between the King and Aegisthus. But

Agamemnon is not satisfied with this answer and asks that

he attack more specifically.

Orestess But I don't want to attack. For what

purpose? It has taken you a lifetime to
become your son's aversion and I have no
desire to rummage in your past.

Agamemnon: And then if I say to you that I regret

nothing, that all I have done deserves
only praise and imitation, you could only
mumble that it is not your way and nothing
more? Come Orestes, as your father I de­
serve better than that.

Orestes: What do you want to hear? What am I sup­

posed to tell you? If it's one solid fact
you want, I give you the name "Iphigenia."

Agamemnon: That is a name causing us both pain. The

reasons are different, though, and that's
what I wish to hear.

Orestes: Reasons? Beyond the fact you allowed your

daughter, my sister, to die, or worse,
ordered it? What reason has more effect
than that? (75)

The argument continues, Agamemnon explaining that he needs

his son as a "symbol of permanence" (78), and Orestes re­

peating that he is not interested and does not wish to get

involved. Unfortunately for the playgoer, Orestes' reasons

 128

are never made any clearer than in the above speeches.

At length Agamemnon says wearily that the time may come

when Orestes will be on his father* s side— or at least

against Aegisthus. When the young man replies that

nothing could cause him to take such a position, the King

states that Orestes will become involved in the struggle

whether he likes it or not.

My death, Orestes, will involve you. . . . Wherever

you go you will be noticed and the world will argue
and await your decision. You will be drawn into the
current, and if you struggle back toward your peaceful
shore shadows will be there to strike at your hands
and force you out again into the center flow. . . .
My death will be a fact— there in front of you, and
you will step neither around nor over it. (80)

Orestes says that no one in Argos will care about

Agamemnon* s death, but the King answers that Electra will

care and will always demand that the murder be avenged.

Presently, Cassandra returns with the sword belt and

Agamemnon retires to his chamber to await the arrival of

Aegisthus.

Almost at once the regent and a small band of sol­

diers arrive. Orestes tells Aegisthus that the murder is

■unnecessary, and that Agamemnon's plan will fail if

Aegisthus ignores him. Aegisthus is afraid of Agamemnon,

however, and feels that he should be killed at once.

Clytemnestra enters and she, too, attempts to persuade

Aegisthus to abandon his plan, but to no avail. In fact,

he forces her offstage with him, obviously intending to

make her take part in the murder.

 129

Orestes waits, wondering whether or not he will

pass the test which Agamemnon has set for him. Electra

enters and tries to go to her father, "but the soldiers

block her path. When she pleads with Orestes to take some

action, he replies that their father never existed, that

Electra created him from dreams and rumors. At that moment

Agamemnon's death cries are heard. Shortly afterwards

Clytemnestra and Aegisthus appear on stage, both dazed and

shaken. Electra, now hysterical, screams at Orestes to

pick up the sword which Aegisthus has dropped. "Take it,"

she cries, "and kill them both" (94). "No1

. Let it rest.

Let it rot and crumble where it is" (95), Orestes answers.

As the scene ends, Electra shrieks, "You will come back to

pick it up, Orestes. You will come back" (95).

The last scene of The Prodigal takes place on a

hillside near Athens six months after the previous scene.

Orestes and Pylades are discussing Orestes' approaching

marriage to Praxithia, the daughter of an Athenian peasant.

As the scene progresses it becomes apparent that Pylades

has changed, that he no longer wishes to be known as Orestes'

friend. The two say goodbye and Pylades remarks bitterly

that he will sail away to "spend the rest of his days in an

undeserved exile" (100).

Praxithia enters to tell Orestes that when she and

her father went to the temple to ask the priests' blessings

on her marriage, the priests denied the blessings and

 130

forbad© the marriage on the grounds that Orestes had

failed to avenge his father's death and was, therefore,

an accomplice to murder. Praxithia, realizing that her

father is not strong enough to stand against the priests,

has run away to join her beloved. Although she pleads

with Orestes, he now refuses to marry her, explaining that

under the circumstances they could never be happy. Sadly,

she returns to her home.

For a few moments Orestes sits, motionless, his

hands covering his eyes. Suddenly, Cassandra appears, as

if from nowhere. Aegisthus has given her the choice of

exile or hanging, and so she has wandered to Athens.

Orestes asks Cassandra for news from Argos and she replies

that Aegisthus has set about hanging all those he calls

heretics; the people are discontented with his rule and

scribble the names of Agamemnon and Orestes on walls as a

sign of protest. Electra is to be married to a priest, a

union which she desires in order to punish herself in her

father’s name.

Orestes asks Cassandra if he has any choice but to

return to Argos and, when Cassandra fails to answer his

question, answers it himself:

The world demands that we inherit the pretentions of

our fathers, that we go on killing in the name of
ancient illusions about ourselves, that we assume the
right to punish, order, and invent philosophies to
make our worst moments seem inspired. Who am I to
contradict all this any longer? I will return to
Argos. I belong no other place. (109)
 131

Orestes requests Cassandra to tell him what his future

holds. She refuses, hut adds that if he must have drama,

she will play the poet. Cassandra moves downstage and says:

Let us suppose that the sea is our audience, Orestes.

Let us change each wave, each cap of white into a face—
a spectator who we hope has some interest in the prob­
lems we act before him. And as the poet, I must under­
stand those faces and see that they are masks for de­
sires which, if I am to be successful, I must fulfill.

Some, I believe,have very moral crests. They consider

poor Clytemnestra's conduct inexcusable and would have
Orestes return, if for no other reason than to curse in
public the backstairs activities of his mother.

A somewhat larger collection, along the horizon there,

in the cheaper seats, think that progress must go on,
even at the expense of individual misgivings. They're
quite scientific and see themselves as Agamemnon's
followers.

And now, alas, we come to the majority. They are the

ones who have been struck by the fact of murder and are
this very minute preparing precepts that justify their
wish to see you balance this fact with another. For
them, dramatic justice is a none—too-complex equation
which can be simply solved by death. They speak with
Electra's voice.

But since we are engaged in popular drama, the majority

dictates the plot. To please all, I must write of your
return, your use of the sword upon Aegisthus, and,
since the public never objects to a bonus slaughter,
I'll add Clytemnestra as one of your victims.

And look, see how the waves vanish and are replaced by
others. It will be the same with the faces watching us,
and, perhaps some day, through a chance collocation of
atoms, we will have an audience other than the one we
play for now. It might be that this new gathering will
demand something better for your consent than e d g e w o m
ideals and dramatic necessity. Even better, perhaps,
there will be a majority who would see you return to
Argos with feelings other than tragic, but this, of
course, would be unfortunate for the poet since such
sentiment makes for bad drama. (110- 13)
 132

Orestes answers that there will never he such an audience,

not as long as one person in it suffers. The sea will

always echo Electra's cry and the waters will always de­

mand Agamemnon's revenge. "Then you'll return?" Cassandra

asks, and Orestes replies:

I can resist these forces no longer. I will go back,

murder, and say it's for a better world, for this must
be said to prevent insanity. And when I'm standing,
addressing the crowds of Argos, telling them what great
things are to come because of my act, I will know it is
nothing but weakness that brought me there in front of
them. I will speak of the golden days to come and
boast of my killing to achieve them; but, King Agamemnon,
I will do so under protest. I will do so knowing I was
not great enough to create something better. (113)

Orestes exits and Cassandra follows him, leaving the stage

"ready for the popular and typical hero to come" (144).

This summary of The Prodigal reveals that Richardson

has taken considerably greater freedom with the Atreus myth

than any of the dramatists whose works we have thus far

examined. Richardson's version of the story is not pri­

marily the result of omissions, or additions to the myth,

but rather of a number of changes or adjustments in the

details of the story and the characters. There are, how­

ever, two additions and one omission which should be noted.

The action of The Prodigal, unlike that of the

myth, is in no way controlled by the operation of the

supernatural. Although this same tendency has been noticed

in some of the plays examined earlier, Richardson goes even

farther in his avoidance of supernatural elements. Although

 133

the play is not without the element of fate, this fate is

neither God nor the gods, hut rather the attitudes and be­

liefs of men. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, and Orestes do re­

fer to Iphegenia's death, but there is no mention of

Artemis or of any god who desires the sacrifice. Curiously,

we are never told why the sacrifice was performed.

The two major additions to the legend are found in

the final scene of the play, a scene which is almost en­

tirely Richardson's invention. The first of these is the

introduction of a character who plays no role in the classic

version of the story: Praxithia, the daughter of an

Athenian peasant, whom Orestes chooses as his bride. The

second addition is the appearance of Cassandra who has

been allowed to go into exile. Her conversation with

Orestes causes him to realize he must return to Argos.

As previously stated, Richardson has made numerous

changes in the details of the story. Some adjustments are

made in order to reinforce the theme of the play, while

others are a result of the playwright's attempt to cast

the legend into the mould of intellectual comedy. Although

no attempt will be made here to estimate the author's suc­

cess in either of these directions, the changes should be

enumerated briefly: (1) When Agamemnon departed for Troy,

he made Aegisthus regent of Argos. The two were apparently

on the best of terms at that point. (2) The ages of Orestes

and Electra have been reversed. Electra was five when her
 134

father left Argos, Orestes a few years older. (3) Although

the play makes no mention of this fact, we must assume that

Pylades is a citizen of Argos. He has heen Orestes' com­

panion for a number of years and the drama contains no

reference to Phocis. (4) After Agamemnon returns to his

homeland, his soldiers desert him and give support to

Aegisthus. (5) Agamemnon is not murdered immediately upon

his return; he is killed only after Aegisthus has given

him the chance to relinquish the rule of Argos peacefully.

Furthermore, Agamemnon intentionally behaves in such a way

as to force Aegisthus to murder him, and plans his own

murder in an effort to arouse Orestes. (6) Clytemnestra

attempts to dissuade Aegisthus from murdering Agamemnon,

but she is forced to take part in the crime. (7) Cassandra

is not killed with Agamemnon, and after the murder is

allowed to go into exile. (8 ) Orestes willingly leaves

Argos after Agamemnon's death to go on a lengthy voyage

which Aegisthus ordered. (9) In the final scene of the

play, Cassandra reports that Electra will marry a priest

of Argos in order to punish herself for not avenging her

father's death. (10) Orestes returns to Argos at the end

of the play, but he returns reluctantly, seeking vengeance

only because he feels that society forces him to do so.

More important than these alterations of detail in

the plot, however, are the changes which Richardson has

made in the personalities of the mythical figures. Of the

 135

six major characters in The Prodigal, only two, Agamemnon

and Electra, resemble their prototypes. Orestes has been

changed from the heroic figure of the myth to an "angry

young man," an anti-hero who is completely alienated from

the world in which he finds himself, and who "expresses

himself less by looking back in ajiger than by looking for­

ward in mockery.”^ Neither Agamemnon's heroics nor

Aegisthus' religiosity appeal to him, and he wishes simply

to be left to himself, to remain uninvolved. He wishes to

isolate himself in order to retain his own sanity in a

world which he believes has become insane. Orestes does,

finally, return to Argos to avenge his father's death, but

he returns not because he has taken on the ideals of a

hero, but because he can find no other path to follow.

Society and tradition dictate that he return and he is not

strong enough to resist.

Aegisthus, too, has undergone a transformation.

He was, apparently, on friendly terms with Agamemnon at

one time, for Agamemnon has made him regent. His term as

substitute-ruler of Argos has turned Aegisthus into a

philosopher and theologian of sorts. He is, as the play

opens, a "combination of eighteenth-century rationalist

2
and Italian Renaissance Machiavellian politician." He

''■"Weirdness and Wit," Time, April 18, I960, p. 54.

^Wellwarth, p. 285.
 136

has instituted a new state religion, a kind of Calvinistic

fundamentalism which demands simple faith in gods whose

ways are far beyond the comprehension of mortal man, a

religion for which Aegisthus writes all the prayers and

hymns. In addition, Aegisthus teaches that all men are

equal in value to the state and in the sight of the gods,

that shepherds are as worthy and virtuous as heroic war­

riors. At the end of the play, however, Aegisthus becomes

unbalanced, takes complete control of the government, and

hangs all who oppose him.

If Clytemnestra seems less changed, it is only

because she plays a far less important role in this play

than in those which we have already examined. In The

Prodigal, Clytemnestra is no longer regal and heroic,

but has become a very feminine and sensual woman, far more

interested in amourous dalliance than in the affairs of

state. This queen has lost all that makes her queenly.

Cassandra is the last of the major characters to

undergo a major revision. Cassandra is not only no longer

mad, but throughout the play remains detached from the

action and appears more sane than any other character.

She is, as Time called her, a woman "who resembles Hedda

Hopper in appearance and Dorothy Parker in wit."^ It is

her wit which not only saves her life but makes her the

most appealing and interesting character in the play.

1Tdme, April 18, I960, p. 54.

 137

Although there has been some modification in the

characters of Agamemnon and Electra, they are far less

altered than any of the other major characters of the

play. Agamemnon remains essentially a heroic figure,

but he gains a certain philosophic insight into his hero­

ism that he does not have in the classic myth. Electra

is younger than her prototype, and certainly less mature,

but in other respects remains faithful to her Greek models.

Like most of the other plays in this study, The

Prodigal uses classic myth in order to make a statement

about the nature of life and man which will be relevant

to a twentieth-century audience. Unlike most of the

others, however, it is essentially an intellectual comedy;

and for that reason it is especially unfortunate that its

major weakness is in the development of the theme. The

central thesis of the play is not consistently clear, and

the last scene, in which the thesis is most apparent,

seems heavily contrived and poorly integrated with the

rest of the drama.

The Prodigal deals with the inability of the

individual to choose his own way of life when that choice

goes against the desires of society. The majority of men,

Cassandra says, demand "dramatic justice"; and since life

is "popular drama, the majority dictates the plot" (112).

Orestes despairingly agrees with Cassandra's conclusion,

 138

recognizing the futility of resisting conventional soci­

ety’s insistence that we embrace "the pretensions of our

fathers" and other "ancient illusions" (109); he accepts

the role that is forced upon him— but with the bitter

knowledge that he does so only because he is not "great

enough to create something better" (113). "Thus," as the

Time review comments, "the audience itself is slapped

with guilt as Orestes unwillingly leaves for Argos to put

the sword to the murderers— and by extension to the human

race."^

Richardson not only makes clear this theme in the

final scene of the play, he also makes it obvious that he

is in complete agreement with Orestes' estimate of the

world. As the playwright commented in a recent "self­

interview,"

I am concerned that man seems determined to learn

nothing from history; that he is still ready to
justify himself with bogus moralities; that he can­
not live without some artificial structure to support
him and that h e ’ll ignore or murder anyone who decides
that structure is unsound; and that with all the ter­
ror in simply existing he is bent upon manufacturing
some terror of his own .2

The reader may have difficulty distinguishing between

Orestes' speeches and Richardson's own comment. At least

a glimmer of hope is evident in The Prodigal, however, for

Cassandra says near the end of the play that perhaps some

^Time, April 18, I960, p. 54.

2
Jack Richardson, "Jack's First Tape," Theatre
Arts, XLVI (March, 1962), 77.
 139

day Orestes can play out his drama before a more enlight­

ened audience, one which will "demand something better

. . . than edgeworn ideals and dramatic necessity" (112).

Richardson's diagnosis of the world's ills may be

correct, but this does not establish the dramatic necessity

of the play's final scene in which the message becomes

most apparent. The first part of that scene, with Pylades

and Praxithia, seems gratuitous. Although there may be

some point in Pylades' forsaking Orestes in order to make

Orestes appear more isolated in the world, the scene with

Praxithia seems to have no legitimate purpose. Certainly

Orestes could return to Argos without this kind of prompt­

ing. Cassandra's reason for being in Athens, that she has

been allowed to choose between exile and death, seems

strained beyond belief. In general, the scene does not

seem to be the natural outgrowth of the previous action,

and the effect is to make its didacticism more obvious

than it should be.

The scene in which Agamemnon attempts to persuade

Orestes to join forces with him reveals an even more sig­

nificant flaw in Richardson's treatment of the thesis.

The difficulty here, as was mentioned briefly in the synop­

sis of the play, is that Orestes fails to make his position

explicit. Again and again Agamemnon asks Orestes to state

specifically his objections to his father's principles, but

he is unable to do so. Finally, harried by Agamemnon's

 140

repeated questions, he shouts,

What do you want to hear? What am I supposed to tell

you? If it's one solid fact you want, I give you the
name "Iphigenia." (75)

What Orestes means "by this, however, is never clear. As

Donald Malcolm explains,

One cannot tell, . . . whether he /0restes7 objects

to his father for personal reasons, . . . or because
the king's stated principles do not always accord
with his practice, or because the principles them­
selves are vicious. By refusing, as he does, to dis­
cuss such matters, Orestes cuts himself out of the
play .1

Although Orestes' inability to state his case may be con­

sistent with the character which Richardson has fashioned,

it tends to cloud the issues upon which the play is built.

Even if we accept Orestes' use of his sister's name as a

generalized symbol of all that he finds wrong with the

world, we must realize that the value of the symbol is

weakened by Clytemnestra's previous reference to Ophigenia's

death as the reason she no longer loves her husband. The

audience is bound to feel that for Clytemnestra, Iphigenia

is little more than a convenient excuse.

Later in the same scene, there are two sections of

dialogue which give contradictory ideas of Orestes' frame

of mind. In the first, after Agamemnon has calmly explained

to his son why Aegisthus will find it necessary to commit

regicide, Orestes sayss

*4)onald Malcolm, "Return of the Hero," The New

Yorker, February 20, I960, p. 107.
 141

And I thought you a fuddled dreamer who

slaughters, so to speak, by accident.

Agamemnon: One can be conscious of all and still

dream, Orestes.

Orestes: Then you knew the balance of pain in

every measurement you took of the world.

Agamemnon: I made the choice.

Orestes: Then, dear Father, I shall remember your

death with peaceful satisfaction.

Agamemnon: We shall see when you are placed within it.

But there is not much time. Our guard
should have told his tale by now and I must
be ready to receive the results with a cer­
tain amount of ceremony. (Calling).
Cassandra, Cassandra, I am ready now.

Orestes: You have given me my first true feeling.

Agamemnon: Then I have already made progress with you,

Orestes. (82-83)

The implication is that Orestes no longer sees his father

as a bungling, well-intentioned leader, but now as a kind

of Machiavellian villain who has carefully planned his

actions and was completely aware from the beginning of the

pain which he would bring to others. But this opinion

seems to be negated by a passage of dialogue which occurs

only minutes later in the play. After Agamemnon exits,

Orestes asks Cassandra if Agamemnon will not listen to her:

Cassandra: You have heard him. He needs me no

longer, for he knows what will come.

Orestes: He is wrong. His death holds nothing

miraculous in it. It is his natural end,
a law of nature to be observed, marked
down and never forgotten.

Cassandra: And yet he has moved you?

 142

Orestes: Less than a slave condemned to hang would.

Death, even my father's, upsets me because
it confirms my worst suspicions about the
world. But that is all I feel, Cassandra.

Cassandra: We shall see, Orestes. (85)

Since Cassandra has been portrayed as omniscient, some

weight must be given to her last words, which suggest that

she knows more about Orestes' true feelings than he knows

himself. She seems to say that Agamemnon has awakened

some kind of family loyalty or admiration within Orestes,

even though Orestes is not yet aware of it.

There is no way to reconcile these statements,

and their ambiguity is intensified when we attempt to re­

late them to the end of the play. When Orestes finally

goes back to Argos to avenge his father, there is no evi­

dence that he is motivated by any tender filial sentiments.

In most other respects the play is, fortunately,

more effective. Although the characters have been stripped

of the grandeur that they had in the myth and reduced to

human size as in some of the other plays which we have ex­

amined, here the effect is intentional and helps to demon­

strate the insanity of the world against which Orestes

rebels. The characters are generally well-defined and

consistent. I cannot agree with Gerald Weales' comments

that "Richardson's characters are only animated abstrac­

tions, perambulating points of view."'*' They may be less

■^Gerald Weales, American Drama Since World War II

(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), p. 220.
 143

complex than some of the great tragic heroes of world

drama, but they are, after all, not tragic figures at all,

and they seem adequately developed for the comic world in

which they exist. Moreover, most of the characters remain

interesting throughout the play. Richardson nods only

when he introduces the insipid Praxithia.

Richardson has avoided most of the other short­

comings which have been characteristic of the dramas we

have discussed. With the exception of the final scene,

the play seems well constructed, and the possibilities

of the material have been adequately realized. Particu­

larly fascinating is Richardson's handling of Cassandra,

a character who should appeal to the modern dramatist,

but one who is usually omitted or given only a super­

ficial treatment.

The Prodigal seems to be entirely free of irrele­

vant theatrical effects. The only obvious effect in the

play is the transformation of the audience area into the

sea and then into an imaginary audience, and this works

well in production.

Only one Greek dramatic convention is to be found

in the play, the off-stage murder of Agamemnon. This

seems to be standard procedure for all Atreidae dramas,

and there is no more reason for it here than in other plays.

Finally, a word must be said about the language of

The Prodigal. The dialogue is written in prose which

 144

closely resembles the conversational speech of a highly

articulate group of people. It is usually interesting,

frequently witty, and sometimes brilliant. Generally the

language helps to establish the comic tone, and to rein­

force what the playwright has to say. Richardson's

treatment of dialogue seems to be strongly influenced by

other modern writers of intellectual comedy, particularly

Giraudoux and Shaw.

The Prodigal demonstrates a third basic manner in

which classic myth has been used by English-speaking play­

wrights of our century. Although Richardson has retained

the outline of the myth, he has made numerous modifica­

tions in the details of the story and has completely re­

vised many of the mythic characters. In addition, the

play has certain tendencies in common with other plays in

this study, particularly the de-emphasis of the super­

natural framework of the myth and the adjustment of the

characters to resemble more ordinary mortals than their

prototypes. Unlike other m o d e m Atreidae dramas, however,

The Prodigal does not shift its emphasis to the female

characters of the story, nor is the action left unresolved.

Finally, the play is witness to the difficulty which

m o d e m playwrights have in their attempts to give a mean­

ing of contemporary relevance to the ancient story. But,

although the characters of the play have been reduced to

 145

human size as they have in the other m o d e m adaptations

of the myth which have been examined here, the comic

mould in which Richardson casts his play allows him to

take advantage of this fact by making it a part of

Orestes’ disenchantment.
 Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra:

Myth and Psychological Pate

Undoubtedly Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes

Electra is the best known of the plays included in this

study. According to O'Neill's "Working Notes," he first

conceived the idea of writing a modern psychological trag­

edy based on Greek myth in the spring of 1926.^ More than

p
five years later, on October 26, 1931, New York's newly

formed Theatre Guild presented O'Neill's version of the

Atreidae legend to the public in the form of a thirteen-

act trilogy which took more than five hours to perform.-^

It would be understatement to say that the production,

A
which ran for 150 performances, was a success. As Burns

Mantle commented, "The morning editions of the New York

papers, in their dramatic columns, carried such shouting

superlatives of praise as no other dramatic production has

^Eugene O'Neill, "Working Notes and Extracts from a

Fragmentary Work Diary," European Theories of the Drama
with a Supplement on the American T)rama, ed. Barret H.
Clark ( N e w York: drown Publishers, Inc., 1945), p. 530.

^Buras Mantle (ed.), The Best Plays of 1931-32

(New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1932), p. 45-7 .

■^Otis Chatfield-Taylor, "The Latest Plays," Outlook

and Independent. November 11, 1931, p. 343.

S u m s Mantle (ed.), The Best Plays of 1931-32,

p. 417.

146
 147

called forth in the history of the native t h e a t r e . I t

was Mourning Becomes Electra more than any other of his

2
plays which established O ’Neill as the American playwright.

Considering the fact that O'Neill and his work in

general have been the subject of considerable controversy

over the years,^ it is not surprising that Mourning Becomes

Electra, in spite of its critical and popular success, has

evoked a great deal of contradictory and often heated opin­

ion. In their reviews of its first performance, Joseph

Wood Krutch stated that it was difficult "to find in the

A.
play any lack at all," while Francis Fergusson found
5
O'Neill "far below even his contemporaries." Somewhat

later George Jean Nathan declared that Mourning Becomes

Electra disclosed O'Neill as "the most imaginately courage­

ous, the most independently exploratory and the most

1Ibid.t p. 66.
2
Robert Willoughby Corrigan, "The Electra Theme in
the History of Drama" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Minnesota, 1955), p. 314.

^In 1947, Joseph Wood Krutch wrote: "It would in­

deed be difficult to find any American writer of comparable
prominence concerning whom responsible opinions have re­
mained for so long diametrically opposed to one another"
(Joseph Wood Krutch, "O'Neill's Tragic Sense," The American
Scholar, XVI /Summer, 19477» 283).

^"Joseph Wood Krutch, "Our Electra," The Nation,

November 18, 1931, p. 552.

Francis Fergusson, "A Month of the Theatre," The

Bookman, LXXIV (December, 1931), 445.
 14-8

ambitious and resourceful dramatist in the present-day

Anglo-American theatre";1 while in 1953 Eric Bentley com­

plained that O'Neill's play was "unrealistic, unsocial,

2
illiberal, unpolitical, and pessimistic."

This critical disparity does not help in an evalu­

ation, but it does serve to indicate the intense interest

the play has aroused over the years. There are, further­

more, many points on which both its admirers and its de­

tractors are able to agree; and the faults they find are

similar to those which I have found in other Atreidae

dramas examined here.

In the degree of freedom which O'Neill has taken

with the Atreidae myth, his play most closely resembles

those of Richardson and Rexroth, and is, therefore, grouped

with the works of those authors. The mythic framework of

Mourning Becomes Electra. like that of The Prodigal and

Beyond the Mountains, is evident upon the first reading of

the play; O'Neill, however, like the other playwrights

examined in the third part of this chapter, makes severe

changes in the myth and at times departs from it altogether.

He is the first playwright of those whom we have examined

to place the action in a modern setting. This change in

G e o r g e Jean Nathan, "Our Premier Dramatist,"

O'Neill and His Plays; Pour Decades of Criticism, ed. Oscar
Cargill, N. Sryllion Pagin, and William T. Pisher (New York:
New York University Press, 1961), p. 288.
p
Eric Bentley, In Search of Theatre (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 24-7.
 149

time and locale, O'Neill's comparatively realistic handling

of his subject, and his attempt to impose his own meaning

upon the events of the myth have led to the alteration of

many details, and to radical changes in the characters'

motivations. Since O'Neill's play is extremely long, the

following synopsis will cover only the most important parts

of the action.

All but one of the thirteen acts of Mourning

Becomes Electra are set on the Mannon family estate, lo­

cated on the edge of a small New England village. Home­

coming, the first of the trilogy, takes place in April,

1865, at the end of the Civil War. The Mannon family has

been "top dog"'*' in this area of New England for the past

two hundred years. Abe Mannon (Atreus), now dead, inherited

money from his family but made a great deal more in a

shipping line which he began. Abe's son Ezra (Agamemnon)

was educated at West Point and fought in the Mexican War,

but gave up the A m y to take over the family shipping busi­

ness when his father died. In time he became a judge and

finally was elected mayor of his town, but resigned that

post to become a brigadier general in the northern army

when the Civil War broke out. Although the town finds

Ezra "cold blooded and uppish," they believe him to be

^Eugene O'Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra. in Three

Plays of Eugene O'Neill (New Yorks Vintage Books, n.d.)',
p. 22$.
 150

"able" (229) and are proud to claim him as a native. But

their opinion of Ezra’s wife Christine (Clytemnestra) is

quite different:

Polks all hates her'. She ain't the Mannon kind.

French and Dutch descended, she is. Furrin lookin'
and queer. (229)

Ezra's son Orin (Orestes), at the urging of his father and

sister Lavinia (Electra) but much to his mother's dis­

appointment, has accepted a commission -under his father's

command. Lavinia has remained at home and has begun to

suspect that an illicit relationship has sprung up between

her mother and a handsome clipper captain, Adam Brant

(Aegisthus). When Christine visited her father's home in

New York, Lavinia followed her and saw her go with Brant

to his rooming house.

During the course of Act I, Seth, the Mannons'

gardener, tells Lavinia that Adam Brant bears a striking

resemblance to the male members of the Mannon family, par­

ticularly to Abe Mannon's younger brother David (Thyestes).

Seth reminds Lavinia that many years ago Abe Mannon hired

a Canuck Indian girl, Marie Brantome (a kind of composite

of Aerope and Pelopifc)» to care for his ailing daughter.
David fell in love with Marie, and eventually she became

pregnant. When Abe learned of his brother's affair with

Marie, he disinherited David, put the pair out of his home,

tore down the house where they had all lived, and built a

new mansion so that he would not be forced to live where

 151

his brother had disgraced the family. David and Marie

traveled to the Y/est and no more was heard of them except

that Marie's child, a boy, was b o m . Seth believes that

Adam Brant is this child.

Later in the act, when Adam calls on the Mannons

pretending to court Lavinia, she confronts him with this

story. Adam admits that he is Marie’s son, but adds that

Abe Mannon as well as his brother had fallen in love with

Marie and that it was jealousy which caused Abe to disown

David and cheat him out of his rightful share of the busi­

ness. As a result of his disgrace, David became an alco­

holic and finally committed suicide. Many years later

Marie, dying of sickness and starvation, wrote to Ezra Mannon

for financial aid, but he failed to answer her letter. When

Adam returned to his mother, it was too late to save her and

she died in his arms. He swore to avenge her death.

The second act of Homecoming builds to Christine's

plan to poison Ezra. As the act begins Lavinia confronts

her mother with her knowledge of Christine's adultery.

Christine admits it, but attempts to defend herself by ex­

plaining that her love for Ezra turned to disgust because

of his ineptitude as a lover, and that she has found with

Adam the love for which she has always longed. In addition,

she adds that her relationship with Adam would not have be­

gun had not Lavinia and her father deprived her of Orin by

nagging him to go to war. When Lavinia asks Christine if

 152

she knows of Adam's true identity, Christine answers that

he revealed it to her when he declared his love, confiding

that he had planned to avenge his mother by seducing Ezra's

wife, but had fallen in love with her instead. Lavinia

agrees to keep her knowledge of Christine's unfaithfulness

a secret if her mother will promise to sever her relation­

ship with Adam. Christine cries out that her daughter's

real motive is not her wish to save the family from scandal,

but rather her own desire for Adam. Lavinia hotly denies

it and warns her mother that if she should decide to go

away with Adam, Ezra could easily ruin his career. Later,

Christine tells Adam that her daughter knows of their affair.

Although Adam wants to confront Ezra openly, Christine per­

suades him that he must help her to poison Ezra if they are

ever to be free.

Act III takes place a week later and centers on

Ezra's return. Lavinia greets her father warmly, but

Christine remains aloof. After telling his family that Orin

has received a head wound and assuring them that his own

heart trouble is not serious, Ezra sends his daughter to

bed. When husband and wife are alone, Ezra attempts to ex­

plain the change which has occurred in him as a result of

his war experiences; somehow the horrors of war have dis­

pelled his Puritan preoccupation with death:

It was seeing death all the time in this war got me to

thinking these things. Death was so common, it didn't
mean anything. That freed me to think of life. Queer,
 153

isn't it? Death made me think of life. Before that

life had only made me think of death.

That's always been the Mannons' way of thinking.

They went to the white meeting-house on Sabbaths and
meditated on death. Life was a dying. Being born
was starting to die. Death was being born. . . .
How in hell people ever got such notions'. That white
meeting-house. It stuck in my mind— clean-scrubbed
and whitewashed— a temple of death'. But in this war
I've seen too many white walls splattered with blood
that counted no more than dirty water. I've seen dead
men scattered about, no more important than rubbish to
be got rid of. That made the white meeting-house seem
meaningless— making so much solemn fuss over death'.
(269)

Ezra's desire to live life more fully extends to improving

his relationship with Christine. In the past, he says, he

has always felt that a barrier existed between them; now he

wants to get rid of this barrier and regain the kind of love

they had before they were married. Christine is upset by

the change which has come over her husband and is unable to

respond to him as he desires. When she realizes that her

coldness is causing him to become bitter once again, she

assures him that no barrier has ever existed between them

and urges him to come to bed.

The last act of Homecoming takes place later that

evening in Ezra's bedroom. Neither Ezra nor Christine can

sleep. It is obvious that their sexual relationship has

been unsatisfying and Ezra's desire for a new life seems to

have been replaced by the old bitterness. He accuses

Christine of waiting for his death to set her free and then

goes on to say:
 154

You were lying to me tonight as you've always liedl

You were only pretending to love'. You let me take
you as if you were a nigger slave I'd "bought at auc­
tion'. You made me a lustful beast in my own eyes'.
— as you've always done since our first marriage night'.

And I had hoped my homecoming would mark a new be­

ginning— new love between us'. I told you my secret
feelings. I tore my insides out for you— thinking
you'd understand'. By God, I'm an old fool'. (275)

This is the cue for which Christine has waited, for she

now defies her husband and tells him the details of her

adultery with Adam Brant. Ezra tries to strike his wife,

but the excitement of the evening is too much for him and

he suffers the heart attack which Christine has anticipated.

He calls for his medicine but Christine substitutes the

poison pellets that Adam has sent her. Ezra realizes too

late that he has been poisoned, but manages to call out

weakly to Lavinia. She appears just in time to see him

point to Christine and say: ''She's guilty— not medicine'."

(277). All this has been too much for Christine, and she

faints. As her hand hits the floor the box of poison slips

out; Lavinia sees the package and picks it up. Slowly, her

look of suspicion turns to horrified certainty.

The Hunted, the second play of the trilogy, begins

two days after the murder of Ezra Mannon. The first act

focuses on the reaction of Christine and Lavinia to Ezra's

death and Orin's return from the war. Although Christine

has been unable to find the incriminating box of poison,

she is not yet certain how much Lavinia knows about Ezra's

death. Lavinia has remained aloof since the murder,

 155

following Christine about the house but never speaking.

Orin, twenty, an attractive but overly-sensitive and weak

young man, has returned from the military hospital where

he has been recuperating from a head wound, his mind ob­

sessed with the horror and death which he has seen. Orin

asks his sister about the rumors concerning his mother's

relationship with Adam Brant. Lavinia has no time to go

into detail, but warns her brother not to believe the lies

which his mother will surely tell him. The act ends as

Christine learns that Lavinia has found the poison and

knows that her father was murdered.

A good deal more of Orin's personality is revealed

in the second act of The Hunted. In a lengthy scene with

his mother, Orin admits that he never cared for his father

and that he cannot pretend to be sorry that he is dead.

Christine replies that Ezra hated his son and that she, too,

is glad that her husband is dead. She is delighted that

her son has returned and she paints a wonderful picture of

how happy their life will be together. Orin adores his

mother, but his love for her does not prevent him from dis­

playing the jealousy which has been aroused by the rumors

of Christine's relationship with Brant. Christine, how­

ever, has planned for this, and with elaborate explanation

she convinces Orin that tales of her infidelity and of

Adam Brant's background are figments of Lavinia's mind, a

mind which is on the verge of insanity. Once Christine

 156

feels sure that she has persuaded Orin to believe her,

she confronts Lavinia and mockingly tells her what has

taken place. Lavinia, silent and expressionless, gazes

steadily at her mother. Suddenly Christine's defiant

attitude collapses. Terrified in the knowledge that Orin

would not hesitate to kill Adam, she begs Lavinia not to

tell her brother the truth. Lavinia walks mechanically

from the room without answering her mother and Christine

realizes that she must warn Adam at once.

Act III takes place in Ezra Mannon's study where

the body of the late general rests on a bier. Orin's de­

pression over the horrors of war returns at the sight of

his dead father, but Lavinia has no time to listen to his

morbid thoughts. Feverishly, she tells him how Christine

murdered their father; but Christine's earlier interview

with Orin has had its desired effect, and Orin will not

listen. Realizing this, Lavinia shifts her attack on

Christine from the murder of Ezra to her adultery with

Adam. Orin is aroused, but demands proof; and Lavinia sug­

gests that they follow Christine on her next visit to New

York. Christine is heard knocking on the door of the study

and suddenly Lavinia realizes that she can prove her mother's

guilt within the next few minutes. Swiftly she places the

box of poison on Ezra's corpse, tells Orin to watch his

mother's reaction when she sees the poison, and then opens

the study door to admit Christine. Within seconds Christine

 157

notices the pills, and her reaction reveals her guilt.

Orin rushes from the room knowing that at least part of

Lavinia1s accusation is true. Christine attempts feebly

to convince Lavinia of her innocence, but the daughter

simply turns and walks out in silence.

The fourth act of The Hunted is the only act of

the trilogy which takes place outside the Mannon estate.

It is an evening two days after the previous scene; visible

on the stage are the stern section and cabin interior of a

clipper ship moored to an East Boston wharf. Christine

emerges from the shadows and is met at the gangplank by

Adam. They make their way to the ship’s cabin where

Christine tells Adam that Lavinia has learned the truth

about Ezra's death. While Christine tells her story,

Lavinia and Orin stealthily board the ship and move silent­

ly to the sky light in the cabin roof to overhear the con­

versation. Christine tells Adam that she fears Orin and

Lavinia will attempt to murder him, and urges him to sail

with her on the next ship leaving Boston. Adam agrees and

accompanies Christine ashore. Orin would rush after them

and kill Adam in Christine's presence, but Lavinia throws

herself in his way and convinces him that they must wait

until Adam returns to the cabin so that no one will suspect

that they are the murderers. They conceal themselves in

the cabin. A moment later Adam appears; Orin steps from

the shadows and fires twice at point blank range. Lavinia

 158

orders him to ransack the cabin so it will appear as though

Adam has been shot in the course of a robbery. Orin is

dazed and trembling, but manages to do as she says.

The last act of The Hunted occurs the following

night. Christine has returned home to find the Mannon

house empty. Although Orin had told his mother that he

and Lavinia would visit at their cousin's home overnight,

Christine had expected that her children would return home

before she arrived. Their absence has aroused Christine’s

suspicions; she paces about, tense and restless. Her fears

are realized when Lavinia and Orin return and tell her that

they have murdered Adam Brant. Christine sinks to the

steps of the portico and begins to moan. At first Orin

taunts his mother with the crime, but soon he is on his

knees pleading with her to forget Adam. Again Lavinia

takes charge of the situation and orders Orin into the

house. She turns to Christine and announces that Adam's

murder was an act of justice and that Christine can now

live. Christine bursts into hysterical laughter and rushes

into the mansion. While Lavinia repeats implacably to her­

self, "It is justice'. It is justice1

." (328), a shot rings

out, followed by Orin's screams as he sees his mother's

body. Visibly shaken, Lavinia attempts to console her hys­

terical brother as the act ends.

The Haunted, the third play of Mourning Becomes

Electra, takes place a year later. Lavinia and Orin have

 159

just returned from a visit to the Par East and the islands

of the Pacific. During the past year Orin's sense of

guilt has become severe; his return to the Mannon estate

is a kind of self-testing. Lavinia is determined to prove

to her brother that the dead have forgotten the living and

the living need no longer fear the ghosts of the dead, but

it soon becomes apparent that Orin cannot forget the past

and that he is close to mental collapse. As Orin talks to

his sister his thoughts become more and more morbid, and he

finally suggests that neither he nor Lavinia is entitled to

happiness since they are as guilty of Christine’s death as

if they had murdered her. Lavinia, however, has changed.

Not only has she become more physically attractive, but

she manifests a desire to "begin a new life," to "get back

to simple normal things" (342), and to find an outlet for

the love which she has so long repressed. She now welcomes

the attention of Peter Niles (Pylades), a former suitor

whose advances she had always previously rebuffed. She

also encourages Orin to renew his relationship with Peter's

sister, Hazel (Hermione). Orin is suspicious of Lavinia's

motives and is puzzled by her adoption of her mother's

physical appearance and attitude toward life. Near the

end of the act, Orin leaves the room and returns later to

find Lavinia in Peter's arms. He glares at them in a

jealous rage, but manages to control himself. Lavinia

sees his reaction, however, and begins to realize that Orin

will frustrate her desires for a new life.

 160

The following act occurs a month later. Orin has

become obsessed with guilt and pleads with Lavinia to con­

fess with him the murder of Adam in order "to wash the

guilt of our mother's blood from our souls'." (353).

Lavinia angrily replies that confession would be stupid

and that Orin must stop torturing her with his guilty con­

science. At this point Orin reveals that he has been

writing the history of the Mannon family as a means of

keeping Lavinia with him forever. He adds that he finds

Lavinia the most interesting criminal of the family, and

accuses her of planning the murder of Brant because of her

jealous hatred of Christine. He suggests that Lavinia was

attracted to Brant just as she was to the first mate-of the

ship on which they sailed and to the native chief whom they

met. In a fit of anger Lavinia admits that she was

attracted to these men, but declares that she has a right

to love. As a result of her confession, Orin collapses and

the scene ends as Lavinia attempts, unsuccessfully, to

assure Orin of her love for him.

The conflict between Orin and Lavinia reaches a

climax in the third act of The Haunted. Orin, more dis­

traught than ever, gives Hazel an envelope containing the

Mannon family history which he has written. Determined to

keep Lavinia with him, Orin makes Hazel promise to make

Peter read the contents of the envelope if Lavinia should

decide to marry him. But before Hazel can leave the house,
 161

Lavinia appears, learns what her brother has done, and in

desperation promises Orin that she will do anything he

wishes if he will ask Hazel to return the envelope. Orin

retrieves the envelope but is not satisfied with Lavinia's

promise. He says that he will only believe her when he

knows that she feels as guilty as he; and this can only be

accomplished if she submits to incest. Once Orin has made

this suggestion, however, he collapses emotionally and

again begs Lavinia to go with him to the police, confess

their crimes, and find peace. Lavinia answers that there

is nothing to confess, that what they did was only justice.

Then, in a rage of anger, she screams:

I hate you'. I wish you were dead'. You're too vile

to live'. You'd kill yourself if you weren't a
coward'. (365)

For a moment Orin can hardly speak. Suddenly his tortured

imagination begins to take hold of him and he says to him­

self:

Yes'. That would be justice— now you are Mother'.

She is speaking now through you'. . . . Yes'. It's
the way to peace— to find her again— my lost island—
Death is an island of peace, too— Mother will be
waiting for me there— . . . • (365-66)

Orin rushes from the room just as Peter enters. Lavinia

throws herself into Peter's arms and is declaring her love

for him as a shot rings out.

The final act takes place three days after Orin's

suicide. Lavinia, agitated and defiant, declares to Seth

that she intends to marry Peter and leave the Mannon estate
 162

forever. As if in answer, Hazel appears and beseeches

Lavinia "to leave Peter alone. Lavinia vehemently denies

Hazel's contention that she and Peter could never be happy

together; but in the following scene with Peter, when she

mistakenly calls him Adam, she begins to realize that she,

too, will always be haunted by the dead. She dismisses

Peter, mounts the steps of the Mannon house, and turns to

proclaim to the world:

I'm not going the way Mother and Orin went. That's
escaping punishment. And there's no one left to punish
me. I'm the last Mannon. I've got to punish myself!
Living alone here with the dead is a worse act of jus­
tice than death or prison! I'll never gc out or see
anyone! I'll have the shutters nailed closed so no
sunlight can ever get in. I'll live alone with the
dead, and keep their secrets, and let them hound me,
until the curse is paid out and the last Mannon is
let die! (With a strange cruel smile of gloating over
the years of self-torture.) I know they will see to
it I live for a long time! It takes the Mannons to
punish themselves for being bora! (376)

This synopsis of Mourning Becomes Electra reveals

that O'Neill has made extensive modifications in the classic

story which serves as the framework for his play. Changes

occur in the setting, in background details, in the events

of the myth which are included in the action of the drama,

and, perhaps most significantly, in character motivations

and relationships.

As was mentioned earlier, Mourning Becomes Electra

is the first of the plays which we have examined that

places the events of the myth in a comparatively modern

 163

setting. As O'Neill's ''Working Notes" indicate, a con­

scious effort was made not only to find some sort of modern

parallel to the Trojan War, but more importantly, to find a

period in American history which would serve as a satis­

factory background for the kind of play which O'Neill en­

visioned:

No matter in what period of American history play is

laid, must remain a modern psychological drama—
nothing to do with period except to use it as a mask—
What war?— Revolution too far off and too clogged in
people's minds with romantic grammar-school-history
associations. World War too near and recognizable in
its obstructing (for my purpose) minor aspects and
superficial character identifications (audience would
not see fated wood because too busy recalling trees)—
needs distance and perspective— period not too distant
for audience to associate itself with, yet possessing
costume, etc.— possessing sufficient mask of time and
space, so that audiences will unconsciously grasp at
once, it is primarily drama of hidden life forces—
fate— behind the lives of characters. Civil War is
only possibility— fits into picture— Civil War as
background for drama of murderous family love and
hate— i
0'Neill also alters details in that part of the

Atreidae legend which serves as the background for his

play. Iphigenia and Cassandra are omitted, and Marie

Brantome has no one prototype, but is a kind of composite

of Aerope and Pelopia. The relationship between the Mannon

brothers and Marie parallels the relationship of Atreus and

Thyestes to Aerope. Marie was not, however, Abe's wife as

Aerope was the wife of Thyestes, and therefore Abe's mo­

tives for denouncing David were somewhat different from

■^O'Neill, European Theories of the Drama, pp.

530-31.
 164

those of his mythic counterpart. In one way, however,

Marie is more like Pelopia than Aerope, for she is the

mother of Adam, whereas in the myth Aegisthus was the off­

spring of Thyestes' rape of his daughter.

More important than any of the above modifications

are the adjustments that O'Neill makes in the mythic ele­

ments which serve as the basis for the dramatic action.

The most obvious of these is the shift in emphasis from

Orestes to Electra as the primary actor in the revenge plot.

Both Lavinia and Orin are adults at the time of their

father's murder and as a result only a few days elapse be­

tween Ezra's murder and the deaths of Adam and Christine.

In the myth eight years pass between the murder of Agamemnon

and that of Clytemnestra. Christine is not murdered as is

her prototype, but commits suicide. Nevertheless, Orin

feels as guilty of her murder as Orestes did of Clytemnestra's.

O'Neill adds the incest motif which we have previously noted

in Jeffers' The Tower Beyond Tragedy, and will again find

in Rexroth's Beyond the Mountains. Unlike any of the previ­

ous Orestes figures whom we have examined, Orin acknowledges

his failure to reconcile himself with the world by commit­

ting suicide in order to join his mother in death and sat­

isfy the Mannon dead who cry for justice.

Other modifications made in the plot elements of

the myth are less significant. Christine murders Ezra with

poison and Adam dies from a bullet wound; both of these

 165

changes are necessitated by the change in period and locale.

Peter and Hazel bear little resemblance to their mythic

counterparts except as love objects of Lavinia and Orin.

The inclusion of Hermione (Hazel) is interesting, for she

plays a very small role in the Greek legend and she is not

a part of any of the other twentieth-century handlings of

the Atreidae myth.

The most severe adjustments which O'Neill has made

in the myth appear not in the action but in the characters

of the play, particularly in the way motives and character

relationships are delineated. All of the characters of

Mourning Becomes Electra are motivated not by a desire to

see justice done or to avenge the death of an ancestor as

were their classic prototypes, but primarily by sexual

frustration and jealousy. Only Adam Brant's motive seems

similar to that of his mythic model, although he is not

moved by a desire to avenge his father, but rather to

avenge his mother's treatment at the hands of the Mannon

family. Although Adam is initially inspired to seduce

Christine as a means of hurting Ezra, he later finds he is

genuinely in love with her. As a result, Adam would prefer

to confront Ezra openly, and it is only after desperate

pleading by Christine that he is willing to help her poison

Ezra.

Since O'Neill omits Iphigenia and Cassandra, and

since Ezra is not obviously hybristic, some other motive

 166

must be found for Christine's desire to kill her husband.

Ezra Mannon's Puritan conscience has never allowed him to

establish a satisfactory sexual relationship with his wife,

and Christine's sexual frustrations have turned to hatred

for her husband. This hatred, coupled with her desire for

Adam, furnishes sufficient motivation for Christine to

plan and execute Ezra's murder.

Lavinia is the only Mannon who claims that her

actions grow out of a desire for Justice, and finally even

she is forced to admit that her attempt to avenge Ezra's

death was based more on her hatred of Christine, who

Lavinia feels stole Ezra, Orin, and finally Brant from her,

rather than any wish for Justice. Orin's murder of Adam

was motivated solely by the Jealousy he felt because of

his mother's attentions to her lover.

It is well known that O'Neill wrote Mourning

Becomes Electra in order to answer a question which he

postulated in the spring of 1926: "Is it possible to get

m o d e m psychological approximation of Greek sense of fate

into such a play ^ a modern psychological drama based on

Greek myth/, which an intelligent audience of today,

possessed of no belief in gods or supernatural retribution,

 167

could accept and toe moved toy?— O'Neill otoviously "be­

lieved that his play was an affirmative answer to this

question. Psychological fate, as it is presented in

Mourning Becomes Electra, is a product of the synthesis

of two concepts of m o d e m psychology: first, the idea

that a strong Puritan tradition and upbringing, with its

conviction that sex is shameful, can destroy the individual

ability to make a satisfactory sexual adjustment with his

marriage partner; and, second, that children tend not only

to toe subject to unconscious Oedipal desires, tout that

most individuals seek a marriage partner who closely resem­

bles physically and temperamentally the parent of the

O'Neill, European Theories of Drama., p. 530.

Perhaps at this point I might suggest that the existence of
O'Neill's "Working Notes" for Mourning Becomes Electra may
toe a less fortunate happenstance than has been generally
realized. At least it is readily apparent that a number of
critics seem more interested in O'Neill's notes than they
are in the play itself, and many of this number tend to
judge the notes, O'Neill's intentions, rather than the
artistic product of those intentions. Eric Bentley, in
In Search of Theatre, makes much the same point when he
says: "0'toeill's intentions as a writer are no less vast
than Dostoyevsky's. . . . What is surprising is not that
his achievements fall below Dostoyevsky's tout that critics
— including some recent rehatoilitators— have taken the will
for the deed and find O'Neill's nobler 'conception' of
theater enough. 'Conception' is patently a euphemism for
'intention' and they are applauding O'Neill for strengthen­
ing the pavement of hell. In this they are not disingenu­
ous; their own intentions are also good; they are simply a
party to a general gullibility. People believe what they
are told, and in our time a million units of human energy
are spent on the telling to every one that is spent on exam
ining what is told; reason is swamped toy propaganda and pub
licity. Hence it is that an author's professions and inten
sions, broadcast not only toy himself tout toy an army of in­
terested and even disinterested parties, determine what peo
pie think his work is." (Bentley, In Search of Theatre,
p. 243.)
 168

opposite sex. O'Neill attempts to establish dramatic ten­

sion by showing the emotional fragmentation these concepts

can cause.

Although the "fatal forces at work in Mourning

Becomes Electra . . . have been traced to Jung, /jm&f to

F r e u d , a n article by Doris Alexander which appeared in

1953 showed that a closer relationship existed between

O'Neill's play and a modern psychoanalytic study of one

hundred married couples, A Research in Marriage, by G. V.

Hamilton, a popularization of which, entitled What is Wrong

with Marriage, by Hamilton and Kenneth MacGowan, was pub-

2
lished in 1929. Although Miss Alexander carefully avoids

any claim that O'Neill's play is based on What is Wrong

with Marriage, she does affirm that O'Neill was well ac­

quainted with both Hamilton and MacGowan,^ that he con­

sulted Hamilton "on the psychological aspects of Strange

A
Interlude," and that models for all the psychological

concepts of O ’Neill’s play can be found in Hamilton and

5
MacGowan's book. In addition, Miss Alexander points out

"4)oris V. Falk, Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Ten-

sion (New Brunswick, New Jerseys ftutgers University Press,
I 555), p. 136.
p
Doris M. Alexander, "Psychological Fate in Mourn­
ing Becomes Electra," PMLA, LXVIII (December, 1953), passim.

^Ibid., p. 924.

4Ibid.
5
Ibid., passim.
 169

that both What is Wrong with Marriage and Mourning Becomes

Electra extend Freudian theory far beyond the point to

which Freud was willing to take it.^ Miss Alexander's

explanation of psychological fate as it is related to

O'Neill's play is so excellent that I believe an extensive

quotation from the last paragraphs of her article is in

order here:

Orin and lavinia are, at the end of Mourning

Becomes Electra, tragic duplicates of their parents.
From their parents they have received a matrix of atti­
tudes, desires, needs which make normal adjustment for
them impossible. Christine and Ezra are as much vic­
tims of their family background as are their children.
Ezra had to love a passionate, lively woman like
Christine because his family supplied him with Marie
BrantSme as a mother image 2 ® iss Alexander does not
make clear why Ezra should choose Marie as his mother
image rather than his own mother, but perhaps she is
correct in believing that the play suggests this rela­
tionship^. But his family also supplied him with a
set of Puritan inhibitions that made it impossible for
him to get along with such a woman. In a similar man­
ner, his children cannot make a satisfactory love ad­
justment. Orin is too bound by the Oedipus complex and
Puritan misgivings to love Hazel normally. Lavinia,
too, is bound by Puritan restraints and her father image;
when she finally rebels inwardly she is already hope­
lessly trapped by what she has done. Each character in
Mourning Becomes Electra is doomed in the same way by
the hopeless conflict between the needs for love
aroused by the family and the attitudes toward love en­
gendered by the family. The doom of the Mannons is
their inability to gain satisfaction in love. The mur­
ders and suicides of the play are only incidental ex­
pressions of the chief doom of the Mannons, their fated
frustration in love. The culminating horror in the
family fate is not death, but Lavinia's final abnegation
of love and return to a life of perpetual frustration
within the walls of the family.
Within the walls of the family, then, psychological
fate in Mourning Becomes Electra is completed. All of
the causes behind the Mannon doom are inherent in the

1Ibid., p. 929.
 170

structure of the family itself. O'Neill's two ideas

for a psychological fate meet in his concept of the
family, the original cause of all his causes. O'Neill,
of course, was clearly aware that his fate was a family
fate; he designed every aspect of Mourning Becomes
Electra with a family fate in mind"! lie even worked for
a prose style "with simply forceful repeating accent
and rhythm which will express driving insistent compul­
sion of passions engendered in family past, which con­
stitute family fate." At all times he wished to remem­
ber that "fate from within the family is modern psycho­
logical approximation of the Greek conception of fate
from without, from the supernatural" ("Working Notes,"
p. 534). The concept of fate in Mourning Becomes
Electra is the concept of fate in What is Wrong with
Marriage. . . . O'Neill's psychological fate, like
Hamilton and MacGowan's fate, is simply the influence
of parents upon their children in the most important
of all relationships— love.

This summary of the use of psychological fate in

Mourning Becomes Electra suggests one of the play's major

defects. O'Neill is so anxious to infuse the action of his

drama with his concept of fate that his treatment of this

concept becomes not only overly explicit, but too obviously

schematic and mechanical. O'Neill uses so many techniques

to reinforce his idea and repeats his pattern so frequently

that much of the time the skeleton of the drama is more

visible than its flesh.

O'Neill makes a considerable point of the extent to

which his characters physically and psychologically resem­

ble one another. All of the members of the Mannon family,

including Christine, who is a Mannon only by marriage, are

described as having faces "that in repose . . . ^give^ one

the strange impression of a life-like mask" (228). Even

1Ibid., pp. 933-34.

Seth, the gardener, has taken on this facial character­

istic, apparently because of his long association with the

family. Not only does the device seem intrusive in a play

which is essentially realistic in form, but the insistence

on the device and the use of an almost identical stage

direction for each of the characters becomes monotonous.

The resemblance technique does not stop here, however, for

each of the Mannons bears a physical and emotional resem­

blance to one or another of the other characters of the

play. A catalogue of the likenesses might read as follows

Adam physically resembles Ezra and Orin; Christine resem­

bles Marie Brantome both physically and emotionally; Orin

resembles Ezra (although at the beginning of the drama he

seems emotionally like his mother), particularly in the

last play of the trilogy; Lavinia resembles both her par­

ents: her face and hair are similar to Christine's, but

her posture and carriage remind one of her father. In

The Haunted, when Lavinia returns from her tour of the Far

East determined to find a new life and to satisfy her de­

sire for love, she not only resembles her mother psycho­

logically, but her body has filled out, she walks with

grace, and she even wears the same shade of green which

Christine wore earlier in the drama. At the conclusion of

the play, however, Lavinia regains many of her father's

characteristics.

The most important devices which O'Neill uses to

 172

reinforce his pseudo-Freudian concept of family relation­

ship, and the most intrusive, are those of psychological

substitution and parallelism. The substitution device is

related to the Oedipal patterns which underlie the action

of the play, and are closely connected to the concept of

resemblance discussed above. Adam loves Christine at least

partially because she resembles his mother and becomes for

him a kind of mother surrogate. In a similar manner

Christine desires Adam because he reminds her of Orin.'*'

Lavinia is attracted to Adam because she substitutes him

for her father and brother, whom he resembles, and she is

finally attracted to Peter because she substitutes him for

Adam. Orin desires his sister because he substitutes her

for his mother, and perhaps Ezra was originally attracted

to Christine because she resembled Marie. The hate patterns

are designed, of course, in the reverse manner. Christine

hates her daughter whom she sees as her rival; Lavinia

hates her mother for exactly the same reason. A similar

relationship exists between Ezra and Orin.

O'Neill also attempts to establish a sense of fate

through the use of parallels. Initially, Orin bears a

marked physical resemblance to Ezra and Lavinia to

Christine; but Orin parallels Christine in thoughts and

^There is obviously some inconsistency here, for

Adam also resembles Ezra, whom Christine hates. This is
simply one of the difficulties that seems bound to arise
in a work that is overly-schematic.
 173

emotions, while Lavinia parallels her father psychologically

and. in comportment. A reversal is apparent after the

brother and sister return from abroad. Orin is now the

embodiment of Ezra, not only physically, but also in his

father's Puritanical bigotry and obsession with death; and

he fears being deserted by Lavinia as Ezra feared being de­

serted by Christine. Lavinia has come to resemble her

mother in carriage as well as in appearance, and has taken

on Christine's desire for love and happiness; she fears the

discovery of the real nature of the deaths of her mother

and Adam as Christine feared the discovery of the manner of

Ezra's death. Furthermore, Lavinia feels bound to Orin and

wishes to rid herself of him as Christine wanted to cut the

ties which bound her to Ezra. In a more general sense,

both problems are resolved in a parallel manner through the

death of the male figure in the relationship.

But O'Neill cannot stop at this point. He must be

positive that no one in his audience misses these parallel

relationships and the part they play in the pattern of psy­

chological fate. And so when Orin reveals that he is writ­

ing the Mannon family history in order "to trace to its

hiding place in the Mannon past the evil destiny behind our

lives" (354), he says to Lavinia:

Can't you see I'm now in Father's place and you're

Mother? That's the evil destiny out of the past I
haven't dared to predict'. I'm the Mannon you're
chained to'. (356)

Although O'Neill relies mainly on resemblances,

 174

substitutions, and parallels to establish his framework of

psychological fate, other less important devices add their

weight to an already over-burdened schematic structure.

The Mannon house, with its white-pillared neo-classic

portico standing out against the grey stone wall of the

house, represents the Puritan heritage of death and frus­

tration. Early in the play Christine says:

Each time I come back after being away it appears

more like a sepulchre'. The "whited" one of the Bible—
pagan temple front stuck like a mask on Puritan grey
ugliness'. It was just like old Abe Mannon to build
such a monstrosity— as a temple for his hatred. (237)

This speech is also an ecample of the numerous references

to the past and its influence on the present.

It must be admitted that O'Neill is enough of a

craftsman and that he has had enough practical stage exper­

ience to make many of his devices work effectively. In

fact, it is perhaps because O'Neill is so skillfull as a

playwright (as opposed to a dramatist) that the errors

which he does make stand out so glaringly. Many serious

critics agree that O'Neill's treatment of his theme in

Mourning Becomes Electra is overly explicit and frequently

mechanical. Alan Thompson, in The Anatomy of Drama, says:

His /O’Neill' s7
main trouble, I believe, has come from
his development of an excessive anxiety to convey to
the audience the abstract meanings of his plays. Each
of his later plays is a morality if not an allegory,
and he seems so afraid that the listener will not -under­
stand its significance that he leaves nothing to the
listener's imagination. He uses all manner of devices
to emphasize meaning: masks and masklike make-up,
symbolic costume and groupings of actors, symbolic
stage sets and formalized plots. . . . In the mind of
 175

anyone acquainted with psychoanalysis, Mourning

Becomes Electra rouses so much speculation about com-
plexes and perversions that the plays of the trilogy
seem more like a series of case histories than trag­
edies. Beneath the ponderous and obtrusive machinery
of the plot scheme almost all human spontaneity and
naturalness are squeezed out^of the characters and
they mouth like marionettes.

Bert Leefmans finds essentially the same flaw in the play,

and suggests the cause:

Tragedy /the idea of writing tragedy according to

certain theoretical abstractions/ here was more im­
portant than the drama or the communication. Quite
often through the play one has the feeling that the
drama not merely came after the pattern but also that
it was much less important. Form was imposed from
without, beforehand, the substance being necessitated
by the form rather than the form by the matter of the
communication. If the two are necessarily inextricable,
in this case they were handled separately, one before
the other, instead of being handled not merely together
but as one thing.
It is apparent from his journal that this is what
he did. It is apparent from the play not merely that
he did it, but that, once again, rules and patterns
are proven to be destructive of art. O'Neill imitated
a tragedy in this instance instead of creating his
own.2

Even John Gassner suggests that O'Neill tends to "abstract

personalities and issues," and "to schematize characters

and deprive them of some of their life." "Perhaps," adds

Gassner, O'Neill "took ideas per se with too much of the

■^Alan Reynolds Thompson, The Anatomy of Drama

(Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 154-6),
pp. 391-92.
2
Bert Mallett-Prevost Leefmans, "Modern Tragedy:
Five Adaptations of Oresteia and Oedipus the King" (unpub­
lished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University), pp. 126-27.
 176

seriousness of those who have only recently discovered

•ideas.*"'*' This last statement is reminiscent of Eric

Bentley's comment, quoted earlier, to the effect that O'Neill

is guilty in this play of what Bentley calls "tragedy in the

2 3
head." Gassner, Bentley, and others seem to agree that

O'Neill is simply no thinker, and that the more he attempts

to deal with "ideas," the less effective his drama becomes.

Anyone who is familiar with some of O'Neill's earlier work,

particularly his one-act plays, will understand what Bentley

and Gassner have in mind.

O'Neill's overly-explicit handling of the theme,

his patterns which are repeated over and over again, and his

tragedy-by-the-numbers approach to his material make

Mourning Becomes Electra extremely tedious for the reader

or the audience and intrude on the dramatic action; worse,

they destroy whatever tragic meaning the play might have had.

O'Neill's strict adherence to his formulae has also

resulted in his creating a set of characters who fail, for

the most part, to move an audience to pity or fear. Bert

Leefmans, in his recent dissertation on m o d e m tragedy,

suggests that O'Neill has made the audience so conscious of

■*John Gassner, "Homage to O'Neill," O'Neill and His

Plays; Four Decades of Criticism, p. 328.
p
Bentley, In Search of Theatre, p. 246.

^See, for example, Bernard DeVoto, "Minority Re­

port," The Saturday Review of Literature, November 21, 1936,
p. 16.
 177

Orin1s and Lavinia1s motivations that the audience feels

"too well informed to fear for i t s e l f . T h i s is not, I

believe, quite the point, since the more we understand

modern psychological theory, the more aware we become of

the frailty of our own barriers against destructive de­

sires. The real reason why we feel neither pity nor terror

for Lavinia or Orin, nor even much interest in them, is

that they are little more than puppets, acting out the

theory to perfection. They are not human beings, and we

cannot identify with them.

As we have already seen, nearly all the characters

act out of what are basically Oedipal desires. It is true

that these desires are made more apparent in Orin and

Lavinia than in Ezra, Christine, and Adam, but they remain

a potent force even in these latter characters. No matter

how much any of the characters may claim to be an agent of

justice, his acts are always sexually motivated, and always,

either wholly or at least in part, motivated by abnormal

sexual desires. Even Lavinia's decision to give up Peter

and imprison herself in the Mannon home is essentially

masochistic, and O'Neill's stage direction— "With a strange

cruel smile of gloating over the years of self-torture"

(376)— makes' this abundantly clear. Once more O'Neill's

patterns become obvious and the "mask-like figures are,"

as Frederick Lumley suggests, "merely instrumental to the

■^Leefmans, p. 107.
 178

theme; they are not characters of flesh and blood."^

Francis Fergusson's judgment is essentially the same for

he finds "Mr. O'Neill's characters, with their pseudo-

?
scientific skeletons, . . . more abstract than life."

Even George Jean Nathan admits that the characters of

Mourning Becomes Electra are sometimes "the after-images

rather than the direct images and funnels of"^ O'Neill's

emotional imagination.

Even if O'Neill had been able to make his characters

credible human beings, I doubt that his passional and

essentially romantic approach to the characters, combined

as it is with the basically realistic framework which he

gives the play, could have raised them much above the level

of melodrama. Only Lavinia seems to retain some of the

strength and will power which was so characteristic of

nearly all the figures in the Atreidae myth. Christine

appears to have a degree of will power in The Homecoming,

but whatever strength she had in the first play of the

trilogy quickly disappears in the second. None of the male

■^Frederick Lumley, Trends in Twentieth Century

Drama (2d ed. rev.; Fair Lawn, ft. J.: Essential Books,
T9357, P. 133.
^Fergusson, The Bookman, LXXIV (December, 1931),
445. For similar critical opinions see William G. McCollom,
Tragedy (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1957), p. 231; and
tiomer E. Woodbridge, "Beyond Melodrama," O'Neill and His
Plays; Four Decades of Criticism, p. 319.

^Nathan, O'Neill and His Plays; Four Decades of

Criticism, p. 289.
 179

members of the drama ever seems to have much strength,

although the reader may experience some sympathy for Ezra

because he recognizes his responsibilities for the failure

of his marriage.

The truth of much Freudian theory can no longer

be doubted, but, as was pointed out earlier, O'Neill takes

Freudian theory far beyond the point Freud was willing to

go. The characters of Mourning Becomes Electra are so ab­

normal, so neurotic, so sick, that they are only interesting

in a kind of perverse way, like Grand Guignol figures. Of

the two possible critical approaches to such characters, the

easier is to suggest, as H. G. Kemelman does, that "the

characters in the O'Neill play are so far removed from normal

experience that they can interest . . . /the readei7 only as

unusual cases of abnormal psychology."^ On the other hand,

one might argue in a more complex and interesting fashion,

as Henry Canby does, that such characters are the product

of a decadent romanticism.

There are clear indications that Mr. O'Neill is

riding his romance too hard in "Mourning Becomes
Electra." The old rigors, the old conflicts that in­
spired Hawthorne are no longer enough, they have no "kick"
in them for O'Neill unless they are lifted from imagina­
tion into nightmare and lead into situations so sensa­
tional that it is horror rather than imaginative sympa­
thy which they inspire. All, all the Mannons must be
made incestuous in wish, because the last step in the
suppression of desire by a code is a spiritual morbidity
where the tortured soul can be satisfied only by what is

^H. G. Kemelman, "Eugene O'Neill and the Highbrow

Melodrama," The Bookman, IXXV (September, 1932), 4-88.
 180

forbidden in every man's taboo. All, all in their

imaginations long for some "happy island" of the South
Seas (and Lavinia goes to seek it) where they can
lapse into primitivism with their beloveds and doff
their karmas with their garments. The Puritan tradi­
tion of greed and suppression, duty and accomplishment,
is driven into a baleful Purgatory with no way out but
a return to savagery, or a final extinction of all that
makes it human. This is the kind of alternative that
Byron used to offer a shuddering Europe. It was excess
then, it is excess now. The dramatist has tortured his
situation until it becomes an abnormality, and his
tragedy suffers from the law of diminishing returns.
I submit that by every literary and historical test
this is decadence, the sensationalism of decadence, the
reversals of decadence by which the recessive abnormal-^
ities of character become the main springs of the plot.

Both of these approaches acknowledge O'Neill's inability to

create characters whose actions are meaningful to a con­

temporary audience. Perhaps O'Neill's tendency to dwell on

sex, particularly abnormal passions, could be more meaning­

ful if Mourning Becomes Electra were written in something

other than a realistic mode. At least it is interesting to

note that the other playwrights in this chapter who have

taken a strongly passional approach to the material— Jeffers,

whose work we have already examined, and Rexroth, whose work

will be examined next— use their sexual references as sym­

bols rather than as realistic detail. Both seem to make a

more successful use of sexual elements than O'Neill.

One additional and less significant point about

characterizations the change which occurs in Lavinia be­

tween the end of The Hunted and the beginning of The Haunted

^Henry Seidel Canby, "Scarlet Becomes Crimson,"

The Saturday Review of Literature, November 7, 1931, p. 258.
 181

seems incredible. Nothing in the first two plays prepares

me for the Lavinia that I find in the third. This is simp­

ly another example, I believe, of O'Neill's subordinating

the elements of his drama to the formulae which underlie it.

Although it may not be possible to accuse O'Neill

of the use of irrelevant theatricalism, Mourning Becomes

Electra is certainly filled with melodramatic details; and

accident and coincidence play a more important part than

they do in any serious modern play of genuine artistic

merit. Two murders, two suicides, a death-bed accusation,

poison pellets planted on a corpse, villains who watch

their victims through a skylight, a sealed envelope con­

taining all the family secrets— all these are melodramatic

details and have little meaning beyond the events themselves.

In these and other ways O'Neill uses mechanical devices in

an effort to obtain an emotional response from his audience.

As Kemelman points out:

Even in his less violent incidents of the plot

O'Neill exaggerates his effects with all the melodra­
matic vigour at his command. In the handling of dra­
matic situations of the reversals of fortune which be­
fall the characters, he shows all the delicacy and
subtlety of a circus advertisement. He uses dramatic
irony, that delicate rapier, as a shillelah with which
to cudgel his characters. He toys with them as a boy
plays with a fly whose wings he has torn off. Indeed,
an O'Neill character has only to express a desire for
something in order to,get just the opposite before the
end of the act. . . .

In addition, accident and coincidence reinforce the

^Kemelman, The Bookman, LXXV (September, 1932), 489.

 182

melodramatic quality of the play. Lavinia's arrival at

Ezra's bedside just in time to hear him accuse Christine

of murder seems remarkable, particularly since Lavinia is

at his side within seconds of a call which was made,

according to the stage direction, in a "wheezy whisper"

(276). It is even more incredible that Lavinia should have

to speak to her maid just before Hazel arrives at the

Mannon house, and thus afford Orin an opportunity to give

Hazel the family history he has written. These coincidences

simply add to the melodrama of the play.

O'Neill's melodramatic devices would be less obvi­

ous and less objectionable, no doubt, if they were not in

conflict with the realistic mode in which Mourning Becomes

Electra is written. As Homer Woodbridge states,

Melodrama and symbolism are both hostile to naturalism;

melodrama because it tends to sacrifice all kinds of
truth to life to stage effects; symbolism because it
often sacrifices the illusion of reality to the pro­
jection of an idea. Many of the inconsistencies and
weaknesses of O'Neill's plays are accounted for by
these fundamental antagonisms among the elements out
of which they are created. He succeeds at times by
sheer imaginative force in blending these hostile ma­
terials, but the blend is never quite perfect. There
are always cracks and flaws.1

O'Neill's most obvious use of Greek dramatic con­

ventions is his division of his thirteen acts into a trilogy

entitled Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted. Although

the arrangement is legitimate and the action can be broken

^Horner E. Woodbridge, "Beyond Melodrama," O'Neill

and His Plays; Four Decades of Criticism, p. 310.
 183

into three units, each with its own climax, I am not sure

that anything is gained by the trilogy form. It is possi­

ble that in production the audience might not be aware of

the tripartite form (except that the interval for dinner

would probably be placed after Homecoming). The titles

are simply another of O'Neill's ways to make sure the audi­

ence will not miss the message. As such they are hardly

necessary, and the repetition of the h in each title seems

pretentious.

Much of the necessary exposition in Mourning

Becomes Electra is provided by a group of New England

townspeople, O'Neill's equivalent of a Greek chorus.1 Some

of O'Neill's best dialogue, interesting in itself and with

a ring of truth, appears in the choric speeches. On the

other hand, this arrangement calls undue attention to the

expository material by separating it from the rest of the

play. Furthermore, the composition of O'Neill's chorus

makes it impossible for it to function as a Greek dramatic

chorus; as Ashley Dukes states, "to interpret the action is

utterly beyond . . . /the7 power or province" of these

townsfolk.

Two other aspects of the play, while not exactly

Greek dramatic conventions in themselves, are at least

10'Neill, Three Plays, p. 228.

^Ashley Dukes, "O'Neill Succeeds," Theatre Arts

Monthly, XXII (February, 1938), 102.
 184

strongly reminiscent of such conventions. As O'Neill

introduces the members of the Mannon family (including

Seth, the gardener), he points out that each face in re­

pose gives the strange impression of a "life-like mask."

And the Mannon house, with its "white Grecian temple por­

tico" (227), recalls the traditional setting of ancient

Greek drama.

A brief evaluation of O'Neill’s use of language

is necessary before concluding this discussion. For the

most part, the prose in which Mourning Becomes Electra is

written is, as Edmund Wilson comments,

heavy and indigestible even beyond the needs of

naturalism. People say the same things to one
another over and over again and never succeed in
saying them any more effectively than the first
time; long speeches shuffle dragging,feet, marking
time without progressing, for pages.

Only when O'Neill writes dialogue for a character who speaks

"some kind of vernacular" does he begin "to write like a

poet."2

Two other language difficulties are also noticeable.

The first is O'Neill's tendency to fall into clich£. The

dialogue of the following passage, the climax of the second

act of Homecoming, is typical:

"^Edmund Wilson, "Eugene O'Neill as a Prose Writer,"

O'Neill and His Plays; Four Decades of Criticism, p. 464.

2Ibid.
 185

Christine: What a fraud you are, with your talk of

your father and your duty'. Oh, I'm not
denying you want to save his pride— and
I know how anxious you are to keep the
family from more scandal'. But all the
same, that's not your real reason for
sparing me'.

Lavinia: ( confused— guiltily) It is'.

Christine: You wanted Adam Brant yourself'.

Lavinia: That's a lie'.

Christine: And now you know you can't have him, you're
determined that at least you'11 take him
from me'. (251)

Not only do we have the eternal triangle, hut the dialogue

that, if not eternally, at least too frequently accompanies

it.

A second language defect is O'Neill's tendency

toward unconscious humor. In the third act of The Hunted

the following dialogue occurs as Lavinia and Orin stand

gazing at the body of their father:

Orin: That's all your crazy imagination'. God, how

can you think— ? Do you realize you' re de­
liberately accusing your own mother— It's
too horrible and mad'. I'll have you declared
insane by Doctor Blake and put away in the
asylum'.

Lavinia: I swear by our dead father I am telling you

the truthI (She puts her hand on the dead
man and addresses him) Ntake Orin believe me,
K i E e r ! ---------------
Orin: (Harshly) Don't drag him in'. He always
sided with you against Mother and me'. . . .
(306-07)
For a writer who seems to have great difficulty using humor

when itwould be most helpful, it is interesting to note

 186

how many humorous moments can he found where they do not

belong.

Mourning Becomes Electra is another instance of

the third basic way in which Anglo-American dramatists

have handled classic myth: although the outline of the

legend is retained, the playwright has made numerous and

sometimes severe departures from the story. O'Neill is

our first example of a playwright who chooses to place the

mythic action in a relatively modern setting; the plot and

characters have undergone the changes demanded by the dif­

ference in time and locale, as well as those resulting from

O'Neill's basically realistic approach to his materials.

Mourning Becomes Electra also reveals some of the

same tendencies which were noted in other plays included

in this study. Chief among these are the shift in emphasis

from the male figures to the female, particularly Lavinia

(Electra), the omission of the supernatural framework in

which the classic story operates, and the depiction of the

characters in basically psychological terms.

finally, O'Neill's work exhibits many of the same

defects which mar other dramas I have examined. His

treatment of the play's theme is overly explicit and so

schematic as to appear mechanical. This, and the drama­

tist' s heavy emphasis on Freudian or pseudo-Freudian psy­

chology reduce the meaningfulness of his characters and

 187

tend to make them two-dimensional. Mourning Becomes Electra

also gives evidence of a heavy emphasis on melodramatic

detail, an adoption of Greek dramatic conventions which is

either unnecessary or unsuccessfully integrated with the

action of the play, and language which does little to

raise the artistic level of the drama.

 Kenneth Rexroth's Beyond the Mountains:

Myth and the Salvation of Love

Kenneth Rexroth's Beyond the Mountains, a volume

of three verse dramas written over a period of ten years,

appeared in 1951. The work includes two one-act plays en­

titled Phaedra and Iphigenia, and a two-act play which bears

the same title as the collection itself. When Rexroth's

volume was first published, it received considerable crit­

ical attention, and William Carlos Williams, a long-time

admirer of the author, proclaimed: "I have never been so

moved by a play in verse in my time."1

Since its original production by The Living Thea­

tre, an off-Broadway playhouse, during the 1950-51 sea-

2
son, Beyond the Mountains has rarely been performed.

This is not surprising, since it is so heavily erotic at

times that it could only be presented before a select

audience. That the work has received slight critical

notice since its publication is more difficult to under­

stand, considering the apparent esteem in which Rexroth is

■^William Carlos Williams, "Verse With a Jolt to It,"

The New York Times Book Review, January 28, 1951, Sec. 7,
p. 5.

^Price, p. 195.

188
held by a number of American writers.

In the following pages I shall examine only the

two-act drama which gives its name to the entire collec­

tion. Although Jarka Burian has analyzed all of the plays

as if they were each simply acts in one long dramatic

work,^ this approach does not seem to be justified either

by the way in which the title pages of the book have been

set up or by the comments which Rexroth makes in his pre-

2
face to the volume. Certainly the dramas are connected

philosophically, and connected in such a way that they bear

a closer relationship to one another than individual plays

by one author normally do. They are, nevertheless, separ­

ate dramatic entities and should be analyzed as such. I

omit any consideration of Phaedra here because it obviously

does not parallel any of the other dramas examined in this

chapter. Although Iphigenia can legitimately be compared

with the first act of Daughters of Atreus, a consideration

of it would lengthen this chapter without adding further

insight into the way in which Rexroth has handled the

Atreidae myth or further evidence as to his degree of suc­

cess .

Although in some ways Beyond the Mountains demon­

strates a freer handling of the mythic elements than any of

■^Burian, pp. 339-59.

Kenneth Rexroth, Beyond the Mountains (New York:

New Directions Books, 1951), p.
 190

the plays which I have thus far examined, it is yet another

example of the third hasic way in which m o d e m playwrights

have used classic myth. The time and place of the action

are different from those of the myth, and the characters

and character relationships are considerably modified, but

the story line is more like that of the legend than it is

in The Prodigal or Mourning Becomes Electra.

Beyond the Mountains takes place on the terrace of

the summer palace of Hermaios (Agamemnon), "in the hills

above the Bactrian Greek city of Alexandria-in-the-

Paropamisadae. ... In modern terms, this is the foothills

of the Hindu Kush, in Afghanistan" (95). The first act

(entitled "Hermaios") takes place on the eve of Christ's

birth. Two choruses remain on stage throughout the play.

The First Chorus, made up of a beggar and a prostitute, is

omniscient and remains aloof from the action which occurs

on the stage, treating the principal actors with a "certain

condescension" (96). The Second Chorus, a larger group,

changes its identity from time to time, acting, as Rexroth

indicates, as "musicians, mob, commentators, prop men and

sound effects" (96). Generally, however, the comments of

the Second Chorus seem to be those of an unenlightened,

cynical mob.
The play begins with a series of lengthy choral

passages which provide most of the exposition. After a few

brief comments about the birth of Christ and the star which
 191

heralds His birth, we learn that Hermaios is the last of

the Greek leaders and that Alexandria-in-the-Paropamisadae

and the surrounding countryside are all that remain of

Alexander's empire, all that are left of the Greek world.

Hermaios is weak, and each year for the past ten years he

has had to buy the suburbs of his city back from a new

enemy. At present he is down in the city attempting to

make peace with the current invaders, the Huns.

Again there is reference to the beginning of the

Christian era, and then we learn something of the relation­

ship of Hermaios to the other characters. He is married to

his younger sister, Kalliope (Clytemnestra), who is in love

with her twin brother Demetrios (Aegisthus), and has been

his mistress for some time. Kalliope's first child

(Iphigenia) died several years earlier in India, where she

was captured by the Indians and sacrificed to their gods.

(Apparently she had accompanied her father on an invasion

of that country, although the text is not clear about this.)

Kalliope has been somewhat deranged ever since her child's

death and has begun to blame her husband for their child's

murder. Hermaios also has a paramour, Tarakaia (Cassandra),

a "witch" (104) whom he brought back from India. Tarakaia's

presence has not only alienated Kalliope's affections, but

has had an effect on the entire family. Berenike (Electra)

has come to resemble Tarakaia, rather than her mother, and

Menander (Orestes) has fallen in love with her. The chorus

 192

fears Tarakaia, who is apparently subject to some kind of

seizure, but they also fear Kalliope who, one of the

chorus members says, reminds him of "a hissing swan" (105)

which terrified him as a child. Near the end of the choral

passage we learn that Menander and Berenike are both away

from home but will return before the new year. The chorus

adds that if Demetrios, who has always envied his brother,

and Kalliope plan to do "anything" (106), they must act

immediately.

A scene follows between Kalliope and the chorus.

When the chorus asks Kalliope if she thinks that the King

will be able to make peace with the Huns, she answers that

he will because the enemy realizes that they can gain more

by taking tribute from the Greek city each year than by de­

stroying it. Then, too, she adds, the Huns fear Tarakaia

for they believe she is the living Artemis, the incarnation

of the moon. All agree that peace must be made soon for

the weather is too cold for them to remain in the summer

palace.

No sooner has Kalliope left the stage than the

Second Chorus sees a series of fires in the city below,

and interprets them as signal fires which celebrate the

peace that has been made. The First Chorus, however,

announces that Hermaios has failed and that Alexandria-

Beyond-the-Mountains is burning to the ground.

Kalliope and Demetrios enter, see the blaze, and

 193

begin to discuss what this will mean to them. Demetrios

believes that the downfall of the city will mean the death

of Hermaios and Tarakaia. Now, Demetrios says, he and his

sister are free at last to return to Greece and to love

without intrigue. Kalliope, however, is much less certain,

and answers;

If what bound us together

Was as simple a thing as love,
May be our lives could drink its peace.
But it isn't, and what it is
Will keep the king alive awhile.
We three need each other. We are
Hungry ghosts that haunt each other. (113)

As the discussion continues, Kalliope and Demetrios ponder

how they have managed to reach "this time and place" (115),

and how their love for their brother has turned tohatred;

the conversation is cut short, however, by the entrance of

Hermaios and Tarakaia.

After a brief greeting between Kalliope and her

husband, Tarakaia begins to tell how the Greeks were be­

trayed at the very moment they were counting out the trib­

ute money; suddenly fires sprang up throughout the city and

the soldiers began fighting. Tarakaia begins to dance out

the tale, and the dialogue is taken over by the chorus.

They tell of how Hermaios seized his sword and began to

make his way toward the Hunnish king, and how Tarakaia took

the sword of a dying man and began to kill the enemy, who

were afraid of her and allowed her to kill them without a

struggle. Gradually the description becomes more

 194

sensational and more erotics

II Chorus: Her hair was clotted with blood.

Their dying hands clutched at her clothes.
They tore the dress from her shoulders.
Blood ran between her breasts.
Hot blood ran down her belly.

Tarakaia: Thick blood flooded into my womb.

II Chorus: Her feet slipped in squirming bowels.

She was wonderful,
Naked
Fiery red with streaming blood. (120)

Finally Hermaios, Tarakaia, and some Greek soldiers were

able to fight their way out of the city and to return to

the palace.

Hermaios tells Kalliope and Demetrios that the Huns

attacked because he had refused their offer to allow him to

move his Greek colony to Rome or to join his forces with

the soldiers of the Huns in order to conquer India.

Kalliope is shocked by Hermaios' unwillingness to leave the

settlement in safety; she would have liked to go to Rome.

Hermaios answers that he does not believe that the colony

could have crossed Parthia. He adds that he is one of the

last Greek citizens, and since the colony is all that is

left of Greece, he will not give it up for the sordid and

effeminate ways of Rome. The King dreams of building a

new city, a perfect city, on the site of the summer pal­

ace, since it affords ample meadowland and seems to be in­

vulnerable to attack. Although Kalliope cannot agree with

her husband, when Demetrios appears to agree, she gives up

her argument and invites her husband into the palace to

 195

bathe. Hermaios hesitates, however, exclaiming that he

should not wear the purple robe in which the servants have

attired him earlier in the scene, and adds that he has

never been guilty of such pride in his life. The scene

ends with this dialogue:

Kalliope: Nonsense, It will be off in the bath,

And then you will be clothed in the white
Robes of a priest. Now you are a king
Taking rule over a new empire.

Hermaios: No.
Doubt overcomes me. I may be wrong.
I hope I made the right decision.
I may have made a fatal mistake.
I can no longer see ahead
For the smoke and the mist.
I am clouded over with doubt.
When we think we are at our best, we
May be steered by a lifetime's evils.

Demetrios: Crime is a tribute paid to life.

When the heat trembles, we still it
With ritual. Will you go in. (131-32)

The three enter the palace leaving Tarakaia standing,

"rigid and silent, in the center of the stage" (132).

Soon a servant appears and asks Tarakaia to enter the pal­

ace. She hesitates for a few moments, prophesying her own

death as well as that of the others who have just left the

stage, and then dances slowly about the stage holding an

axe and a noose. At last she hands a ring to the chorus

with instructions that it should be given Berenike when she

returns. Tarakaia enters the palace, there is a brief

pause, and then the death screams of Hermaios and Tarakaia

are heard. Another pause, the doorways of the palace are

opened, and the bodies of the King and his mistress are
 196

exposed in the doorway, lying on a crimson robe. Demetrios

and Kalliope stand beside them and Demetrios begins speak­

ing to the mob; Berenike enters stealthily at the other

side of the stage.

Act II of Beyond the Mountains (entitled "Berenike")

begins a few days after the end of the previous act. The

bodies of Hermaios and Tarakaia are still on catafalques

and Berenike sits huddled at one side of the stage. Again

the act begins with a choral passage of some length which

refers to the cyclical nature of human history. The Second

Chorus briefly reviews the past events. It is apparent

that they have no confidence in Demetrios' ability to take

the colony to Rome. They wonder what would happen if

Menander should return, whether the Queen and her lover

would be able to break his spirit as they have apparently

broken Berenike's.

As if in answer to this question, Menander enters.

He doesnot know what course of action to take and turns to

the First Chorus to ask for its advice:

If you are so wise, then tell me,

What will become of all of us?
What can I know? What must I do?
What can I hope? (149)

The chorus, in its usual cryptic way, answers:

Little enough.
You will do what you have to do.

There is an end to the fingers

That feed the twigs to the fire.
But the fire passes on. No one
 197

Can know when it will be put out.

Act. All things are made new by fire. (149)

As it becomes increasingly apparent that Menander would

prefer totake no action whatsoever, Berenike rises and

comes forward from the corner of the stage in which she

has huddled, and addresses her brothers

Menander,
We are all that's left. We must be
Everything to each other now.
You are my brother and father,
Mother, son, lover and husband.
I will do anything you want. (151)

To which Menander answers:

I want nothing, and least of all

The burden of other's kinship.
I would much rather be my own
Ancestors and decendants. (151)

As the scene continues, much of the dialogue becomes so

obscure that it is almost without meaning. Some points,

however, are clear: Berenike is devoted to the idea of

murdering her mother and Demetrios, and urges Menander to

help her commit the crime. Although neither her reasons

nor Menander's objections are ever quite clear, it is ob­

vious that Berenike has fallen in love with her brother,

and offers him her body as inducement to kill Kalliope.

But, although Menander is fascinated by his sister, he is

not easily persuaded. At one point during the conversa­

tion, he says to her:

But it is you who cry vengeance.

You are the voice of consequence,
The automatic damnation
Of pur aged blood. It is you
 198

Who are snarled in the web of cause.

I only want to turn no more
On the turning wheels. (154)

But Menander also seems to realize that he cannot escape

his fate, since the history of the human race is cyclical:

I never loved my father, but

I know my duty and my fate.
They shall be complete, I suppose,
But I shall not will them. My acts
Will be only images of acts. (155)

The scene is broken by a dance which brother and sister

perform, a dance intended, I presume, to represent the lust

which each feels for the other. After the dance is com­

pleted Berenike says:

You think I want to use you. No.

I want you to use me. Use me,
All of me, till I am used up,
Until there is nothing left of me,
Only you and your action.
Only your will. I want to be
Like a straw cart loaded with fire,
A vehicle which perishes
As it runs. I am yours to burn. (157)

After a few more speeches, they dance again, this time with

swords, symbolizing their sexual union. Just as the dance

ends, Demetrios enters and Menander disappears behind a

screen at the back of the stage.

Demetrios tells Berenike that an unknown man has

been seen entering the palace grounds and asks her if he

has passed that way. She answers that she has seen no one

but the new king, a man who is afraid of her and afraid to

act, and whom she loves more than he can know. As Berenike

intends, Demetrios errs and believes that she refers to him.

 199

She continues in this vein and finally offers herself to

him. Demetrios is surprised and nearly speechless. But

the scene is cut short as Kalliope is announced; Berenike

tells Demetrios to get rid of her, and runs out.

Demetrios can still not believe what he heard and wonders

if it has not all been a hallucination.

The Queen enters, complaining of the cold, and

asks her new consort if they cannot leave for Rome at once.

He answers that he has sent a messenger to the Khan to tell

him that the terms have been accepted; the messenger is to

return by midnight. Suddenly a round object falls onto the

stage; it is the head of the messenger whom Demetrios had

sent to the Khan. Frightened, Kalliope runs off. Demetrios

picks up the head and throws it over the cliff at the back

of the stage, and when Kalliope returns, he tells her that

the head was simply another hallucination. She stares at

him for a few moments and then departs.

Almost at once Berenike steps from behind the

screen at the back of the stage, tells Demetrios that she

is ready for him, and “lies on the floor with her knees

lifted and spread11 (172) . A few brief lines of dialogue

follow and then “She screams, a long, wailing scream.

Demetrios rises, whirls around, his 3word drops beside h e r .

As he falls stiffly upon her, she, screaming, runs him

through” (173). She pushes the corpse aside and rises,

and the chorus places the body between those of Hermaios

 200

and Tarakaia. "How easy it was," Berenike says,

like testing
Pudding. Menander will not have
So easy a time. She'll die hard.
Poor heef, did I hate you so short
A moment ago? Now I feel
All hollowed out. If my mother
Appeared now I would he tempted
To let her escape. (173-74)

Menander enters and another scene between the

brother and sister follows, a scene similar to the first

in that she again offers him reasons why he should murder

Kalliope and he explains why he cannot. The following

speech by Berenike seems to be central to this scenei

. . . Act grows from the will.

Will grows from love. Look at your sword.
The sword is the perfect mirror
Of naked love.

(She presses her belly.)

Here is the source

Of all our outrageous deeds
As we live each other's death and
Die each other's life. (177)

Finally Menander exits with sword drawn, apparently to kill

his mother although it is never very clear why he has

finally decided to commit the crime. A scene follows in

which Berenike dances and the chorus reviews the whole

history of Greece, commenting that it is only one of the

cycles of human history. Berenike exits and Kalliope

enters. She sees the body and stands still on the stage as

if awaiting her own death. Menander enters. When Kalliope

tells him that she has been looking for him, he answers

that he dares not take vengeance. The Queen invites him to

 201

kill her, but as he moves toward her his sword drops lower

at each step. Suddenly the chorus announces the Huns, and

as Menander runs with uplifted sword toward the rear of the

stage, Kalliope throws herself on the blade, and falls back

dead. Berenike enters, sees the dead Queen with the sword

still in her breast, and removes it. Menander takes the

sword from her, gives it to the beggar of the First Chorus,

and in return is given a bowl which the beggar has held.

The prostitute of the First Chorus gives her cheap jewelry

to Berenike in exchange for Tarakaia1s ring which Berenike

has worn throughout the act. Then the brother and sister

take the places of the First Chorus. The play ends as the

Huns rush on performing a wild acrobatic military dance

while the new First Chorus looks on impassively.

Perhaps Rexroth's greatest departure from the

Atreidae myth appears in the initial situation of Beyond

the Mountains. As noted in the synopsis, the time and place

of action have been changed from prehistoric Greece to cen­

tral Asia (now Afghanistan) at the beginning of the Christian

era. Names and relationships are considerably changed as

well. Hermaios (Agamemnon) and Demetrios (Aegisthus) are no

longer cousins, but are now brothers, and Kalliope

(Clytemnestra) is the younger sister of her husband and the

twin of Demetrios. Kalliope lost her first child

(Iphigenia) in India when the girl apparently accompanied

her father there on one of his military campaigns. She was

 202

captured by Indians and sacrificed in one of their temples.

Tarakaia (Cassandra) is Indian rather than Trojan and has

been the mistress of Hermaios for a number of years.

Neither Berenike (Electra) nor Menander (Orestes) is at

home at the time of their father's murder, although they

return shortly thereafter.

The political situation, too, has been changed.

The Greek world has been destroyed and Alexandria-in-the-

Paropamisadae is all that is left of the Greek world. The

war with Troy has been replaced by a series of wars with

India, and Rexroth has added a current battle with barbar­

ian Huns from the North.

Considering these changes, it is surprising how

much of the action of the drama is determined by the events

of the myth. The major element which has been added is the

description of the battle with the Huns and the discussion

which follows it concerning which course of action the

Greeks should take. Other modifications include the sub­

stitution of the purple robe for the carpets upon which

Agamemnon walks in the legend, and the death of Aegisthus

at Electra's hands. More significant than either of these

is the suicide of Clytemnestra which replaces her murder by

Orestes.

It is difficult to comment on the way in which

Rexroth has changed the individuals of the myth to fit his

drama since the characters of the play seem to be little

 203

more than philosophic abstractions. This is in itself

a change, of course, and will be discussed in more detail

later.

It is difficult to know at what point one should

begin an evaluation of Beyond the Mountains. It is essen­

tially a kind of symbolic, abstract drama. As such, it is

the most obscure and least coherent of all the plays with

which this study is concerned, and, as a result, the most

difficult of these plays to analyze. Interestingly enough,

most of the critical comments which have been made about

the play are as confusing as the play itself. Only Burian

seems to have an inkling of what Rexroth*s work is about,

and there is much that even he cannot explain. Nevertheless,

some attempt must be made to discover the central thesis of

Beyond the Mountains in order to evaluate Rexroth's degree

of success and to see if the play is subject to the same

tendencies and weaknesses which characterized the other dra­

mas included in this study.

Beyond the Mountains embodies a series of ideas

concerning illusion and reality, action and inaction, love,

and transcendence, and the play attempts to relate all of

these ideas in a final statement concerning the nature of

man and his life on earth.

Man's life, according to Rexroth, is made up of a

series of recurring events and situations. Any examination

of history will reveal not only the cyclical pattern of each

 204

individual's life, but a similar, albeit larger, pattern

which exists in the relation of one age to another. The

First Chorus, that omniscient duo which is the primary ve­

hicle for the thesis of the play, comments at the end of

Act Is

The acts of men move in endless

Recurrent cycles. The heavens
Never do quite the same thing twice (133)
Man, whether he likes it or not, finds himself a part of

this history, and unless he can rise above the pattern, will

be destroyed by it:

History
Is definite and sure enough.
It is only blind and twisted
To its victims and instruments (148)

Man must act within the cyclical pattern and his acts will

have consequences which somehow must be accepted. As

Burian says,

man's relation to life is bound up with the necessities

of cause and effect, means and ends, action and conse­
quences. Enmeshed as he is in these forces, man can­
not escape the events of the past, nor the circum­
stances of the present; in fact, his actions, in most
cases, are determined beforehand as part of encompas­
sing and recurrent cycles.1

Even though most of man's actions are predetemined, he is

"Haunted by consequences," and as a result "all/ Existence

is uneasy" (144). Most men become merely the "marionettes/

Of choice and consequence" (166).

But this view of life is, according to Rexroth,

■^Burian, p. 344.
 205

essentially an illusion. When man sees life only on this

level, action as well as the refusal to act are equally

real, equally unreal— "Action and inaction are as real/

As the swinging clapper of a bell." (150)— and life is

only a mockery. As the First Chorus states,

Time is enclosed in
Forever as in a box and
All the forevers are enclosed
In Eternity like the seeds
In a pomegranate.

The past is shut in the present,

The present closed in the future.

Time is a series of boxes,

One closed in the other. In the
Last box is a tiny image
Of the god of comedy, the
Only begettor /sic7 of them all,
The father of the great false gods,
The Past, The Present, The Future. (179-80)

Yet it is possible for some individuals to go be­

yond time, beyond the superficial level of life, beyond

illusion to reality. In other words, it is possible to

gain transcendence. The individual gains reality through

unselfish acts, through acts which are ends in themselves

rather than means to ends. This idea is expressed by the

First Chorus near the end of the plays

All action rises in the heart.

Every deed begins there, runs its

Course in the tangle of the world,

Comes to final fruition there.

Suffering follows on thought and act

As the wheel follows the ox's hoof.
 206

0ut of every act a person

Appears. From acts without strength
Come cripples, monsters, and the blind.

From irresponsible actions

Come insensate conspiracies,
The kingdoms of men, their power
And history's bastard image
Of time's breaking, falling mirrors.

We act in the world of illusion

Where action is busy with means.
In the world of reality
The single act is its own end. (180-81)

Transcendence is finally gained through a genuine

act of human love (for Rexroth this would always have to

include the sex act, I believe) which is, of course, the

most selfless of all human actions and always an end in

itself. This idea is made clear through a series of

speeches in the play. In the first act of the play Hermaios

says:

History begins
When the family sickens with conflict
And flies apart.

History ends in death.

At the end the virtuous and wise

Pass beyond history to a new
Family of love and devotion. (127-28)

Later, somewhat the same idea is stated by the First

Chorus, this time in a negative way:

The damned b u m , not with want of love,

But with the wish to be loved alone. (134)

Furthermore, in his preface to the volume in which Beyond

the Mountains appears, Rexroth states:

The general ideas which have guided me in writing

these plays are also discussed in my long poems, . . .
 207

especially in my recent work, The Dragon and the

U n i c o m . . . . The plays and The Dragon and the U n i c o m
complement each other and could he read profitably to-
gether.

And in that hook of verse the poet writes: "It is the

2
essence of love to transcend consequence."

Briefly, then, Beyond the Mountains preaches that

only human love has the power to transcend acts and conse­

quences, causes and effects. Once the reader has this

theme clearly in mind, Rexroth's failure to handle his

thesis in dramatic terms becomes readily apparent. First,

it is difficult to tell which, if any, of the characters

achieves transcendence. In his preface to the collection

of plays, Rexroth says: "In Hermaios and Berenike all the

characters are caught in the web of cause and effect, and

the reader will have to judge for himself who achieves

transcendence, how, and to what degree."^ The answer seems

to be that none of the characters do. Burian1s explanation

of this point is cogent:

A surmounting of cause and effect seems to be requisite

for transcendence according to Rexroth1s standards.
Kalliope, Demetrios, Hermaios, Berenike, and Menander,
in varying ways, are entangled in immediate circum­
stances, despite their lusts, and their rebellions
against or submittings to action and consequence.
The only character who remotely approaches Rexroth's
concept of transcendence is Tarakaia; there is a

■^Rexroth, p. 9.
^Kenneth Rexroth, The Dragon and the U n i c o m
(Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1952J, p. 375.

^Rexroth, Beyond the Mountains, p. 9.

 208

certain integrity and purity in her relationship

with Hermaios, in her awareness of the loneliness
and fear of Kalliope and Demetrios, and in her
hravery in following Hermaios to her own death.
While her love for Hermaios is never embodied in
the action, the description of the battle with the
Huns gives sufficient indication that she was fully
capable of the passion and blood-tinged lust which
seems essential to Rexroth1s concept of love. . . .

Even if Burian1s guess is correct, and Tarakaia does

achieve transcendence, this hardly saves the play, for

Tarakaia appears only in the first act of the drama. If

she is the only character whose actions illustrate the

theme, then the second act has no function.

What the play has to say, then, comes almost en­

tirely from the choral passages and never from the dramatic

action itself. To paraphrase MacLeish, a drama should not

preach, but demonstrate through action, and the severest

criticism which can be leveled at Beyond the Mountains is

that the demonstration never occurs. Rexroth's embodiment

of his theme in choral passages rather than in action calls

to mind a somewhat similar tendency in Turney's Daughters

of Atreus, and reveals the same inability of the author to

fuse successfully theme and action which we have noted in

all the plays thus far examined.

Closely related to these flaws is the play's tend­

ency toward obscurity and lack of coherence. Undoubtedly,

a drama which is symbolic and abstract in nature will be

more difficult to comprehend than one which is more

durian, pp. 346-4-7.

 209

conventionally realistic; "but any piece of dramatic art is

intended for performance and should be written in such a

way that at least part of its meaning can be readily com­

municated to the audience. It would be a rare audience

that could find meaning in Beyond the Mountains without

first studying the play in some detail. The meaning of

the dialogue is frequently unclear, and the imagery which

it contains is often cryptic; even when the meaning of a

speech seems apparent, the speech itself often has little

relevance to the action of the drama or to Rexroth's basic

thesis. This point is difficult to demonstrate without the

use of large quantities of quoted material; but a few of

the more troublesome passages may illustrate my point.

Shortly after the play begins the First Chorus says:

The weaving circles of heaven

Are the orderly reflection
Of the erratic course of men
In eternity's still mirror.

Dreams are a drum music in code.

The world's great pulse in the small heart. (109)

Although a kind of superficial meaning is apparent here, the

reader can go no further and the speech bears only a tenuous

relationship to either the theme or the action of the play.

Near the beginning of the second act we find the same group

making this comment:

There is an end to the fingers

That feed the twigs to the fire.
But the fire passes on. No one
Can know when it will be put out. (149)
 210

And a few pages later this piece of dialogue is found,

again spoken by the First Chorus:

All things are made new by fire.

From
The one to the two, from the
Two to the many, from the many
To the not many, from the not
Many to the not two, from the
Not two to the not one. (159)

Perhaps if these were lines of a poem to which the reader

could return as frequently as he wished, this kind of ob­

scurity might be justified; no one would insist that all

poets write verse which can be instantly comprehended.

Drama, however, is not simply poetry put on the stage, and

for me at least, the obscurity of Rexroth's play damages

its dramatic effectiveness.

It is impossible to analyze the characters of

Beyond the Mountains as we have those who appear in the

plays previously examined, for, in spite of their violent

actions, they remain essentially abstractions which are sub­

ordinated to Rexroth1s thesis. As a consequence, they never

achieve dramatic credibility. This emphasis on one­

dimensional characterization, like the crypticism of

Rexroth's imagery, seems more appropriate to verse than to

drama.

Ergo, Beyond the Mountains has a great many weak­

nesses; but it also has certain virtues. The idea of hand­

ling the Atreidae myth in an abstract, symbolic way is an

interesting one and provides the author with an opportunity

 211

to use certain physical actions, particularly the dance se­

quences, and technical effects (specifically scenery and

costuming) which should "be theatrically exciting and dra­

matically effective. It also allows the playwright to avoid

the heavy emphasis on psychological, even Freudian detail

in characterizations, and the transformation of the mythic

figures into twentieth-century neurotics or psychotics, a

tendency which is noticeable in most of the plays in this

study. Moreover, the frankness with which Rexroth uses

not one, but two choruses in his drama without making these

groups simply carbon copies of the Greek dramatic chorus is

laudable. Finally, Rexroth uses to advantage some of the

minor details of the myth in the imagery of his work, par­

ticularly the frequent reference to Kalliope as a swan."^

In spite of this freshness of approach, Rexroth1s

play is loaded with details which resemble other plays in

this study; in fact, he has gone so far with many of these

familiar details that his play comes close to unintentional

parody. The most obvious example of this is the use of the

incest motif which we noted in The Tower Beyond Tragedy and

Mourning Becomes Electra. In Beyond the Mountains three

sets of characters are involved in incestuous relationships.

The Orestian hero who refuses to act recalls The Prodigal,

and again Rexroth goes to extremes, so much so that in order

"blelen, not Clytemnestra, was the daughter of the

swan according to tradition. Rexroth1s inversion is prob­
ably intentional.
 212

to retain the mythic framework, Kalliope (Clytemnestra)

must throw herself on Menander's (Orestes') sword. The

stone images which are found in Beyond the Mountains recall

Jeffers' play, and the lines concerning action and suffer­

ing are reminiscent of Eliot's verse. At times it is very

difficult to take Rexroth's play seriously.

Probably because of the abstract nature of Beyond

the Mountains, Rexroth's borrowing of Greek dramatic con­

ventions seems, for the most part, justified and effective,

not obtrusive as the same practice has been in other plays.

The murder of Hermaios (Agamemnon) and Tarakaia (Cassandra)

and the revealing of their bodies immediately afterward is

a natural outcome of the dramatic action and furnishes an

appropriate climactic moment on which the act may end. On

the other hand, Rexroth is obviously not committed to the

use of such conventions regardless of their dramatic

appropriateness, and so Kalliope (Clytemnestra) and Demetrios

(Aegisthus) are murdered on stage. The only Greek detail

which seems not to achieve its effect is the use of the

purple robe to demonstrate Hermaios' hubris, and this fails

not because it is a Greek device, but because the King's

hubris, if he is hubristic, seems irrelevant.

No matter what other flaws are evident in Rexroth's

play, it must be admitted that the verse sounds well when

read aloud. Rexroth's basic line is an eight syllable one,

but he uses this with great flexibility, alternating it with

 213

shorter and longer lines. Only rarely does the line run

to ten syllables, and for the most part the iambic foot

is avoided. Consequently, there is a freshness and a

vitality about Rexroth's verse which makes it sound very

much his own, as the following excerpts illustrate:

X X X X
Snow. The wind is blowing the snow.
X X X
It's not living like fallen snow.
X X X X
It's fine and dry like marble dust. (110)
X X X
There is a hundred miles of good
X X X X
Meadow land in this valley and we
X X X
Have the cream of our troops and people. (126)
x x
History begins
X X X
When the family sickens with conflict
x x
And flies apart. (127)
x x
They will break him as they broke
x x
Berenike, cowering
x x
There by the fire.
X X X
He won't break. (146)

The poetic line is, as R. W. Flint comments,

tight and spondaic, even in excitement, well-mannered,

and never goes far from abase flatter than even
spoken English outsidethetheatre, an achieved
flatness.

The language does help to raise the play's artistic level,

but cannot compensate for its numerous dramatic defects.

"4?. W. Flint, "An Ambitious Venture," Poetry,

LXXVIII (September, 1951), 360.
 214

Beyond the Mountains properly belongs to the third

of the four basic ways in which English-speaking play­

wrights have used classic myth in our time. Like

Richardson and O'Neill, Rexroth makes numerous changes in

the myth; on the other hand, he maintains at least enough

of the framework of the legend to make the play's debt to

the myth an obvious one. The initial situation is further

removed from its prototype than it is in either of the

other two plays which belong to this third category, but

the action of the play more closely resembles the events

of the myth than does the action of those other dramas.

In addition, Rexroth's work demonstrates certain

tendencies which seem to be characteristic of other plays

which this study has examined. These include the almost

complete avoidance of any references to the gods as super­

natural agents of human fate (Rexroth substitutes his

cyclical theory of human history), and the emphasis on the

strong feminine agents and the corresponding de-emphasis

of the weaker masculine ones. Rexroth does, however,

attempt to resolve the action of his drama as many of the

other playwrights do not, and he makes no attempt to turn

the mythic personalities into ordinary human beings.

Beyond the Mountains also gives evidence of some

of the same flaws which seem to have plagued most of the

other plays so far considered. The most obvious of these

is Rexroth's inability to make his thesis an integral part

 215

of his work. The playwright's failure to transform the

mythic personages into satisfactory dramatic characters

and the heavy emphasis on melodramatic sensationalism,

particularly on sexual abnormality, are other weaknesses

which Rexroth's play has in common with others in this

study. On the other hand, Beyond the Mountains makes a

more legitimate and therefore more successful use of

theatrical conventions which have been borrowed from the

Greeks than any of the other m o d e m Atreidae dramas.

 Part 5: The Atreidae Dramas: Section 4

The final section of this chapter includes two

plays: William Alfred's Agamemnon, and T. S. Eliot's

The Family Reunion. Although both owe a debt to the

Atreidae legend, the debt is far less than that owed by

any play which we have previously examined; the plots and

characters of Agamemnon and The Family Reunion are almost

wholly original.

216
 William Alfred's Agamemnon:

Myth, and Moral Responsibility

William Alfred's Agamemnon, a four-act play in

blank verse, was published in 1954- Written when its

author was 32, it represents his first attempt at play-

writing.^- Since its appearance, the drama has received

scant critical attention, and to my knowledge has never

been performed. The few critics who did review the play

soon after it was published were favorably impressed with

what Alfred had done. Henry Rago, for example, commented

that Agamemnon is "a fine play, with a few moments of

2
really high distinction."

Agamemnon is of value to this study because it re­

veals a fourth and final basic approach which twentieth-

century English and American dramatists have taken toward

myth. Although the plays considered earlier have differed

greatly in their degree of faithfulness to the Atreidae

legend, the action of each has tended to remain basically

within the mythic framework. Alfred's play, in contrast,

is almost wholly original. It is related to the myth in

■^Henry Rago, "Pity and Pear," The Commonweal,

December 3, 1954, p. 259.

2Ibid.

217
 218

only two ways: Agamemnon's murder serves as the climax

of the drama, although the details of the murder are con­

siderably different from the legendary ones; and the his­

tory of the House of Atreus serves as a kind of background

for the action of the play, but here again the details are

frequently modified. If the names of the characters and the

settings for the play were altered, the average reader might

easily miss the play's relation to classic mythology. Per­

haps it was this approach to the myth which Alfred had in

mind when he commented in the preface of his work, "This

play is Greek by accident."^

One might well wonder why Alfred bothered with the

Greek myth at all, and the author is kind enough to supply

the answer:

All I have is a puzzled but affectionate interest in

people and the lives they lead, and a desire to capture
what I have seen and come to feel sure about them, so
that it will not be wholly lost.
And that is the reason I have chosen to unfold
again the old story of how Clytemnestra, the sister of
Helen of Troy, came to kill her husband, Agamemnon, on
the very day of his victorious return to Greece.
Clytemnestra's story is doubly old: in time, and
in the consciousness of us all. For it is a myth, a
fable which is an ambush to reality. The scholars
know it as the entrance-gate to the Oresteia; but all
men, though they may not know its place in history, or
any of the names of its chief actors, as if by some
mysterious instinct, know its turnings. Myths are like
those places you have never been before, which you some­
times come upon in foreign cities and find familiar.
They touch you with an uncanny intimacy, half memory,
half restive recognition. Hence you need no briefing
in this story to know what waits beyond the first event

■^William Alfred, Agamemnon (New York: Alfred A

Knopf, 1954), p. ix.
 219

upon the stage; some inner sense of direction will

draw you on the way ahead, will make you aware of the
closed court these four-jbewildered lovers must choose
for their last meeting.

Alfred's statement that he has "a puzzled hut affectionate

interest in people and the lives they lead" is a clue to

the reader that what lies ahead is a kind of domestic,

character-centered drama; and the preface also suggests

that Alfred chose Greek myth for what are essentially side-

effects, for the overtones and connotations which the myth

gives his play. This is not a particularly legitimate

motivation and may reveal a certain weakness in the work;

hut it is the play that must he judged, not the author's

intention.

Agamemnon takes place in late April of the tenth

year of the Trojan War; the scene shifts hack and forth

from the palace of the Atreidae to the ship upon which

Agamemnon and Cassandra are returning to Greece. As the

first scene of Act I begins, the four members of the Coun­

cil of Regency, who, with Clytemnestra, govern the state

of Argos while Agamemnon is at Troy, are arguing over the

disposition to he made of Euholus, a Cretan outlaw.

Euholus has learned of Iphigeneia's sacrifice at Aulis, a

secret which has been closely guarded by the Councillors so

that Clytemnestra will not learn the truth; the Queen has

^Ihid., pp. viii-ix.

 220

been told that her daughter died of fever. Moeris, the

chief Councillor, Gnatho, and Dipsas would charge Eubolus

with sedition and sentence him to death in order to keep

Iphigeneia's fate a secret. Philo, however, urges them

to banish Eubolus and to tell the Queen the truth, claim­

ing that

What Agamemnon did ten years ago

To Iphigeneia on the beach at Aulis
Is no affair of the state, but of his conscience.
It was his daughter, no mere citizen.
We must not meddle in it, lest it drag us,
And through us the whole kingdom, to a defeat
Par worse than any could befall in Troy. (3)

But Philo pleads to no avail, and the other members of the

Council vote for death and set the execution for thateven­

ing so that it can be carried out before Clytemnestra or

Aegisthus returns to the palace.

When Eubolus is brought before the Council and his

sentence announced, he tries to bargain for his life,

announcing that he knows three facts which the Council does

not know: (1) that Orestes left the palace that morning

"Never to return" (8), (2) that the war in Troy is over,

and (3) that before the dawn of the next day the signal

fires will announce Troy's defeat and the return of

Agamemnon. The Councillors refuse to believe Eubolus, how­

ever, and the outlaw goes on to promise that if he is freed

he will keep the Queen from discovering the truth and will

return to Crete. But nothing can move the Council and the

time of execution is decreed. The scene ends as Eubolus

says:
 221

The day to come will demonstrate the truth

Of what I say, Lord Councillor of Greece. . . .

I'm seventy years old, a murderer,

A pander, and a thief. If it were for that
The sentence you have passed on me were passed,
I should die more satisfied than I have lived.
But that I who have "bought and sold the human soul
Should die a martyr for the truth— that sickens’.
(9-10)
In the next scene we learn to what lengths Agamemnon

is willing to go in order to keep secret the manner of

Iphigeneia's death. The scene, which is quite brief, occurs

in the hold of Agamemnon's ship later the same day.

Cassandra, led by one of the King's soldiers, is brought

before the inert body of a young Greek who has been brutally

beaten and whose tongue has been torn out. As Cassandra

cares for him, she learns that the young man, made careless

by too much wine, had let fall some unfortunate remarks

about the death of Iphigeneia.

The following scene takes place a few minutes later.

Cassandra enters Agamemnon's cabin, tells him what she has

just seen, and asks him why he ordered such a brutal pun­
ishment. Agamemnon, immediately on the defensive, explains

that the young man told lies that threatened to jeopardize

the future of the whole Argive state. He adds that those

who simply sit, those like Cassandra, cannot know the agony

of those who must act in order to insure "a hard-bought

permanence" (16). Cassandra asks if the devastation of Troy

is what the King means by "the permanence of the mind" (17)»

and adds:
 222

Oh, Agamemnon,
Our only greatness is to embrace the truth,
Without a care for ourselves. I couldn't do it.
That's why I am where I am. I couldn't do it. (17)

As the scene ends, Cassandra accuses Agamemnon of killing

his daughter and suggests that he is allowing Iphigeneia's

death to destroy him, "Afraid of harm where no harm is

. . ." (18). Agamemnon answers:

No harm!
That was a sacrament, and outward sign
Of the rebellion against secrecy
That keeps the kingdom of my poise divided.
Please god, it brings the grace of resolution.

I saw her bleed to death on the beach at Aulis.

Confession cannot bring her back, Cassandra.
You stand before me, like a broken promise,
And picture me my heart's suspended honor'.
But once that glass of secrecy is smashed,
My strength lies open to the scattering wind.—
The wind'. The wind'. That lost me my conclusion.
I thought to step from the still shore she died on
To a fixed shore of certainty— but no'.
The continents have split; and here I stand,
Arrested like a paralysed colossus
Above these straits I've too much weight to leap.—
(18-19)
The final scene of Act I takes place in a villa at

Eurymanthus, nine miles from Argos. The villa belongs to

Meno and his sister Xanthis, old friends of Aegisthus, and

has served as a retreat for the King's cousin on numerous

occasions. Aegisthus has just finished recruiting a group

of men to send to Troy, and has stopped at Meno's villa on

his return to the palace.

The scene allows Aegisthus to give the audience a

great deal of background information. Aegisthus tells of

Atreus' attempt to punish Thyestes for his adultery with

 223

Merope by sending Aegisthus to kill Thyestes. Before

Aegisthus could carry out the order, however, he discovered

that Thyestes was his father, and that he (Aegisthus) was

the product of his father's incestuous relationship with

his daughter Pelopia. Having learned the truth, Aegisthus

slew Atreus and established his father as King of Argos;

knowing, however, of Thyestes1 desire for revenge,

Aegisthus engineered the escape of Agamemnon and Menelaus.

Three years later Thyestes died; Aegisthus restored the

throne to Agamemnon and left the city in hopes of escaping

the family curse. Years later, when Clytemnestra learned

of Iphigeneia's death and, in her grief, almost capsized

the state, Aegisthus returned to Argos. Por seven years

Aegisthus traveled back and forth from the city to his home

in the Argive countryside, offering comfort and advice to

the Queen. At length, they fell in love, and for the past

three years Aegisthus has lived at the palace. When, near

the end of the scene, Moeris urges Aegisthus to end his

relationship with Clytemnestra, Aegisthus answers that his

love for the Queen keeps him at her side and that through

that love he has thwarted the curse of the Atreidae.

The first scene of the second act begins at two

o' clock the following morning in the throne room of the

palace. Dipsas and Gnatho are involved in an argument over

whether or not they should tell the Queen of the information

which they gained from Eubolus the previous evening. Their

 224

argument leads to a discussion of Clytemnestra's adultery

with Aegisthus; but Philo interrupts them, asserting that

they are all to blame for the cancer which has infected

Argos, and that the condemning of Eubolus is simply the

latest in a series of injustices perpetrated in the name

of expediency.

Our order's dead.

It died on that Procrustes' bed last evening,
The bed of our expedience. There was a time
We were municipal and private men,
Citizens and lovers, both together,
And yet could act in each capacity
without this limp of slatternly injustice.
What's true of us is true of the whole country.
Things are not at all what they used to be:
Quality's gone now; we are worse than children
Parading in our father's clothes.

You talked of cancer, Gnatho. There's your cancer.

The seated tumor of this secret's maimed us.
The rapid healing has convulsed us all—
Couldn't you see that when we dared condemn
that patent murderer and monstrous pimp,
Not for his onslaughts onthe harried right,
But only because he daredto tellthe truth? (30-31)

Their argument is cut short by the entrance of

Clytemnestra who has returned from the ceremonies at her

daughter's grave and is delighted to hear that Aegisthus

has obtained the necessary troopsto send to Troy. After a

description of the memorial service to Iphigeneia,

Clytemnestra turns to Aegon, the court poet and her closest

personal adviser, to ask him if she has aged. Although he

assures her that she is still beautiful, she cannot shake

off a strange premonition that something is about to happen

which will be at once a personal tragedy and a triumph for

her.
 225

Aegisthus enters, greets the Queen, and tells the

Councillors that he has sent word to Agamemnon that the

fresh troops will arrive before the frost. Clytemnestra,

in a state of rising agitation, dismisses the Councillors

and Aegon. As soon as she is alone with Aegisthus, she

turns on him in a fury, accusing him of having driven

Orestes from the palace. Aegisthus, who had been unaware

of Orestes' departure, protests his innocence and declares

that he has never meant to come between the Queen and her

son; it was duty, he says, that first brought him back to

Argos, and it is love that keeps him here now. But

Clytemnestra pays no attention to Aegisthus' words; she is

nearly hysterical with accusation and self-recrimination.

In despair over love's inability to negate the curse which

seems to follow him, Aegisthus turns to leave the palace,

and as Clytemnestra's passion reaches its peak, she

screams at him:

Your Grandfather'.
Your grandfather and father both'. Your mother
Was his daughter and his whore. Oh, yes, I know it.
I know the tale of that vile revelation
You think so hidden, though all your life's a pose
To give that truth the lie, that rotten truth—
Blood tells. Blood tells— deny that if you can'.
(42)

Aegisthus, terribly shaken by her words, exits. Clytemnestra's

passion is spent, and she collapses into the arms of Aegon

as he returns to the throne room. In the last moments of

the scene Aegon persuades Clytemnestra to give up Aegisthus,

and in return he promises to bring Orestes home.

 226

Once more the scene shifts to the cabin of

Agamemnon's ship; Agamemnon enters to announce to Cassandra

the dawn of the day on which they will landat Argos.

Cassandra brushes this aside, and begins to complain that

he has failed to be a proper lover, that he has turned

from her, and never treated her as a friend; then, without

warning, she taunts him once more with the death of

Iphigeneia. She says that ten months ago, when the Greek

soldiers took Troy, she walked through the Greek tents and

presented herself to him because she thought that she had

been divinely appointed to save the Greek commander. Now,

however, she realizes that they are both lost. Nothing

Agamemnon can say is of any help, and as the scene ends he

strides angrily out of the cabin while Cassandra covers

her face and begins to sob.

The first scene of Act III takes place in the throne

room of the palace; it is seven o'clock the same morning

and in the distance there is the sound of great hubbub—

horns, bells, singing. Aegisthus enters, so exhausted that

he appears drunk, to find Clytemnestra seated on the throne.

He begins to describe the merry-making which is taking

place in the streets as a result of the news that

Agamemnon's fleet is returning to Argos, but his words

soon trail off and there is silence between them. The

Queen turns to her paramour and tells him that now, more

than ever, they must part. She urges him to give her up,

saying:
 227

It's almost funny. What can I give you

But a life in sordid hill-towns, hiding out,
Childless and wasted, or— Throw me down, Aegisthus.
The sound in me is what set Atreus raging,
The sea-surge of the curse, the pain repeated
In those who will succeed to this confusion. (51)

And as the scene ends she pleads:

I've sent for my son. It's up to you to end it.

It's more than pity you must show me now:
It's mercy.— Are you man enough for that? (52)

An equally brief scene follows in which Aegon re­

ports that Orestes is no longer with Pylades, and his

(Orestes') whereabouts are unknown. Clytemnestra replies

that she has given up Aegisthus and will do her best to

forget him. She fears, however, that her life now may be

like that of her mother, who also bore the hidden scar of

love.

It is nine o'clock on the same morning as Scene 3

begins. Moeris and Gnatho, who have just returned from the

wharf where the first of Agamemnon's ships is landing, are

discussing the homecoming, which has been marred for them

by the report of the death of Philo's son. Gnatho has be­

come completely disillusioned by the war, calling ita

"pirate raid" made "On the flimsy pretext of some sordid

right/ To avenge a nymphomaniac's vagary'." (57). When

Moeris replies that the war was a question of insulted

right, Gnatho answers:

It wasn't'. Now it is'. Poor injured justice—

I think that from the outset we were cursed,
The cursed people of a cursed King.—
We should have known that when he killed his child
For a change of wind— . (57)
 228

Moeris is scandalized that Gnatho should speak of

Iphigeneiab death in such a manner, hut Gnatho can only

urge the Chief Councillor to "Cut out this cancer paralyses

all/ . . . Go tell the Queen the truth" (58). Moeris re­

fuses, however, and insists that they must stand fast until

the Emperor returns.

Clytemnestra enters the throne room and learns of

the death of Philo's son. At once she decides to go to

Philo hut is told that the streets are too crowded for such

a journey. At this point Gnatho turns to the Queen and

asks if he might he released from "the conscript ranks/

Of this disheartening armyl" (60). Moeris is horrified at

the request, hut Clytemnestra responds in a more understand­

ing manner:

But living is war, friend. All of us are conscript.

The fierce stars battle in the challenged air,
And the strenuous gods that ride them.— What are we
To escape the bondage of this tension? Peace?
Tell me, my lord, where does that apple hang
Except across the frontiers of this danger
Where the winds of death contest its radiance
And slit the sinews of the gathering hand?
Let us he grateful it's no worse than this,
And pray that in this muddle of joy and death,
Joy will prevail. (60-61)

As the scene ends, Clytemnestra sends her love to Philo

and begins to memorize the speech which Aegon has written

for her to deliver to the people later that day.

The last scene of Act III takes place on hoard

Agamemnon's ship; it is one o'clock that afternoon. As

the scene begins, Agamemnon addresses Cassandra, assuring

 229

her that he will restore her to her earlier peace; but it

soon becomes apparent that Cassandra is not listening.

Soon she begins to speak, not to the Agamemnon who stands

before her, but to an imaginary king who ispaying a call

on the Trojan court. Cassandra recalls a time when her

father took her to the mountains to see a piece of sculp­

ture and to read the inscription on thebases "Traveler,/

It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch" (64).

Nothing Agamemnon does can end Cassandra’s trance and the

climax of the scene is reached as the girl foretells the

murder of the Argive King:

— Oh, there’s my mother,

There with those four old men around that bull—
No, that’s not her. And yet she wears a crown.—
Stand back from her’. Stand back'. (66)

As the scene ends, Agamemnon pleads with Cassandra:

Without you, I am lost. Child, child, come back—

I killed the other.— Can you hear me?— Oh,
I killed the other. (67)

As the first scene of Act IV begins, Clytemnestra

is addressing the Argive crowds who have assembled below

the palace windows. When the speech is completed,

Clytemnestra receives the applause of the people, and re­

tires within the palace. While Aegon and the Councillors

are offering her their congratulations, an old woman slips

into the throne room, fixes the Queen with a half-crazed

stare, and launches into an impassioned tale of Iphigeneia's

death at Aulis. Gnatho calls for the guards, but the old

woman finishes her story before they carry her away. There
 230

is a moment's silence; then Clytemnestra turns to the men

surrounding her to ask, in a dazed voice, if the woman

has spoken the truth, particularly about Agamemnon's having

ordered the sacrifice. Aegon protests that it is only

rumor; but Gnatho confesses that the story is true.

Clytemnestra looks blindly from face to face, strikes her

forehead with the back of her hand, and runs toward the

door.

Pour hours elapse between the final scene of the

play and the previous one. Clytemnestra is seated on the

Argive throne, telling Aegisthus and Aegon of the bitter­

ness and hatred that she feels toward her husband. She has

decided she will leave Argos, taking Electra with her. Be­

fore she can do so, however, Philo enters and tells her

that his son's death is the price which he has paid for

knowing and not telling, adding that he has been sent to

intercede for the Councillors who fear that Clytemnestra

will make a scene when Agamemnon arrives. As the Queen

listens to Philo's words, her look of compassion changes

to one of passivity, and when he finishes speaking, she

announces that she will remain to meet her husband. Moeris

enters, relieved that Clytemnestra is willing to cooperate,

and quickly explains the part she must play in the cere­

monies to follow. Just as he completes his instructions,

the heralds announce Agamemnon's entry into the courtyard

below and Clytemnestra goes to meet the King. Partly from

 231

Aegon's description of the scene "below and partly because

Alfred allows us to overhear some of what the principals say

to one another, we learn that Clytemnestra greets her hus­

band and welcomes Cassandra, and that all three walk to­

gether toward the sacrificial bull. When Clytemnestra

lifts the axe to symbolize her role as mother of the state,

she turns avenger, striking first Cassandra and then

Agamemnon. For a moment chaos reigns, and then Clytemnestra

throws open the palace doors and announces that she has done

what had to be done. As the Queen collapses against the

throne, Moeris calls her murderer and whore, and even Aegon

turns away from her. Only Aegisthus goes to her and cradles

her head on his shoulder; there is a moment's pause and

then Philo rises, faces Aegon and the other Councillors,

and says:

Why do you turn away, old men? Are you afraid

Of the sight of the justice you so long thought gone?
What surety was ours with a murderous king?
What court in Argos could we have tried him in?
She has dispossessed the night we limped through
dumbly.
Her end was justice. She has brought us home. (87)

And Aegisthus adds:

This man is right. You must believe him sirs.

We had hopes we could face him; but my courage
failed;
And Aegon's love; and all your policy.
She is the only one who dared make a show;
And if she lies here now more dead than alive,
It is because the right outstripped her strength.—
What makes us princes but this war in us
Of what we are with what we want to be?—
I can find no words. . . . Do me the grace to
leave. (88)
 232

As the play ends, the Councillors exit to bury the dead.

Alfred has retained a portion of the supernatural

framework of the legend. Aegisthus and Clytemnestra make

frequent references to the curse which follows the de­

scendants of Pelops, and it does seem to play a part in

their relationship. On the other hand, the death of

Iphigeneia and the murder of Agamemnon appear to be pri­

marily the result of human volition.

A number of details drawn from the myth serve as

background, though they have been considerably altered;

the most important of these changes concerns the death of

Iphigeneia. In Alfred's play, Clytemnestra does not

accompany her daughter to Aulis as her prototype did in

the myth, and this enables Agamemnon to tell his wife that

Iphigeneia died from fever. This attempt to keep

Iphigeneia1s sacrifice secret from Clytemnestra serves as

the springboard of the action. In addition, the circum­

stances surrounding the sacrifice are not made clear. We

learn that Agamemnon ordered his daughter1s death in order

to gain favorable winds, but there is no mention of any

god's requiring Iphigeneia's sacrifice, nor of any priest's

decision that the sacrifice must be made. In fact, it re­

mains a mystery how Agamemnon knew that Iphigeneia's death

would alter the winds.

Other changes are less significant but equally

 233

interesting. Early in the play Aegisthus recalls how he

learned the knowledge of his true parentage and as a re­

sult murdered Atreus in order to establish his father

Thyestes on the Argive throne. However, when Thyestes

came to power, Alfred's Aegisthus, unlike the mythical

Aegisthus, engineered the escape of Agamemnon and Menelaus

from the Argive state. Three years later, when Thyestes

died, Aegisthus gave up the throne, established Agamemnon

as king, and went into self-imposed exile in the hope of

escaping the family curse. In an even more altruistic

manner, Aegisthus returned to Argos to serve the state and

to give comfort to Clytemnestra when, as a result of her

grief at the news of Iphigeneia's death, she almost toppled

the Argive government. Later, when Aegisthus realized his

love for Clytemnestra, he attempted in justify the affair by

claiming that their love would help to end the family curse.

Two other modifications should also be mentioned.

Some time before the play Cassandra has given birth to a

dead child, but the play fails to make clear whether Apollo

or Agamemnon was its father. There is a suggestion at least

that the Cassandra of this Agamemnon accepted the advances

of the god as the Cassandra of the myth did not. Alfred

also reverses the ages of Electra and Orestes. Electra is

eleven when the Trojan War ends, Orestes somewhat older.

And, unlike the Orestes of the classic tale, this Orestes

has left the palace the day before the play begins because
 234

he cannot live "four lives at once" (40)— his mother’s,

Aegisthus', his father's, and his own.

Agamemnon ends with Clytemnestra's murder of

Cassandra and Agamemnon, but the details of the murder

are considerably different from those of the legend.

Clytemnestra does not murder her husband and his concubine

in their bath after she has rendered them defenseless;

here, she cuts them down in the palace courtyard as the

three prepare to celebrate the victory over Troy.

It might be wise to preface an evaluation of

Agamemnon with a few descriptive comments about the play.

Although Alfred's drama is in blank verse, it is essentially

realistic. In addition, it includes a series of stock dra­

matic ingredients— the palace intrigue, the exotic setting,

two pairs of sentimental lovers whose extra-legal rela­

tionships are thwarted by the circumstances of their environ­

ment— ingredients which we might expect to find in a typical

nineteenth-century romantic melodrama. The numerous scenes

into which the action is divided, the relatively large

cast, and the play's focus on the private emotional dilemmas

of the individual characters only reinforce the romantic,

melodramatic appearance. It should also be noted that

without a fairly thorough knowledge of the history of the

House of Atreus, one would find the action of the play con­

fusing; much of the exposition comes too late to be of use

 235

to the uninitiated and can be only helpful as a reminder

to those who already know the basic facts of the story.

Through the action of his drama Alfred attempts

to project three main themes: the corrupting effects of

deceit upon the human soul, the inevitability of justice,

and the inescapable failure of love based on selfish or

guilt-ridden motives. Potentially significant as these

themes may be, Agamemnon displays some of the same con­

fusion 'which has been characteristic of the other works

which we have previously examined. Alfred relates his

three themes inadequately; furthermore, he does not make

any one of them dominant, and so the play seems to have no

controlling statement. In addition, too frequently these

themes are stated but not demonstrated.

Since Alfred devotes more time to developing the

theme of deceit than he does his other themes, I think it

is reasonable to assume that this is the central thesis of

Agamemnon.^ Unfortunately, the climactic action of the

play, Clytemnestra1s murder of Agamemnon, has no relation­

ship to this theme, unless we can believe that Clytemnestra

kills her husband because he kept the means of Iphigeneia's

■*T do not mean to suggest, however, that this was

necessarily Alfred's intention and, in fact, the preface of
the play would suggest that Alfred believed the justice
theme to be dominant. "The play you hold in your hands is
a tragedy," says the author, "a play about the moral limits
of life, and what the cost of violating them is." The
characters lead "lives of full moral responsibility for
every previous action, lives in which justice works with a
brutal majesty" (Alfred, p. viii).
 236

death a secret for ten years; but by no stretch of the

imagination can we accept this as the Queen's motive.

Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon because she believes him

guilty of murdering her daughter, not because he kept the

murder a secret; her final action would be the same whether

or not she had been deceived about the cause of Iphigeneia's

death. We must conclude then that the climax of Alfred's

play is related to the theme of justice, not to the theme

of deceit, and that the author has written a play in which

he has been unable to make any one theme prevail.

The climax of Agamemnon fails, not only because of

the shift from one theme to another, but because Alfred

does not make it clear why the murder of Agamemnon demon­

strates the inevitability of justice. First, the play

gives us inadequate information about Agamemnon's crime

and we are unable to judge his degree of guilt. If we are

to assume the mythical background of Iphigeneia's sacrifice

(which the play neither affirms nor denies), and if we

assume that the characters of the play subscribe to the

state religion of their day, then how guilty is Agamemnon?

To complicate matters, he seems to be a truly contrite man.

Second, Clytemnestra fails to explain why she murdered her

husband. When, before the murder, she gives up her plan

to leave Argos and decides to take a different course of

action, her decision is made in silence and the only clue

to what may be going through her mind is the stage

 237

direction: "Clytemnestra's face changes its look of com­

passion for one of a strangely fixed impassivity" (80).

After the murder she can only say: "What had to be done I

did" (86). Third, Alfred moves the confrontation scene off­

stage, although he might easily have used it to make the

justice of Clytemnestra1s act clear to his audience. In­

stead, we are left with Philo's last speech which pronounces

judgment but explains nothing:

Why do you turn away, old men? Are you afraid

Of the sight of the justice you so long thought gone?
What surety was ours with a murderous king?
What court in Argos could we have tried him in?
She has dispossessed the night we limped through dumbly.
Her end was justice. She has brought us home. (87)

Even if we were to accept Clytemnestra* S murder of

her husband as an act of justice, the play fails to con­

vince us that the act is inevitable; too many of the events

which lead to the climax seem either contrived or accidental:

a woman who somehow manages to witness the sacrifice of

Iphigeneia; an outlaw who learns of this and arranges her

appearance before the Queen; the woman's entry into the

palace at a moment of confusion, not only after the death

of the outlaw and therefore without his aid, but in spite

of the fact that the woman seems mentally deranged; the

death of Philo's son and the arrival of this news at an

opportune moment; and the final return of Philo to the

Queen just before she leaves the palace of Argos. The whole

story seems hardly credible, and certainly there is little

sense of inevitability about it.

 238

It must be admitted that both the deceit theme and

the love theme are handled with more skill and less con­

fusion. The deceit theme fails to be significant, however,

partially because it is truncated at the end of the play in

favor of the theme of justice, and partially because Alfred

can find no successful way in which to relate these two

themes. Because he does attempt to relate them, the play

seems occasionally to project the curious notion that

Agamemnon1s sacrifice of Iphigeneia was wrong only because

it was kept secret. The love theme, on the other hand,

fails to be meaningful because Alfred simply never gives it

any significance. The loves of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus,

and of Agamemnon and Cassandra, are treated always in ro­

mantic terms. The inability of each couple to achieve any

kind of successful -union, far from seeming to be a result

of the circumstances in which they find themselves, is in­

herent in the melodramatic materials from which they are

constructed; they are the kind of transparent dramatic

characters who continually try to prove that "life can be

beautiful," but who always discover that such is not the

case. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, Agamemnon and Cassandra

are destined to failure by the very dramatic tradition

which gives them life, and this failure is certain regard­

less of their circumstances or their acts.

Finally, Agamemnon fails in a broader sense because

too frequently Alfred depends on statement rather than dra­

matic action to project the meaning of his play. The most

 239

obvious example of* this is the substitution of Philo's

soliloquy, for the final confrontation of Agamemnon and

Clytemnestra, a scene which could dramatically present

the opposing elements of the play and bring about a mean­

ingful resolution of the action. Alfred has resorted to

this same technique throughout the play. Too frequently,

for example, we must be told how the secret of Iphigeneia1s

death has undermined the health of the entire state; sel­

dom are we shown that such is the case.

Alfred's handling of characterization in Agamemnon

reveals his major strength as a dramatic writer, but also

discloses significant weaknesses. I agree with Burian that

Alfred's forte is his ability to capture in verse the

essence of a character's emotional and mental state
in a specific situation, particularly when that situ­
ation calls for an evaluation of the character's rela­
tion to the situation; by employing a variety of char­
acters and a variety of scenes, Alfred i3 able to make
effective use of this talent.1

A number of examples could be cited to prove this point,

such as Agamemnon's guilt-laden lament over his sacrifice

of Iphigeneia and his inability to "step from the still

shore she died on/ To a fixed shore of certainty" (19)»

Aegisthus' explanation of why he cannot give up

Clytemnestra, Aegon's agonized reasoning for keeping

Iphigeneia's sacrifice a secret, Philo's speech of self­

recrimination, and Cassandra's recollection of her life in

Priam's palace. But perhaps the best example of Alfred's

^Burian, p. 368.
 240

ability to reveal the emotional state of a character is

found in Clytemnestra1s response to Aegon's suggestion

that she forgive the King:

Forgive? Forgive?
Shall we exchange repentances and weep
For the dead splendor of our lying down
When our marriage star pierced darkness to the heart
Over Mount Spider, and the guests went home?
Shall we kiss each other's hands, embrace here kneeling,
And try to forget the knowledge makes us sick;
That that clear fire's recalled by these drowned ashes;
That all our pledges were as much a joke
As the dirty jokes that old men make at weddings;
That once he left off possession of my flesh,
He could kill my child; that with him gone away,
I could lie and be unlocked by another man—
Is that what we must do? I cannot do it.
Ten years have made a murderer of him,
And made a whore of me— another ten
Will make me but a passing catch in his heart.—
(78-79)
In spite of Alfred's ability to reveal the emotional

states of his characters, he is unable to give them much

human significance; furthermore, he fails to make their

motivations and their relationships to other characters

clear. Agamemnon, for example, is little more than a

conscience-stricken old man, haunted by the guilt of a

crime he committed years earlier. He has none of the

grandeur or the hubris which distinguishes his prototype.

In addition, the picture of Agamemnon is blurred, chiefly

because we know so little of the forces which drove him to

sacrifice Iphigeneia. He says at one point that he wished

to achieve a "hard-bought permanence" (16), but what this

phrase means is never clear. Other characters in the play

voice what they believe to be Agamemnon's motives, but

 241

their opinions do not agree and no one opinion seems more

valid than any other. Nor do we understand explicitly what

Agamemnon's relationship is to Cassandra. At one moment he

seems to he her lover, although he is unable to establish a

satisfactory relationship because of the old crime whose

memory still plagues him. At other times, however, the

play suggests that Cassandra is a kind of daughter-substi-

tute for Agamemnon. These two impressions can hardly be

reconciled unless we are to assume that Alfred wants us to

think of the Agamemnon-Cassandra relationship as a peculiar

form of psychological incest, and the play never suggests

that such is the case. In addition, although it is appar­

ent that Agamemnon brings Cassandra to Argos because he

feels she can be of some help to him, the kind of assist­

ance he hopes for is never established. A concubine is

not likely to help him reestablish his relationship with

his wife.

Cassandra is an equally confusing character. She

spends the greater part of her time on stage accusing

Agamemnon at one moment of not loving her enough and at

another moment of killing his daughter, and as a result,

appears to be little more than a bad-tempered little girl

who insists on having her own way and takes a kind of de­

light in tormenting her lover. Furthermore, Alfred fails

to specify the relationship which she has had with Apollo,

although the play seems to suggest that this Cassandra,

 242

unlike the mythical one, took Apollo as her lover and later

threw him over for someone else, whereupon, in a fit of

jealousy, he decreed that those who heard her prophecies

would not believe her. If this is what we are to assume,

then the character of the prophetess is even more roman­

ticized than it might first appear to be. Cassandra has

had achild, born dead, but Alfred does not make clear

whether the child's father is Apollo or Agamemnon. In the

third scene of Act I Cassandra says to Agamemnon in re­

sponse to a question about her prophetic seizures,

There is no question of such seizure now:

He's left me here alone for good, the god.
I've turned my back on him, turned it too often.
I knew that when the child we had fell dead
Prom my womb. That's over now; all over—
And oh, for what? Por what? For you withheld
yourself
Just as you're doing now. (17)

The identity of the child's father and what Alfred hopes

to accomplish by adding this detail are equally mysterious.

The characterizations of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra

are similarly inconsistent and romanticized. Aegisthus'

whole altruistic attitude, including his devotion to

Agamemnon and to the state of Argos, seems hardly credible.

Although we might accept his return of the throne to

Agamemnon after Thyestes' death as an attempt to rid him­

self of the curse, his continued commitment to Agamemnon

after having been Clytemnestra's lover for three years is

unbelievable. Clytemnestra, although more fully character­

ized, is no clearer. Although the play indicates that

 243

Clytemnestra is no longer in love with her husband, no

reason is given for her change in emotions; the motivation

for her relationship with Aegisthus is equally unclear.

Most important is Alfred's failure to explain why at the

last minute Clytemnestra decides not to leave Argos as she

has planned, but instead to remain and kill her husband.

No explanation is offered before or after the murder.

Most of the other defects in Agamemnon have already

been touched upon and may be passed over rather briefly.

Although for the most part Alfred avoids the use of ir­

relevant theatricalism except possibly in Cassandra's

prophetic seizure in the last scene of Act III, the de­

pendence of the play upon accident and contrived events,

the manner in which the characters are drawn, their rela­

tionships to one another, the division of the play into a

series of brief vignettes, the inclusion of a number of

details which seem without dramatic purpose, and the

author's difficulty in embodying his thesis within the

dramatic action all suggest the heavily melodramatic qual­

ity of Alfred's work.

For the most part Alfred eschews the use of Greek

dramatic conventions. Since the action is essentially

realistic, he wisely avoids the introduction of any kind

of choric element. Alfred does retain the Greek convention

of keeping the murder of Agamemnon off-stage, but it is

impossible to know whether Alfred's retention of the

 244

classic convention had any effect on his decision to place

the confrontation of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon also in the

wings. If it did, retaining the convention has seriously

flawed the drama.

Alfred writes in what is basically a blank verse

line. Fortunately, he uses it with considerable freedom

and variety, as in these lines:

X X X X
Did the face of your hope go white when you first
x
discovered
X X X X
The scratches of this death on you? Or don't you
x
recall
X X X X X
The day when first it struck you you'd grown old? (34)

On the other hand, Alfred often falls in love with

language for its own sake and allows his characters to

string metaphor after metaphor, which either impede the

action or seem to have no purpose. Cassandra's lengthy

reply to Agamemnon's claim that he sacrificed his daughter

to gain a "hard-bought permanence" is an example of this

tendency:

Don't talk to me of the permanence of the mind.

Can't you remember the rubbish we set sail from
Three weeks ago? Can't you remember Troy?

Is that what you mean by the permanence of the mind?

Or is it the brain itself you think will outlive you?
The brain will harden like a buried egg,
Cleave to the prostrate base of the crazing skull,
And burst at the soft invasion of the worm,
In a last futile ambuscade on death
From some sarcastic ditch. . . . (17)

A similar tendency can be noted in Clytemnestra's attempt

to describe her premonition of the future:

 245

But this thing I talk of here,

So like the alteration of a star,
In which the light and influence are one
And are lost together, this thing I feel in me
And no man's words can shake that premonition. (35)

And in response to Aegon's request that she describe her

feeling, the Queen continues:

As if I had been crying in my dreams

All night on the shuttered streets half-lit with stars,
Because I was a partner in some wrong,
In some default of faith too base for words;
And waking hoarse, should find the world I left
Swept still by clean-cut winds and cleansing light,
But somehow find it as a pauper child
Must find a trinket it can never own,
Heart-breaking in its beauty.— Punished, I feel,
Resigned, yet in that resignation
Slow triumph like a blush, beyond mere joy,
Plow up through me; and all things are
Precious and distant, as in a brazen mirror,
And intricately small. (36)

Finally, Alfred introduces a series of pretentious

and distracting anachronisms, which not only fail to lend

any kind of modern tone, but tend to negate any timeless

quality which he has been able to give the play. Perhaps

the funniest of these is Cassandra's line in the fourth

scene of Act I: "Agamemnon./ A penny for your thoughts"

(19). The line is humorous not only because it seems so

inappropriate in tone, but because it comes just after

Agamemnon has finished a 24-line soliloquy. Other examples

of Alfred's use of anachronism include Clytemnestra's com­

ment about her mother, "She drank, you know" (53); Gnatho's

description of the Greek war on Troy as "a pirate raid/

On the flimsy pretext of some sordid right/ To avenge a

 246

nymphomaniac's^ vagaryl" (57); and Aegon's description of

the Maenads who destroyed Orpheus as "Those harridans

drugged mad on spanish-fly" (84).

This examination of William Alfred's Agamemnon re­

veals a fourth and final "basic approach which English-

speaking playwrights of our century have taken toward classic

myth. Whereas the plays which we have previously analyzed

in this study have tended to remain within the basic frame­

work of the legend, Agamemnon is almost wholly original.

It uses elements of the myth only as background for the

action and for the climax.

Nevertheless, Alfred's play bears certain resem­

blances to the more orthodox Atreidae dramas. Like Jeffers,

Alfred introduces the matter of Aegisthus' incestuous par­

entage; an incest motif is also included in the works of

O'Neill and Rexroth. In terms of the realistic treatment

given the myth, the emphasis of the play on love, and the

domestic, character-centered nature of the drama, Agamemnon

is similar to Turney's Daughters of Atreus. And finally,

in its rather pretentious use of language it bears a subtle

resemblance to the first play in this study, LeGallienne's

Orestes.

^Although the word nymphomania is formed from two

Greek roots, the word was, apparently, unknown to the ancient
Greeks. It does not appear in Henry George Liddell and
Robert Scott (comps.), A Greek-English Lexicon (7th ed., rev.
and aug.; New York: Harper and Brothers, 1883).
 247

In a more significant way, Agamemnon displays cer­

tain tendencies which seem to be characteristic of most of

the plays in this study. These include the reduction of

the importance of the supernatural framework, the psycho­

logical approach to character and the attempt to make the

personages of the drama seem more like ordinary mortals,

and the focus on the feminine agent (the play might be more

properly entitled Clytemnestra) . Since the ending is so

confused, it is debatable whether the action is more than

superficially resolved.

Agamemnon also reveals many of the shortcomings

which are typical of modern mythic drama. Alfred's in­

ability to integrate theme and action, and his failure to

develop characters who are dramatically consistent and

meaningful are the most significant flaws. And, like most

of the other writers whose efforts we have examined, Alfred

depends heavily on melodramatic effects, and only rarely

does his skill in language raise the play above the level

of most twentieth-century drama.

 T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion:

Myth and the Expiation of Sin

T. S. Eliot's The Family Reunion, a verse drama in

two parts, was first produced at London's Westminster

Theatre in March, 1939;^ and was published in a slightly

2 3
different version the same year. Since then it has been

produced twice in West End theatres;^" once (in 1958) at

5
New York's Phoenix Theatre; and many times on college and

university stages, both here and in England. Nearly all of

these productions have been as unsuccessful as the premiere

in 1939*^ Nevertheless, The Family Reunion has received an

Grover Smith, Jr., T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays:

A Study in Sources said Meaning (Chicago: The University of
Chicago !Press, 1956), p. 19*>.
2
Richard Pindlater, Michael Redgrave, Actor, pp.
49-50, as quoted by David E. Jones, The_Plays of j. S.
Eliot (Toronto: University of Toronio Press, i960), p. 10In.

^T. S. Eliot, The Family Reunion (London: Faber &

Faber, Ltd., 1939).
^E. Martin Browne, "From The Rock to The Confiden­
tial Clerk," T. S. Eliot: a Symposium^Tor His Seventieth
Birthday, ed. Neville Braybrooke (New York: Farrar, Straus
& Cudahy, 1958), p. 63.
^Tom F. Driver, "Eliot in Transit," The Christian
Century, November 26, 1958, p. 130.

^Grover Smith, Jr., p. 196.

248
 249

extraordinary amount of attention from an impressive list

of critics. It has been subject to a much wider range of

interpretation than any of the other Atreidae dramas so far

considered, from a Christian-existentialist view of the

1 2
play, to an anthropological-ritualistic analysis, to a

thoroughly psychoanalytic interpretation;^ the range of

critical opinion concerning its artistic merits is equally

wide.

This chapter has moved from the most literal hand­

lings of the Atreidae myth in twentieth-century Anglo-

American drama to the freest use of that myth. Although

there can be no question that The Family Reunion, like

Alfred's Agamemnon, belongs in the last of the four cate­

gories used here, the proper order of these last two plays

is much less obvious. Eliot uses a great many more mythic

details than Alfred does; at least elements of The Family

Reunion frequently parallel, in one way or another, ele­

ments of the Atreidae myth. On the other hand, Eliot has

^■Richard E. Palmer, "Existentialism in T. S. Eliot's

The Family Reunion," Modern Drama., V (September, 1962),
174-86. See also Nathan A. Scoii, Jr., Rehearsals of Dis-
composure (New Yorks Columbia University Press, 1§5£),
pp".22'9-T7.
2Carol H. Smith, T. S. Eliot's Dramatic Theory and
Practice (Princeton, N. JTs Princeton University Press,
1963), PP. 112-46.
■^C. L. Barber, "Strange Gods at T. S. Eliot's 'The
Family Reunion,'" T. S. Eliot: A Selected Critique, ed.
Leonard Unger (New York: Rinehart & Co., Inc., 1948),
pp. 415-43.
 250

placed the action in a contemporary setting and has so

interpolated the legendary materials that his borrowings

are, with one exception— the Eumenides— much less obvious

than Alfred's. In any case, it matters little which play­

wright has made the freer use of mythic materials; what is

important is that both their plays take much greater liber­

ties with the myth than any of the other Atreidae dramas

included in this study.

The Family Reunion is set in "a country house in

the North of England,"^ Wishwood, the home of Amy, the

dowager Lady Monchensey; it is a day in late March, 1939.

Amy has invited the members of her family to a reunion to

celebrate her birthday and the return of Amy's son, Harry,

Lord Monchensey, who has been away for nearly eight years.

Gathered in the drawing room at Wishwood are Amy; her

younger sisters, Ivy and Violet, spinsters who live a life

of impoverished gentility, and Agatha, the silent and mys­

terious principal of a women's college; Amy's brothers-in-

law, Colonel the Honorable Gerald Piper, a retired British

army officer, and the Honorable Charles Piper, a London

clubman; and Mary, the daughter of a deceased cousin of

Lady Monchensey. Expected, in addition to Harry, are his

younger brothers, Arthur and John.

During the early part of the scene we learn that

^T. S. Eliot, The Family Reunion, in The Complete

Poems and Plays (New Yorks Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1952),
p. 225.
 251

Harry left Wishwood after marrying a young woman who had

no wish to become a part of the Monchensey family.

She never wanted

Harry's relations or Harry's old friends;
She never wanted to fit herself to Harry,
But only to bring Harry down to her own level.
A restless shivering painted shadow
In life. . . . (230)

For several years she and Harry toured the world, visiting

expensive resort hotels and living in idleness and luxury.

Then a year ago she was swept from the deck of an ocean

liner, according to newspaper accounts, and her body was

never recovered. Amy tells the family that there can be

no grief for such a woman and calls the death "nothing but

a blessed relief" (229). She is anxious to have Harry re­

turn home and become the master of Wishwood; she has, in

fact, lived her entire life for this moment, and has kept

Wishwood exactly as it was when Harry left. Amy asks the

others to "behave only/ As if nothing had happened in the

last eight years" (230), but Agatha reminds her sister that

after all that has happened, Harry's return will be

. . . painful, because everything is

irrevocable,
Because the past is irremediable,
Because the future can only be built
Upon the real past. . . . (228)

She adds that he will find another Harry at Wishwood:

The man who returns will have to meet

The boy who left. Round by the stables,
In the coach-house, in the orchard,
In the plantation, down the corridor
That led to the nursery, round the c o m e r
Of the new wing, he will have to face him—
 252

And it will not be a very .jolly corner.

When the loop in time comes— and it does not come
for everybody—
The hidden is revealed, and the spectres show
themselves. (229)

Amy pays little heed to her. The others promise to do

their best to make Harry welcome, although they all admit

that they dislike being assigned to their parts "like

amateur actors" (231).

Abruptly Harry enters the drawing room and, without

stopping to greet anyone, hurries to the window to draw the

curtains, saying:

How can you sit here in this blaze of light for all
the world to look at?
If you knew how you looked, when I saw you through
the window'.
Do you like to be stared at by eyes through a window?

Can't you see them? You don't see them, but I see them,
And they see me. This is the first time that I have
seen them.
In the Java Straits, in the Sunda Sea,
In the sweet sickly tropical night, I knew that they
were coming.

They were always there. But I did not see them.

Why should they wait until I came back t"o Wishwood? (232)

In spite of Harry's peculiar behavior, all the family ex­

cept Agatha do their best to make Harry feel welcome and to

assure him that nothing has changed. Harry finds their re­

marks inane and complains:

You all of you try to talk as if nothing has happened,

And yet you are talking of nothing else. Why not get
to the point
Or if you want to pretend that I am another person—
A person that you have conspired to invent, please do so
In my absence, I shall be less embarrassing to you. . . .
(233-34)
 253

Only Agatha seems to have some comprehension of Harry's

problem. She asks him to explain what is bothering him,

and promises that they will do their best to understand.

Harry is doubtful that he can explain his condition to them,

for they are, he says, "all people/ To whom nothing has

happened" (234). Nevertheless, Agatha persuades him to

try. He says:

The sudden solitude in a crowded desert

In a thick smoke, many creatures moving
Without direction, for no direction
Leads anywhere but round and round in that vapour—
Without purpose, and without principle of conduct
In flickering intervals of light and darkness;
The partial anaesthesia of suffering without feeling
And partial observation of one's own automatism
While the slow stain sinks deeper through the skin
Tainting the flesh and discolouring the bone—
This is what matters, but it is unspeakable,
Untranslatable: I talk in general terms
Because the particular has no language. One thinks
to escape
By violence, but one is still alone
In an over-crowded desert, jostled by ghosts.
It was only reversing the senseless direction
For a momentary rest on the burning wheel
That cloudless night in the mid-Atlantic
When I pushed her over. (235)

The family is shocked by this confession, but cannot believe

it; as Charles says, "Of course we know what really hap­

pened, we read it in the papers— " (235). Charles adds that

Harry should not indulge in fantasies of this kind, that he

need not reproach himself for anything, that his "conscience

can be clear" (236). Harry answers that what bothers him

goes much deeper than conscience; "it is just the cancer/

That eats away the self" (236). Amy suggests that her son

is simply suffering from fatigue and urges him to go

 254

upstairs to bathe and rest. Just before Harry leaves,

Agatha says:

There are certain points I do not yet understand:

They will be clear later. I am also convinced
That you only hold a fragment of the explanation.
It is only because of what you do not understand
That you feel the need to declare what you do.
There is more to understand: hold fast to that
As the way to freedom. (236)

Harry, apparently relieved by Agatha's partialcomprehen­

sion of his feelings, answers:

I think; I see what you mean,

Dimly— as you once explained the sobbing in the chimney
The evil in the dark closet, which they said was not
there,
Which they explained away, but you explained them
Or at least, made me cease to be afraid of them. (237)

After Harry leaves the room, the family discusses

what should be done to help him. Gerald suggests that they

ask Dr. Warburton, the family physician, to talk to Harry,

and Amy goes at once to invite the doctor to dine with them

that evening. Charles adds that they might also question

Downing, Harry's valet-chauffeur, to find out what he knows

about the death of Harry's wife. The other members of the

family do not agree to this plan, but Charles sends for the

man. During the interview they learn that during the voy­

age Harry had been depressed, "more nervous than usual"

(240), and "behaved as if he thought something might happen"

(240). He tried to keep his wife inside the ship during

rough weather, and objected when she went too close to the

rail. Harry's wife, Downing says, seemed her usual self,

"Down in the morning, and up in the evening" (240), and he

 255

suggests that she frequently drank more than she should

have. He adds that Harry and his wife were always together*

"That was just my complaint against my Lady. . . . She

wouldn’t leave him alone" (241). Although Downing did not

see the accident happen, he remembers seeing his employer

standing "alone, looking over the rail" (241) for nearly

half an hour on the night his wife died.

After Downing leaves, Charles, Gerald, Violet, and

Ivy form a kind of chorus (a device which Eliot uses at

intervals throughout the play) and as a group suggest the

sort of safe, proper, and useless lives which they leads

We all of us make the pretension

To be the uncommon exception
To the -universal bondage.
We like to appear in the newspapers
So long as we are in the right column.
We know about the railway accident
We know about the sudden thrombosis
And the slowly hardening artery.
We like to be thought well of by others
So that we may think well of ourselves.
And any explanation will satisfy:
We only ask to be reassured
About the noises in the cellar
And the window that should not have been open.
(242-43)
Now, however, they have been confronted with something

which they cannot comprehend and they fear they are about

to learn some wretchedly unwelcome truth. "Hold tight,

hold tight," they chant, "we must insist that the world is

what we have always taken it to be" (243). As the scene

ends all but Agatha go to dress for dinner.

The next scene begins only moments later as Mary

 256

enters the drawing room to ask Agatha's advice. Mary has

realized that Amy has kept her only so that she might have

a "tame daughter-in-law with very little money" (245) whom

Harry might take for his wife. Even after Harry married,

Amy kept her because she could not "bear to let any pro­

ject go" (245). Mary knows now that she could have left

Wishwood at any time if she had had the courage, but it

was not until Harry returned that she "felt the strength

to go" (246). Agatha answers that she cannot leave now;

before, "it would have shown courage" (246), now it would

only be running away. "Now, the courage is only the

moment," Agatha says,

And the moment is only fear and pride. I see more

than this,
More than I can tell you, more than there are words for.
At this moment, there is no decision to be made;
The decision will be made by powers beyond us
Which now and then emerge. You and I, Mary,
Are only watchers and waiters: not the easiest role.
(246)

Agatha goes to dress for dinner leaving Mary to ponder what

has just been said.

After a moment Harry enters, greets Mary more

warmly than he has any other member of the family, and soon

they are involved in a conversation about their childhood

together. Harry tells his cousin that he has returned home

thinking his life there had been simpler, and that by com­

ing home he might be able to "escape from one life to

another" (247). Instead he has found that life is all one

and there is no escape. We learn that neither of them was

 257

happy as a child; both feel that a way of life was somehow

imposed upon them, that they were part of a design, and

that there was "never any time to invent . . . fihelv/ own

enjoyments" (248). Mary says that she will not bother Harry

with her troubles, which must seem trivial to him since what

she feels is "just ordinary hopelessness" (249)• He an­

swers that she cannot know what hope is until it has been

taken from her as it has from him. She agrees that this is

an experience which she has never had, but adds that

. . . in this world another hope keeps springing

In an unexpected place, while we are unconscious of it.
You hoped for something, in coming back to Wishwood
Or you would not have come. (249)

Harry tells her that whatever it was he hoped for, he now

realizes that he will not find it at Wishwood. Mary replies:

But surely, what you say

Only proves that you expected Wishwood
To be your real self, to do something for you
That you can only do for yourself.
What you need to alter is something inside you
Which you can change anywhere— here, as well as
elsewhere. (249-50)

But Harry will not believe that she can ever understand

what it is that troubles him. As she is about to leave,

however, he asks her to remain, for he feels that their

conversation is somehow of importance. Mary tells him that

although she is not a wise person, she knows some little

truth. "You attach yourself to loathing," she says,

As others do to loving: an infatuation

That's wrong, a good that's misdirected. You deceive
yourself
Like the man convinced that he is paralysed
 258

Or like the man who believes that he is blind

While he still sees the sunlight. I know that this
is true. (250-51)

Mary's words have impressed Harry and he suddenly feels

that perhaps they can communicate with one another, that

their relationship can somehow help him out of his dilemma.

You bring me news

Of a door that opens at the end of a corridor,
Sunlight and singing; when I had felt sure
That every corridor only led to another,
Or to a blank wall; that I kept moving
Only so as not to stay still. Singing and light. (252)

Such is not to be the case, however. Suddenly the curtains

part, revealing the Eumenides standing in the embrasure of

the window. Nothing Harry can say will placate these

supernatural beings; and when Mary attempts to assure him

that there is nothing in the window, he turns on her, snarl­

ing that she is obtuse and of no use to him.

I must face them.

I must fight them. But they are stupid.
How can one fight with stupidity.
Yet I must speak to them. (253)

The scene ends as Harry rushes forward and tears the cur­

tains apart only to find the embrasure empty.

Only a few moments elapse before the final scene of

Part I begins. Ivy, Violet, Gerald, and Charles enter the

room, chatting aimlessly, and Mary leaves to dress for

dinner just as Amy enters with Dr. Warburton. After greet­

ing Harry, the doctor is reminded of his first patient, a

murderer who suffered from an incurable cancer; in particu­

lar, he remembers the man's extraordinary desire to live.

 259

Harry finds the story not unusual, and observes that it

is harder to believe in murder than it is in cancer; "cancer

is here/ The lump, the dull pain" (255-56), while the mur­

der "was there" (256); the murderer regards himself as an

innocent victim, and cannot realize that "everything is

irrevocable, the past unredeemable" (256). In order to

prevent any more discussion of this sort, Amy leads the

doctor in to dinner. After a moment's hesitation in which

Violet, Ivy, Gerald, and Charles express, in choric fashion,

their fear of something which they can sense but cannot

comprehend, they follow Amy and the doctor. Agatha is left

alone on the stage to end the scene with a kind of runic

verse:

The eye is on this house

The eye covers it
There are three together
May the three be separated
May the knot that was tied
Become unknotted
May . . .

The eye of the day time

And the eye of the night time
Be diverted from this
Till the knot is unknotted
The crossed is uncrossed
And the crooked is made straight. (257)

Part II of The Family Reunion takes place in the

library at Wishwood; it is after dinner. As the scene be­

gins, Dr. Warburton is alone with Harry, telling him that

he is glad to have this opportunity for a private conversa­

tion. Harry believes he knows what the doctor has to say

and will not listen to him. When Warburton makes it clear

 260

that it is Amy, not Harry, whom he wishes to discuss,

Harry remarks that, as usual, everything is referred back

to his mother.

When we were children, before we went to school

The rule of conduct was simply pleasing mother;

When we came back, for the school holidays,

They were not holidays, but simply a time
In which we were supposed to make up to mother
For all the weeks during which she had not seen us
Except at half-term, and seeing us then
Only seemed to make her more unhappy, and made us
Feel more guilty, and so we misbehaved
Next day at school, in order to be punished,
For punishment made us feel less guilty. Mother
Never punished us, but made us feel guilty. (258-59)

Harry is willing to discuss only one subjects he would

like to know something about his father. Warburton re­

luctantly tells him that his father and mother were never

happy together, that they separated by mutual consent, and

that his father went to live abroad and died there while

Harry was still a boy. Harry can hardly remember his

father, but he can remember the day, a "summer day of un­

usual heat" (260), when the news of his father's death

arrived; and he can remember how that night when his mother

kissed him he "felt the trap close" (261). Warburton is

unwilling to carry this discussion further; he feels that

Harry must understand that although his mother appears to

be strong, it is only her will which keeps her alive, and

she has lived only for Harry's return. For this reason,

Harry must see that nothing disturbs or excites her; and

for his own good, he must take command of Wishwood at once.

 261

John lacks the intelligence to control the family fortunes,

Warburton says, and Arthur is "rather irresponsible" (262).

Dr. Warburton's interview with Harry is abruptly

interrupted by the entrance of Winchell, a police sergeant,

who tells them that John has had an automobile accident

just outside the village; although his injuries are not

serious, he must not be moved. Just at that moment the

other members of the family enter the library. When Amy

learns of John's accident, she announces that she will go

to him at once. Warburton forbids her to leave the house,

however, and adds that he will go into the village to see

that John has proper care, and will return at once to tell

Amy of her son's condition.

After Warburton and Winchell leave, Violet upbraids

her nephew for not reacting properly to the news of his

brother's accident. Harry replies that a concussion cannot

make much difference to John or to anyone who enjoys the

kind of consciousness John enjoys. The other members of

the family are shocked, but Harry says,

It's only when they see nothing

That people can always show the suitable emotions—
And so far as they feel at all, their emotions are
suitable.
They don't understand what it is to be awake,
To be living on several planes at once
Though one cannot speak with several voices at once.
I have all of the rightminded feeling about John
That you consider appropriate. Only, that's not the
language
That I choose to be talking. I will not talk yours.
(266)

Harry suggests that Amy should rest, and mother and son
 262

leave the room. While the rest of the family are dis­

cussing John's propensity for accidents and Arthur's lack

of responsibility, a telephone call comes for Ivy. When

she returns, we learn that Arthur will also miss the family

reunion, since he has just had his driver's license revoked

for an accident which he had several months earlier. The

scene ends with the following choric speech:

In an old house there is always listening, and more

is heard than is spoken.
And what is spoken remains in the room, waiting for
the future to hear it.
And whatever happens began in the past, and presses
hard on the future.
The agony in the curtained bedroom, whether of birth
or of dying,
Gathers in to itself all the voices of the past, and
projects them into the future.

There is no avoiding these things

And we know nothing of exorcism
And whether in Argos or England
There are certain inflexible laws
Unalterable, in the nature of music.
There is nothing at all to be done about it,
There is nothing to do about anything,
And now it is nearly time for the news
We must listen to the weather report
And the international catastrophes. (270-71)

The next scene, which occurs only moments after the

end of the previous one, is devoted almost entirely to an

interview between Agatha and Harry; it is by far the most

difficult part of the play to comprehend and serves as the

climax of the action. Agatha urges Harry to explain what

he feels, and adds that he need not regard it as an explana­

tion, since he seems to be afraid that she will not under­

stand, or will understand too well. Harry says that at

 263

first, eight years ago, he felt a "sense of separation/

Of isolation unredeemable" (272). Then, during the past

year, this feeling has been replaced by a "numbness," the

"degradation of being parted from . . . /the7 self," the

"self which persisted only as an eye, seeing" (272). In

order to rid himself of this sense of unreality, he re­

turned to Wishwood, thinking that "Everything would fall

into place" (272). The Eumenides, however, have prevented

this and Harry feels he must find out why they haunt him.

He adds that since he has returned home he has found "a

misery long forgotten" (272), "the shadow of something

behind our meagre childhood,/ Some origin of wretchedness"

(273). Finally, he asks Agatha about his father.

Agatha tells him that when his parents first

married and moved to Wishwood, Amy was lonely, for the

house was isolated and for three years the marriage was

childless. Consequently, Amy insisted that one of her

sisters live with her at Wishwood. Agatha was at Oxford

at the time and came to spend one summer vacation with her

sister. As the summer passed, Agatha and Harry's father

fell in love, and Agatha can remember a "summer day of

unusual heat" (274) when their love was consummated. As

the fall came, Agatha found her lover thinking of ways to

murder his wife. Harry's father was "not suited to the role

of murderer" (274), however, and because Amy was pregnant,

Agatha convinced him to give up his plan so that the child

 264

might be saved. Agatha says:

I can take no credit for a little common sense,

He would have bungled it.
I did not want to kill you1.
You to be killed'. What were you then? only a thing
called 'life'—
Something that should have been mine, as I felt then.
Most people would not have felt that compunction
If they felt no other. But I wanted youi
If that had happened, I knew I should have carried
Death in life, death through lifetime, death in my womb.
I felt that you were in some way mine'.
And that in any case I should have no other child.
(274-75)

Harry finds that Agatha's words give meaning to things that

have seemed meaningless. He feels somehow as if his life

had only been a dream, a dream "Dreamt through me by the

minds of others" (275), and wonders if he may simply have

dreamed that he pushed his wife to her death. In a speech

which is probably the clearest single statement of the

play's theme, Agatha answers:

So I had supposed. What of it?

What we have written is not a story of detection,
Of crime and punishment, but of sin and expiation.
It is possible that you have not known what sin
You shall expiate, or whose, or why. It is certain
That the knowledge of it must precede the expiation.
It is possible that sin may strain and struggle
In its dark and instinctive birth, to come to con­
sciousness
And so find expurgation. It is possible
You are the consciousness of your unhappy family,
Its bird sent flying through the purgatorial flame.
Indeed it is possible. You may learn hereafter,
Moving alone through flames of ice, chosen
To resolve the enchantment under which we suffer. (275)

Although he cannot explain why, Harry is happy for

a moment, while Agatha is at least relieved, if not happy,

to have passed on the burden which she has carried for many
 265

years, the "burden of all the family" (276). Harry now

begins to understand something of his past, how family

affection has always been for him a kind of "formal obli­

gation" (276), how he has been forced to play a part im­

posed on him, and how he has been wounded "in a war of

phantoms/ Not by human beings— they have no more power than

I" (276).

The things I thought were real are shadows, and the real
Are what I thought were private shadows. 0 that awful
privacy
Of the insane mind'. Now I can live in public.
Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison. (276)

Just then the Eumenides again appear in the embrasure of

the window, but this time Harry is not surprised to see

them; this time they are real, outside of him, and "just

endurable" (278). Now Harry realizes that he is following

the Eumenides, they do not follow him, and he knows that

there can be "only one itinerary/ And one destination" (278).

After the Eumenides vanish, Harry tells Agatha that

he is still "befouled" (279), but that he now knows there

is only one way out of his defilement, a way that in the

end leads "to reconciliation" (279). At this moment Amy

enters, and is shocked to hear that Harry is leaving

Wishwood. He cannot explain to his mother why he must go,

nor can he explain it to anyone. The scene ends as she

asks her son where he will go and he answers:

I shall have to learn. That is still -unsettled.

I have not yet had the precise directions.
Where does one go from a world of insanity?
Somewhere on the other side of despair.
 266

To the worship in the desert, the thirst and

deprivation,
A stony sanctuary and a primitive altar,
The heat of the sun and the icy vigil,
A care over lives of humble people,
The lesson of ignorance, of incurable diseases.
Such things are possible. It is love and terror
Of what waits and wants me, and will not let me fall.
Let the cricket chirp. John shall be the master.
All I have is his. No h a m can come to him.
What would destroy me will be life for John,
I am responsible for him. Why I have this election
I do not understand. It must have been preparing
always,
And I see it was what I always wanted. Strength
demanded
That seems too much, is just strength enough given.
I must follow the bright angels. (281)

As the final scene of the play begins, Harry has

left the room and Amy is berating her sister for taking

Harry away from her as she once took Harry's father.

Agatha attempts to explain that she has not taken Harry,

that his success will be what he can make for himself, not

what Amy can make for him, and that since neither of the

women can have him, it is senseless to argue. Amy cannot

be placated, but her vindictiveness is cut short by Mary's

entrance. When Mary hears that Harry is leaving, she

pleads with Agatha to stop him. She has seen the Eumenides

herself, and she fears that Harry is in great danger.

Agatha assures her that the only danger for Harry is at

Wishwood; elsewhere there will be "agony, renunciation/

But birth and life" (284). She says that Harry has crossed

a frontier beyond which safety and danger have a different

meaning, into a world from which there is no return.

Agatha, too, has seen the Eumenides, and they have made
 267

this clear. She adds that she and Mary will no doubt

meet again in the "neutral territory" (285) between these

worlds. Mary is satisfied and is happy that Agatha will

help her find a life beyond Wishwood. Amy, however, is

sickened by the fact that everyone is leaving her, and

she declares that she will let the walls crumble about her.

Harry enters to tell his mother goodbye and to

convince her that he is "safe from normal dangers" (286).

The other members of the family have heard of Harry's de­

parture and they enter to ask him where he is going.

Although Amy answers that he is going to become a mission­

ary, Harry says:

I never said I was going to be a missionary.

I would explain, but you would none of you believe it;
If you believed it, still you would not understand.
You can't know why I'm going. You have not seen
What I have seen. . . . (287)

And on this note Harry says goodbye and leaves.

Thoughtfully, Amy watches him go and says, almost

to herself, that she has just begun to learn the truth

about things which are now too late to mend; nevertheless,

she is glad to know the truth. "I always wanted too much

for my children,/ More than life can give" (287). She

asks Gerald and Violet to help her from the room.

Just after Amy has left, Downing, Harry's chauffeur,

appears, sent by his master to retrieve a cigarette case

left on the library table. As Downing is about to leave,

Mary stops him and asks if he will promise to stay with

 268

Harry as long as Harry needs him. Downing answers that

he will, hut that he has the feeling that his master will

not need him much longer. Downing, too, it seems, has

realized that Harry is different from others:

I've always said, whatever happened to his Lordship

Was just a kind of preparation for something else.
I've no gift of language, hut I'm sure of what I mean:
We most of us seem to live according to circumstance,
But with people like him, there's something inside them
That accounts for what happens to them. . . . (288-89)

As the scene continues, we learn that Downing has also seen

the Eumenides, that he realizes Harry's departure this

evening is somehow related to them, and that, like Agatha,

he feels sure the Eumenides mean no harm to Harry.

Within moments of Downing’s exit there is a cry

from Amy's bedroom and we know from her words that she is

dying. Once more Ivy, Violet, Charles, and Gerald repeat

their fears of the unknown and acknowledge

Except for a limited number

Of strictly practical purposes
We do not know what we are doing;
And even, when you think of it,
We do not know much about thinking.
What is happening outside of the circle?

And what is being done to us?

And what are we, and what are we doing?
To each and all of these questions
There is no conceivable answer.
We have suffered far more than a personal loss—
We have lost our way in the dark.

But we must adjust ourselves to the moment: We

must do the right thing. (291-92)

They exit and Agatha and Mary return to the library, where

the maid has just placed a birthday cake with lighted

 269

candles on a table in the center of the room. The play

ends as Agatha and Mary walk single file around the cake,

at each revolution blowing out a few candles until the room

is in total darkness, and chanting a final incantatory verse.

A curse is slow in coming

To complete fruition
It cannot be hurried
And it cannot be delayed

A curse is a power
Not subject to reason
Each curse has its course
Its own way of expiation

This way the pilgrimage

Of expiation
Round and round the circle
Completing the charm
So the knot be unknotted
The cross be uncrossed
The crooked be made straight
And the curse be ended
By intercession
By pilgrimage
By those who depart
In several directions
For their own redemption
And that of the departed—
May they rest in peace. (292-93)

It is obvious that Eliot uses the details of the

Atreidae myth with great freedom. His most obvious borrow­

ing of legendary materials appears, of course, in his use

of the Eumenides. In spite of the fact that Eliot has

written an essentially Naturalistic play, he has used the

Eumenides without any attempt to adjust them to the real­

istic genre. They appear twice, and although they do not

speak nor is there a stage direction describing their physi­

cal appearance, they seem to have been lifted whole from

 270

classic Greek drama.1 Of the eight dramatists whose works

have been discussed here, only one other, LeGallienne,

chose to bring the Eumenides on stage; this fact is par­

ticularly interesting since the works of these two play­

wrights are so different. Of the other six playwrights,

v
only three chose to portray a haunted Orestes, and all of

these have substituted some kind of mental illness for the

part which the Furies play in the myth.

Eliot's use of the supernatural, the curse on the

House of Monchensey, is particularly significant since all

of the other playwrights whose works we have so far con­

sidered have tended to reduce the supernatural elements of

the story. Several of these plays make allusions to the

curse, and O'Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra attempts to

employ a "psychological fate," but in none of them is the

action significantly affected by the supernatural. Although

Eliot may fail to make clear the causes of the curse, he

does persuade us that the curse on the house plays an im­

portant part in his work.

The other mythic elements which appear in The Family

Elliot is now fully aware of the production problems

which his use of the Eumenides presents. In his essay
Poetry and Drama, he describes in an amusing fashion some of
the different methods which producers have used in order to
present the Eumenides on the stage. Eliot concludes that
none of these have been acceptable, and addss "They must,
in future, be omitted from the cast, and be understood to
be visible only to certain of my characters, and not to the
audience" (T. S. Eliot, Poetry and Drama /Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1951/> PP* 36-37).
 271

Reunion are considerably altered and therefore much less

obvious. Harry is a kind of twentieth-century Orestes

hounded by the not-so-twentieth-century Furies. Like the

mythic Orestes, Harry had been designated by fate to expi­

ate an ancestral curse, but Harry's precise relationship

to it is somewhat different. Harry believes that he has

murdered his wife by pushing her into the sea from the deck

of an ocean liner, but the play never makes clear whether

he has actually done so. He has, at least, willed his

wife's death, and in Christian terms this is no less a sin.

Furthermore, the play suggests, albeit somewhat ambiguously,

that the sin (whether it be the deed or the desire) is re­

lated to Harry's childhood. But The Family Reunion fails to

explain whether Harry's sin is a result of his desire to

punish his mother for the manner in which she treated his

father (this would, of course, make Harry's wife a kind of

mother-surrogate and would more closely parallel the

Atreidae legend), or whether it is the legacy of Harry's

father's desire to murder Amy, Harry's mother. Perhaps we

are to assume that both of these causes are involved.

Finally, Harry learns, as does Orestes, the way in which

he must expiate the curse, although the manner of the expia­

tion differs. Interestingly enough, Harry actually does

commit Orestes' crime at the end of the play, for his leav­

ing Wishwood is indirectly the cause of his mother's death.

Other mythic parallels in The Family Reunion are

 272

even less apparent. Amy has the kind of willful strength

and determination which is characteristic of Clytemnestra,

and she dies as a result of an act of her son, hut, al­

though she does not love her husband and finally forces

him to go abroad, she can hardly be blamed for his death.

Agatha helps Harry learn how to expiate the curse, just as

Athena provides relief for Orestes. Downing, Harry's

chauffeur-valet, is, as William G. McCollom points out,

"a Pylades declasse";'*’ and in the final scene, Grover

2
Smith suggests, "assumes the role of a guardian Apollo."

Finally, Harry's father desires to kill his pregnant wife,

a crime which would also destroy his son; in the broadest

terms this parallels Agamemnon's murder of Iphigenia, his

eldest child.

It is impossible to fully explicate The Family

Reunion. It is clear that the play deals with a young

man's attempt to expiate a family curse and, in the pro­

cess, to find his own salvation. The attempt is a success­

ful one* the young man gains wisdom through his suffering,

he learns the secret of his past, and apparently discovers

the relationship of his past life to his present. As a re­

sult of this realization, he is able to go forth, convinced

^William G. McCollom, Tragedy (New York: The

Macmillan Co., 1957), p. 237.
2
Grover Smith, Jr., p. 203.
 273

that he has found the way toward salvation. This seems,

however, to be the analytical limit. Many different

interpretations of the play exist; each can be supported

by reference to the play, yet none can incorporate all the

details in a coherent analysis, and each simply disregards

certain elements of the play. This very diversity of in­

terpretations suggests the major weakness of the work:

Eliot fails to give his drama any consistently meaningful

theme. This, in turn, is the result of three major defects

in the play. If, as E. Martin Browne has suggested, the

trouble with most modern poetic plays is that their "range

of overtones is so limited,"'1’ Eliot errs in the opposite

direction by failing to limit the meaning of the materials

which he uses. Or, as Grover Smith suggests:

It was probably overbold to use a ready-made theme,

having psychological, anthropological, mythological,
and religious meanings for a play where all of these
vie with one another on the very surface. Most of the
difficulties come from inadequate differentiation of
levels, from confused mixtures of the literal and the
symbolic.2

Secondly, Eliot fails to give the action of his drama any

social context, and consequently there is no opportunity to

"probe the social and ethical implications of his

^E. Martin Browne, T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for His

Seventieth Birthday, p. 63. Browne means, I presume, that
a good poetic drama has several levels of meaning.
p
Grover Smith, Jr., p. 212.
 274

hero's . . . conduct."^ And most important, Eliot has

found no way to dramatize whatever meaning he is able to

give his material. Or, as Sean Lucy has commented,

"almost the whole play sets out to explain rather than to

2 ^
express and develop" the plight of its hero.

Maud Bodkin, in her essay The Quest for Salvation

in an Ancient and a M o d e m Play, says that the

burden of several criticisms of . . . /The Family

Reunion/ ha-s been that Greek, or 'pagan', thoughx
and Christian cannot mix. I have wished to bring
out in this comparison something of the significance
I feel to be present in oust this 'mixing' . . . .
It seems as though in writing a play so permeated by
awareness of a spiritual world, yet with no direct
reference to Christian forms of faith, Eliot had
meant to avoid any unnecessary limiting of the com­
munication of his thought. • . . The paradoxes of
the Gospel are not Christian in the sense that worship
in a Roman or Anglican Church is Christian. The move­
ment of the human spirit discovering, through stress
of bitter experience, a way from one order of life to
another, obeying a Divine voice calling from the un­
known, is a movement distinctive to no church, pagan
or Christian, but communicable to spirits.awakening
within or without the bond of any church.

There is much here with which one must agree. Even a par­

tial knowledge of Eliot and his works would lead to the

assumption that the underlying philosophy of The Family

•^Scott, p. 230.
2
Sean Lucy, T. S. Eliot and the Idea of Tradition
(New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., I960), p. 194.

^Although I will attempt to isolate each of the

defects and discuss each separately, they are so closely
related that a certain amount of overlapping is inevitable.

^Maud Bodkin, The Quest for Salvation in an Anci-

ent and a M o d e m Play (London: Uxfor3TUnIvar3Tty~~Preaa^
1941), pp. 38-39.
 275

Reunion is essentially Christian, even though this may not

he obvious in the play itself. Furthermore, pagan or

mythic materials can, if carefully handled, support

Christian doctrine in the broadest sense of that term.

To acknowledge that Christian and pagan materials can be

successfully "mixed" in an artistic work is not, however,

to assume that a real fusion will necessarily take place.

Eliot has not, in my opinion, handled his mythic materials

in such a way that they make clear the essentially Christian

theme of the drama. As Bodkin points out, Eliot has

attempted to avoid limiting "the communication of his

thought" by omitting any direct reference to "Christian

forms of faith," or as Nathan Scott has said, Eliot had

attempted "the dramatization of the religious problem with­

out visibly relying on a structure of d o g m a . A l t h o u g h

Eliot handles his material in this way in order to disarm

the modern, essentially agnostic audience, by avoiding ex­

plicit reference to Christian doctrine he unwittingly

pushes to the foreground the ritualistic and psychological

implications of his material. The effect is that the

Christian doctrine is not supported by the mythic materials

but seems to be merely a background element intended to sup­

port other levels of meaning in the play. This is further

complicated by the fact that the realistic level of the

drama is never adequately adjusted or related to the

■^Scott, p. 231.
 276

symbolic level.

Eliot's handling of the Eumenides is one of the

more obvious examples of his failure to relate the various

levels of meaning in The Family Reunion. Eliot is aware

of this defect and has admitted that the Eumenides "never

succeed in being either Greek goddesses or modern spooks."’*'

In his essay Poetry and Drama he admits that their failure

2
is symptomatic of the "deepest flaw" of the play, the

"failure of adjustment between the Greek story and the

modern situation."3 The problem is, however, even more

complex than Eliot seems to realize. The Eumenides fail

not only because they seem out of place in the essentially

realistic world of the play, although this is certainly an

important defect, but also because what they represent is

not consistently clear. At the beginning of The Family

Reunion we accept the Eumenides (who are initially the

Furies in spite of their title) as legendary avengers of

family blood-guilt; we may also accept them on a Christian

level as a symbol of Harry's own guilt, and these two mean­

ings can be realized simultaneously. By the end of the

4
play, however, the Furies have become "bright angels"

which Harry feels he must follow rather than avoid, but

"hsiiot, Poetry and Drama, p. 37.

^Ibid., p. 36.

3Ibid.

^Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, p. 281.

 277

this transformation is never explained. The two scenes in

which the Eumenides appear, one "between Harry and his

cousin Mary, the other "between Harry and Aunt Agatha, are,

as Matthiessen observes, "very obscure,"^ and this obscurity

is even more apparent when we learn, from a letter which

Eliot wrote to his producer, E. Martin Browne, what the

playwright wanted the scenes to convey.

The scene with Mary is meant to bring out, as I am

aware it fails to, the conflict inside him ^Sarr^7
between . . . repulsion for Mary as a woman, and the
attraction which the normal part of him that is left,
feels toward her personally for the first time. This
is the first time, since his marriage (1there was no
ecstasy*) that he has been attracted towards any
woman. The attraction glimmers for a moment in his
mind, half-consciously as a possible 'way of escape,'
and the Furies (for the Furies are divine instruments,
not simply hell-hounds) come in the nick of time to
warn him away from his evasion— though at that moment
he misunderstands their function. Now, this attraction
towards Mary has stirred him up, but, owing to his men­
tal state, is incapable of developing; therefore he
finds a refuge in an ambiguous relation— the attraction,
half of a son and half of a lover, to Agatha, who re­
ciprocates in somewhat the same way. And this gives
the cue for the second appearance of the Furies, more
patently in their role of divine messengers, to let
him know clearly that the only way out is purgation
and holiness. They become exactly 'hounds of heaven.'
And Agatha understands this clearly, though Harry only
understands it yet in flashes.

Eliot's comments indicate, I think, how far these scenes

are from realizing the meaning which their creator wished

them to convey. Perhaps, as Matthiessen suggests, in the

"^F. 0. Matthiessen, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot

(3rd ed.; New Yorks Oxford University tress, 1^59)» p. 16»7.

2T. S. Eliot, "Letter to E. Martin Browne," quoted

by Matthiessen, pp. 167-68.
 278

scene with Agatha, Eliot finds "an equivalent for the

transformation of the Furies through the difference be­

tween Hell and Purgatory,"1 and "through the acceptance

2
of the purifying fire," he has attempted to tie the

Eumenides to his pattern of thought, but "he has hardly

been explicit enough to take an audience with him."3

The Eumenides present still another difficulty.

We must assume that the transformation of the Furies takes

place primarily within the mind of Harry. If such is the

case, why are these supernatural sisters visible to other

members of the family? This question is still appropriate

if, instead of the above interpretation, we assume that the

Eumenides are the manifestation of some abnormal mental

state.

Perhaps Eliot's failure to treat the Eumenides in

some consistently meaningful way as well as his more gen­

eral difficulty in relating the various levels of meaning

in his play can be explained by remembering what Eliot him­

self wrote about one of his earlier dramatic works, Sweeney

Agonistes. It was his intention in that play, he says,

to have one character whose sensibilities and intelli­

gence should be on the plane of the most sensitive and
intelligent members of the audience; his speeches
should be addressed to them as much as to the other

Matthiessen, p. 168.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.
 279

personages in the play— or rather, should be addressed

to the latter who were to be material, literal-minded
and visionless, with the consciousness of being over­
heard by the former. There was to be an understanding
between this protagonist and a small number of the
audience, while the rest of the audience would share
the responses of the other characters in the play.

This sounds as much a description of the schematic arrange­

ment for The Family Reunion as for Sweeney Agonistes.

C. L. Barber's objection to this rather extraordinary plan,

and his demonstration of the difficulties which it causes

are very much to the points

Such a discontinuity of levels really works counter

to the aim of including the whole audiences most of
the audience by the author's deliberate plan are not
expected to understand the protagonist'. . . . In
Eliot's scheme . . . the higher meaning is set over
against the obvious and tangible surroundings. The
irrelevance for Eliot of what in the m o d e m world is
tangible and obvious is in the last analysis what makes
such an opposition necessary. The visible life and the
traditions of Shakespeare's time provided him with ma­
terials for plots at once obvious to the simplest audi­
tor and capable of containing the playwright's higher
meanings. Eliot's meaning cannot in this direct fashion
find a body in contemporary life and symbols, with the
result that when he uses a m o d e m setting he must set
spiritual in opposition to material. As it works out
in The Family Reunion, what is material remains in-
significant, while what is spiritual is not adequately
objectified. And the dramatizing of the opposition
amounts at times to dramatizing the writer's diffi­
culty of expression, his difficulty in making "spiri­
tual" meaning concrete. His isolation from the greater
part of his audience becomes part of the play as the
isolation of his protagonist from its "visionless"
characters.

■^T. S. Eliot, quoted by Barber, T. S. Eliot: A

Selected Critique, p. 420.

2Barber, T. S. Eliot: A Selected Critique, p. 420.

 280

The above comment leads me to the second defect

which I find in The Family Reunion: Eliot fails to give

his theme of salvation any social context, he fails to

probe the social implications of the action, and therefore

Harry's experience remains strictly personal and private

and can have little meaning for us. Eliot attempts at

certain moments to give his drama a wider scope; for exam­

ple, in the first scene Harry says that it is not "my

conscience,/ Not my mind, that is diseased, but the world

I have to live in" (236). And later in the play he adds

that his life

. . . begins to seem just part of some huge disaster,

Some monstrous mistake and aberration
Of all men, of the world, which I cannot put in order.
(268)

Neither of these statements is ever developed, however, and

they remain, as Burian suggests, the "product of a psycho­

logical or mystical trauma more than . . . a reasoned or

balanced observation of life.""*" Moreover, any social impli­

cations which the material might have are destroyed by

Harry's inability to communicate his experience. Through­

out the play Harry repeats such statements as "If I tried

to explain, you could never understand" (250), or "I would

explain, but you would none of you believe it;/ If you be­

lieved it, still you would not understand" (287). In fact,

this sort of line becomes almost a leitmotiv. Agatha, the

one person who seems to have some inkling of Harry's plight,

^Burian, p. 390.
 281

might be of help, but she is as reluctant to explain

things as her nephew. Since the play is never explicit

about the nature of Harry's experience, we can hardly be

expected to find it meaningful for us or for society in

general. Members of the audience cannot be blamed if, when

the play is concluded, they echo Charles' statement of a

few moments before:

It's very odd,

But I am beginning to feel, just beginning to feel
That there is something I could understand, if I were
told it. (288)

In The Achievement of T. S. Eliot, P. 0. Matthiessen

compares Eliot's earlier work, Murder in the Cathedral, to

The Family Reunion and concludes that the author managed to

"dramatize permanent issues"^* in the former play but failed

in the latter work because he had not "grasped and inter-

2
preted a social context." Matthiessen concludes:

Perhaps . . . /Eliot’s7 increasing sense of the degrada­

tion and decay of the m o d e m world had gradually numbed
him against any strong feeling for such immediate
issues as Becket had faced. Although he wrote an essay
about the idea of a Christian society, when confronted
with one of the sharpest-drawn crises of our own time,
he replied to a questionnaire on loyalist Spain:
'While I am naturally sympathetic, I still feel con­
vinced that it is best that at least a few men of let­
ters should remain isolated, and take no part in these
collective activities.' One wonders whether such de­
tachment could be possible for any dramatist who would
meet the exacting standards held up by Granville-Barker:
that the dramatic art in its fully developed form 'is
the working out . . . not of the self-realization of the
individual, but of society itself.'3

Matthiessen, p. 171.
2Ibid.
3ibid.f pp. 172-73.
 282

The third, and most serious, defect of The Family

Reunion is that whatever meaning it manages to convey to

an audience comes not through dramatic action, but through

statement. Too frequently the play tends to explain rather

than to demonstrate. This tendency makes an already con­

fusing thematic treatment even more obscure for it fails to

present the issues of the play in terms which are dramatical­

ly or emotionally meaningful.

There is no struggle on the part of the protagonist

and little conflict of any kind in the play. Harry tells

us of his anguish, but the playwright does not provide him

with any situation in which he may demonstrate it. Further­

more, if the central action of the drama is Harry's search

for knowledge about his past, he does not struggle for

this knowledge. He simply asks the right question and the

necessary information is delivered to him whole. Conflict

exists between Harry and Amy, but Harry tends to simply

dismiss his mother as he dismisses most of his other rela­

tives. Amy struggles, but her struggle has little meaning

since she has nothing to struggle against. Nevertheless,

she is the most dramatically successful character in the

play, the only one about whom we gain some insight as a

result of an action in which she is involved.

In his article, "Strange Gods at T. S. Eliot's

The Family Reunion," C. L. Barber comments upon the play's

failure to embody its theme within the action, and ties

together its three major thematic flaws.

 283

When the verse strives to express the significant

issues at the heart of the play, it suffers from the
failure to embody the spiritual action in immediate
dramatic terms. Isolated as he is, the hero has to
express the crucial reality of the play almost single-
handed, aided only by the cryptic remarks of his
Cassandra-like Aunt Agatha. . . . Hence to reach the
real issues, the discourse must move away from the
immediate circumstances in which it is spoken instead
of rising out of them. The contribution of the dra­
matic situation is merely negative, to emphasize by
its irrelevance or unimportance the difficulty of com­
municating what really matters. The result is that
much of the best poetry is not dramatic poetry, and
suffers from the lack of a dramatic context to give it
precision and receive its impact. . . .
The material setting does serve one purpose: by
insisting on its unreality Harry can express indirectly
the intensity of what is real for him. . . . This in­
direct method of expression is easily worn out, how­
ever, and Eliot uses it with a wanton persistence which
suggests that some of Harry's exasperation is his own.
The fact that the same dismissing tendency appears in
the handling of the aunt and uncle strengthens this
impression that the writer has failed to keep an ob­
jective attitude towards his hero. . . . This device
of turning the artistic process back upon itself soon
reaches a point of diminishing return. Of course, one
of the things Eliot wants to convey is just the diffi­
culty of communicating the terrible fact of super­
natural retribution his hero is discovering. But he
does not give his audience an adequate point of vantage
outside Harry, with the result that they are as uncer­
tain as the hero about "what he is discovering and to
what it leads."
One is reminded of Eliot's remarks in Hamlet and
his Problems about the lack of an objective correlative
in Hamlet. 7 . . All this acute criticism applies di-
rectly to The Family Reunion. Eliot has deliberately
set out "to express xhe inexpressibly horrible," the
"intense feeling, ecstatic or terrible, without an ob­
ject or exceeding its object," which he felt to be the
underlying emotion in Hamlet.-. . . In attempting in
his latest play /The Family Reunion7 what "proved too
much" for Shakespeare, iie evidently thought that he
had discovered in the Eumenides the objective equiva­
lent Shakespeare lacked, just as he has himself found
in the Christian supernatural the object of this in­
tense feeling without a human object. . . .
The Eumenides fail as an objective correlative be­
cause Harry's relation to them exists exclusively on a
symbolic level which cannot be adequately dramatized
 284

in social terms. . .

Eliot's characters, like his theme, are rarely

realized in dramatic terms, and most of the major charac­

ters of the drama lack sufficient stature to be meaningful.

Harry, for example, not only lacks any heroic proportions,

but is drawn in such a manner that we can neither sympathize

nor identify with him. Eliot himself admits that his hero
2
now strikes him "as an insufferable prig." Or as Lucy says,

Harry "wears his curse like a nasty badge of superiority

and uses it as an excuse for being completely selfish and

unforgivably rude to people who are only, however ignorant-

ly, trying to help him."^ Much of the time Harry's behavior

is clearly neurotic. There is certainly no Christian char­

ity in his attitude toward his aunts and uncles, and his

departure from Wishwood, after he has been warned by Dr.

Warburton that the slightest shock might mean his mother's

death, seems heartless. No acceptable justification is

offered for Harry's conduct; as Matthiessen says, "Though

Agatha may tell Harry that 'Love compels cruelty/ To those

who do not understand love,' Eliot has not succeeded in

persuading us that Harry has anything of the overmastering

love of God that alone could give sanction to the mystic's

^Barber, T. S. Eliot: A Selected Critique, pp.

424-28.
Eliot, Poetry and Drama, p. 38.

^Lucy, pp. 195-96.

 285

terrible renunciation."^ Furthermore, there is nothing in

Harry's background which convinces us that he can profit

from the future which he faces, or that he "can undergo the

2
discipline of suffering in any broadly meaningful sense."

The only character of The Family Reunion who is

successfully realized is Harry's mothex; Amy. Eliot's

statement that she now strikes him as the "only complete

human being in the play"^ is acceptable, even though it is

difficult to have any particular sympathy for her. Never­

theless, her determination to make the world what she

wishes it to be does give her a certain stature which none

of the other characters have. In addition, she struggles

physically to obtain her objective, as Harry does not, and

we are shown at least a part of this struggle. Finally, in

spite of the fact that Amy is defeated at the end, she has

gone at least part way toward a realization of why she

failed.

Eliot, like most of the other dramatists whose plays

have been considered in this study, uses certain conventions

generally associated with classic Greek drama, and, like

most of the others, uses them ■unsuccessfully. The most ob­

vious of these is the chorus which speaks at intervals

throughout the play. Eliot's chorus differs from the

■^latthiessen, p. 171.

^Ibid., p. 170.

^Eliot, Poetry and Drama, p. 38.

 286

typical Greek chorus in that it does not illuminate the

meaning of the protagonist's struggle, but comments upon

the materialistic, visionless, unspiritual level of the

life upon which the members of the chorus live, and pro­

vides a contrast between this level of life and the higher

spiritual plane upon which Harry lives. The audience can

easily understand the criticism which the chorus conveys,

but may find it difficult to accept the manner in which the

chorus is presented. The chorus seems to be at odds with

the realistic genre of the play, particularly since it is

made up of individuals who at one moment behave as charac­

ters in a naturalistic drama while at the next moment they

are chanting away with three other individuals in a more or

less formalistic manner; and it is so obviously self-

critical that we cannot accept this kind of speech from

characters who are not only members of a chorus but who

have independent lives of their own as well.

Amy's death off-stage may also be partially a re­

sult of the play's adoption of Greek dramatic conventions,

but this would be difficult to prove. In addition, Eliot

gives her a single-line death-speech which faintly resembles

the off-stage death cries of characters in classic drama.

Eliot's stature as a poet demands a more thorough

investigation of his use of language in The Family Reunion

than a study of this kind can permit. I will attempt,

therefore, no more than a brief description of the verse

 287

and a general evaluation of its effectiveness as dramatic

dialogue.

Eliot has stated that he worked out for The Family

Reunion a verse line which he has continued to employ in

his later plays,

a line of varying length and varying number of sylla­

bles, with a caesura and three stresses. The caesura
and the stresses may come at different places, almost
anywhere in the line; the stresses may be close to­
gether or well separated by light syllables, the only
rule being that there must be one stress on one side
of the caesura and two on the other.

What Eliot says about the metric pattern is not, however,

strictly true, or, if we assume it to be true, we must scan

the poetry in something other than the traditional manner.

At least two critics have made essentially the same observa­

tion. Sean Lucy suggests that "the 'ghost of a simple

metre1 lurking in the background is that of an anapaestic

line, usually having four feet, to which is sometimes con­

trasted a line of inverted, that is to say dactylic,

2
feet." And Grover Smith makes the following observations

Eliot has described his prosody . . . as calling for

"a line of varying length and varying number of syl­
lables, with a caesura and three stresses." Unlike
the traditional metric principle normal to Murder in
the Cathedral, where stress means all syllabic accentu­
ation, this considers only the dominant stresses in
each speech phrase, leaving unnoticed any inferior
accents not ranking as main stresses. The new princi­
ple requires new scansion. (When scanned conserva­
tively, many lines . . . in The Family Reunion and in
The Cocktail Party reveal an underlying free blank-

^l i o t , Poetry and Drama, pp. 32-33.

^Lucy, p. 207.
 288

verse measure or else the four-stress rhythm of

Everyman.)~L

My own feeling is that the four-stress line is dominant

and that the line is handled with such variety that it is

difficult to discern any traditional pattern of metric

feet. The following passage demonstrates my reading of

a small portion of the play:

X X X X
I shall have to learn. This is still unsettled.
X X X X
I have not yet had the precise direction.
X X X X
Where does one go from a world of insanity?
X X X X
Somewhere on the other side of despair.
X X X X
To the worship in the desert, the thirst and deprivation,
X X X X
A stony sanctuary and a primitive altar,
X X X X
The heat of the sun and the icy vigil,
X X X X
A care over lives of humble people,
X X X X
The lesson of ignorance, of incurable diseases.
X X X X
Such things are possible. It is love and terror
X X X X
Of what waits and wants me, and will not let me fall.
(281)
Although Eliot uses his verse line with considerable

freedom, it is generally well controlled; it has a wide

range of tempo, and Eliot makes an attempt to adjust the

line to the character who speaks it. As a result the lines

of Harry, Agatha and Mary have an essentially different

sound from those of the other aunts and uncles. But beyond

this, it seems to me that Eliot does very little to adjust

trover Smith, Jr., p. 213.

 289

his language to the demands of the theatre. The metaphors

are often confusing, and the lines contain many allusions

which the audience will not recognize. Even the diction

becomes troublesome at times. The following passages, for

example, might be at home in a lyric poem, but they are

hardly appropriate as dramatic verse:

The bright colour fades

Together with the unrecapturable emotion,
The glow upon the world, that never found its object;
And the eye adjusts itself to a twilight
Where the dead stone is seen to be batrachian,
The aphyllous branch ophidian. (249)

There are hours when there seems to be no past or

future,
Only a present moment of pointed light
When you want to burn. When you stretch out your hand
To the flames. They only come once,
Thank God, that kind. Perhaps there is another kind,
I believe, across a whole Thibet of broken stones
That lie, fang up, a lifetime's march. I have
believed this. (274)

As Grover Smith says,

The actors have to speak lines often so overburdened

with cryptically associative images that no audience
can be expected to follow the meaning. The poetry
is not abstract: that is its whole trouble. It is
too symbolically concrete, too imagistic. Phrases
like "The unexpected crash of the iron cataract,"
"The bright colour fades," "the bird sits on the
broken chimney" are good in themselves but are not
closely relevant; they are "objective correlatives"
for emotion that an audience wants to see justified
in the plot. The connotative language should inte­
grate with the action. Eliot's old methods of sym­
bolism are not public enough for drama.1

The Family Reunion, like William Alfred's Agamemnon,

properly belongs to the last of the four categories of

^"Grover Smith, Jr., p. 213.

 290

plays included in this chapter. While the action of most

Atreidae dramas so far considered has tended to remain

within the outlines of the legendary story, The Family

Reunion, like Agamemnon, is essentially a new play which

parallels the myth in a very limited way. Without the

Eumenides, many readers might easily miss the play's debt

to classic mythology.

Eliot's drama, with its emphasis on the mystic and

symbolic levels of meaning and its focus on the salvation

of the hero, recalls the works of Jeffers and Rexroth; and

all three authors are more successful poets than dramatists.

The Family Reunion also demonstrates certain tendencies

which seem to be typical of nearly all the plays in this

chapter, particularly in its psychological, essentially

realistic approach to character, and in the fact that the

action seems -unresolved. However, Eliot retains the super­

natural framework of the myth, and focuses on the masculine

agent (although it should be remembered that his only truly

dramatic character is a woman).

Finally, The Family Reunion reveals certain defects

which are characteristic of the plays studied here. It

fails to convey any meaningful theme, partially because

Eliot cannot adequately relate the various levels of mean­

ing, and more importantly because he does not integrate his

thematic materials with the action. The characters of The

Family Reunion are equally without significance because for

the most part they are not dramatically realized, and

 291

because they have insufficient stature. Eliot is also

guilty of using Greek dramatic conventions without satis­

factorily adapting them to the action. Finally, Eliot's

language, although poetically effective, fails as dramatic

dialogue and does little to add to the artistic merits of

the play.
CHAPTER III: THE PHAEDRA-HIPPOLYTUS MYTH AND DRAMAS
 Part 1: The Phaedra-Hippolytus Myth

As was the case in my analysis of the Atreidae

dramas, a study of the twentieth-century English and

American plays based on the Phaedra-Hippolytus myth must

be preceded by an examination of the myth itself. Once

again we turn to contemporary dictionaries and handbooks

of Greek and Roman mythology for the details of the legend.

Fortunately, the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus is much

shorter and contains far fewer variants than the Atreidae

myth.

The Phaedra-Hippolytus myth is a part of that

large body of legendary materials which relates the ex­

ploits of one of the most famous of mythological heroes,

Theseus. Some time after Theseus became king of Athens,

he joined Heracles in his expedition against the Amazons.

In the course of their adventures, Theseus kidnapped the

Amazonian queen, Hippolyte, or her Sister Antiope,^ and

returned to Athens with her. In the following year Antiope

bore Theseus a child, a boy named Hippolytus. Shortly

thereafter the Amazons invaded the Athenian kingdom in

order to rescue the sister of their queen; Antiope,

^Antiope is more frequently mentioned.

293
 294

however, had fallen in love with Theseus and so fought at

his side against the forces of her homeland. At length

the Athenians triumphed, but not before an Amazonian

arrow had pierced the heart of Antiope.^

Several years later Theseus formed an alliance

with Deucalion, who had become the king of Crete at the

death of his father Minos. In order to make the alliance

more secure, Deucalion gave his sister Phaedra to Theseus

in marriage. The couple returned to Athens and within a

2
few years Phaedra presented her husband with two sons.

Hippolytus, Theseus’ son by Antiope, had been sent

as a child to Troezen to be raised by his grandfather

Pittheus, or by his uncles. When he grew to manhood,

Hippolytus built a temple to Artemis, the goddess of

chastity and of the hunt, and worshipped that goddess to

the exclusion of all other immortals. His devotion to

Artemis repudiated the power of Aphrodite, the goddess of

love, and she determined to punish Hippolytus for his fail­

ure to recognize her powers. When Hippolytus returned to

■^A variant of the legend suggests that Theseus did

not carry off Antiope but captured her when the Athenians
turned back the Amazonian invasion of Athens, and later
married her.
2
Theseus had first seen Phaedra as a child. When,
on his first visit to Crete, he had stolen Ariadne, the
daughter of Minos, Phaedra had accompanied Theseus and her
elder sister to Naxos. Later Phaedra returned to Crete and
there grew to be a beautiful young woman. Theseus had
heard of her charms and was anxious to make her his wife
for he believed she would be as lovely as Ariadne had been.
 295

Athens in order to take part in the celebration of the

Elusian mysteries, Phaedra saw her stepson for the first

time and, as a result of Aphrodite's desire for revenge,

fell in love with him.^

When the religious rites had been completed,

Hippolytus returned to Troezen. Shortly thereafter Phaedra

journeyed to that region, either because she accompanied

her husband there on a visit to his kinsmen, or because

Theseus had gone on an expedition to the Underworld,

leaving Phaedra to do as she pleased with her time. Each

day Phaedra secretly watched Hippolytus exercise, jabbing

the pin of a brooch which she wore into the leaves of a

nearby myrtle tree in order to control the passion which

she felt. Although she confided her desire to no one, at

length her nurse, noticing that her mistress ate and slept

poorly, guessed the truth. Believing that Hippolytus was

no different from the young men which she had known, the

Phaedra was not the first of her family to manifest

unusual sexual desires. Before Phaedra was bora, Poseidon
had sent her father, Minos, King of Crete, a magnificent
white bull which the King had promised to sacrifice to that
god. "But Minos hated to slay the handsome creature and
sacrificed another bull in its place. Poseidon punished
Minos for this breach of his oath by causing Pasiphae
^Phaedra's mother/ to fall in love with the bull. Pasiphae
confessed her bizarre passion to Daedalus, the marvelous
smith and builder who was living in Crete at that time. He
built her a wooden image in the shape of a cow and made it
possible for her to enter the structure and consort with
the white bull. As a result of this union she produced the
monstrous Minotaur, half-man and half-bull." (Catherine B.
Avery /ed//, The New Century Classical Handbook /New Yorks
Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1962/, p. 823)•
 296

nurse encouraged Phaedra to reveal her feelings to her

stepson. After some hesitation, Phaedra agreed, and either

by means of a letter, or by a message which the nurse de­

livered orally, Phaedra disclosed to Hippolytus her love

for him and invited him to share her bed.

Hippolytus was horrified by the revelation of his

stepmother's true feelings, and in his anger he destroyed

the letter which she had sent, his only evidence of the

Queen's passion. He bitterly reproached Phaedra and cursed

all women; then, feeling that he must no longer remain in

the palace, he went into the forest to live until his

father should return to Troezen.

Phaedra, fearing that Hippolytus would inform his

father of her desires and thus besmirch her honor, wrote a

letter addressed to Theseus in which she accused Hippolytus

of violating her; then she hanged herself."^ When Theseus

returned to Troezen he read his dead wife's message, called

Hippolytus before him and accused him of dishonoring

Phaedra. He then banished the young man from the kingdom

without allowing his son to answer these charges. In addi­

tion, Theseus called on his father Poseidon to grant one of

the three wishes which that god had bestowed upon him

^A variant of the myth claims that Phaedra wrote

no letter, but instead waited until her husband returned to
Troezen and then openly accused her stepson of raping her.
This version adds that Phaedra committed suicide only after
Hippolytus had died and his innocence had been revealed to
his father.
 297

earlier in his life; he asked the god to destroy Hippolytus.

As Hippolytus left Troezen he drove along the edge

of a high cliff overlooking the sea. Poseidon, seeing his

opportunity to satisfy Theseus' request, sent a great wave

toward the coast and on the crest of the wave appeared a

huge hull, or, according to another version of the myth, a

sea monster. The horses which pulled Hippolytus' chariot

were frightened by the animal, reared backwards, and

swerved from the road. Either because the reins caught on

the branches of a fig tree at the side of the road or be­

cause the axle of the chariot struck the tree, the vehicle

upset and Hippolytus became entangled in the reins and was

dragged to his death.

Too late Theseus learned of his son's innocence,

either because Phaedra's nurse could no longer withstand

the pangs of conscience and confessed the truth about her

mistress, or because Artemis wished to absolve Hippolytus

of any crime. A variant of the legend adds that Theseus

and his son were reconciled just before Hippolytus died.

One version of the myth claims that Hippolytus and

Phaedra were buried beside one another in Troezen, near

the myrtle tree whose leaves had been scarred by the pin of

Phaedra's brooch. A second version suggests, however, that

Artemis refused to allow Hippolytus to die. She transported

his spirit to Tartarus and there demanded that Asclepius

restore the young man to life. With the help of certain

 298

herbs, Asclepius granted the request, hut since it was

against divine law for one dead to return to life, Artemis

disguised Hippolytus, wrapped him in a cloud, and took him

to Italy. There, for his protection, she changed his name

to Virbius and made a home for him in a sacred grove in

Aricia. After some time, she granted him permission to

marry the nymph Egeris.

 Part 2: The Phaedra-Hippolytus Dramas

No classic myth has been used as frequently or

with as much diversity by English-speaking playwrights of

our century as the Atreidae myth. In my analyses of the

dramas that follow, I have, therefore, made no attempt to

divide these works into four distinct categories as I did

the plays examined in the previous chapter. The smaller

number of works and the more restricted scope of handling

the legendary materials precludes such structuring. I have,

of course, continued to consider the degree of freedom with

which each author treats the myth, and I have retained the

practice of placing the dramas in an order which moves from

the most literal handling of the legend to the freest use

of the classic story.^

It seems appropriate to note here Robert Lowell's

recent and beautiful translation of Racine's Ph&dre. The
play is, of course, a translation, not a re-working of the
myth, and as such cannot properly be included in this study.
Nevertheless, Lowell's verse is so much his own, so remote
from Racine's in all respects except excellence that it
deserves some mention.

299
 Robinson Jeffers' The Cretan Woman: Myth and

the Doctrine of Inhumanism Revisited

Robinson Jeffers' The Cretan Woman, a lengthy one-

act poetic drama, first appeared in 1954 as a part of the

author's last book of verse, Hungerfield and Other Poems.

Early in the summer of that same year Jeffers' work was

given its premiere performance by the Arena Stage in

Washington, D. C.1 Shortly thereafter the play was revived

in New York by the Provincetown Playhouse where it ran for

2
a total of 95 performances. Although there was some dis­

cussion of transferring this production of the play to a

4.
Broadway theater, such a venture was never undertaken.

The initial critical response to The Cretan Woman

was mixed. Richard Hayes, writing in The Commonweal, called

the play "a restatement of the Greek substance of the deepest

^Henry Hewes, "Phaedra and the Lion,” The Saturday

Review, June 5, 1954> p. 25.
^Julia S. Price, The Off-Broadway Theater (New York:
The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1^62), p. 211.

^Richard Hayes, "Two Masterpieces," The Commonweal.

September 10, 1954, p. 558.

^Louis Kronenberger (ed.), The Best Plays of 1954-55

(New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1955).

300
 301

viability and poise."'*' Henry Hewes and Dudley Fitts, on

the other hand, were much less impressed with the drama.

Hewes noted that the "crises arrive rather than build," and
2
thought the work too diffuse; Mr. Fitts' criticism was a

good deal more harsh: "It /The Cretan Woman/ lacks every

quality of tragedy as the Greeks understood it— and as

those of us who are not television-struck understand it

today. It misrepresents Euripides and lacerates art."^

Although Jeffers' work was anthologized in a collection of

modern drama in 1956,^ the play has not been produced on

the professional stage in America since 1954 and has, since

that date, received scant critical attention by literary

scholars.

In my discussion of The Tower Beyond Tragedy in the

previous chapter, I noted that some question might be raised

concerning the validity of my examination of that work as a

piece of dramatic literature. There can be no doubt, how­

ever, that The Cretan Woman is a play, not a poem. Jeffers'

work is written entirely in dialogue form, it contains numer­

ous stage directions, and the play itself is preceded by a

■^Hayes, The Commonweal. September 10, 1954, p. 558.

2
Hewes, The Saturday Review. June 5» 1954, p. 25.

^Dudley Fitts, "Gigantic Bad Dreams," The New York

Times Book Review, January 10, 1954, p. 18.

^Eric Bentley (ed.), From the Modern Repertoire:

Series Three (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University fress,
 302

description of the setting and a list of the characters who

appear in the drama. Only one critic, Horace Gregory,'1'

argued that the work is a dramatic poem rather than a play,

but he offered neither explanation of nor support for his

statement. It would appear, moreover, that Mr. Gregory has

altered his opinion of the work, for in a later analysis of

Jeffers' writing, he discusses The Cretan Woman in strictly

2
dramatic terms.

In the degree of freedom which the author has taken

with the legend, Jeffers' handling of the Phaedra-Hippolytus

myth most closely resembles the use made of the Atreidae myth

by the authors whose dramas are included in the third part of

chapter ii. Although Jeffers has not treated the myth in

literal fashion, he remains essentially faithful to the frame­

work of the classic story. His setting and characters are

Greek in appearance, and for the most part the figures of his

drama act in much the same way as did their prototypes.

Jeffers has, however, changed details of the story and made

additions to the legend in order to give his own meaning to

the action of the drama.

The action of The Cretan Woman takes place before the

^Horace Gregory, "The Disillusioned Wordsworth of Our

Age," New York Herald Tribune Book Review, January 24, 1954,
p. 5.
2
Horace Gregory, "Poet Without Criticss A Note on
Robinson Jeffers," New- World Writing: Seventh Mentor Selection
(New York: The New American Library, 195$}, pp. 5i-i?2.
 303

palace of Theseus at Troezen. The palace is of heavy stone

construction and quite old; at one side of the stage is an

altar to Aphrodite. As the play begins a Chorus of three

poor women enter, explaining that they are starving and

have come to the palace to beg. As they approach Aphrodite's

altar, they suddenly become aware of some strange unseen

presence, a sense of "divine anger, which seems to ema­

nate from the altar.

Selene, Phaedra's nurse, comes from the palace and

asks the women to depart. She explains that her mistress

has become very ill; during the night the Queen has been

delirious, "like someone possessed/ By an angry god" (30),

someone with something to hide. At once the women suggest

that Aphrodite has caused Phaedra's illness, but Selene

answers that such cannot be the case for the Queen is

"loving and good," she "neglects no divinity" (30), and

has remained always faithful to her husband, Theseus. The

nurse adds that homesickness is more likely the cause of

her mistress' delirium, a homesickness for her island home

and for her royal family, "the most highly cultured family

in Europe" (31).

The palace doors swing open; Phaedra stands be­

wildered, gazing at the scene before her. She speaks to

herself, but her words seem to have no meaning. Slowly she

^Robinson Jeffers, The Cretan Woman, in Hungerfield

and Other Poems (New Yorks Bandom House, 1954), p. 2b.
 304

moves toward Aphrodite's altar as if she is drawn toward it

against her will, but she stops, retreats a few steps, and

turns back toward Selene who has followed her closely.

Then, almost as if she can no longer hide the thing she

most dreads, Phaedra confesses her love for Hippolytus,

her stepson, and admits that she is entirely in Aphrodite's

power. Selene reminds her mistress that Hippolytus is "not

the kind of young man for any woman to love" (34) for "He

does not care for women" (35). The Queen replies that she

is glad Hippolytus has such an aversion and asks Selene to

keep her admission secret; the nurse answers that her mis­

tress will be better off for having divulged her secret.

Phaedra has no patience for such consolation, however, and

in a lengthy soliloquy she berates herself.

I have not faced the truth but an idiot deception,

a great false fire in the fog
On a phantom coast. — If decency and common shame
were out of the question— For I love his father,
My husband Theseus. It is not even -possible to love
two men. I know how my heart lighted up
When I came down the plank from the Cretan ship and saw
him— tall, fierce, and tender, there waiting for me,
In the dirty-cluttered Athenian harbor among the
sailors— like the temple of a god
On a high rock. For I love him, you know'. Theseus I
love. I have been fighting myself . . .
He is— not young— if any person he loves should betray
him . . . When anyone's very young he can slide
From one lust to another, nothing is mortal: but a
fierce man of war growing grizzle
Under the helmet: I know him: if anyone should betray
him even in thought,
He'd hate the world. — And when I look at . . . his
son . . . my eyes
Scald with the stupid tears. — Die . . . ah? No
choice. (35-36)

Murmuring that pride is her greatest sin, she goes into the
 305

palace and Selene follows, weeping.

Gradually the stage grows dark and the beggar women,

terrified by this strange phenomenon, cower at one corner of

the palace. Without warning Aphrodite glides from behind a

flowering bush and leans on the altar. She speaks as if

she were alone, thinking aloud, and playing idly with a

spray of fruit-blossom which she has in her hand. Aphrodite

sees herself as a goddess with great "saving power" (37),

keeping everything, even the "hot whirling atoms" (37),

from splitting apart. Sometimes, she says, she grants the

prayers of those who worship her; but those who reject her

will be punished, not because she is angry, but because

she punishes all men who reject love. Hippolytus is such

a man; he not only rejects love and fails to worship

Aphrodite, but he goes so far as to boast of his chastity,

to boast that "he will never make love to a woman nor

worship/ The Queen of Love" (38). Hippolytus will be

punished, therefore, but Aphrodite admits that she is a

little sorry for Phaedra and Theseus who must "go down into

shame and madness" (38) to make certain the ruin of

Hippolytus. "But," Phaedra adds,

... to suffer is man's fate, and they have to

bear it. We gods and goddesses
Must not be very scrupulous; we are forces of nature,
vast and inflexible, and neither mercy
Nor fear can move us. Men and women are the pawns we
play with; we work our games out on a wide chess
board,
The great brown-and-green earth. (38)

Then, turning to the audience, Aphrodite announces that

 306

today is the day which she has chosen to punish Hippolytus

and invites the audience to watch her work. Suddenly day­

light returns and the goddess vanishes.

Hippolytus and two of his companions, Alcyon and

Andros, come from the palace. After a few moments dis­

cussion of the day's hunting plans, Andros suggests to

Hippolytus that he ought to pay homage to Aphrodite.

Hippolytus answers that he finds those who worship the

Goddess of Love grotesque and disgusting. Their conversa­

tion is cut short by the entrance of Selene who asks that

Hippolytus give her a moment in private.

After Alcyon and Andros depart, Selene tells

Hippolytus that she fears her mistress is dying. As she is

describing Phaedra's illness, the Queen comes from the

palace and dismisses Selene, who moves away but stops and

watches the interview which follows.

Phaedra turns to her stepson and tells him that

she has been patient and that human beings must bear their

fate, they must do what the gods choose. "Not entirely,

Phaedra" (47), Hippolytus answers,

We have to suffer what they choose: but we control

our own wills and acts
For good or evil. (47)

The Queen reminds Hippolytus that the gods also send madness

and questions him as to whether man controls his own will

when he is insane. Then abruptly Phaedra dismisses this

philosophizing and begins to reveal to her stepson her love

 307

for him. Hippolytus, however, fails to comprehend the

meaning of Phaedra1s words. Phaedra answers that she de­

sires only a little kindness and asks the hoy why he is

"All cold, all angry" (49)* Hippolytus tells the Queen

that she is mistaken, that he has, in fact, loved her in

his own way. He goes on to say that he has thanked God

that his nature was not inclined toward women or he might

have loved Phaedra "Beyond what's right" (49)« He adds,

however, that even should that have happened he could have

conquered it and ruled his passions.

Phaedra is not surprised that her stepson distrusts

love, for he was, after all, the product of a loveless

matings

. . . — The hattle-captain of those grim warrior-women,

the breastless Amazons,
Was your mothers your father conquered her with his
sword and his spear, he clubbed her down and she
hated him . . .
And he raped her. You were b o m of that horrors . . .
(49)
Phaedra reminds Hippolytus that her own background is

quite different, that she is a civilized Cretan, not a

Greek savage, and that Cretans know that good and evil, sin

and virtue are only words, but that "love is more beautiful

than a sunrise/ Or the heart of a rose" (50). Hippolytus

begins to perceive Phaedra1s meaning and cautions her to

keep her thoughts to herself, but the Queen continues to

lament her fate before Hippolytus and the beggar women who

have now drawn close to listen to her. When Selene attempts

 308

to quiet her mistress, Hippolytus intervenes and tells the

nurse to let Phaedra destroy herself if she wishes to do

so; he boasts that her words will prove his innocence and

that the beggar women will be his witnesses. Phaedra has

heard the young man's boasts, however, and warns him to be

less certain of his ability to prove his innocence. As the

Queen continues her lament, Hippolytus turns to the beggar

women to suggest that when they report this incident they

must add that Phaedra is clearly insane, overpowered by

some demon or goddess, or perhaps affected by the taint in

the blood of the Cretan royal family.

At length Phaedra kneels before her stepson and

begs him to murder her before she becomes poisonous.

Hippolytus, taking pity on the woman before him, answers

that she is very beautiful and that in spite of his nature

he might love her were it not that he loved honor more.

In a last desperate attempt Phaedra throws herself upon the

boy, but her behavior proves too much for Hippolytus and he

shakes her off disdainfully and goes to join his companions.

The Queen is beside herself with rage at the contempt

with which her stepson has treated her and at once begins to

plan her revenge. Phaedra's plans are interrupted, however,

by the arrival of one of Theseus' messengers. Theseus has

been told by an oracle whom he has consulted that ''his

house was burning" (57), and he must hasten home; the

messenger has been sent to see if such is the case. The

 309

Queen assures the man that there is no fire and he returns

to his master.

Phaedra lapses once more into her "black medita­

tion" (58). As she does so Selene turns to the beggar

women and asks them to promise never to reveal what they

have seen and heard today. They swear their allegiance to

Phaedra. In response to these words, Phaedra, somewhat

more calm now, comes forward to speak to them, saying that

Hippolytus was right to despise her. She adds that she

will not betray her stepson and she asks the women to be

merciful, to cover up her folly. Again they pledge their

silence.

Theseus enters the palace grounds and at once be­

gins to question the women as to what has happened during

his absence, what has happened to cause the oracle to tell

him that his house was on fire. Selene attempts to assure

him that things are as they were when he left and that

Phaedra has suffered only a slight illness. The Queen, how­

ever, tells her husband that Selene lies and that evil has

befallen the house of Theseus. After some hesitation and

considerable prompting by her husband, Phaedra explains

that Hippolytus came to her room during the night and with

a knife held at her throat, forced her to submit to his

advances. Theseus is stunned by his wife's disclosure and

at first will not believe that it was Hippolytus who raped

her. He goes on to conclude that if his son is guilty,

 310

Phaedra must have "tempted him, . . . perverted him,

handled him, slavered on him" (68), and adds that Phaedra

would not have revealed the truth had not someone caught

her in the act. The Queen answers that no one saw the

crime occur, hut that her grief since the event has driven

her nearly mad and as a result she has told Selene and the

beggar women of her troubles. When Theseus turns to ques­

tion the beggars, their words, although somewhat ambiguous,

seem to prove that what the Queen has said is true:

Oh, she is not to blame, sir, not to blame;

guiltless. It was her misfortune
But not her crime. (68)

Theseus turns to his guards and orders them to

bring Hippolytus to him. After the guards depart, Phaedra

taunts her husband with the remark that he has for so long

solved all his problems by killing his adversaries, now only

blood has the power to heal his wounds. After a brief

choral interlude, Phaedra repeats her jeering remarks.

Theseus moves threateningly toward her, his hand on his

sword, but Phaedra exclaims that his sense of justice will

not allow him to kill her until he has heard what Hippolytus

has to say; she adds that even he must find it difficult to

believe that she or any woman would approach Hippolytus, a

man who cares only for his own sex. Theseus answers that

he will hear Hippolytus out before he takes any action, and

adds:
 311

I have lived with some honor and respect. I have led

the people and been true to my friends, and done—
they tell me—
Valiantly once or twice. I have been thought of as a
man who could— at least—
Guard his own gear . . . But old age comes, old age
comes,
And flies defile us. (74)

Finally, in a last desperate effort to hold his world to­

gether, he asks Phaedra to tell him that what has just

happened has been nothing but a dream; he adds, however,

that should Phaedra's story be true, his son must die.

Hippolytus enters the palace courtyard and at once

Theseus turns to his wife and asks her if this is the man

who violated her. At first Phaedra refuses to accuse

Hippolytus:

I have some nerves of decency still: though you

don't think so. I will not talk your sword
Into the belly of your son. (75)

When threatened with her own death, however, the Queen

claims that it was her stepson who raped her. Hippolytus

denies his guilt, but will not tell his father the truth.

When Theseus asks his son why he was not hunting, Hippolytus

can only answer that he felt "dejected" (76), "sorrowful"

(76), because "a person whom I once loved and honored had

done a shameful thing" (77). The King asks the boy to name

the person, but the young man refuses, answering that "The

thing failed, and is finished" (77). In response, Phaedra

asks, "Do you think it is finished? Love has an end: but

deep hate has no floor,/ It falls forever" (77). Phaedra

begins to describe in some detail the event which she claims

 312

to have taken place on the previous evening, ending her

description with the taunt that Hippolytus claimed his

father was so old he would not care about the violation.

Theseus, enraged by these remarks, turns toward his son,

about to strike. In order to acquit himself, Hippolytus

asks the beggar women if they heard the Queen claim to

have suffered any violence, for a few moments the women

equivocate; then Selene comes forward to tell Theseus that

what his wife says is true. In response, Alcyon, who has

entered the courtyard only a few moments earlier, screams

that Selene lies. The beggar women, however, apparently

caught up in the frenzied emotion of the scene, now claim

that Selene has told the truth. Theseus has his proof and

advances toward his son, sword drawn. In a last attempt to

save himself, Hippolytus tells his father that the women

are making a fool of him; but the warning goes unheeded,

and Theseus drives his sword into the boy. As Hippolytus

dies the following brief exchange occurs:

Phaedra: Do you still despise me, Hippolytus?

Hippolytus: (Struggling for breath) Stand off . . •

Give me room to die in . . . (He raises
head and shoulders from the ground: a
gasping shout) Yes!
I despise you. (Turns painfully in
silence; looks up at Theseus and says
tenderly) My poor father. (He dies.)

Phaedra: (Like a bewildered child, quietly, her hand

to her mouih.) But I love him, Theseus'.
(81-82)
Alcyon struggles with the guards in order to get at

Theseus, and is killed in his attempt.

 313

As the King stands looking down at the mute body

of his son, Phaedra begins, with great vindictive pleasure,

to tell her husband that she has lied, that it was she who

pursued Hippolytus, and that he was pure and honorable and

refused her. Any fool but Theseus, she adds, would have

known this. Gradually Theseus realizes what has happened,

but he can only murmur: "Some god came into me;/ Some evil

god" (83). Phaedra answers that it is cowardly to blame the

gods and reminds her husband that he is the man who killed

his son and she the woman who deluded him. As Theseus

kneels by the body of Hippolytus and declares his love for

his son, Phaedra seems to regain her composure. She walks

toward the palace and then, reaching the door, turns and

says:

. . . — Stay there and watch him for me, Selene,

And tell me all that he does: his groans, words, grief,
outcries and so forth—
And whether he goes wild or not. Watch very carefully:
For he— my husband— is a great man, powerful and piti­
able; the glory of Athens and Greece,
Famous into far Asia: and I have almost come to the
Greek opinion: that there is nothing
Nobler than a great man in his mortal grief. Or . . .
(She begins to weep) a loved beautiful youth . . .
Suddenly slain. Oh . . . (She raises her head, speaks
proudly)
These are ihe agonies that men remember forever;
imperishable jewels of the age; and their mighty
spirits
In spite of God live on. As for me— me too perhaps
they'll remember— to spit on.
I can't say that I care. (85)

For a moment Phaedra stands in the doorway, gazing

at her husband; then she turns and enters the house.

Theseus ignores her and moves toward the body of his son.
 314

Trembling, he touches the body and shakes his head; his

hand passes over Hippolytus' face and hair and finally he

leans over and kisses the boy. Then, raising his face sky­

ward, Theseus prays to Poseidon to make his son live once

again. The beggar women remind Theseus, however, that

Poseidon has no power in this matter; he would have to pray

instead to the God of Death who has ears of stone and has

never yet answered such a prayer.

Cries of confusion are heard within the house and

Selene runs into the palace but returns again almost in­

stantly to report that Phaedra has hanged herself. Slowly

Theseus raises himself and speaks to those who surround him:

I am not so stupid as you believe. I wish my mother

had strangled me
In the night I was born'. I wish the sun had gone blind
that morning. I wish that Aethra my mother
Had pointed her breasts with poison before she suckled
me, before I began to be a slayer of men
And a woman's fool. I say there is no pleasure in it;
it is not delightful
Tobe old, mocked and a fool. I say that liars have
swindled me out of reason, like a poor old peasant
Duped in the market; they have diddled him out of his
land and his cows and his very teeth— and there
they go laughing
And hang themselves. Why did she laugh like that?
What did she mean? I will never draw sword again.
I wish it had turned in my hand and stabbed me, in my
first fight: but now let it stick in the sheath,
blackened
With dear dear blood. My enemies will come and mock me,
old and disarmed: I shall say "Where is my son
To speak to them between the tall stones? Where is my
son Hippolytus
To take my part?" He will lie still, he will not come,
he will not answer. There is a darkness:
And those who enter it have no voice any more; and
their hands and feet
Will not move any more; and the dear flesh falls from
the rotting bones, and the beauty is ugliness;
 315

The "brave cold eyes are humbled, the bodies stink. I

wish I had died for them'.
They were like two stars in heaven: when the high
clouds break open, and a warm wind
Blows in the dark: but I was easily fooled . . .
And my hand leaped. They were nearly the same age;
they were brave and beautiful. I should have
helped her
In her deep trouble.
And all this noise was nothing— froth and a noise— a
little noise in the night. The two I loved
Are gone: that's all. I stand
Between two gods; and my north is grief and my south is
wailing and the children laugh at me.
She was in trouble and I did not help her. Indeed I
never understood her; she was too beautiful for me.
Her mind moved like a bird.
And now I have to go down all alone in blood, having
lived in it, alone to death,
Having loved deeply. As to— my dear, dear son . . .
(89-90)

In agony, Theseus flings himself on the body of Hippolytus,

and the scene darkens. Laughter is heard and once again

Aphrodite appears on her altar. Her speech concludes the

play:

(Laughing) We are not extremely sorry for the

woes of men. We laugh in heaven.
We that walk on Olympus and the steep sky,
And under our feet the lightning barks like a dog:
What we desire, we do. (She smiles) I am the power
of Love. (She stands smiling and considering)
In future days men will become so powerful
That they seem to control the heavens and the earth,
They seem to understand the stars and all science—
Let them beware. Something is lurking hidden.
There is always a knife in the flowers. There is
always a lion just beyond the firelight. (90-91)

This synopsis of The Cretan Woman reveals that

Jeffers has made numerous modifications in the mythic ma­

terials with which he worked. Many of the changes which

 316

Jeffers makes are essentially minor adjustments; a few are

more significant. As I commented earlier, however, Jeffers

makes his adjustments in the details of the story without

severely altering the framework of the myth. In this re­

spect the play resembles Jeffers' treatment of the Atreidae

legend; in fact, The Cretan Woman may be said to be a more

literal handling of the legendary material than The Tower

Beyond Tragedy since the later work nowhere evidences that

kind of major alteration of the myth which we noted at the

end of The Tower Beyond Tragedy. With these facts in mind

let us examine in more detail Jeffers' treatment of his

subject.

There are, it seems to me, three major changes

which Robinson Jeffers makes in his handling of the

Phaedra-Hippolytus legend. One concerns the character of

Hippolytus, and the other two concern Theseus' relationship

to the death of his son.1

The careful reader will realize that there is one

other significant difference between the details of the myth
as recounted in the first section of this chapter and
Jeffers' handling of the legend. In The Cretan Woman
Phaedra discloses her lust for Hippolytus by confronting
him directly rather than by either of the methods used by
her mythic prototype— a letter or a message delivered by
her nurse. Although none of the handbooks of classic myth
which I consulted includes a confrontation between Phaedra
and her stepson as a part of the mythic tale, such a scene
does occur in Seneca's Phaedra and may have been a part of
the first version (now lost) of Euripides' Hippolytus.
Consequently I have not considered this detail of Jeffers1
play a significant alteration of the myth as it existed
during the classic period.
 317

Although Hippolytus boasts of his chastity"*" and

loves hunting much as his prototype did, no mention is ever

made in the play of Hippolytus' devotion to Artemis. More

important, the young man rejects Phaedra primarily because

2
he is homosexual, not because he values his own chastity.

In addition, Hippolytus claims to be motivated also by

honor, stating that he could love Phaedra in spite of his

nature were it not that his personal code of honor re­

stricts him from forming a sexual liaison with his father's

wife. Jeffers may have borrowed this last detail of

Hippolytus' character from Racine's Phedre; nevertheless,

the question of honor is not raised in any of the classic

versions of the story.

The other major alterations which Jeffers makes in

the myth concern the relationship of Theseus to his son's

death. Instead of asking Poseidon to bring about the death

of Hippolytus as his prototype did, Theseus of The Cretan

Woman stabs the boy himself. Later, after Phaedra has re­

vealed the truth to her husband, Theseus calls on Poseidon

to restore his son to life.

■*"At least Aphrodite claims he boasts of his chastity

(p. 38). This is curious, however, since other parts of the
drama make it fairly clear that Hippolytus has had sexual
relations with his male friends. Aphrodite's definition of
chastity must be a limited one.
O
As a result of Hippolytus' homosexuality, Selene,
unlike her prototype, does not urge Phaedra to reveal her
feelings to her stepson.
 318

In addition to these three major changes in the

story line of the myth, Jeffers chooses to follow a variant

version of the legend concerning Phaedra's lie to Theseus.

In The Cretan Woman Phaedra tells Theseus that Hippolytus

has raped her; in the more generally accepted version of

the myth Phaedra commits suicide before her husband re­

turns home, leaving behind a letter which accuses her

stepson of the same crime. Jeffers' use of the variant

detail causes him to make other alterations in the story

which appear in none of the ancient versions of the myth.

Theseus insists that Phaedra confront Hippolytus with her

$

accusation. As a result, Hippolytus attempts to disprove

Phaedra's charge without revealing the fact that his step­

mother invited him to share her bed. This in turn forces

Selene and the Chorus to substantiate the Queen's lie.

Finally, since Phaedra is still alive when Theseus kills

his son, Jeffers uses her as the means by which the King

learns the truth.

Other changes or additions which Jeffers makes are

less important and can be briefly noted. Although Phaedra

is sexually attracted to Hippolytus, she claims that she

still loves her husband. Jeffers complicates her charac­

terization further by having the Queen declare that she has

been too proud in her lifetime, although no evidence of this

fact seems to be given in the play; and to have her add that

Theseus will be outraged by her betrayal because he has

 319

reached old age, implying that if he were her own age he

might be able to accept her unfaithfulness.

Phaedra's description of the relationship of

Theseus and Antiope is far different from the picture pro­

vided by the myth. Whereas the myth suggests that Antiope

fell in love with Theseus after he kidnapped her, Phaedra

claims that Theseus subdued Antiope with his sword and

raped her, and that she hated Theseus as a result.

Hippolytus, Phaedra says, is the product of this hateful

union and therefore it is not surprising that he mistrusts

love. In a somewhat similar manner Hippolytus offers an

excuse for Phaedra's behavior by suggesting that it is the

result of the tainted blood of the royal family of Crete.

Finally, two additions to the mythic material

should be noted. As in the classic version of the story,

Theseus is away from home when Phaedra confronts her step­

son. Jeffers adds, however, that Theseus has gone to con­

sult an oracle (the reason for the consultation is not

given) who tells the King that his house is burning. Again

as in the Greek version of the myth, Aphrodite is the cause

of Phaedra's illness. Jeffers' goddess, however, sees her­

self as a "saving power" (31), not simply the Goddess of

Love, although it is difficult to understand how she can be

seen in such terms within the action of the play.

Nearly all the critics who have examined The Cretan

 320

Woman have concluded that the thematic statement which

underlies the play is the same as that which is central to

nearly all of Jeffers' works, the doctrine of Inhumanism.'1'

Since my discussion of The Tower Beyond Tragedy in the

previous chapter includes a fairly detailed explanation of

Jeffers' philosophic position, it seems unnecessary to re­

peat a similar analysis here. Nevertheless, it might be well

to remind the reader of the essential elements of the doc­

trine of Inhumanism. For Jeffers, man has become

horribly self-centered, or "introverted." "There is

no health for the individual whose attention is taken
up with his own mind and processes; equally there is no
health for the society that is always introverted on
its own members." Consequently, "humanity is the mold
to break away from" and "humanity is but the start of
the race." Unless we can break away from sentimental­
izing ourselves and our destiny, we shall never per­
ceive the perfected man, the Prometheus Unbound, en­
visioned by Shelley and Jeffers. Indeed, the rise of
science has doubled the difficulty for man between
Shelley’s time and ours, for now "he's bred knives on
nature /anc£7 turns them also inward"— medicine and
psychoanalysis which have increased his "self-love and
inward conflicts." The task of the poet is to help
humanity break its mold, to gain a sense again of
immortality, to find absolute values. And the way is
obviously to fix attention on what is inhuman, both in
nature and in man.2

In other words, as man has become more civilized he has also

become more obsessed with himself, and this obsession is

See particularly Gerald Weales, American Drama

Since World War II (New Yorks Harcourt, Brace & World,
Inc., 1962), pp. 193-95; Selden Rodman, "Knife in the
Flowers," Poetry, LXXXIV (July, 1954), 226-31; and David
Littlejohn, "Cassandra Grows Tired," The Commonweal,
December 7, 1962, pp. 276-78.
2
Oscar Cargill, Intellectual America (New Yorks
The Macmillan Co., 1941), p. 744.
 321

nothing short of introversion and incest. Man must, like

the Orestes of The Tower Beyond Tragedy, find transcendence

by falling "in love outward,"^ by renouncing human know­

ledge and human power and falling in love with the natural

world, the hawk and the stone which are so dear to Jeffers.

There is no doubt that Jeffers' doctrine of

Inhumanism is very much a part of The Cretan Woman. This

theme is made most explicit in the two scenes in which

Aphrodite speaks to the audience. Early in the play,

after explaining her plan to destroy Hippolytus, she says:

We gods and goddesses

Must not be very scrupulous; we are forces of nature,
vast and inflexible, and neither mercy
Nor fear can move us. Men and women are the pawns we
play with; we work our games out on a wide
chess board,
The great brown-and-green earth. (38)

And as the drama ends, she tells us:

(Laughing) We are not extremely sorry for the

woes of men. We laugh in heaven.
We that walk on Olympus and the steep sky,
And under our feet the lightning barks like a dog:
What we desire, we do. (She smiles) I am the power
of Love.
(She stands smiling and considering)
In future days men will become so powerful
That they seem to control the heavens and the earth,
They seem to understand the stars and all science—
Let them beware. Something is lurking hidden.
There is always a knife in the flowers. There is
always a lion just beyond the firelight. (90-91)

Certainly these lines make clear man's insignificance to

the natural world in which he lives and his inability to

^Robinson Jeffers, RoanStallion. Tamar, and Other

Poems (New York: The Modern Library, 1^35), p. 83•
 322

improve his condition through the use of human intellect,

imagination, or will. It would seem that in these speeches

"the play coldly rejects humanity for destiny and time."'*'

Perhaps it is this same theme, although less

clearly developed, which underlies Phaedra's actions and

the comments of the Chorus. At least Gerald Weales would

have us think so:

The tragic doings of the Troezene are put in an un­

usual light by the Chorus of begging women who, even
though they are forced to become part of the action,
remain aloof from it: "If this great house ever
fails— I wish it no evil— I wish my boy had the loot­
ing of it." It is possible that Jeffers intends that
the beggars, whom hunger keeps from the artificiali­
ties of the court (much is made of how the Nurse has
tried to tempt the lovesick Phaedra with delicacies),
should contribute to the theme of the play. Certainly,
the point is that Phaedra, who is from Crete, who
thinks of herself as a civilized woman "in exile here/
Among savages: the fierce little cut-throat tribes of
Greece," is torn by a passion that strips away her
veneer of civilization.

Much of what Weales has said is quite accurate, and if

this were all there was to the play we might conclude that

Jeffers' handling of his thematic content is effective.

There is, however, much more than this, and much of the

remainder of the play tends to contradict what seems to

Weales and other critics to be the essential statement

which the play makes. It is, then, this confusion which

Ifind to be the most serious flaw in The Cretan Woman.

Let me illustrate a few of the points at which the play

^Hayes, The Commonweal, September 10, 1954, p. 558.

^Weales, p. 94.
 323

contradicts itself.

A few years ago Joseph Roddy wrote that the "un­

hidden implication" of all Jeffers' poetry is "that the

human race does not deserve existence, that tie natural

universe . . . will he free from defilement when mankind

hoils away in its own hrew." Later in the same article

he added that the "basic thesis of . . . every major poem

Jeffers has written is that man is mean and miserable,

nature is clean and tremendous."^ Nearly all critics,

whether they approve of such a philosophic position or

not, would agree with Roddy's conclusions, and certainly

what Roddy has said seems to repeat what we have found to

be the essential thesis of The Cretan Woman. But Jeffers'

use of Aphrodite seems to contradict this. The goddess

tells us that she and her Olympian cohorts are "forces of

nature, vast and inflexible" (38). If Aphrodite is a

representative of the natural world of which Jeffers is so

fond, of that world which is "clean and tremendous," then

the superiority of this representative, this force, must

be demonstrated in the play. Unfortunately, Jeffers offers

no such demonstration. Beyond the fact that Aphrodite seems

to have more power than any human in the play, she seems no

different from the human principals. She is selfish, petty,

nasty-minded, in fact little more than a bad-tempered child

^"Joseph Roddy, "A View Prom a Granite Tower,"

Theatre Arts. XXXIII (June, 1942), 32-36.
 324

who insists on having her own way. If this is what the

Orestes of The Tower Beyond Tragedy fell in love with, he

must have "been quickly disillusioned. Nor, for that matter,

does it seem to be of any benefit to pay homage to these

natural forces (a step toward "falling in love outward"),

for Phaedra "neglects no divinity" (30) we are told and

her condition is no better than that of her husband 'or

stepson.

More significant, because it is even more contra­

dictory, is the fact that some humane values do at least

partially ennoble some of the principals of the drama.

Hippolytus' unselfish love for his father and his intention

to maintain his personal honor in spite of everything tend

to make him seem better than most of us. Of course

Hippolytus' homosexuality confuses the issue and allows

one to make the charge that his speech— "it is true you are

very beautiful; and I could love you . . . in spite of

nature . . ./ But not of honor. That holds me." (54)— is

nothing more than rationalization. There is, nevertheless,

the ring of truth about these words and the way in which

Hippolytus meets his death seems to add to his stature.

Theseus' discovery of his love for his son and wife after

their deaths and his willingness to admit his faults tend

to ennoble him in much the same way. But the ennobling

seems incomplete because we are ill-prepared for Theseus'

last long soliloquy. Phaedra herself, only a few moments

 325

prior to the soliloquy, tells us:

... I have almost come to the Greek opinion: that

there is nothing
Nobler than a great man in his mortal grief. Or . . .
a loved beautiful youth . . .
Suddenly slain. Oh . . .
These are the agonies that men remember forever;
imperishable jewels of the age; and their mighty
spirits
In spite of God live on. (85)

I cannot help feeling that there is considerable truth in

what Phaedra says, and in spite of the Chorus' rejection

of human love and in spite of a final scene in which, as

Louis Untermeyer says, "Jeffers' Olympian-minded spirits

laugh at man's cherished virtue, love, and pretense to

power,I remain not only unconvinced, but also uncertain

as to what is finally the essential statement of the work.

Nor am I alone in my confusion. R. W. Short concludes that

philosophic contradiction is a flaw that mars all of

Jeffers' major works.

A careful reading of any of Jeffers' long poems

will disclose the confusion in which they were conceived:
the strong statements of determinism, followed by
equally strong expectations of the operation of free
will; notions that sin regenerates, and that there is no
sin; that pain ennobles, and that there is no nobility;
that man rejoins the atomic flux, and that strong souls
live on; that the hawk's strength is good, and that
cruelty is bad, all occurring together as inconsistencies
in Jeffers' outlined scheme of things.
Yet to the casual reader the same poems may not
seem as chaotic as they are, partly because the intel­
lective elements are- so cloudily, "broodingly" stated
that their contradictory characteristics are not immedi­
ately apparent, and partly because the emphasis is never
upon these elements. The long poems are held together,

^Louis Untermeyer, "A Grim and Bitter Dose," The

Saturday Review, January 16, 1954, p. 17.
 326

not "by organic unity, but by a forcible and continuous

emphasis upon the hero and his sensational exploits in
the shining pageant of pain. . . . One could give many
examples of this departure from consistency for dramatic
utility, and it is the more objectionable because these
epistomological or moral components have the effect of
persuading us that the spectacles of pain and perver­
sion are helping us solve our riddles, and mean more
to us than public hangings and tabloid sex-murders.
We have the right to protest when the tragic heroes
appear under false colors as symbols in a confused and
insufficiently objectified philosophy of life.1

Many of Short's criticisms can be appropriately applied to

2
The Cretan Woman.

Not only does Jeffers include material which seems

to contradict his doctrine of Inhumanism, but he is also

unable to organically relate the doctrine to the action of

his drama. As I commented earlier, the theme of Jeffers'

play is stated most clearly in the two soliloquies of

Aphrodite and in certain lines of the Chorus. It can be

argued that Aphrodite's initial appearance is required by

^R. W. Short, "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," The

Southern Review. VII (Summer, 1941), 139-40.
2
Jeffers' dramas also include several less signifi­
cant inconsistencies and irrelevant details. Aphrodite
claims that Hippolytus boasts of his chastity, yet in fact
he does not do so and the play makes it apparent that he is
not chaste. A considerable number of lines are devoted to
explaining the sexual history of the royal family of Crete;
a somewhat smaller number to detailing the sexual heritage
of Hippolytus. None of this information, however, is ever
directly related to the theme of the play. Near the middle
of the drama we learn that Theseus has gone to consult an
oracle and is told that his house is burning. Since we are
not told why Theseus made his pilgrimmage nor shown how
this detail adds to any thematic dimension the play may
have, Jeffers' use of the oracle seems nothing more than a
device by which he can motivate the entrance of the King.
Since the play is hardly Naturalistic, such a device seems
unnecessary.
 327

■the plot of the mythic story since it is she who serves as

the main spring of the action. Nevertheless, while we may

accept as legitimate the expression of her desire to

avenge herself upon Hippolytus, nothing in the play neces­

sitates the kind of philosophizing which characterizes the

latter part of her soliloquy, and it is this part of her

speech in which Jeffers' doctrine is made most clear.

Aphrodite's final appearance is completely gratuitous;

although the subject of her speech may be vaguely germane,

nothing in the previous action requires this final scene.

Jeffers' use of the Goddess of Love is strongly reminiscent

of that to which he put Cassandra in The Tower Beyond

Tragedy, and the parts of the play in which the goddess

appears seem as strongly didactic as did Cassandra's

soliloquy.

Jeffers' handling of his Chorus seems equally un­

fortunate. While we might be able to accept a certain

amount of obvious message-bearing from a chorus that had

been handled abstractly, or as a collective unit, this kind

of philosophizing from a chorus that is treated in realistic,

even Naturalistic terms and in which every attempt is made

to differentiate between the individual members is not dra­

matically viable. When, to fill the interim between

Phaedra's confession and Hippolytus’ appearance, the Chorus

sings a song which explains why death is better than love,

I cannot help feeling that Jeffers' inability to handle his

 328

theme in dramatic terms has "become much too obvious. Even

if the reader can agree with Gerald Weales that Phaedra1s

actions demonstrate the theme of Jeffers1 play, it must be

questioned as to how meaningful P h a e d r a ^ actions might be

if they were not surrounded by the more obviously didactic

moments of the drama. Would we see in P h a e d r a ^ plight

(or in the plight of Hippolytus or Theseus) reasons to

support Jeffers1 doctrine of Inhumanism, or would we find

some other statement concerning the individual^ ability

or inability to deal with a basic natural force? Perhaps

the confusion of the drama makes it impossible to answer

this question.

Jeffers is no more successful in his depiction of

character than he is in handling his theme. His strongly

passional approach to his material coupled with his attempt

to present the myth in essentially realistic terms causes

him to create characters who appear to be little more than

studies in abnormal psychology, characters who are so sick

as to have no particular significance for us and who cer­

tainly have none of the stature which characterized their

prototypes. As Euphemia Wyatt suggests, The Cretan Woman

is "Greek au Grand Guignol."^ Nor is Jeffers able to make

anything of importance out of his de-heroized creations; he

makes them neither individual nor universal. Selden Rodman

^Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt, "Theater,11 The

Catholic World. CLXXIX (September, 1954), 471.
 328,x

has pointed out that

it is Jeffers' lack of respect for or interest in his

characters as human beings that reduces them to puppets,
mere vessels for generalized passions, so that their
plight fails to move us deeply. They are not particu­
larized enough to be believable. We can't care greatly
what happens to them.1

Nor, as R. W. Short explains, are Jeffers' characters suc­

cessful on a more universal level:

In Jeffers' poem the hero is a vividly drawn creature

of one dimension, the sharp shadow of a Dr. Caligari
thrown backstage, among the lumber of Jeffers' back­
stage world of hawks and stones and suffering. The
other characters are lesser phantoms of the same de­
sign, who but for impotence would doubtless be glad to
sin and suffer just as the hero did. Differences be­
tween them are dialectical only. . . . The presence of
didactic materials emphasizes their inadequacy, since
they are painfully lacking in the universality the
didactic materials seem to claim for them.2

Phaedra is Jeffers' least effective creation. Not

only does she have no redeeming feature, but the playwright

allows her at times to "vacillate in a 'kill me'— 'don't

kill me' fashion which may make - - - /her/ seem more mortal

but which dulls the sharp blade of tragic inevitability,"^

and tends to place the action on the level of soap opera.

Phaedra calls forth neither our sympathy, admiration, nor

awe; she remains no more than a curious psychoneurotic

spectacle.

hodman, Poetry. LXXXIV (July, 1954), 229.

O
Short, The Southern Review, VII (Summer, 1941),
143. Short's remarks refer to the characters of all of
Jeffers' major works, not to those of The Cretan Woman.
The comments are, nevertheless, as applicable to Jeffers'
later dramatic works as to his earlier ones.

^Hewes, The Saturday Review, June 5, 1954, p. 25.

 329

Hippolytus and Theseus have at least some humane

traits, hut Jeffers fails to develop either character

clearly. Hippolytus boasts of his chastity (or so

Aphrodite claims), but he is obviously not chaste. Fur­

thermore, his penchant toward homosexuality confuses his

motives for refusing Phaedra; it is possible that his

speech about honor is nothing more than rationalization.

The final lament of "Theseus seems to ask us to accept him

as a great man fallen; £but/ we have seen him only as a

blunt but confused old soldier, and there is nothing more

than pathos in his realization that he has killed the only

two people he l o v e s . T h i s last speech is doubly confusing

for it seems to function as the playwright's futile attempt

to turn Theseus into a tragic hero when the focus of the

drama has been, up to this moment, on Phaedra, not on

Theseus.

The Cretan Woman is, for the most part, free of

irrelevant theatricalism. There are, certainly, some ele­

ments of the play which seem to have no functional relation­

ship to either the plot or the theme of the work (the oracle

is the most obvious example), but none of these appear to be

used primarily for their theatrical effectiveness. Never­

theless, Jeffers' passional approach to his material, with

its emphasis on sensuality, violence, and pain, coupled with

his inability to integrate theme and plot, causes the drama

^Weales, p. 194.
 330

to seem heavily melodramatic. In this respect, Jeffers'

approach to the myth is reminiscent not only of his hand­

ling of the Atreidae legend, but of O'Neill's Mourning

Becomes Electra and Kenneth Rexroth's Beyond the Mountains.

In The Cretan Woman Robinson Jeffers makes use of

three conventions which are similar to those found in Greek

drama of the fifth century B. C. These include the use of

an exterior palace setting for the action of the play,

placing Phaedra's death offstage, and the use of a chorus.

I have no quarrel with either of the first two devices.

The action of the play seems to demand the palace setting

and, like the setting for The Tower Beyond Tragedy, it

gives the play a unity it sorely needs. It seems equally

appropriate that Phaedra should die offstage. Jeffers'

use of the Chorus, however, is much less effective. The

three beggar women are too individualized and treated in

too realistic terms for us to accept the kind of abstract

philosophizing which they occasionally do. Nor does

Jeffers' handling of the Chorus in Naturalistic terms add

dimension to the play. The members are, after all, a

chorus, and no amount of realistic detail will convince us

that they are three women who just happened along at a

dramatically convenient moment. It would seem that the

playwright might at least have shown how the lives of his

beggar women would be altered by the actions of the royal

family and in this way gain a degree of magnitude for his

 331

principles. There does, in fact, appear to be some attempt

to do this early in the play, but by the time the action is

concluded the attempt has been forgotten and the beggar

women seem almost as puzzled as we are by their presence.

Finally, some comment should be made concerning

the nature and quality of Jeffers’ verse. Since the previ­

ous chapter contains a study of the prosodic structure of

The Tower Beyond Tragedy and since the poetry of The Cretan

Woman is very similar to that of the former play, it is

unnecessary to repeat such an analysis here. Again a ten-

stress line seems basic to the drama, and as in The Tower

Beyond Tragedy, it alternates with lines of different

lengths, particularly the five-stress line. If there is

any change, it is that the verse of The Cretan Woman seems

somewhat freer than that of The Tower Beyond Tragedy; the

ten-stress lines appear with less regularity and there are

far fewer long soliloquies in The Cretan Woman which serve

to regulate the prosodic structure.

The play also repeats the poetic mannerisms which

we have come to expect in a Jeffers work. That is not to

say that when Jeffers wrote The Cretan Woman he was in­

capable of producing highly original and frequently beauti­

ful passages of poetry. Although I cannot agree with

Horace Gregory that Jeffers never wrote better poetry than

 332

he did in some of the passages of this play,^ an examina­

tion of the work will prove that the author remained a

competent poet. I note, however, a more limited vocabulary,

more frequent tendency to fall into clich^, and an inability

to control the tone of his language which was not character­

istic of his verse in The Tower Beyond Tragedy. For exam­

ple, Jeffers uses the adjective white at least twelve times

in the play. Such frequent use of the word might be

acceptable if Jeffers gave it some kind of symbolic mean­

ing. His use of the adjective is, however, so haphazard

that it is impossible to understand any special meaning

which Jeffers wishes the word to have. Early in the play

the word is used to describe Aphrodite and things related

to her (37-40). Later, Selene describes Phaedra as a

"white pillar" (45). Still later the Queen speaks of the

"white of summer" (51), and the whiteness of her own skin

(53). During the song which the Chorus sings they speak

of the "death-white/ Teeth of snow on the rock" (59), and of

the "white dust" which "Floats in the sun like a flag" (60).

Finally, near the end of the play, Theseus calls Phaedra a

"white fool" (65). The use of the adjective, then, tends

to confuse rather than to add meaning to the play.

Too frequently the tone of Jeffers' language seems

inappropriate. Note, for example, Phaedra's answer to

^Gregory, New York Herald Tribune Book Review,

January 24, 1954, p. 5.
 333

Theseus when he moves toward her as if to kill hers

Me? No'. Not me Theseus'.

Not meI You are grim, dearest, hut you are just. (72)

And when a little later in the play Theseus says to Phaedra,

"Shut your mouth" (77), the line jars as it should not.

Most unfortunate is Jeffers' use of sexual imagery which

becomes almost ludicrous at times. At one point during

Phaedra's attempt to seduce Hippolytus she says to him:

You have a good lance there:

That boar-spear with the great metal head, your toy
that you play with: will you do me a kindness
fellow?
You say you are not unfriendly to me— Stick it into
me'. (53)

It is, as Gerald Weales suggests, not the controlling

image but the tone of the speech which seems out of place.^

But in spite of these objections, there is much of artistic

worth in the verse of The Cretan Woman and it is obvious

that Jeffers was still in 1954, as he was in 1925, far more

successful as a poet than as a dramatist.

This analysis of The Cretan Woman reveals that

although Jeffers has made a number of alterations in the

details of the Phaedra-Hippolytus myth, he has remained

essentially faithful to the framework of the legend. In

the degree of freedom with which Jeffers treats the classic

story, his play resembles Robert Turney's Daughters of

Atreus and Jeffers' own handling of the Atreidae myth.

^Weales, p. 195.
 334

Furthermore, Jeffers' play is characterized by some

of the same tendencies and weaknesses found in most of the

works examined in the previous chapter. Like many of those

plays, the protagonist of The Cretan Woman is the female

agent of the myth rather than the male; and Jeffers'

approach to the story, like that of O'Neill, Rexroth, and

Jeffers himself to the Atreidae legend, is one which empha­

sizes the sensual aspects and which tends to make all of

the principals appear neurotic. The flaws of Jeffers' work

are equally familiar— the playwright's failure to unite

theme and action, his tendency to include elements which

contradict the thesis of the play, his inability to give

adequate human significance to his dramatic figures, and

his use of melodramatic effects simply for their shock

value.
 H. D.'s Hippolytus Temporizes: Myth and Ideal Beauty

Hippolytus Temporizes, a three-act verse drama by

H. D. (pseudonym for Hilda Doolittle Aldington), was pub­

lished in 1927. To my knowledge the play has never been

produced on the professional stage, but it has received

some critical attention. This fact is particularly inter­

esting since the work appeared long after the demise of

Imagism, with which H. D. was first identified; and only

in recent years has she been widely acclaimed as a signifi­

cant literary figure.

The initial response to Hippolytus Temporizes was

favorable. Although all the critics admitted that it was

a very special kind of literature, intended only for "a

small audience,"^ all admired the beauty and originality

of its lyric dialogue. Mark Van Doren called its language

"poetry with a difference, since it ends not in character,

2
where all good poetry begins, but in communication;" and

added that H. D. had "achieved passion in her poetry rather

than sentiment."3 Charles Trueblood, writing for The Dial.

■^Mark Van Doren, "Books— First Glance," The Nation,

October 12, 1927, p. 382.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

335
 336

was pleased that Miss Doolittle had chosen the dramatic

form since this forced her to he less obscure than she had

been in her earlier l y r i c s b u t

admitted that the play
2
seemed "more dramatic lyric than lyric drama." William

Troy, however, questioned whether H. D. had gained from

turning to what he called "this ineffectual type of poetic

drama.Those poems written before Hippolytus Temporizes,

4
he added, "possessed a superior evenness and solidity."

Most of the critics who have examined the play more

recently have found it less praiseworthy. In 1962, how­

ever, Thomas Burnett Swann, the author of the first full-

length critical work on H. D.'s poetry, devoted an entire

chapter to it, claiming the work to be a "small master­

piece."^ Although the drama is poetically interesting,

an examination of it will reveal, I believe, that Swann

has overrated it and that it is subject to many of the same

flaws which plague other mythic dramas in our century.

C h a r l e s K. Trueblood, "The Poetry of Concentration,"

The Dial, LXXXIV (January, 1928), 64.

2Ibid.

^William Troy, "White Lightning," The New Republic,

August 24, 1927, p. 25.

4Ibid.

^See particularly Douglas Bush, Mythology and the

Romantic Tradition in English Poetry (New York: Pagean'fc
fiook Co., 1957), pp. 503-04; and Glenn Hughes, Imagism and
the Imagists: A Study in Modern Poetry (Stanfords Stanford
University Press, 19^1), p. 11£.

^Thomas Burnett Swann, The Classical World of H. D.

(Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 19&2), p. 143.
 337

H. D. uses her legendary material with considerably

greater freedom than did Robinson Jeffers in The Cretan

Woman. Although the setting is Greek in appearance, and

the play begins within the framework of the myth, H. D.

alters several of the most important incidents and adds a

good deal of original material. The third act is entirely

her own invention. The characters of Hippolytus Temporizes

resemble their prototypes in some respects, but are gen­

erally colder and less human. Interestingly enough, H. D.

makes these changes without any apparent attempt to give

her story or her characters particular relevance to the

twentieth century.

All of Hippolytus Temporizes takes place outside

the city of Troezen, where a "wild gorge or ravine cuts

through the trees on to a flat, sandy b e a c h . A s the

first act begins, Artemis enters, explaining that she has

heard the sound of human prayer and has come to this wild

spot by the sea in order to escape all human beings and to

be alone with the elemental nature which she loves.

Hippolytus enters, but does not see Artemis in the half-

light. He soliloquizes at length about his adoration of

her, and his attempts to find her. As his eyes grow accus­

tomed to the dimness, he sees the goddess; he bows before

^H. D . , Hippolytus Temporizes (New York: Houghton

Mifflin Co., 1927), P « 1 * ~ ”
 338

her and begins to tell her of his great devotion.

Artemis, however, is not pleased with Hippolytus

and tells him that he wastes his time in his search for her

and that he might more profitably busy himself with the

demands of kingship; he answers that the forest is his city

and he its high priest. Artemis warns him that there is

another goddess who is not happy with his behavior and

Hippolytus replies that he cannot be concerned with any

other goddess.

As the conversation continues Artemis tells the

Prince that she has heard a disgusting rumor that his step­

mother entertains a passion for him. She warns him to beware

of the Queen, but he reminds the goddess that she alone has

been the object of his faithful worship. Artemis, exasper­

ated, calls him a snare and a trap; he and the others who

pray to her continually frustrate her desire to escape the

prayers and songs of men and "attain immortal sustenance"

(12). Hippolytus retorts that she is the snare, a "lure of

frenzied feet,/ of webbed gold hair" (13)• Artemis denies

this, saying that she is "not woman/ nor of womankind"

(13), though only women can share her company.

Once more Artemis asks the young man to leave her,

but he answers that he cannot and that she fails to recog­

nize the common bond of their love for his mother, Hippolyta.

He says that as Hippolyta was Artemis' own, so, too, is he

her own; since Hippolyta1s spirit still lives in him he is

 339

not mortal. Artemis is appalled by these words and answers

that he certainly is mortal, or at least half-mortal since

Theseus was his father, and "a mortal's heart/ is never

wholly god-like, still and cold" (19)• Hippolytus is not

satisfied with this answer, however, and asks Artemis why

she allowed Hippolyta to die when she would save the least

of the forest creatures. Artemis reminds him that the

"gods may not/ cut athwart/ a mortal's fate" (21), and adds:

I will not stay and argue with a man

for you are that
for all your fragile and imperious length,
your pale set features
and your woman's grace. (21)

Again Hippolytus pleads with her to allow him to stay by

her side, to hunt with her as his mother had. When Artemis

replies that Hippolyta is dead, he cries that his mother is

not dead but lives still in him.

0 if Hippolyta were only dead in me,

then I would sit in front of all thethrong
as Theseus bids me in the banquet hall,
smiling and suave,
all of the courtier
great Theseus as you call him
bids me be;
0 if Hippolyta were dead in me. (23)

Artemis is touched by his despair, but bids him not to

tempt anygod; for gods, like mortals, are weak and can be

urged to do those things which they should not do. Finally,

when Hippolytus calls the goddess "mother," she adds:

Nay, nay,
you are no son, no child of mine,
in you yet lives the strong and valiant soul
of Theseus of Athens;
should I cherish here
 340

this prince of Athens,

his kingship bid him to betray
and the kings that after him
may sway all Attica,
Zeus, Pallas and Another then were the gods,
wroth with me. (25)

Suddenly a white mist obscures the scene. When it dis­

perses, Artemis has vanished and Hippolytus is seen wander­

ing "as if struck blind or with fear of blindness" (26).

Prom the forest Hyperides, a young Athenian cour­

tier, emerges, and tries to persuade Hippolytus to return

to the palace. Hyperides1 tone is gentle; he admits that

religion has its place and that the gods must be worshipped.

He objects, however, to Hippolytus' willfulness, to his

"boy infatuation/ for a wraith" (27), and reminds Hippolytus

of his duty to serve Athens and its king. Hippolytus

answers that Theseus and Athens make him sick and suggests

that Hyperides return to the court to tell Theseus that his

son seeks in the wilderness "to recall the trace/ of one/

long since forgotten" (30). The Prince says that Hyperides

may also report to the King that his son has jeered at him

as a weakling, that Theseus is ridiculous "with all his

senile Greek urbanities" (32), and that he (Hippolytus)

loves only Artemis.

While this conversation has gone on a band of

Athenian huntsmen have entered and grouped themselves

around Hippolytus and Hyperides. Suddenly, a boy approaches

and kneels before Hippolytus. The Prince asks him who he

is, and he answers that he is a stranger who has come

 341

ashore from a wrecked Cyprian vessel.

Ignoring the child, Hyperides resumes his pleading

with Hippolytus to return home. The Prince becomes less

cordial, calling Hyperides a "blatant hypocrite who

think /I7/ to humour a mad prince" (37), and ends his

tirade with the suggestion that Theseus must be impotent.

After the courtiers leave, the strange boy quietly

unfastens his cloak and places it upon the sand so that

Hippolytus may rest. The Prince flings himself down and

begins to talk of his beloved Artemis. The boy comments

that she is very much like his own goddess at home.^ As

Hippolytus falls asleep, the scene ends.

As the second act begins, it is evening. Phaedra

and her serving-woman, Myrrhina, have come to the same

strip of sea coast where the action of the previous scene

occurred. Phaedra tells Myrrhina that she hates Greece and

finds the Greeks cold, arrogant, self-contained, without

any of the warmth and sensualness which characterize the

people of her own land. In particular she objects to the

Greek habit of seeing in each natural object some god or

goddess rather than simply the beauty of the object itself.

Myrrhina objects, asking her how she can find cold

a land where purple .decks . . . smallest

ways,
where a king follows
courting through long days. (45)

Since the boy is Cyprian, the reader may assume, I

believe, that he refers to Aphrodite. This is never made
clear, however.
 342

Phaedra, however, finds no compensation in a dull king who

hears her only a "dotard love" (45). Myrrhina urges her to

he strong until the time comes when they can "outrule this

pallid shore" (46) and return to Crete. The Queen answers

that there is no escape from the passion which she feels,

hut Myrrhina interrupts with a warning to watch what she

says and to remember that she is, above all, queen.

Phaedra's nurse enters to report that Theseus has

granted the Queen's request that a tent he erected by the

sea and that she he allowed to sleep in it for the night.

Phaedra is overjoyed and at once begins giving the nurse

directions for preparing the pavilion.

Phaedra prays to Aphrodite to thank her for this

favor. Myrrhina, however, is frightened, for she knows

that this place is sacred to Artemis who will be affronted

by what the Queen plans to do. But nothing she can say

will deter Phaedra, who tells Myrrhina that when she sees

her husband she aches with a desire to kill him.

The boy who appeared in the previous scene enters.

In spite of almost continual protestations from Myrrhina,

Phaedra manages to convince him that she is the goddess

Artemis. She sends him to tell Hippolytus that Artemis is

done with pride and now chooses love, and that she will now

welcome his companionship if he will come secretly to this

place.

After a brief choral interlude to indicate the

 343

passage of time, Phaedra emerges from the tent. Myrrhina

at once insists that she return to the palace before

Artemis can take revenge on her. The Queen, completely

satisfied with the night's experience, answers that she has

pledged this spot to Aphrodite, and that she cannot return

to Theseus for her king now lies asleep within the tent.

Hippolytus steps from the tent. Seeing Phaedra,

he asks her why she is here. When she answers that she has

come to pray, Hippolytus reviles her, calling her a defiler

of sanctity, a snare, a cheat. Phaedra speaks of her love

for him (apparently she has done so before), but he simply

brushes her aside, telling her that during the night he lay

with Artemis. He adds that he knows that she is gone and

that he will never see her again; Phaedra replies that he

may be able to find her in some other form, "A goddess in a

woman's arms" (75). The Prince tells her brusquely that he

is not tempted.

Phaedra goes on to tell her stepson that on the

previous night she slept soundly for the first time in many

months. Hippolytus, not understanding the implication,

says that he understands her dream, for last night he, too,

"lay bathed in phosphorescence" (78), and adds that he hopes

Phaedra may sleep as well for many other nights. She

answers that she will not be so fortunate, adding mysteri­

ously that
 344

. . . she and I
have won.
• • • • • • • •
In a contest
for a prince—
with death. (78-79)

Neither Myrrhina nor Hippolytus understands her remarks,

hut both seem concerned about the strange mood which has

taken possession of the Queen. Myrrhina urges her to return

to the palace and Hippolytus asks forgiveness for his be­

havior which he says was cruel and unjust. Phaedra turns

once more to her stepson, asks him to pray to Hippolyta for

her, and enters the tent.

While Hippolytus welcomes the dawn, Myrrhina prays

to Artemis to understand and pity the Queen. Prom the tent

comes the voice of Phaedra softly repeating the phrase

"pity me,/ pity me" (84) over and over.

Once more there is a passage of time. It is late

in the morning when Hippolytus is found kneeling before the

statue of Artemis. Hyperides comes from the woods, sees the

Prince, and asks him what he is doing. The courtier is

astonished when he hears Hippolytus say that he is praying

for Phaedra who lies ill in the tent nearby. Hyperides

points out that the tent is gone and asks the Prince if he

has been so intent on his prayer that he does not realize

that Phaedra died there only a few hours earlier. All the

young prince can remember, however, is the night which he

spent with Artemis and he begins to tell Hyperides about

the experience. Almost at once he realizes the trick which

 345

Phaedra has played on her stepson, but when he attempts to

explain to Hippolytus that it was Phaedra, not Artemis,

with whom he slept, the Prince refuses to believe him.

Even after Hyperides tells him that Phaedra committed sui­

cide by hanging herself from the tent pole, Hippolytus

cannot accept what has happened. The act ends as

Hippolytus says:

Call me my chariot
I would flout the waves
and still my gladness
lest I tell this thing
to all the Athenians,
shouting riotous. (95)

As the third act begins, Hippolytus lies at the

base of Artemis' statue where he has been flung from his

chariot. Delirious and dying, he murmurs the goddess' name

over and over. In answer to his call, Helios, the sun god

and brother of Artemis, appears. He is disturbed that his

sister, who is "the friend of huntsmen" and who answers the

cries of the lowliest fisherman, should ignore the pleas of

one who was "broken by . . . /her/ snare," who, following

her beauty, became "dazed and fell/ down the precipitous

shelf" (100). At last, just as Helios is concluding that

Artemis is a "heartless, passionless maid" (103), the

goddess appears.

Artemis is indignant about the charges which her

brother has made and orders him to be silent since he does

not know what kept her from this place. (It becomes apparent

from the goddess' tone that she has had to hear such charges
 346

from her brother on previous occasions^ She says that

nothing can dispel the plague which has entered her and

taken her best from her, no one can cleanse this ill.

Hippolytus regains consciousness and, seeing Artemis,

begins to relive the experience of the previous night,

claiming that he is still intoxicated with the goddess'

fervour. "Love," he says,

. . . makes more sure, more sacred

holy things—

Love stood and with his sandals

trod like wine—

— my heart
till ecstasy and intoxicant—

— filled with its fervour

my enchanted spirit—

— and all my soul was lifted

as with wine—

— and all my spirit

and my soul were joined-

— forever and forever

with my veins—

— my flesh, my hands, my feet—

all, all was spirit. (108-10)

Artemis is incensed; she says that what has occurred is

unspeakable treachery and that Love has forever destroyed

the sanctity and grace of this place. At length Helios in­

sists that Hippolytus and Artemis cease their argument.

The boy who appeared in the first act enters, not

perceiving the others. He sings a hymn to the God of Love,

but is interrupted by Artemis who demands to know what

 347

brings him to this place. When he answers that he comes

to pray after a night of ecstasy, she shows him the dying

Hippolytus and asks if he has not heard of the treachery

of Love. The boy, however, cannot agree that Hippolytus'

soul and body have been defamed. Instead, he claims the

Prince's soul is "beautiful/ in love's great name, and

his body "shows more holy/ for the stain of love" (113).

When Hippolytus stirs, the boy begs Artemis to take pity

upon the wounded man and speak to him. When she refuses,

the boy departs, saying that he will return with Troezians

who will prevent Hippolytus' death.

Por a few moments Hippolytus speaks once more of

his beloved, then lapses into unconsciousness again.

Helios urges his sister to take pity on the Prince, and

when she refuses to do so, he reminds hers

None may affront his name,

not one of us,
ah cruel Eros,
none may dispel the gloom
that his name tells,
all, all must fail,
thou, I and luminous God;
Eros is still man's tyrant
and god's king; (116)

A chorus of ghostly maidens, attendants to Artemis,

enter to dance and sing about the figure of Hippolytus.

When they are about to take the soul of Hippolytus away,

Helios bids them be gone, saying that it is unjust that one

so fair, so young, should die. The maidens depart and

Artemis faces her brother, demanding to know why he has

 348

dismissed her attendants. Helios answers that in order to

prove his power he will restore Hippolytus to life. Death,

he says,

. . . has insulted our divinity

and Love has stolen:
shall we stand speechless, impotent
nor move? (125)

Now it is Artemis' turn to remind her "brother that they are

not always powerful. She recalls the story of the death of

Hyacinthus, and says that she would have Hippolytus immortal­

ized in flower-form so that he might stand by each harbor

and estuary where shipj beach as

a symbol of my love,
an emissary
of faith
and friendship
between god and man. (127)

Helios, however, would keep the Prince from the "purity

and nullity of flowers" (128). He will not listen to his

sister's plea to keep Hippolytus "sacred and apart" (128),

but insteadinfuses life back into the inert body.

Hippolytus stirs and Artemis kneels to support him.

Once again he speaks to her, thinking she is the woman whom

he embraced the previous evening. He continues his lyrical

songs of praise to his beloved and to the power of Love,

and as he does so, Artemis bewails the treachery of Phaedra

and of the god of Love. Finally, she turns to Helios,

tells him that this is "not/ the Hippolytus/ of old" (135),

and asks that he allow the boy to return to death. As

Helios grants his sister's wish, Artemis stoops to kiss

 349

Hippolytus. Hyperides and the huntsmen enter and hear away

the dead Prince. Helios takes his leave of Artemis, ex­

pressing regret that once again he has failed to prove his

love for her. As the play ends, Artemis speaks the lines

with which the play began.

This summary shows clearly that H. D. has signifi­

cantly altered the myth which serves as the basis of

Hippolytus Temporizes. Although the characters and setting

remain Greek in appearance and the basic outline of the

myth is retained, all of the individuals portrayed differ

in some respect from their prototypes, some of the main

events of the story are changed, and an entirely new ending

is added. In its degree of departure from the classic

legend, H. D.'s treatment resembles most closely those

Atreidae dramas examined in the fourth part of the previous

chapter.

Perhaps the most important alteration which the

playwright makes in the myth is to shift the emphasis from

Phaedra and Hippolytus to the goddess Artemis and her rela­

tionship with the Prince. In order to accomplish this, the

playwright has made a number of adjustments in the details

of the story. Hippolytus, in H. D.'s play, does not simply

worship Artemis, but actually seeks the visible form of the

goddess. His relationship to her is not depicted primarily

through reverence for the virtues which she symbolizes;

 350

instead, he seems far more enamored of the goddess herself,

or at least of the physical form which she takes. More

than anything else, he appears to be romantically, even

almost boyishly infatuated.^- In his attempt to gain

Artemis' acceptance of his attention, he goes so far as to

suggest that they are bound together by their love for the

dead Hippolyta, and adds that he is not mortal since his

mother still lives within him.

Artemis, on the other hand, is displeased by

Hippolytus' continual attempts to find her. She would, in

fact, escape the attention and prayers of all men and be­

come, as she says, "evanescent," of the "essence of wood-

things" (12), thoroughly immortal. Not only, then, does

Artemis play a far more important role in Hippolytus

Temporizes than in the myth, but she seems, for the most

part, to lack the sympathy for her devotee which charac­

terizes her in some versions of the legend.

The last act of the play, which has no basis in the

myth, is devoted to a conversation between Artemis and her

brother Helios concerning Artemis' relationship to Hippolytus

and the advisability of bringing him back to life. H. D.

not only continues to place the emphasis on Artemis, but

■^This is tempered, however, by Hippolytus' love of

nature, particularly the wilder and colder aspects of
nature— the unharvested sea, the forest with pines like
waves, the snowfields whiter than foam, the inaccessible
fir grove that hugs the mountainside. And Hippolytus hates
humanity as much as he loves the forest; he describes the
Athenian court as a place of "senile Greek urbanities" (32).
 351

now adds a second immortal who plays no part in the legend.

When Helios resurrects Hippolytus, seemingly against the

wishes of the goddess, both are shocked to find that the

young man is still possessed by the "perfidious flame" of

Aphrodite. And so, lamenting the fact that he has dis­

pleased Artemis, Helios allows Hippolytus to die again.

The other major change which H. D. introduces into

the legendary materials is the addition of the ruse by which

Phaedra tricks Hippolytus into sharing her bed. In the myth,

of course, when Phaedra's desires are made known, Hippolytus

reviles her and leaves the city until his father returns.

Phaedra, fearing that Theseus will discover her love for

her stepson, accuses Hippolytus of raping her. In

Hippolytus Temporizes, the Prince is already aware of

Phaedra's desires. She invades the precinct sacred to

Artemis, and pretending to be the goddess, sends a ship­

wrecked youth (another Doolittle addition) to her stepson

to tell him that if he will come to her secretly at night,

she is ready to accept hi3 love. That Hippolytus should

accept such an invitation is made plausible through the

change in his relationship to the goddess. Phaedra's trick

works and Hippolytus makes love to her, thinking she is

Artemis.

H. D. has also altered the character of Theseus and

minimized the part which he plays in the story. Instead of

the heroic figure of the myth, the playwright presents a

 352

senile old man who never appears on stage.^ Hippolytus

hates his father, thinking him weak and impotent, and

Phaedra refers to Theseus' passion for her as "the dotard

love/ of a dull king" (45). As a result, and because

Aphrodite never appears, her influence on the action seems

less important than in the legend. The Goddess of Love is

referred to frequently by Artemis and at one point Phaedra

prays to her; but, as Swann says, Phaedra "appears less a

figure compelled to wrongdoing by the curse of Aphrodite

2
. . . than a woman driven by her own human hungers. ..."

Other changes can be enumerated briefly, (l) Like

her legendary counterpart, H. D.'s Phaedra commits suicide,

but not because she fears any loss of honor. Apparently

Theseus never learns of her indiscretion. In fact, the

play never makes clear why Phaedra kills herself. (2) As in

the myth, Hippolytus meets his death because of a chariot

accident, but his ride is not a result of banishment. Al­

though at the end of the second act a courtier informs him

of Phaedra's treachery, it is not clear whether Hippolytus

ever believes the story. He embarks, then, either because

he cannot bear the thought that the story might be true, or

^Furthermore, H. D.'s Theseus has not absented him­

self from the kingdom as did his legendary model.
p
Swann, p. 136. This is the only point in
Hippolytus Temporizes at which we find that reduction of
supernatural causation which was characteristic of the
Atreidae dramas examined in chapter ii.
 353

simply because of the great joy which he feels as a result

of embracing what he believed to be Artemis. Hippolytus'

death is caused not by the appearance of a sea monster,

but because he drives too close to the edge of a cliff and

falls. (3) Phaedra's nurse, named Myrrhina in the play,'1'

does not advise her mistress to consummate her love for the

Prince, but rather urges her to return to Crete and warns

her not to neglect the worship of Artemis in favor of

Aphrodite. (4) H. D. adds to the story a character named

Hyperides, an Athenian courtier, and through him introduces

the question of Hippolytus' responsibility to the kingdom

of Athens, a question never raised in the myth.

Hippolytus Temporizes depicts the conflict between

the aspirations of the spirit and the desires of the flesh.

Artemis is H. D.'s heroine, symbolizing that idealized

beauty toward which man aims but which he may never possess;

she represents, as Charles K. Trueblood suggests, "the

?
passion of the heart to be alone with beauty." Opposed

to Artemis is Aphrodite (who never appears in the play),

the embodiment of man's sensual appetites and the only

genuine villainess of the figures that appear in H. D.'s

^The play also includes a character called "Nurse"

who speaks a few lines.

2Trueblood, The Dial. LXXXIV (January, 1928), 65.

 354

poetry.^" The play's conclusion is that Aphrodite (or Eros,

the names are used interchangeably) and the force for which

she stands are always victorious; that the cravings of the

body will always destroy the love of beauty and corrupt

mankind. As Helios says in the third act,

None may affront his name,

not one of us,
ah cruel Eros,
none may dispel the gloom
that his name tells,
all, all must fail,
thou, I and luminous God;
Eros is still man's tyrant
and god's king. . . . (116)

Although this is the thesis in its simplest terms,

the play says more than this. H. D. elaborates upon this

central point until the reader begins to identify Aphrodite

with the forces of modern civilization as opposed to Artemis

who represents nature in its most primitive state. There is

throughout the play a criticism of civilized life.

Hippolytus turns away from Athens and from Theseus, its

king, "with all his senile Greek urbanities" (32). Phaedra,

too, would leave the "tyranny of spirit/ that is Greece"

(45); she cannot understand why the Greeks are unable to

appreciate "each beautiful thing" (44) without also wor­

shipping "the associated spirit with its power" (45). Per­

haps the criticism becomes most apparent when, later in the

play, Hippolytus says of the precinct sacred to Artemis,

■hswann, p. 38.
 355

Sadness of vile humanity;

humanity and sadness of its kind
have no place by this holy driven sea-

Humanity and stale and perilous lust

have no place by this coast. . . . (76)

H. D.'s point is clear. If we are ever to overcome

Aphrodite and all that she stands for, we must turn away

from "vile humanity," and return to nature or at least to

an appreciation of uncivilized beauty, just as Robinson

Jeffers would have us "fall in love outward." There is at

least some similarity between the thesis of Hippolytus

Temporizes and the theme which underlies Jeffers' works

which we have examined. For Jeffers, civilization is the

enemy of man and "the timeless physical universe reduces

humanity to insignificance;"^ similarly, H. D. is, as

Harriet Monroe has said, "a hard, bright-winged spirit of

nature to whom humanity is but an incident." Her writing

reveals, as Douglas Bush suggests, "a sensitive mind op­

pressed by the ugliness and barbarism of modern life, by

the belief that modern civilization has no room for beauty,

and she invites choice spirits to worship at her own se­

cluded shrine."^ Or, as Swann concludes, what H. D. seeks

is to

^Bush, p. 522.
p
Harriet Monroe, Poets and Their Art (New Yorks
Macmillan Co., 1926), p. §2.

^Bush, p. 505.
 356

show through her characters' actions and lyrical

utterances what she considers the only honorable life
possible in a world corrupted by men. Artemis and
Helios— and Hippolytus until he is possessed by
Aphrodite— lead what is, in H. D.'s eyes, a life of
spiritual integrity. Why are their lives good?
Because all three fly the taint . . . ^of h u m a n i t y
and confront their souls among the steadfast moun-
tains .
H. D.'s truth is addressed not to all mankind but
to sensitive individuals like herself, and she does
not exhort them to follow her example, she simply
shares with them what she has learned through her own
tragic experience1

Hippolytus Temporizes is flawed in a number of ways.

Perhaps the playwright's most obvious error is one which

she shares with many modern dramatists who have worked with

classic myths she cannot seem to make the message of her

play rise naturally out of the dramatic action. In general,

the alterations which H. D. has made in the legend seem to

defeat what she would have the play say to us.

As I have already noted, the dramatist shifts the

emphasis from the human agents of the story and their rela­

tions to one another, to the goddess Artemis and her rela­

tionship to Hippolytus. Yet, because the action of the play

remains within the framework of the myth, Phaedra and

Hippolytus continue to be the "actors" in the story, while

Artemis remains essentially a passive participant. There­

fore, if the theme is to be presented in an effective drama­

tic manner, it must somehow be demonstrated by the acts

which Phaedra and Hippolytus perform; they must show us not

■^Swann, pp. 142-43.

only the conflict between spirit and flesh, but also how

erotic love can destroy mankind. But does erotic love de­

stroy either of these characters? Hippolytus, unlike his

prototype, falls prey to Phaedra's trick and, thinking her

to be Artemis, becomes her lover. But he is, as far as we

can tell, not much changed by the experience; if anything,

he is simply more devoted to the goddess and those things

sacred to her. Certainly he is no less able to perceive

beauty or to recognize the place of the spiritual in life.

Nor is Hippolytus' death a result of his reaction to his

encounter with Phaedra, at least not in any direct way. He

is not banished, nor does he die as a result of Theseus'

intervention as in the myth. Instead, H. D.'s play not

only fails to make clear why the Prince embarks on his char­

iot ride, it also leaves the circumstances of his death am­

biguous. Hippolytus' manner of death is mentioned once,

and then only in an offhand way. In the last act, Helios

says:

he was dazed and fell

down the precipitous shelf,
or some beast tore
this huntsman
lying broken on the shore. . . . (100)

Phaedra's role is no more illustrative of the de­

structive powers of sexual love than is Hippolytus'. H. D.'s

Phaedra, unlike the legendary character, is successful in

her attempt to seduce her stepson. Since this Phaedra

seems to act more as a result of her own human hungers than

 358

because of any supernatural force, and since this hunger

has been, at least for a time, satisfied, her suicide

seems illogical and unnecessary. It cannot be claimed that

she kills herself to save her reputation, for no one but

Myrrhina learns of her love-making; nor does the play sug­

gest that by her act of self-destruction she salves her

conscience and makes peace with her spirit.

In short, then, because of the changes which the

dramatist has made in the legend that serves as the basis

of her play, neither Hippolytus nor Phaedra seems to demon­

strate in any adequate way the thesis of the work. Further­

more, the central idea becomes most apparent in the last

act in which the action seems unmotivated by previous

events. Even Swann admits that "H. D. has introduced her

favorite god, not from any dramatic necessity, but so that

he and her favorite goddess may deliver a final . . . judg­

ment against the villainy of love."1

Closely allied to the above point is the fact that

H. D. has, for the most part, simply failed to write genu­

ine drama. What she offers instead is a series of lyrical

passages loosely strung together by a narrative thread.

Since she chooses to center her drama on the one character

in the legend who plays no active role, she writes a work

in which there are no complications, no climaxes, not even

much action. Most of the events occur offstage and are

1Ibid., p. 141.
 359

simply reported; and, as Swann says, even her /E. D.'a/

reportings are likely to be more lyrical than dramatic."1

As a result, the drama which is inherent in the myth is

vitiated. In place of the "concrete, human, and ethical"

drama which we might expect, we get, as Douglas Bush notes,

2
a play which is "vague, unhuman, and esthetic."

A third point which has also already been suggested

is that Hippolytus Temporizes is frequently obscure or even

contradictory. I have already touched on the lack of clar­

ity which surrounds the motivation for Phaedra's suicide

and the cause of Hippolytus1 death. Perhaps a few other

similar problems ought to be noted. There can be no doubt,

I feel, that Artemis is H. D.'s heroine. Yet, how are we

to react when Artemis' maidens come to retrieve the soul of

Hippolytus, and Helios says to them:

Nay
nay
be gone,
I feel the web,
the ecstasy, the lure
of peace,
the power
that negates life,
be off. . . . (122)

Is this picture of the life which Artemis represents not alien

to the message which the play preaches? Equally confusing

is the nature and degree of power which H. D.'s immortals

have. Early in the play Artemis tells Hippolytus that

1Ibid.
2Bush, p. 504
 360

Gods may not

cut athwart
a mortal's fate. (21)

And a little later when Hippolytus asks if gods are weak

like mortals and can he tempted, Artemis answers, "Too

well" (25). In the final act, however, it becomes quite

apparent that the gods, or Helios at any rate, can "cut

athwart/ a mortal's fate," for he brings Hippolytus back

from the dead. Helios even says at one points

I am more powerful
than heaven's will
and death must pause
and death must stand amazed
even at the life
the strength my hands distil. . . .
(123)
A third point of ambiguity concerns the character whom

H. D. calls "Boy." Is he simply a survivor of a wrecked

Cyprian vessel as he claims, or is he Eros or the agent of

Eros? He is portrayed in a less realistic manner than the

other mortals, and the fact that he is from Cyprus and the

one who leads the Prince to Phaedra's tent would suggest

that we should identify him with the God of Love. Yet the

playwright leaves us with doubts as to whether such an

identification is correct.

Most of the major characters of Hippolytus Tempor­

izes have already been described; perhaps a few additional

comments will be sufficient to provide the reader with an

adequate picture of each, and to suggest their essential

failure as dramatic characters. At the center of the play

 361

is the goddess Artemis— cold, remote, entirely aloof from

human affairs. She would, if possible, isolate herself

entirely from the human world; she would escape the re­

sponsibility of answering human prayers; even the atten­

tions of someone entirely devoted to her are a tiresome

nuisance. She can tolerate only the companionship of her

ghostly maidens who make no claims on her whatsoever. Her

brother Helios is only slightly less distant. He does have

at least some degree of sympathy for Hippolytus and it is

he who urges Artemis to take pity on the Prince; neverthe­

less, H. D. is careful to divest the Sun God of the sexual­

ity which characterizes him in many of his legendary ex­

ploits and to subordinate him to his sister, the virgin

moon.

Hippolytus, too, would divest himself of humanity

in order to follow his elusive ideal. Like his prototype,

he is in love with nature; but it is always with the colder,

harsher aspects of nature. H. D. turns her Hippolytus into

a "modern poet,"^ a young man who appears to be more in­

fatuated with the idea of being devoted than he is genuinely

in love with his ideal.

The Cretan princess Phaedra is the most interesting

character of the play. There is warmth and life in Phaedra,

qualities which are absent in the other major characters.

By diminishing the role which Aphrodite plays in the story,

1Ibid., p. 503.
 362

H. D. creates in Phaedra a character who seems more moti­

vated by her own sexual desires than by the will of a god­

dess. But, as Swann indicates, Phaedra is subordinated to

Artemis and Hippolytus; her

fire blazes up only to accentuate Hippolytus's frigid

withdrawal; it casts into relief the icy emotional
landscape surrounding her, as a torch in a cave illumin­
ates a forest of frosty stalagmites. By the end of Act
II, when Phaedra disguised as Artemis goes to Hippolytus,
the ice has begun to quench her flame, and she actually
resembles Artemis.1

H. D . , then, unlike many modern dramatists who have

turned to classic mythology, retains for her characters the

majesty which characterizes their prototypes. In the pro­

cess, however, she has dehumanized most of them to such an

extent and removed them so far from the common range of ex­

perience that they hold little interest for us as dramatic

figures. They are like marble statues, cold and lifeless,

and we can find no adequate way to relate our lives to

theirs.

Hippolytus Temporizes is free of irrelevant thea-

tricalism and contains few conventions borrowed from classic

Greek drama. H. D. does make use of reported action and

stichomythia, but these seem less a matter of borrowing

than of the style in which she writes. The only element of

the play which appears obviously transplanted is the chorus

of ghostly maidens who are in the service of Artemis.

Throughout most of the play the chorus remains offstage and

"^Swann, pp. 136-37.

 363

its brief lyric passages are heard only infrequently. When,

in the third act, the chorus is brought onstage and given a

considerable portion of dialogue, H. D. gives it some degree

of dramatic motivation by having the chorus members explain

that they have come to take away the soul of Hippolytus.

Perhaps the worst thing that can be said for the chorus is

that it seems a too self-conscious poetic device.

H. D. has written a heavily lyrical, carefully con­

trolled free verse. Although no one cadence seems basic to

the poetry of the play, lines of 4, 5, and 6 syllables pre­

dominate; occasionally 8- or 10-syllable lines are found,

but in the entire work there are not more than a dozen lines

of greater length. As the following passages will indicate,

i
Hippolytus Temporizes contains numerous passages which are

essentially iambic:
X X X
I will disport at ease
x
and wait;
X X X X x
I will engage in thought and plot with earth
X X X
how we may best efface. ... (2)
X X X X
I have intrigued for many days
x
to meet
x x
some kindly serpent
X X X
who might name your name. ... (4)
X X X X X
one grain, one seed of human kindly love,
x x
how is it you
X X X
who seek in wind and wet
X X X
the ferret as he writhes. . . . (20)
 364

X X X
Were you then so intent
x x
upon your prayer,
x x
your worship of this chaste
X X
and distant lady. . . . (85)

It should be added, however, thatthe preponderance of

iambic lines is in the first act.

It will be noted that about half of the previous

examples contain single lines of blank verse. There are

also within the play a few brief passages which are

written in rhymed iambic pentameter. Perhaps the longest

of these is one that is found at the end of Act Ills

X X X X X
Hyperides: See how/the spray/is sweep/ing from/the
x
sea—
X X X X
Hippolytus: As snow/blown from/the peak/of some/
X X
tall tree—
X X X X X
Hyperides: Hear how/the wind/is whip/ping up/the
x
sand—
X X X X X
Hippolytus: As sil/ver and/as white/as her/headband—
X X X X X
Hyperides: Hear how/the tide/moans peri/lously/
x
along—
X X X X X
Hippolytus: As low,/as soft,/as omi/nous as/her song.

(94)

H. D. also has a tendency to take what might, in more tra­

ditional verse, be blank verse lines and split them in two,

For example:
 365

x x
is this some blossom
X X X
wafted from your hands. . . . (6)
X X X
that works like some still poison
X X
in the blood. (103)

To the auditor, the rhythmic effect of each of these exam­

ples and of genuine blank verse must be nearly the same,

although for the reader the visual effect is, obviously,

different.

H. D. depends on assonance and alliteration as well

as meter to create her aural effects, perhaps more heavily

on the former than the latter. Slant or imperfect rhyme is

often added to heighten the total effect.

There is no question that Hippolytus Temporizes is

shot through with lovely lyrical passages; at the same

time it must be admitted that the playwright has had only

limited success in writing dramatic dialogue. The language

of the play is most effective when it is most direct. Fre­

quently, however, H. D. gives her characters speeches which

are too long and too intricate for the dramatic require­

ments of the scenes in which they occur. The result is al­

most invariably one of tenuousness. At times the poetry be­

comes monotonous because H. D. restricts her verse to a

limited number of patterns; the monotony would go unnoticed

in a short lyric, but becomes too obviously apparent in a

full-length dramatic work. Finally, I would add that one

of H. D.'s stylistic mannerisms, the repetition of identical

one-word lines, becomes obsessive, and, as Douglas Bush

 366

observes,

often approaches and sometimes topples over the brink

of the ridiculous; in the space of two pages, for
instance, there are eighteen lines consisting of
"aye," "yes," and "no." As dramatic or lyrical dia­
logue such writing lacks passion and variety; not
even a^ritualistic play achieves high tension by such
means.

In summary, Hippolytus Temporizes reveals another

basic way in which the Phaedra-Hippolytus myth has been

treated by English-speaking playwrights of our century.

In the degree of freedom with which H. D. treats the myth,

the play resembles most closely the Atreidae dramas of

Richardson, O'Neill, and Rexroth. The drama fails par­

tially because the action tends to contradict the theme

which Doolittle gives to the work, and partly because

H. D. is essentially a lyric, not a dramatic poet.

Hippolytus Temporizes is more a series of antiphonal lyrics

than a unified dramatic work.

^Bush, p. 504.
 Kenneth Rexroth's Phaedra: Myth and

the Power of Human Love

Phaedra, a one-act verse drama "by Kenneth Rexroth,

was published in 1951 as part of a collection of short

plays based on classic myth; this volume, and the final

drama which it contains, are both entitled Beyond the

Mountains. According to William Carlos Williams, Rexroth

worked on these plays for a period of ten years before

offering them to the public.'*' Since their appearance they

have been the subject of scant critical attention, and

Phaedra, to my knowledge, has never been produced on the

professional stage. Further introductory comments as well

as my justification for considering each of the works in

the volume a separate artistic entity may be found in the

first few pages of my discussion of Beyond the Mountains

which appears in the previous chapter.

Rexroth uses the elements of the Phaedra-Hippolytus

legend with greater freedom than any playwright whose works

I have examined. He retains the Greek names for his charac­

ters and the settings and costumes are formalized versions

^William Carlos Williams, "Verse with a Jolt to It,"

The New York Times Book Review, January 28, 1951, Sec. 7,
p. 5.

367
 368

of ancient Greek architecture and dress. More important,

however, he turns the events of the myth topsy-turvy so that

the characters of Phaedra behave and relate to one another

in ways which are almost exactly opposite to those of their

legendary models. As a result, the play resembles most

closely, in terms of the degree of freedom which its author

has taken with the myth, those Atreidae dramas included in

the final part of chapter ii.

Phaedra takes place at some time during the Greek

Heroic Age. Across the back of the stage is a wide screen

on which is sketched a "small, primitive, columned building,

of the wooden Doric type,"^ representing Theseus' palace at

Athens. Two choruses remain onstage throughout the play.

The First Chorus, consisting of an old beggar, the former

king of a city plundered by Theseus, and a prostitute,

identified by Phaedra as one of the court ladies of another

ruined empire, voice the view of an omniscient sage. Al­

though they perform necessary business during the play, they

seem uninterested in the events of the drama and "treat the

principals with a certain condescension" (14). The Second

Chorus, a group of four individuals, act as "musicians, mob,

commentators, prop men, and sound effects" (14). Their

comments reveal them to be cynical and unenlightened.

The play begins with two brief choral passages. In

^Kenneth Rexroth, Phaedra, in Beyond the Mountains

(New York: New Directions Books, 1951), p. 13.
 369

the first we are told of a recent lunar eclipse of the sun,

an obvious portent of evil. The second provides the neces­

sary exposition. We learn that Phaedra has been ill for

some time and that her sickness is reflected in the life of

the kingdom: crops have withered and men and beasts have

become sterile; "The life of the people hangs/ On the womb

they crown with gold" (17). Theseus has journeyed to Hell

"On a fool’s errand" (17), and Hippolytus forsakes his

duties as prince "for/ A saint's gelded wantonry" (17),

spending his time in the forest worshiping Artemis. The

people agree that of the three, Hippolytus is the worst;

but they can remember a time when he was frequently seen

"staggering hot with wine,/ Under each arm a young girl"

(17), a time when "Every year he deflowered/ Half the town's

crop of virgins" (17-18). As the chorus speculates as to

the cause of the change which Hippolytus has undergone, he

enters from the palace.

The Prince asks that his horse be brought to him,

adding that he is anxious to leave his father's palace at

once. When the Chorus reminds him that he leaves much un­

done, he answers that the affairs of state can be taken care

of by the sick queen and Theseus' politicians; they can

build "banks, tombs, whorehouses" (20). Hippolytus will go

deep into the forest, to an apple tree into whose branches

"the sun's blood will stream from the moon's/ Veins" (20);

this is the tree which feeds his heart from the pure com­

passionate heart of Artemis, "who hears the world's cry"

 370

(21). The horse is brought and as Hippolytus departs,

he says:

Good-by, pesthouse. I only hope

I never have to smell your stink
Of lust and murder anymore. (21)

The Second Chorus begins to discuss Phaedra1s ill­

ness. At first, they say, she simply paced her room, or

called for her chariot and then sent it away unused, or

rode aimlessly about. Sometimes she slept all night and

all day as well; at other times a lamp burned in her room

throughout the night. For a week she drank wine, but it

had no effect upon her. Now she will not taste wine and

has refused food as well.

Phaedra is carried out on her couch which is set

down before the palace. Although she has asked to be

brought outdoors, she now realizes that she does not want

the sunlight. When the Chorus suggests that the sun will

give her strength, she answers that she does not want its

strength and adds that she has her own:

It is strength that makes these white thighs

Too weak to walk. I have ample
Strength at my spine’s black root—
I don't need all his cheap blonde noise. (23)

The Chorus urges the Queen to eat, saying that she will

destroy her "beautiful flesh" (24) if she continues to

fast. Phaedra answers that they need not worry, for her

flesh is immortal, passing from dying spirit to spirit.

Wisdom, lust, chastity and war—

All the gods try to destroy it—
But they never will. (24)
 371

She asks the Chorus to place their hands on her "belly

which she says is the phoenix' nest. Someday, she adds,

she will "burn herself up in it and walk from the flames a

virgin.

As one of the Chorus begins to comb her hair,

Phaedra speaks in a random, disconnected way, first about

her mirror which she calls the "elastic masks of our/

Identities (25), and then of mountains, and waterfalls,

and forests where young men go naked at night. After a

time, however, the Queen ceases her musings and tells the

Chorus that she did not ask to be involved, did not ask to

be brought to Athens. At home, in Knossos, she had been a

princess and royal priestess. When Theseus and his Greeks

pillaged her city, her father was killed and she was taken

as a spoil of war to be Theseus' wife. She adds that the

change from royal princess to "pirate's whore" (27) is not

as great as some might expect.

A princess is a kind of whore,

The peasant's gorgeous imagined
Bedfellow. We serve to provide
Insatiable appetites
That keep men busy. If it weren't
For us there'd be no history. (27)

The court ladies of Knossos became prostitutes in Athens,

Phaedra says,

But not me. I'll never be freed.

I am the proof of the pudding—
What it was all for— my sister
And I, all that blood nastiness
And ruin. (28)
 372

Abruptly Phaedra turns to the Chorus, telling them

that she is hot and orders them to remove her clothes.

I wish I were naked in cold

Water. I want to be taken,
Plunged in a freezing cataract,
My flesh burst with monstrous male flesh.
(28 )
Peasants, soldiers, and worshipers, she says, have de­

stroyed themselves with their lust, but she has escaped

clean. Now only "love's absolute" (28) will fill the de­

sire with which she has been left. She adds that although

she is not where she wants to be and trapped in a net of

illusions, she is not afraid.

Then, with the help of those about her, the Queen

rises and begins to dance. At first she staggers, but

gradually she gains strength. The Chorus explains that

she dances the Minotaur dance, which she performed with

her brother in the heart of the Minoan labyrinth; it is a

terrible dance to watch, too dreadful for ordinary folk to

observe. They add that Phaedra has taught Theseus the

heron dance— "The rigid erotic hover/ Of the male and

female virgins" (30)— performed as a part of the labyrinth'

ine procession. The King will never understand what the

dance is for, however, because he will never observe the

ritual which the Queen now executes. For ages the Athen­

ians will dance the steps which Phaedra has brought from

Crete, but for them the routine will always remain point­

less.
 373

At the end of the dance Phaedra sits down abruptly,

staring straight ahead. The screen at right is removed to

reveal Hippolytus who neither speaks nor moves. The Queen

stiffly turns her head and sees him. He explains that he

has lost his sword and has returned to the palace to look

for it. Phaedra pulls the weapon, which she has found,

from her bedclothes and offers it to him, asking why the

hilt and scabbard are sealed together so that the blade

cannot be drawn. Hippolytus answers that the sword is his

father's, and that Theseus gave it to him as a symbol of

power. The young man has taken it, however, as a symbol

of responsibility, and sworn never to draw it and never to

be without it. Phaedra cannot understand why he does not

need his sword since he spends all his time in hunting,

but Hippolytus replies that he does not hunt, that his

hunting is simply a tale which has been told to mislead

Theseus. The Prince has, in fact, vowed never to take a

life, a pledge made as penance for "a career of lust and

blood" (32). It is not Artemis, goddess of the hunt, whom

he worships, but

Artemis the huntress of souls,

The healer and the avenger,
The lady of the moon filled lake.
She is living retribution,
The peace that unties illusion,
Renunciation that gains all,
The myriad breasted virgin,
The mirror that reflects the sun—
Pure in the dark night of the soul. (32)

The Queen is amazed at these words. She has loved and

 374

hated him, she says, for all the wrong reasons; she has

loved him for his pride, and hated him "because she thought

him a true Hellene, "sensate/ Till they are insensible”

(33)» and completely self-assured.

As Hippolytus takes the weapon from his stepmother,

her hand clings to the scabbard, and she tells the boy that

some day he will draw his sword; when he does, he will kill

her. Phaedra begins to weep, murmuring, in French (which

the Chorus says is her native tongue), that she is melting

as the snow on the mountains in simmer. For a moment

Hippolytus stands trembling before her, unable to move.

Softly, he asks her why she cries; he tells her that he has

never hated her, and now realizes that he has not been

alone and can tell her how much he loves her. Phaedra an­

swers, however, that he cannot know, he cannot understand

the cause of her tears, for she weeps not for their private

misery, but "for the chaos of the world" (34). The Prince

cannot comprehend her words, and says that although he has

always been tortured by conflict, he has tried to find what

was his duty. Now he no longer knows whether or not he has

succeeded. Realization, Phaedra replies, is "hard/ to

recognize" (34); it is like the pain in a nerve which has

never been used, like the pain of childbirth. And when she

asks Hippolytus if he would recognize Artemis if he saw her,

he can only answer that he thinks he would. "Do you want

me?" Phaedra asks.

 375

Hippolytus: I want
What you want.

Phaedra: No you don't. But I

will take you. Maybe it is what
I want.

Hippolytus: I want you to take me. (35)

They dance together, a dance which symbolizes their

sexual union, while the Chorus recalls the mating of a sea-

eagle that couples in mid-air when the sun is at its zenith.

Gradually the light grows dim, and when the climax of the

dance is reached, the stage is in total darkness. After an

interval the lights come up again. Hippolytus and Phaedra

are gone, and one of the chorus members is singing the con­

cluding lines of a love song.

The Queen and her stepson re-enter, looking, the

Chorus tells us, like dead people, as if there were nothing

inside their skins. The Chorus adds that although such

love must be wonderful, they can do without it.

Phaedra wonders if some day she- and Hippolytus will

be put in the stars. She fears that if they are, they will

be represented by stars which come together only once during

the year, for, she says, their love will have to be paid for.

Life, like any property,

Is acquired by theft. (38)

Hippolytus and Phaedra agree that they have never known

that such love could exist; but when Hippolytus suggests

that they forget Theseus and begin making new memories for

themselves, Phaedra cautions that that may not be possible.

 376

Memory, she claims, is not a wandering ghost that the mind

can dispossess,

But living bone that our acts

Made powerful over us. (39)

Although she would like to forget, she fears that she will

be unable to do so, and adds that Theseus may return at

any time. Hippolytus believes, however, that by journey­

ing to Hell, Theseus has gone too far and will never be

able to return. But Phaedra replies that the Prince for­

gets the "vast frivolity/ Of the economy of Hell" (39)»

and that Theseus never lacks for stratagems. Besides, she

adds, either the glamour of their bliss or the intensity

of their lust will be noted even in Hell and Theseus will

return home.

The world's destructive children

Dictate their own terms to fate.
It's people like you and me
Pate traps and the Puries haunt. (40)

In spite of Phaedra1s warning, Hippolytus refuses

to concern himself with his father. He tells Phaedra that

for the last ten years— since Theseus brought her back from

Crete— he has hardly been able to look at her lest he re­

veal his true feelings. No man, he says, would take a

goddess as love's surrogate if he could have a human female.

But while Artemis' immortality passed into him, he was able

to forget Phaedra; at other times he forced himself to

think of her only in terms of the King's lust. And if he

had not forgotten his sword, he would again be in the moun­

tains, drunk with the immortality of Artemis. She might

 377

even have opened herself to him tonight, "merged • . .

^iis7 will with her turning disc" (41). Now, however, it

is too late for that; what has happened

. . . has not been an act of will.

It should have been made to happen—
Not just have happened anyhow. (41)

Phaedra wonders if he knows what he has said and asks if he

has found vision in the act of love. When he answers that

he has, she tells him that he does not even know what

vision costs.

We are each of us tied up

In the inside of a glove.
A great pride or a great lust
Can cut the knot and reverse
The glove. There's no other way—
Vision— evisceration. (42)

She goes on to say that his sword with its sealed blade is

the sword of perfect pride, and asks if he has a right to

such a weapon. Although Hippolytus cannot understand all

that the Queen has said, he questions whether she has the

power to be the wound that only an undrawn sword can cut.

But, he says, he would rather make love than bandy mysteries.

After a brief embrace, Phaedra asks her stepson

what he would have done with his will— the will it took ten

years to sharpen— once he had perfected it. Hippolytus an­

swers that he does not know, but doubts that she wants him

to make his will subservient to hers. Submission, the

Queen replies, she can get from Theseus or from any sailor.

I can only be possessed

By an act that is its own
Memory.
 378

You have it wrong—

Your wisdom against my love.
Only the wise can "be proud.
Only the imbecile love. (44)

In response, the Prince tells her that she has been obsessed

with a labyrinth too long and as a result has an inhuman,

labyrinthine heart. He desires only the ordinary bliss of

a human woman's body, "Not a wedding with black nothing"

(44). When Phaedra answers that he has forgotten that he

almost became the husband of Artemis, he replies that he

can choose his fate and that he chooses "the bright hair

on . . . womb" (45) in preference to the black strands

which she is trying to weave around him. Then, the Queen

says, "I make the same choice" (45). She tells Hippolytus

that she can take him to a "place/ Beyond memory" (45), a

place in the Italian jungles where the fugitives from

burned-out Troy and Knossos "struggle with oblivion" (45).

There her royalty would be holy, there she would be the

only one who could perform the sacred rituals, there she

could make Hippolytus king and be his wife, and there he

could draw his sword and anoint her with the blood of bulls

to prepare her for their wedding. She adds that the civil­

izations which have settled there will eventually die out,

but their teachings will last in the minds of the aborigines

who make their home in the same jungles, and some day these

men "will pay the heirs/ Of Theseus in his own coin" (46).

But Hippolytus would leave the founding of new states to

his father; nor has he any desire to butcher bulls in order

 379

to make men immortal. He wants only Phaedra, and for the

rest, can wait and see.

Time is a coiled snake, and deadly

If trod upon. (47)

Phaedra replies that his wise-sounding words are nothing

but procrastination, and adds,

I can take what I can get?

All right. I take everything.
It's now or never? This now
Is never. Kiss me. Take me.
You can have the power now
To take me beyond return.
But what returns if you do,
Is your responsibility.
Now do you know what I mean? (47)

Hippolytus tells her that for once he understands her mean­

ing. Fire will spray from their union, he says, and burn

down the world and them with it; then, "Let it burn" (47).

Phaedra rises from the couch upon which the two have

been seated, asks Hippolytus for his sword, and offers him

a cup of wine. As he drinks from the cup which she holds

to his lips, he drops her gown and she draws his sword from

its scabbard. Once more they begin to dance. When the cli­

max of the dance is reached, they hold their positions for

several seconds, then spring apart. The left screen is

pushed back to reveal Theseus. Phaedra runs across the

stage, the cup and sword still in her hands, presses her

body against the King, looks up into his face, and says:

The lictors of Hell, are they

Sentient beings, or merely
Automata created
Especially for the purpose? (50)
 380

Theseus is momentarily disturbed by his queen's

strange behavior, but he quickly recovers and begins to

tell his son about his adventures in Hell. Although he

was locked in the bottom dungeons, he had no difficulty

escaping, for the walls of Hell are as thin as smoke. He

was unable to bring Persephone back to Athens because, even

though she is a living woman, she is at the mercy of the

dead. Nevertheless, he spent a night with her which she

enjoyed. The only other living thing in Hell, Theseus

adds, was a bull which got lost there years ago. When the

dead found they could not harm Theseus, they tried to get

the bull to kill him; but he simply climbed on the bull's

back and rode him home. The King put him in the stable

with Hippolytus' horses and warns the Prince to be careful

of him; the bull is a sort of relative, Theseus adds, in

fact the same bull which Pasiphae once loved.

Hippolytus can remain silent no longer and blurts

out the truth about his liaison with the Queen. Theseus

answers that he was aware that such an event would take

place and would have been ashamed of his son if nothing had

happened. He hopes that Phaedra has found more pleasure in

the arms of Hippolytus than she did in her husband's arms

and he offers to give Crete to the lovers as their province.

Hippolytus is enraged by his father's reaction and screams

that although Theseus has destroyed a dozen wives and all

their children, cities full of other men and their wives and
 381

children, and "the poems of poets/ The visions of artists,

the dreams/ Of the wise" (52), he cannot destroy his son.

Shouting his defiance at his father, he runs out.

The King watches the hoy go and then turns to the

Chorus to tell them that his son's anger will soon pass.

When Theseus asks that Phaedra he brought to him, the left

screen is removed, revealing her, dead, impaled on

Hippolytus1 sword. He walks to the hody, lifts her face,

and looks silently at her for a moment; then he lets her

head fall with a sigh, saying that she must have heen

drunk and out of her senses when she killed herself. As

he turns away from his dead queen, the Second Chorus enters

carrying the hody of Hippolytus, his arms and legs broken

and the corpse smeared with dirt and blood. The Chorus

tells the King that when his son went to get his horse, he

was killed by the bull which Theseus brought back from

Hell. Theseus gives instructions to have the bodies placed

together on the couch which stands near by, and laments:

What a terrible thing to happen.

And so suddenly. I should have stayed
Away. I am a good-natured man.
But everywhere I bring disaster.
I am just Theseus, a bawdy
Old campaigner, why should things like this
Have to happen to me all the time? (54-55)

As the play ends, the Chorus tells the audience:

They could not win.

Her love was not strong enough,
And her vanity took flesh.

His frail pride could not withstand

That lewd hungry animal.
It walked forth alive from him.
 382

Out of vision generate

The perfected grace of bliss,
The terrible things that wait
Behind substance, seeking form.

Impure intention is damned

By the act it embodies.

Each sinned with the other's virtue. (55)

The above synopsis reveals that Rexroth has altered

the elements of the Phaedra-Hippolytus myth much more

severely than either Jeffers or Doolittle. Although Rexroth

begins his play much as the legend itself begins, he quickly

breaks out of the framework of the myth in order to turn the

characters and events of the classic story inside out and to

produce a work which is almost wholly original. In Phaedra,

Aphrodite and Artemis no longer play important roles, and

the characters of Hippolytus and Theseus are completely

changed. Only Phaedra remains at least somewhat faithful

to her classic models.

The most significant change which Rexroth has made

in the legendary materials appears in the character of

Hippolytus. In complete contrast to his prototype, the

Hippolytus of Rexroth1s play is as much in love with Phaedra

as she is with him, and is the first to confess his love.

He claims, in fact, to have loved her ever since Theseus

brought her to Athens, ten years earlier. Not only does

Hippolytus reveal his love, but he consummates it as soon

as he learns that Phaedra is willing. To justify this

 383

interpolation, Rexroth has considerably altered the details

of Hippolytus' earlier life. At the moment the play begins,

the Prince, like his prototype, is a celibate devotee of

Artemis; but the Chorus recalls a time when wine and sex

were his greatest pleasures. In addition, Hippolytus' re­

lationship with Artemis is different from that depicted in

the legend. In Phaedra, he worships Artemis not as goddess

of the hunt,^ but as "huntress of souls" (32); and even his

devotion to Artemis in this role appears to be little more

than a means of sublimation, for he quickly gives up the

goddess once he learns that he can possess the Queen.

Finally, at the end of the play it is Hippolytus who informs

Theseus that he has been made a cuckold.

Although Theseus is essentially a minor figure in

Rexroth's play, his character is equally changed. Whereas

the mythical Theseus is enraged by the idea that his son

has made love to Phaedra, Rexroth's Theseus has expected

such an event to occur and would have been ashamed of his

son if it had not. He is, he says, "a man of the world"

(52), and, realizing that he has never given his wife what

she wanted, he has absented himself in hopes that his son

will provide her with the pleasure which she seeks. The

King goes so far as to offer Phaedra and Hippolytus the

island of Crete as their own province. Theseus' reaction

^Hippolytus pretends to hunt, but this is merely a

ruse for Theseus' benefit; in actuality he has vowed that
he will never use the sword which his father has given him.
 384

to the death of his wife and son is also different from

that suggested by the myth. Instead of being filled with

grief by the event, he is merely self-pitying. "Why

should things like this/ Have to happen to me all the

time" (55)» he says.

Rexroth almost completely removes Aphrodite and

Artemis from his story. The Goddess of Love is referred

to only once in the play and there is never any suggestion

that she controls the events which occur or that she is

punishing Hippolytus because he has failed to worship her.

References to Artemis appear much more frequently, but as

I have already pointed out, there is some question as to

how serious Hippolytus' worship of her is. Like Aphrodite,

she takes no part in the action of the play. Consequently,

the acts which the characters perform seem to be partially

a matter of their own volition and partly a result of

Rexroth's own peculiar notion of the forces of history.

The other adjustments which Rexroth makes in the

myth may be enumerated briefly: (1) In the legend, Theseus

makes two trips to Crete, one in which he kills the Minotaur

and steals Ariadne, and a later, more peaceful one, in

which he receives Phaedra as a bride. In Phaedra, these

two trips have been telescoped into one. (2) No equivalent

of Phaedra's nurse appears in Rexroth's drama.

(3) Hippolytus is killed by the bull which Theseus has

brought back from Hell, not by some sort of monster which

 385

Poseidon sends in answer to Theseus' prayer that his son

he destroyed. (4) Phaedra commits suicide hy impaling her­

self on Hippolytus1 sword instead of hanging herself as her

prototype did. (5) The Chorus of Rexroth's drama tells us

that Phaedra's suffering has caused a plague which has

overtaken the Athenian countryside. No hasis for this de­

tail exists in the classic story. (6) Finally, Rexroth has

Phaedra tell us that she has never found pleasure in her

relations with Theseus. Again, this is the playwright's

own addition to the story and gives Phaedra additional

human motivation for taking Hippolytus as her lover.

The philosophic thesis with which Rexroth attempts

to infuse Phaedra is much the same as that embodied in

Beyond the Mountains, the Rexrothian work examined in the

previous chapter. Since the reader may refer to my earlier

discussion, I will present here only a brief resume of that

thesis. The essential statement which Rexroth's work seems

to posit is that human beings may transcend the events and

consequences of human history through acts of sensual love,

which, if they are to be genuine, must be completely self­

less. In turn, this act will enable them to see beyond the

world of illusion which most people inhabit to the true

reality of existence.

On the one hand, Rexroth sees history as a cyclical

affair, a series of recurring events and circumstances.

 386

Man's life is circumscribed by this cyclic pattern; he

cannot escape the events of the past nor the circumstances

of the present. Yet, even though his life is for the most

part predetermined, he is forced to live in a world in

which men must accept the consequences of their actions.

When Hippolytus suggests to Phaedra that they build them­

selves new memories, she answers:

Memory, unhappily,
Is not some wandering ghost
That the mind can dispossess,
But living bone that our acts
Made powerful over u s . (39)

Or, as the Chorus says in Beyond the Mountains, most men

are the "marionettes/ Of choice and consequence" (166), and

as a result, "all/ Existence is uneasy" (44).

On the other hand, life which is lived only on this

level is an illusion. Some men, like Theseus, simply accept

this illusory life without question. Others, like Phaedra

and Hippolytus, fight against it. Occasionally human beings

are able to transcend this level of life and gain a vision

of reality. They achieve such transcendence through the

act of human (and sensual) love, which, if genuine, is

entirely selfless— always an end in itself, never a means

to an end. At one point in the play, Phaedra says to

Hippolytus:

Do you know what vision costs?

We are each of us tied up
In the inside of a glove.
A great pride or a great lust
Can cut the knot and reverse
 387

The glove. There's no other way—

Vision— evisceration. (42)

And Rexroth comments in The Dragon and the Unicorn, a work

which he recommends to those who would learn the message

of his plays, "It is the essence of love to transcend

„1
consequence."

It is doubtful that this analysis of the play's

thesis could he pieced together simply by reading or seeing

Phaedra, but an examination of the other dramas in the

volume in which it appears as well as an investigation into

other of Rexroth's poems support my conclusion. Neverthe­

less, the difficulties which the reader or viewer would

encounter in attempting to comprehend the meaning of

Rexroth's work reveal two of its major flaws: first, the

playwright's failure to integrate the theme and action of

his play, and second, the tendency of the drama toward

obscurity and lack of coherence.

Perhaps the severest criticism of Phaedra is that

the author is unable to embody his theme of transcendence

in dramatic_form. In the preface to Rexroth's collection

of plays, he states: "Phaedra and Hippolytus achieve

transcendence but are destroyed by impurity of intention"

(9). Yet, this point is made in the play only in the

speech of the First Chorus which concludes the drama:

■^Cenneth Rexroth, The Dragon and the Unicorn

(Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1^52), p. 375.
 388

The sword of a Russian witch,

Proud past "belief, the evil
Memory of a bestial
Queen long dead.

They could not win.

Her love was not strong enough,
And her vanity took flesh.

His frail pride could not withstand

That lewd hungry animal.
It walked forth alive from him.

Out of vision generate

The perfected grace of bliss,
The terrible things that wait
Behind substance, seeking form.

Impure intention is damned

By the act it embodies.

Each sinned with the other's virtue. (55)

The action of the drama only vaguely suggests that Phaedra

and Hippolytus have achieved transcendence and never makes

clear why, at the end of the play, they are destroyed.

When, after their first sexual -union, Hippolytus claims to

have gained a vision of the true reality, Phaedra's re­

sponse seems to deny the fact. Furthermore, Hippolytus is

no more able to comprehend Phaedra's philosophizing after

the sex act than he was before, and Phaedra seems no wiser

and no more able to communicate her wisdom at the end of

the play than she was earlier. At most, the action seems

to suggest that transcendence involves no more than an

individual's ability to enjoy sexual intercourse without

apprehension about the consequences.

Moreover, the play never makes clear that the pair

are destroyed by the impurity of their intentions, nor why

 389

their intentions are impure. The drama does contain the

suggestion that Phaedra is jealous of Hippolytus' past

attention to Artemis, and that she would make him king of

a settlement of fugitives from Knossos in order that she

could be a true king's wife, not "a Greek's elegant whore"

(46). Perhaps, then, Phaedra's love is not as selfless as

Rexroth would have it be. But what about Hippolytus? He

wants only Phaedra and frequently says as much. The play

contains no hint of selfishness on his part. Furthermore,

near the end of the drama, Phaedra tells the Prince that he

has the power to take her "beyond return" (47), and asks

him if he understands that what happens will be his re­

sponsibility. He answers:

I understand you. I can see

Fire spray from our union and b u m
Down the world, and burn us with it. (47)

Does not this speech suggest that it is their very act of

love which destroys the Queen and her stepson? And is not

such a statement completely contradictory to Rexroth's

central thesis?

Closely allied to Rexroth's failure to integrate

theme and action is the obscurity and lack of coherence

which mar the play. What, for example, does Phaedra mean

when she tells Hippolytus that she weeps not for their

private misery but "for the chaos of the world" (34)? The

line might be meaningful if it had any close relationship

to the events of the play, but unfortunately it has not.

 390

It is equally unclear what the Queen has in mind when she

tells her stepson that she can he possessed only by "an

act that is its own/ Memory" (44). More important, be ­

cause it is not only confusing but seemingly contradictory

to the thesis of the play, is Phaedra's speech about

Theseus.

The world1s destructive children

Dictate their own terms to fate.
It's people like you and me
Pate traps and the Furies haunt. (40)

But Theseus is pictured as being a kind of self-centered

buffoon, a man who lives his entire life on the illusory

level, never realizing his true condition. Can we ever

believe that this man dictates his own terms to fate? And

if he does, then of what value is the transcendence which

Hippolytus and Phaedra achieve? Finally, it must be noted

that when Phaedra tells Hippolytus of the ways in which

transcendence can be realized, she mentions not only a

"great lust," but a "great pride" (42) as well. The

Chorus echoes the idea of pride as a means of tijnscendence

in the final speech of the play when it mentions the "sword

of a Russian witch /Medea/,/ Proud past belief," and explains

that Hippolytus' "frail pride could not withstand/ That lewd

hungry animal /Phaedra's vanity/" (55). Yet if human love

is a means of transcendence because of its selflessness,

how can pride accomplish the same feat? Phaedra offers no

answers to these questions.

Rexroth adds to the action of his play a recurring

 391

pattern of astronomical imagery to describe the relation­

ship of his characters. Although the imagery lends a cer­

tain scope to the action of the drama and may be at least

vaguely related to the theme, the occult quality of the

imagery destroys whatever its potential value might be.

A few examples will suffices Phaedra begins with a choral

passage which details the eclipse of the sun by the moon.

Later in the drama, Phaedra asks the Prince, "Do you sup­

pose that someday/ They will put us in the stars?" (37).

Still later, while Hippolytus and the Queen dance, the

First Chorus says:

The snake stirs in the earth's core.

The sun hangs in the Bull's horns,

Caught in the Hyades' net.
The moon moves from the Bull's loins.

The snake climbs the last mountain.

The double-headed eagle,

The firebird, flies from the fire.

The five planets crown the snake.

Act and power are mirrored

Pictures in each other's eyes.

The snake crawls into the sun.

The torch goes out, the firewheel

Vanishes in the orb of fire.

The sun's seed is drenched with blood. (48-49)

These lines have a certain poetic effectiveness and the

sexual connotations which they carry are clear. But beyond

this, as dramatic dialogue their obscurity destroys what­

ever positive value they may give to the play.

 392

Rexroth is only slightly more successful in his

depiction of character than he is in his development of

theme. For the most part, in spite of their obsessions

with sex and the violent means by which they meet their

deaths, the characters seem little more than philosophic

abstractions, created simply as devices to expound the

play's thesis. As a result, they and the action in which

they are involved, rarely achieve dramatic credibility.

As in so many of the other plays which I have examined,

the female character plays the dominant role. It is par­

ticularly unfortunate, then, that of the three principals,

she is the least effectively drawn. Throughout the play

Phaedra remains two-dimensional, no more than a mouthpiece

for Rexroth's philosophic concepts. Even the illness from

which she suffers seems affected, and once her sickness is

established near the beginning of the play, it is never re­

ferred to again. Furthermore, she feels none of the

anxiety or fear which she might properly feel and which

would tend to humanize the character.

Hippolytus is somewhat more believable, at least in

the first half of the drama. We can understand his initial

ambivalence toward Phaedra, his use of Artemis as a kind of

surrogate mistress, and the doubts which he experiences as

to the direction in which his responsibilities lie. But as

he becomes dominated by Phaedra and the power of his own

lust, he becomes more and more the kind of abstraction which

 393

she is throughout the drama, a spokesman for the theme,

not a character of flesh and blood.

Rexroth is, however, far more successful in his

delineation of Theseus, probably because the King is never

forced to philosophize as his wife and son are. Theseus is

a bungling, egotistical, insensitive old man who has no

feelings for anyone and who is unable to experience any

but the most superficial emotions. Other human beings for

him are simply objects which he attempts to manipulate.

When they fail to act as he has predicted, as Phaedra and

Hippolytus do, he is baffled; when he is presented with the

corpses of his wife and son, his reaction is one of self-

pity, not true grief. Certainly Rexroth has de-heroized

his Theseus, and has made him thoroughly despicable, but in

the process he has created a character who is interesting

as a human being, and toward whom we have some emotional

reaction as we do not toward Phaedra and Hippolytus. More

important, Rexroth's Theseus exemplifies the awfulness of

life when it is lived entirely on the level of illusion;

for once, the character demonstrates the playwright's

thesis, he Rexroth's thesis, he does not simply give

voice to that thesis as the other principals tend to do.

Perhaps it should also be added that the dramatist's ab­

stract, symbolic handling of the myth allows him to avoid

the heavy emphasis on psychological or pseudo-Freudian de­

tails in characterization and the transformation of the

 394

legendary figures into twentieth-century neurotics, a

tendency which is prevalent in many of the other plays

which this study examines.

It is this same symbolic approach to the myth which

allows Rexroth to employ scenery, costumes, and dance in

such a way as to be theatrically exciting and dramatically

effective. And until the conclusion of his play, Rexroth

avoids irrelevant theatricalism and too obvious a use of

melodramatic effects. Nothing in the play seems to require

the violence of Phaedra's suicide, and, although the Queen's

impaling herself on Hippolytus' sword can be symbolically

related to her overwhelming sexual passion, I cannot help

feeling that the method of suicide was chosen more for its

shock effect than for its symbolic meaning. Rexroth's

stage direction, that Phaedra's body be "covered with blood

from the waist down" (55) when it is revealed, only con­

vinces me that I am right. Furthermore, an aesthetic dis­

cord exists between the violence of Phaedra's suicide and

the more poetic, philosophic quality of the remainder of

the play. Hippolytus' death is less unnerving, but the

circumstances surrounding it seem too contrived to be dra­

matically credible. That Theseus should happen to find in

Hell the bull of which Pasiphae, Phaedra's mother, was

enamored, and that he should ride this bull back to Athens

and place it in the stable where it kills Hippolytus when

he goes there to saddle his horse is unbelievable even in a

 395

highly symbolic play. The intent is to suggest, as the

Chorus states, that the "Memory of a bestial/ Queen long

dead" (55) was somehow responsible for Hippolytus' death.

But this is clearly dramatic contrivance, not fate, at

work.

Like most of the playwrights whose works are

examined here, Rexroth has made use of certain Greek dra­

matic conventions. The most obvious of these is the dis­

playing of the dead bodies of Phaedra and Hippolytus. Al­

though we may object to the excessive realism of the stage

directions which describe the corpses, the use of the con­

vention is basically justified and effective. Perhaps the

abstract nature of Rexroth1s drama makes the convention

less obtrusive than it is in other plays in which it is

found. Rexroth's use of a chorus is equally successful.

Although he may have conceived the idea of employing a

choric element from his reading of classic drama, his

choruses are not patterned on Greek models. They are pre­

sented frankly as choruses and are made an integral part

of both the action and the theme of the drama. Rexroth

errs only in requiring the choruses to do more than their

proper share in developing the thesis of the work.

The discussion in chapter ii concerning the language

of Beyond the Mountains is equally applicable to Phaedra

and only a few additional comments need be made here. As

in the former play, Rexroth has written a very flexible

 396

free verse. His basic unit is the 7-syllable line, but

there are numerous examples of 6- and 8-syllable lines as

well, and some use of lines of less than 6 syllables. The

iambic foot is generally avoided and consequently the play

is not marred by the worn-out Shakespearean sound which

characterizes a number of the verse dramas which I have

examined. Rexroth's highly original poetry is capable of

great variety; it can, as Hayden Carruth says, "absorb

the most archaic inversion and the flattest colloquialism."^

Furthermore, it contains a strength, a hardness, a "jolt,"

2
as William Carlos Williams calls it, which goes below the

surface and which is not only appropriate to the work but

also a delight to the ear. The playwright's tendency

toward obscurity, however, keeps him from producing verse

which is completely successful as dramatic speech.

This analysis has shown that Rexroth has treated

the Phaedra-Hippolytus legend with greater freedom than

either Jeffers or H. D. As a result, Phaedra is essentially

an original drama and as such recalls Alfred's and Eliot's

handling of the Atreus myth.

Rexroth's play is characterized by certain tenden­

cies which have been noticed in many of the other dramas

^"Hayden Carruth, "Verse-Dramas," The Nation, April

7, 1951, p. 329.
2
Williams, The New York Times Book Review, January
28, 1951, Sec. 7, p. 5.
 397

examined in this study. Like The Cretan Woman and

Hippolytus Temporizes, it places the female character

at the center of the play; and like many of the Atreidae

dramas, it avoids making immortals responsible for the

events of the story. The play is flawed as a result of

the playwright's failure to embody his theme in dramatic

form, his tendency toward obscurity, his inability to

transform the legendary figures into satisfactory dra­

matic characters, and his use of melodramatic effects

simply for their shock value— all defects which have been

noted in other plays, not only in this chapter but in the

previous one as well.

CHAPTER IV: THE ALCESTIS-ADMETUS MYTH AND DRAMAS
 Part 1: The Alcestis-Admetus Myth

As in the previous chapters, it is necessary to

preface my analysis of the twentieth-century English and

American dramas based on the Alcestis-Admetus myth with

an examination of the legend itself. Once more I have

turned to contemporary dictionaries and handbooks of

classic mythology for the details of the story.

The tale of Admetus and his wife Alcestis begins

at the point at which the Phaedra-Hippolytus myth ended.

The reader will recall that in one version of that legend,

Asclepius, at the request of Artemis, restored Hippolytus

to life. As a result, Zeus, either because he could not

accept this interference with the natural order, or be­

cause Pluto asked that he punish Asclepius for his daring,

struck the physician with a thunderbolt and killed him.

Apollo was furious with Zeus for killing his (Apollo's)

son, but he did not dare to take revenge on the ruler of

the gods. Instead, he killed the Cyclops who had made

the thunderbolt. In turn Zeus punished Apollo by banish­

ing him from Olympus for a year and condemning him to

serve a mortal.

Fortunately for Apollo, he was indentured to

Admetus, the king of Phaerae in Thessaly. As a young man

399
 400

Admetus had taken part in the Calydonian Hunt and had been

a member of the expeditions of the Argonauts. He was an

eminently just and kingly man, and renowned for his piety.

Admetus perceived that his new thrall was no ordinary serf

and treated him with respect. He put Apollo in charge of

his horses and cattle— coincidentally, an appropriate

assignment for the god of flocks and herds. Apollo was

grateful to Admetus for the treatment he received and the

two became good friends.

Some time later, Admetus sued for the hand of

Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, King of Iolus. Alcestis

had so many suitors that her father finally promised her

to the first man who came to her in a chariot drawn by

wild beasts, or, more specifically, by lions and boars.^

Admetus despaired of success, but Apollo came to his aid,

either because his year of servitude was still not over,

or because of the kindness which Admetus had shown him, or

because he had fallen in love with the handsome king.

With Apollo's assistance, Admetus satisfied Pelias' condi-

2
tions and won Alcestis as his bride.

^Unlike many of the fathers of classic myth who

demanded extraordinary physical trials of their daughters'
suitors, Pelias, it appears, foresaw no danger from
Alcestis' marriage nor had he any special reason for wish­
ing her to remain unmarried.
2
A variant account of Alcestis' betrothal states
that she refused to take part in the specious rites which
Medea proposed to prolong Pelias' life. Jason admired
Alcestis' wisdom and as a consequence gave her to Admetus
as his bride.
 401

On the day of the wedding, Admetus forgot to sacri­

fice to Artemis and the angry goddess punished him. Upon

entering his bridal chamber, he found it filled with snakes,

an omen of imminent death. Once again Apollo interceded,

and won Artemis' forgiveness. In addition, he either gained

from the goddess a promise that when Death came, Admetus

might win a reprieve on condition that someone else take his

place, or he gained a similar promise from the Moirae, ei­

ther by means of persuasion or by getting them drunk and

tricking them into the promise.^"

When Admetus learned how he might escape death, he

rejoiced, for he thought he would have no difficulty in

finding someone to die in his place. Many of his friends

had offered their lives for his in the past. He was, how­

ever, unable to discover anyone who was willing to die for

him; not even his mother and father, aged though they were,

would agree. Finally Alcestis offered her life for that

2
of her husband and Admetus accepted her offer.

Another version of the legend omits the detail of

Admetus1 failure to sacrifice to Artemis. In this variant,
Apollo ascertained, perhaps through direct enquiry of the
Moirae, that Admetus had only a short time to live. Be­
cause of his gratitude to Admetus, he tricked the Moirae
into agreeing that if anyone took the King's place in
death, his life might be extended.
2
As the OCD states, "That there was any baseness in
accepting her offer did not occur to tellers of the legend
before Euripides; elsewhere Adffletus is a wholly admirable
character" (]£. Cary et al. Zeds^/t The Oxford Classical
Dictionary /Oxfords The Clarendon PressT7-l94^77^7™ ^ i J T -
And Hose adds, "a man, and a king at that, is so obviously
more valuable than any woman that the whole thing becomes
almost a matter of simple arithmetic" (H. J. Rose, Gods and
Heroes of the Greeks ^London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1957/,
P. 39) .
 402

On the appointed day, Alcestis died.^ On the day

of her burial, Heracles arrived to spend a few days with

his friend Admetus. The King, with his usual piety, re­

ceived Heracles hospitably and pretended that the funeral

which was in progress was not that of a member of his

family but of a traveler who had died while staying at the

palace. The King ordered his servants to see to Heracles'

comfort and lodged him in a remote part of the palace

where he might avoid the sounds of the funeral. Heracles

ate and drank heartily, but soon noticed that the servants

were all downcast. When he asked the cause of their

grief, he learned the true identity of the dead woman.

In return for the hospitality which Admetus had

shown him, Heracles swore to bring Alcestis back from the

dead. Either he went to Alcestis' tomb, waited there

until Thanatos came to carry her away, then set upon him

and forced him to release her; or he traveled to the Under­

world and there wrestled with Hades in order to win

Alcestis' release. In any event, Alcestis was restored

2
to life and returned to her husband.

■^The various accounts of the myth are not consist­

ent in their indication of the length of time which elapsed
between the wedding and Alcestis' death. In some versions,
the events are separated by only a few days. In others,
Alcestis has been married long enough to have two children
past infancy.
2
Other versions of the myth suggest that Persephone
returned Alcestis of her own accord, or that the powers of
the Underworld were so impressed with Alcestis' virtue
that they restored her to life.
 403

At least one account claims that in old age

Admetus was driven into exile with Alcestis and their

child Hippasus. The cause of the exile is not revealed.

 Part 2: The Alcestis-Admetus Dramas

As in the previous chapter, I have made no attempt

to divide the Alcestis-Admetus plays into distinct cate­

gories. The small number of dramas based on this myth

make such structuring unnecessary. I have, nevertheless,

continued to consider the degree of freedom with which

each author treats the myth, and, as usual, the plays are

placed in an order which moves from the most literal

handling of the legend to the freest use of the myth.^

It should be noted here that I have omitted any

consideration of two m o d e m English-language dramas based
on the Alcestis-Admetus myth, St. John Hankin's Hercules
Victus, and Thornton Wilder's The Drunken Sisters. Both
of these works are burlesques of a segment of the myth and
as such fall outside the limits of this study (St. John
Hankin, Hercules Victus ^ e w York: Minton, Balch, and Co.,
19267» Thornton Wilder, The Drunken Sisters, in The
Atlantic, CC November, 1957/» 92-95). A consideration
of Wilder's full-length play The Alcestiad could legiti­
mately be included, but this work has never been published
in English (Letter from Isabel Wilder, Hamden, Connecticut,
July 28, 1965) .

404
 Carlotta Montenegro’s Alcestis: Myth

and Womanly Virtue

One of the earliest twentieth-century plays based

on myth is Carlotta Montenegro's Alcestis, a four-act

blank verse drama written in 1909. When first published,

the work received only slight critical attention; never­

theless, those who examined the play shortly after it

appeared were impressed with its high quality.

Montenegro's work is "admirable," the reviewer for The

Nation claimed, "in its analytical insight, its pictorial

and emotional eloquence, and its dramatic and intellectual

consistency"; while the drama critic of The North

American Review concluded: "We find in this volume more

thought and more real poetry than in any American poetic

2
drama of the year." In spite of these reactions, the

play, to my knowledge, has never been performed, and is

almost unknown today.

Although the plays based on the Alcestis-Admetus

myth have not been divided into distinct categories for

purposes of analysis, it is appropriate to recognize that

Drama," The Nation, February 3, 1910, p. 119.

2
"New Books Reviewed: Poetic Drama," The North
American Review, CXCI (February, 1910), 278.

405
 406

in the degree of freedom which Montenegro has taken with

the legendary materials, her play resembles Turney's

Daughters of Atreus, and Jeffers' The Tower Beyond Tragedy

and The Cretan Woman. Although Montenegro has not treated

the myth in literal fashion, she retains its general struc­

ture. Her settings and characters are Greek in appearance,

and for the most part, the action follows the legend. She

has, however, altered character relationships and added de­

tails to the story to infuse the action with her own meaning.

The first act of Alcestis takes placewithin the

peristyle of Admetus' palace. As the act begins, five be­

trothed maidens are asking the Nurse where the Queen is.

The Nurse answers that she is with her husband, whose ill­

ness has grown much worse since dawn;

. . . she has no separate self

Prom him she loves and loses; losing him,
She will herself be lost, so much she's one
With him. . .

The young women are saddened by the news and offer to take

the Nurse's place by the King's bedside, but she refuses.

She calls them giddy girls, and takes this opportunity to

recite her own virtues— her keen, quick eye, her ready

hand, her patient smile.

A pipe is heard in the distance announcing the re­

turn of Admetus' shepherd. When the maidens exclaim that

no one knows where he has been, the Nurse replies smugly

■^Carlotta Montenegro, Alcestis (Boston; The Poet

Lore Co., 1909), p* 7.
 407

that Alcestis knows and, as always, has shared her secrets

with her nurse. She takes the flowers which the girls

have brought, gives them offerings to place on Jove's

shrine, and goes into the palace.

After the Nurse has left, the maidens praise

Alcestis for her wit and beauty, her grace and virtue,

but most of all for her perfection as a mother. They say

that when her children stand at her knee, she dips her

head to theirs,

And with a sob convulsive, half of joy

And half of myst'ry from another world,
Cries out, "My future', my best gift to earth'."
But soon the natural luster of her eyes
Has dried them and her gaze is on the king,
Proud, full, possessive, softly languishing. (13)

Admetus, they say, returns this love, and they recall the

dangerous task which he performed to win his bride.

Once more the pipe is heard and the conversation

turns to a discussion of the shepherd's whereabouts during

the past few days. Although they have no proof, they be­

lieve that he has been on a quest of love, for they have

noted that his mood has changed of lates laughter no

longer resounds from the surrounding hills and his pipe is

heard only at night, playing a melancholy tune. They have

also noticed that at times he seems hardly mortals

. . . . When he smiles,
A radiance falls about him; when he walks,
The flow'r that light as air waved on its stem
Of silken thread, in his swift path, still waves,
When he has passed, -unharmed; . . .

When he speaks
 408

All the sweet music you have ever heard,

Long mellowed in the mem'ry, wakes and breathes
And plays in concord round his glowing words.
More kingly than the shepherd of his flocks
Admetus does not show. . . . (15-16)

The pipe sounds again; the maidens sing a song of welcome,

and go to meet the young man.

Pheres, Admetus1 father, enters, supported by two

Thessalians. He is very old, and complains at length of

his infirmities. When he asks that his son be called, the

Thessalians remind him that Admetus is dying. The old man

replies:

Then let me die too, cruel, cruel Jove'.

The slender bark that cleaves the fateful stream,
Creaking beneath the weightless weight of shades,
Would sink with him. Take me'. Oh, let him live'.
(19)
His words are echoed by the Thessalians who vow that they

love their king more than they do their own lives and would

gladly die if the Pates would lift Admetus1 doom.

Suddenly Alcestis enters, joyously announcing that

the King's condition has greatly improved. The Thessalians

are delighted, but they caution her to remember that Death

sometimes plays strange tricks to tease both the doomed

soul and the loved ones who watch. Yet Alcestis will not

be discouraged.

Apollo, disguised as Admetus' shepherd, enters,

accompanied by the women who went to meet him. He announces

that he has sought Apollo's help in the King's cause, and,

as a result, Apollo has learned from the Pates that Admetus

 409

will live only if another consents to die in his place.

Alcestis cries out in fear at this, but Apollo assures her

that there must be many who would gladly give their lives

for the King. He turns to the Thessalians to ask if they

will take Admetus' place in death, and they answer that

they would happily embrace death on the battlefield to gain

the King's life, just as Admetus has done for them, but

that they cannot endure the pain and suffering of a sick

bed. Even Pheres refuses to diefor his son.

Admetus, accompanied by his servant Eumelus, enters.

He is exuberant over his miraculous recovery, but sobers

when Apollo tells him of the Pates' decree and adds that u

no one is willing to take his place in death. Apollo sug­

gests that perhaps the faithful Eumelus, who has saved

Admetus from other dangers, will make the sacrifice; but

Admetus rejects the idea. Eumelus' previous acts of devo­

tion, the King says, make him exempt from further trials.

Suddenly, prompted by a voice which she alone can hear,

Alcestis makes a solemn and binding pledge— her life for

her husband's. Horrified, her friends demand that she take

it back; Admetus, in an agony of grief, prays to Jove to

disregard Alcestis' words; but the Queen remains steadfast.

She asks the others to leave, and they silently obey. The

Queen sits motionless for a moment. Suddenly the sounds

of children at play are heard outside the palace; she

rises and runs toward the window with her arms outstretched,
 410

crying!

What is this thing I've done? 0 mighty Jove,

I cannot leave my children. .• . .

. . . When I am dead
Their little cries of joy will turn to grief;
They'll stop their play to seek me everywhere.
(33)

It was, she moans, not her will, but some force without,

"Driving the Core of immortality," the soul, which made

her take the vow. She throws herself before Jove's

shrine and promises to give him all she has if he will

give her back her life. As if in answer to her prayer,

a vision appears and once more Alcestis hears a voice

calling her name. "Now," she says,

I can see you and you are— myself'.

My better self'. I'll make the sacrifice! (35)

As the act ends, she enters the palace to seek the consola­

tion of her husband's arms.

The setting of Act II is the same as that of the

previous act. Alcestis enters, supported by Admetus. As

she crosses the stage, she picks up a mirror lying on a

nearby table and gazes into it. Then, clasping her hands

before her face, she sinks onto the couch that has been

prepared for her. She talks quietly to Admetus of her

devotion to him, and recalls some of the happier moments

of their lives. The King is grief-stricken by the impend­

ing loss of his beloved and feels unworthy of being loved

by such a noble soul. Alcestis insists, however, that

their love can conquer death:

 411

When I have died from this world's chance and

change
And am new-horn in deathless constancy,
I still will love you as I still have loved.
What is the most that earth can lay upon
The strength of such devotion? If 'tis death,
Earth has no burden that can break true love.
In the safe center of your heart there lies
The key of mines I leave it there and die. (40)

And when she asks her husband if he will hold her hand for­

ever as he does at that moment, he answers that they are

"clasped in love eternally" (40), and that their souls are

one.

Comforted by these words, Alcestis asks Admetus to

read her the story which they have been enjoying. It is

the tale of Hercules' famous exploits and the part which

the King reads concerns Hercules' descent to Hades to gain

possession of the three-headed dog, Cerberus. Suddenly

Alcestis interrupts her husband, seizes his hand, and

presses a phial into it. The phial contains poison, she

tells him, so that when she dies, he may join her in death.

But Admetus drops the phial and buries his face in his

hands. Although he claims his heart will die when his

wife leaves him, he cannot embrace death with her. Shaken

by Admetus' reaction, Alcestis says sadly that she is glad

to die, for he has shown her that the most important thing

to him is life, while for her it is love.

Eumelus and the Nurse enter to announce that Pheres

has died. Admetus and Eumelus depart, leaving the Nurse

behind to care for the Queen. When the Nurse offers her
 412

aid, Alcestis answers that there is no more that she can

do, and adds:

I think no oft'ner has he called my name

Than he has said, "I could not live without you."
He said too much and I believed too much:
A fault in each of us, the greater mine.
My soul has fed on love— now for a change,
A better nourishment— a purer soul.
For years we creep and crawl from act to act,
And lo'. a moment comes and we have wings
And fly. (45-46)

Alcestis' thoughts turn to her children, and she begs the

Nurse to give them the care which they would have received

from their mother's hands. As their conversation comes to

an end, Apollo, still disguised as a shepherd, enters, and

the Nurse departs.

Apollo hands Alcestis flowers; and when she

notices their unusual beauty, he tells her that they have

been sent by Apollo to reveal his love and to bid her fare­

well. Even this cannot hold the Queen's attention; she

turns toward the window and speaks to the sun. Apollo

interrupts her soliloquy to swear that he will not allow

her to die. She thanks him for his kindness, but tells

him that nothing can save her now and asks him to play his

pipe for her. As he does so, she recalls a summer day when

she sat upon a mossy bank and listened to him play this

same tune. Apollo lowers his pipe and speaks to the Queen.

Apollo: Come with me then.

That bank is green and purple now—
all clothed,
Where once you pressed your foot, in
loveliness.
There will I sing and you will understand.
Oh, let me save you'.
 413

Alcestis: Who can save me now?

Apollo: Trust mei

Alcestis: What pow'r have you against the gods?

Apollo: Give me your love and fear and

question not. (51)

Alcestis is shocked by this declaration of love, and re­

minds him that by such an avowal he shows a lack of re­

spect, both for her and for the crown she wears. She did

not dream, she says, that he had built up love of "such

small things as smiles and kind 'good-nights1" (52), but

she can blame neither him nor herself for what has

happened. She simply advises him to speak no more of love.

Suddenly, a radiance surrounds Apollo and he stands

revealed in all his godly majesty. He stoops tokiss

Alcestis and she springs up from her couch, revived.

Apollo begs her to become his wife, telling her that if

she agrees she will not only be saved from death, but will

rule with him as a goddess; he goes so far as to disclose

that it was he who yoked the wild beasts to Admetus* chari­

ot so that the King might win her as his bride. She re­

fuses the god* s offer, however, declaring that she must be

true to the vows which she has made to her husband:

My inner vision ranges from myself

And shows the whole a part, the part the whole.
Admetus, children, all that I have worn
So anxiously in heart, is but the form
Enclosing an immortal principle:
That is the whole, beyond thought high, to which
Struggling, we lift th* eternal in ourselves.
 414

I've turned the road— and turning I have seen—

I scarce know what— a figure horn of time—
And yet a part of time's infinity.
It looked past me and faced eternity.
It was a soul— it was alone— I know not.
Say that my love was founded on a fancy:
All that Admetus seemed, he seemed through love,
And while that love endures he cannot change;
And while there shines a Heav'n that love will
last. (56-57)

When gentler persuasion fails, Apollo tries to

subdue Alcestis through fear. There is sudden darkness and

a crash of thunder; out of the darkness Apollo brings

forth a panorama of Death, the Furies, Despair, Hunger,

Remorse, Care, and other dreadful shadows from the Under­

world. There is another frightful crash and Alcestis flies

to Apollo who stands alone in a pool of light; the next

moment she moves away and shadows fall about the god, but

Alcestis remains in the light. The summoned figures

vanish.

Alcestis explains that once more she has heard the

voice and has seen the vision of her better self, come

again to win her from temptation. Apollo acknowledges

defeat and asks only that she retain his memory "somewhere

in the temple high/ And bright of your affections— " (60).

The five betrothed maidens appear and the Queen speaks to

them from her new-found wisdom:

. . . Vessels of holiness,
Heirs of the past and mothers of the future,
You are the world and all the world is yours.
Yet like your lives it is a passing trust:—
The passing is the only permanence
Of earthly things;— a little while you serve:
Then serve the better. . . . (61)
 415

The maidens depart; Apollo kisses Alcestis and vanishes.

Admetus enters and a brief scene follows in which husband

and wife say their final farewells. The Queen dies as the

act ends.

The third act takes place before the bier of

Alcestis. The maidens, dressed in black, perform a slow

winding dance around the oasket, placing wreaths of flowers

upon it and softly chanting in unison the virtues of their

beloved Queen. After they depart, a vision appears:

A beautiful woods. Gradually figures of Sorrow, Joy,

gods, goddesses, nymphs, birds, etc., appear, then
vanish into the streams, rocks, trees. The image of
Alcestis becomes visible on a height. Truth approaches
it. Then Hercules is seen upon an opposite elevation.
More faintly outlined upon the level ground, reaching
up, stands Admetus. Alcestis and Hercules lean
towards and touch each other, then the whole scene
fades out. (67-68)

When the vision is gone, Admetus enters, kneels before the

bier, and speaks of his grief. He is interrupted by the

sound of footsteps and he quickly covers the bier.

Hercules enters, sees the casket, and mistakenly assumes

that it contains the body of Pheres. He observes that

Admetus is in deep sorrow, and reminds him that Pheres was

very old and that his death was only natural. If Admetus

would grieve so at the death of his father, the hero asks,

how would he "sustain/ The greatest blow misfortune deals

to man— / That strikes away the half of the heart— the

wife?" (69-70). Hercules' words are, of course, no comfort

to the King, and so he offers to depart and return again

 416

when Admetus is less overwrought. But at length the King

regains his composure and insists that Hercules remain as

his guest. Then, without revealing the truth about

Alcestis, Admetus begs Hercules to wait by the bier, and

when Death comes, to conquer him by physical strength, and

to send him shrieking home to Hades so that the prey he

came to snatch away may breathe again. Hercules agrees

and Admetus departs.

While Hercules awaits the arrival of Death, his

thoughts turn once again to Alcestis, and he wonders

whether he will ever know the joy of possessing a wife

as wonderful as she. Suddenly Death appears and attempts

to reach the bier, but is overcome by Hercules and runs

away. Hercules goes to the casket and removes the cover,

finding, to his great surprise, not Pheres, but the Queen.

As he bends to kiss her hand, she rises and walks as if in

a dream. She kneels before Hercules and embraces him. As

their lips meet, she awakens. At first Alcestis knows

neither where she is nor to whom she speaks, but gradually

she begins to realize what has occurred and explains to

Hercules how she took her husband's place in death. She

adds, however, that the vision which appeared to her while

she slept has "wrought . . . /her/ soul anew" (78), and she

knows that she would not again die for another. "Each

man's life," she tells Hercules,

 4-17

Is of eternal, sacred character—

No piece to stretch another's given span.
Duty1s the thread of life and life is dear
For doing— In my soul a quenchless lamp
Has been set burning and dark places shine,
Revealing unguessed treasure— I am rich
And I would spend— I must— it is the law.
"Know your soul's wealth, control its fair
increase,
And spend it"— on my conscience this is writ.
I rashly overturned the urn of life,
Spilling a fair unreckonable store
Of thought and deed. . . . (78)

Alcestis goes on to describe her dream which is, of course,

much like the vision which appeared at the beginning of

the act. She remembers particularly an unknown heroic

figure toward whom she reached but whom she could not

touch, and a moment during which streams, trees, rocks,

and clouds rang out in unison the message: "There is a

god above, a god beyond/ The gods" (82).

In response, Hercules explains that he was the

hero of her dreams and he, like Apollo, offers her his

undying love. Alcestis is greatly moved, but she refuses

him, saying that she now realizes that the shadowy form

which appeared in her dream was her husband. "You need

- ; not me," she says,

Or what you seek in me is what I gave

When in the dream we touched upon the brow.
But of another I am half,— merged, fused,
Yet separate, as in the dream I saw
All things in union massed— all things distinct.
(86)
"You love the man that let you die" (87), cries Hercules.

And Alcestis answers,

 418

And you
That gave me life again— I love too well
To love: the sound is nothing to these words:
They're fathoms deep in meaning. (87)

As Hercules bids Alcestis farewell, she touches her lips

to his forehead.

As soon as Hercules is gone, Alcestis' composure

crumbles. She calls after him, crying out that she has

loved him since she first read of his brave deeds. She

recalls that she has told herself that love is not all,

that the soul has business with the universe.

But love's the universe— there's only love.

To Hercules my thoughts stole day by day,
And now we've met, my soul has followed. Now
Admetus has no place. . . .

The kiss'. And let the world and us dissolve'.

I'll bring you back. The Voice has failed.
I'm lost'.
I'm proudly lost being found for Hercules. (89)

There is a pause, and then her thoughts turn to her children.

They are now, she realizes, the ones for whom she must live

her life. The act ends as Alcestis says triumphantly:

The treasures of my soul— the way is clear'.

No stumbling now. Straight on, my hearts, to you'.
To guide your innocence with my wise sins
Safely, yet seeing, past what wounded me.
That shadowy struggling figure in_the dream—
Admetus, no'. I come not back to you'.
The mother lives again'. The wife is dead'. (90)

As the final act begins, the five maidens are dis­

covered preparing wreaths of flowers to drape the banquet

table at which Hercules will be the guest of honor. The

Nurse enters, gives the girls instructions, and, in a semi­

comic fashion, announces that she has learned that men live
 . . . to spin
Upon the pivot of a higher will. . . •

. . . to think 'twas all or naught,

That sad and autumn-soughing grief of mine'. (91)

In a more serious vein, the Nurse and the maidens discuss

the Queen. She keeps herself apart from all hut her

children, and at times has been heard weeping in her room.

The Nurse, noting the way in which Alcestis ran to her

children hut ignored Admetus when she returned from death,

and seeing the way in which she shrinks from the King and

never calls his name, is convinced that her mistress no

longer loves her husband. Eumelus enters to tell the

maidens that their garlands are needed in the banquet room,

and he and the girls depart.

Silently Alcestis enters; she asks the Nurse if

all is prepared. Assured that all is in readiness, she

allows the Nurse to dress her hair. Eventually the Nurse

exits, leaving the Queen to muse about her mixed feelings

concerning Hercules' visit. She is strongly drawn to him,

but she is determined not to be unfaithful to Admetus.

Just at that moment the King enters. He is disturbed by

the coldness which Alcestis has shown him since her re­

turn, and he pleads with her to explain how he has offended

her. At first* she will tell him only that his faults are

unconscious and can, therefore, never be mended; that he

might better "implore the highest" (100) in himself rather

than call too often upon a god; and that man's main duty in
 420

life is to keep fair and safe the treasure loaned to him

for life, his children. Admetus refuses to accept these

answers, and insists that she loves another.

Alcestis: If you should lay your arm about

my neck
And find a deadly serpent coiled
there,
What would you do?

Admetus: Uncoil and slay it.

Alcestis: No—
In horror you would safely spring away,
And in that time I should be stung to
death. (101)

Finally, Alcestis confesses that she loves Hercules, the

man who saved her from death. Admetus exclaims that he

was a fool to force her to divulge her secret. He ac­

knowledges that her soul is far greater than his, and

that she is a fitting mate for one of heroic stature.

Will she, then, greet Hercules when he arrives? After a

silent struggle in which the Queen seems to hear the voice

again, she answers that she will not. Admetus assures her

that in spite of her confession, he knows she is free from

any sin:

In your innocence,
And truth and greatness you have told me, yes.
All hearts hide something time or chance removes
Or else uncovers. Of your will you speak. (102)

Slowly Alcestis destroys the wreath which she has

made. As she does so, Eumelus enters and gives two parch­

ments to the King, one of which is from Hercules, asking

that he be excused from his visit so that he may complete

 421

a task which can no longer be delayed. Admetus hands the

other parchment to Alcestis and goes out with Eumelus,

leaving her to read her letter. It, too, is from

Hercules, and in it he dedicates to her his latest vic­

tory, "wherein my soul/ In perilous encounter with my

heart,/ Did honorably triumph" (103), and says farewell.

For a moment there is silence. Then Apollo enters and

Alcestis holds out her hand to him; he kisses the hem of

her robe and departs, leaving her in a pool of light.

Again there is a pause, and then the betrothed maidens

enter and seat themselves about the Queen. At first

Alcestis takes no notice of them and says softly to her­

self:

The greatest hour is when pure conscience meets

Hot breathing, fierce Temptation face to face
And looks him down. Then sighs the soul with joy
And all the heavens echo to the sound.

Now I from error to the truth proceed—

Each life is one life and each soul one soul
And neither intertwined save as fond hands
That clasp and unclasp through this fleeting
world;
Distinct as stars and yet as one in this—
The myst'ry wide as space that doth enfold them.
(104-105)
Music sounds from the banquet hall and Alcestis looks up

to see the women gathered about her. She tells them what

she has learned from her recent experiences so that they

may bemore ready to bear the trials which life will visit

upon them. What she has learned, in essence, is that the

soul of woman is inspiration, and that the end of the

 422

eternal self is duty. She concludes:

Remember this and learn to be content—

The mother leads the future by the hand,
The present chains the man to transient deeds.
Rebel not; be content with such a crown
And stoop to help your comrade in his need.

Fret not that 'tis no hero you have chosen;

Doing is proud, but striving still to do
Works in the heart a sweet humility
That makes the failure and his uses kind.
Doing is finite— struggling infinite,
And to the infinite the better part
Of human mixture is allied. . . . (107)

Suddenly the maidens hear the same voice which Alcestis

has heard since the beginning of the play and she tells

them that their souls alone have conprehended hers. The

King's approach is heard and the maidens depart quickly.

Admetus enters and asks Alcestis to go with him to

the feast. Once again he assures her that he believes her

heart unstained by any sin. In response, she kisses him

and he exclaims:

The god has mercy on us— we are saved1

.

When like a stranger you returned to me

I said, "The vow upon the Styx was fast;
Alcestis died for she is changed as death
Transformeth life." More truly now I say
We both are dead from limits of the flesh
And are reborn unto a freer way—
A way that leads us to the climbing sky. (109-10)

Alcestis murmurs to herself, "If 'mong our dismal doubts

. . ./ one streak of light break through,/ It is enough—

we're saved" (110), and they go out arm in arm.

This synopsis demonstrates that although

 423

Montenegro's play remains within the framework of the

Alcestis-Admetus myth, the added material and the various

changes in detail give it a strongly romantic flavor

which the original versions of the myth do not have, and

provide Alcestis with situations in which her conscience

must continually fight to overcome her romantic yearnings.

Most of these additions and modifications can be noted

without much elaboration.

In the first act, when Alcestis vows to take her

husband's place in death, she does so because she has

heard a voice, her "better self," as she calls it, which

prompts her to make the sacrifice. Later in the play,

whenever she seems on the verge of committing an unworthy

act, she hears the same voice and often sees a vision as

well. None of the other characters see or hear Alcestis'

"better self," except the five betrothed maidens at the

end of the play. No such vision appears to the legendary

Alcestis.

The second act contains two important details

which have no basis in the myth. The first occurs when

Alcestis, facing death, offers Admetus the phial of poison.

In the myth, of course, Alcestis never thinks to ask her

husband to join her in death since, by so doing, the

whole point of her sacrifice would be destroyed. The

second addition is Apollo's declaration of love for

Alcestis and his subsequent attempts to persuade her to

 424

become his wife. The mythic Apollo remains loyal to

Admetus, and, in one version of the legend, is even

enamoured of him; there is never any hint that Apollo

is attracted to the Queen.

Since the Alcestis-Admetus legend ends with

Hercules' restoration of Alcestis to her husband, any

events which occur after Alcestis' return from death must

necessarily be additions to the myth. Montenegro chooses

to forego the final scene of the mythical story in which

Hercules presents Alcestis to her husband, and substitutes

the lengthy conversation between Alcestis and Hercules,

followed by Alcestis' final reconciliation with her hus­

band. Neither the Alcestis/Hercules involvement nor the

Alcestis/Admetus reconciliation appears in the myth; both

are related to the romantic atmosphere and the moralizing

tone which pervade the play.

Other minor alterations can be enumerated briefly:

(1) In the Alcestis-Admetus myth, Hercules voluntarily

fights Death in return for the hospitality which Admetus

has shown him, and knows the identity of the soul for

which he struggles. In Montenegro's play, Hercules mis­

takes Alcestis' bier for that of Pheres, and he engages

Death only because Admetus asks him to do so.

(2) Montenegro's Apollo tells Alcestis that he, not

Admetus, yoked the wild beasts to the chariot in order

that the King might win her for his bride. In the myth,

the Queen never learns this fact. (3) The exposition of

 425

Aloeatis includes no mention of Admetus' failure to

sacrifice to Artemis on his wedding day and no reference

to the snakes which he finds in the bridal chamber as a

result. (4) Montenegro has altered the time sequence, so

that when Alcestis has been married long enough to have

two children by Admetus, Apollo is still performing his

role as Admetus' shepherd. In the myth, Apollo is inden­

tured to the King before the latter's marriage and his

term of servitude is set at one year. (5) Since, as the

play begins, Apollo's identity has not yet been disclosed,

he is forced to pretend that he, as shepherd, asked

Apollo to visit the Pates in order to find out how Admetus

might be saved. No such evasion appears in the legend.

(6) Finally, Montenegro adds the characters of the Nurse,

Eumelus, and the five betrothed maidens to the classic

tale.

The central thesis of Alcestis is obvious: It is

the duty of each human being to be true to his better self.

For a woman (and the theme is developed-"entirely in femi­

nine terms) this means that it is necessary to spurn the

romantic advances of other men, no matter how noble and

heroic they may be, in favor of her husband, even though

she may doubt the depths or sincerity of her husband's

love. Furthermore, by remaining faithful the wife may

discover some virtue in her husband of which she was

 426

unaware and in the process her own life may become more

tolerable. This is, at least, the message which

Montenegro preaches at the conclusion of her play.

In addition there are at least two other theses

which the play posits and which are subordinate to the

one discussed above. The first is that a mother must

remember the responsibility which she has to her children,

and must fulfill this duty regardless of her relationship

with the children's father. The other, less conventional

statement, is that each man's life is of "eternal, sacred

character" (78), and therefore no part of it may be used

to lengthen the life of another. Unfortunately, the play

never makes clear how these ideas relate to the principal

theme of the drama.

As a piece of dramatic literature, Alcestis con­

tains so many flaws that it is difficult to know at what

point one should begin to criticize. One serious fault

that is shared with nearly every other play in this study

is the failure of Montenegro to embody the theme within

the dramatic action of her work. She relies instead on

long didactic and undramatic speeches to convey her message.

The major actions in which Alcestis is involved, at least

her encounters with Apollo in the second act and with

Hercules in the third, do give her the opportunity to say

"no" to temptation, but they reveal neither the reasons

for her decision nor what she achieves by her refusal.

 427

Moreover, Alcestis makes her decision, in nearly every

case, as a result of some sort of mystical experience

which she has with her "better self," an experience which,

because of its very nature, is difficult to convey in dra­

matic terms. In one case, there is not even any indica­

tion that some sort of transcendent experience occurs.

At the end of the third act, after Hercules has left the

stage, Alcestis bemoans her fate for nearly a page and a

half. Then there is apparently some kind of dramatic

pause indicated by a scattering of asterisks across the

page. In the short speech which follows, Alcestis makes

it clear that she has decided to return to her husband

solely for the sake of their children; it is impossible,

of course, to know what brought about this decision.

Alcestis' long didactic speeches, upon which

Montenegro relies so heavily, are not only a poor substi­

tute for dramatic action, but they are themselves tin-

successful. First, they are generally far too long, some­

times nearly 100 lines in length. Second, they are rarely

supported by any kind of dramatic situation. Too fre­

quently Alcestis makes her pronouncements in soliloquies

which are not demanded by the action or in speeches

addressed to the betrothed maidens who have entered the

scene without dramatic justification, and who depart as

soon as the Queen concludes her remarks. Third, the

speeches are pervaded by a kind of heavy-handed, Victorian

 428

moralizing which makes their undramatic quality even

more evident.

More important than any of the above, however,

is the fact that Alcestis' arguments for remaining faith­

ful are, for the most part, unconvincing. She fails ever

to make clear how she or her husband can profit, either

on a human level or on a spiritual one, by continuing

their marriage. One can accept and even admire her de­

cision to take her husband's place in death, but it would

be more dramatically convincing if it were done out of an

enduring love for her husband rather than because she

wishes "to be true to her better self." Since Apollo

finally attempts to frighten her into becoming his wife,

her refusal of him seems most appropriate; but her rejec­

tion of Hercules is less easily understood. Not only does

he appear to be a thoroughly admirable man, but by the

time Alcestis realizes that she is attracted to him, she

seems convinced that her love for Admetus is dead. Why

does she not leave the King and join the hero? If her

children's welfare were her only consideration, it would

be an easy enough matter for her to take them with her,

particularly since, as the play suggests, they are almost

wholly mother-oriented. What is to be gained by continuing

a loveless marriage? Unfortunately, the play never answers

this question. Furthermore, Alcestis herself never ex­

plains what it is that finally reconciles her to her

 429

husband. At the end of the third act, she has decided

to live entirely for her children. Throughout most of

the final act she remains indifferent to her husband's

attempts to re-establish some kind of bond between them.

Finally, at the very end of the play, she responds to

Admetus' declaration of faith in her innocence by giving

her love back to him. There seems to be no good reason

for her positive reaction; earlier in the act he made a

more explicit avowal, but his words had no effect on her

then. The only event which occurs between the two con­

versations is the arrival of Hercules' letter of farewell,

in which he tells Alcestis that he has learned from her

that virtue is more important than pleasure.

Montenegro seems to imply that Alcestis' noble

renunciation of extra-marital bliss is motivated simply

by the conviction that virtue is its own reward. Virtue,

in the play's terms, includes remaining faithful to one's

husband even (or especially) if one no longer cares for

him. Furthermore, the cliches which serve as Alcestis1

motivation are stated by the protagonist as well as im­

plied by the author; they serve only to make Alcestis'

arguments less palatable. When she speaks near the end

of the play of "the high, eternal self/ Whose end, what

e'er the road, is duty, duty— / Though earth and Heav'n

by swept away, still duty" (106-07), one is reminded of

the sort of cant which Pastor Manders speaks on the same

subject in Ibsen's Ghosts.

One further point must be made before passing on

to a consideration of Montenegro's characters. There are,

here and there throughout the play, unintentional comic

overtones. One example is the incongruity between the

image of Alcestis as a completely virtuous woman, and the

fact that she is physically so desirable that every man

who meets her falls in love with her. In addition, she

is so unpleasant to Admetus in the final act of the play

that one wonders whether he may regret having had her re­

stored to life. The final act of the play is vaguely

reminiscent, in fact, of St. John Hankin's burlesque of

the Alcestis-Admetus legend.1

Montenegro is no more successful in her depiction

of character than she is in her handling of theme.

Alcestis, her protagonist and chief spokesman, should be

a character with whom we are almost wholly sympathetic,

and Montenegro has tried to achieve this effect. Unfor­

tunately, by the end of the third act, whatever initial

regard we might have had for Alcestis has been destroyed.

This is partially because Alcestis is only two-dimensional

she is simply too good to be true. More important, how­

ever, is the fact that as Alcestis continues to sermonize

her way through the play, 3he becomes more and more self-

righteous and stuffy; whatever humanity she had when she

Gankin.
 431

offered to die for her husband, she has lost. And even

that first deed was less than selfless, since she offered

her life more to save her own soul than she did to save

her husband. Somehow Alcestis enjoys her Promethean

existence too much for the audience to be entirely com­

fortable.

There is, in addition, at least one major incon­

sistency in the development of the character. Throughout

the play, Alcestis is portrayed as the epitome of mother­

hood. Yet, in the second act she asks Admetus to join her

in death, apparently giving no thought to the fact that

this would make orphans of her children.

All of the other characters play far less important

roles. Admetus is the stock husband whose responses to his

wife and to life in general are inadequate. The very

weaknesses which Montenegro attributes to him, however,

make him seem more human and more likeable than his wife.

Apollo is little more than an opportunist, although his

love for Alcestis appears genuine enough. Hercules is per­

haps the most adequately drawn of the major characters.

He retains some of the noble and heroic qualities which

characterized him in the myth, but we are hardly prepared

for the heavy moralistic tone of his letter in the final

act. All of the other major figures, and even Hercules to

some extent, are created in essentially romantic terms

and as a consequence lack the majesty of their prototypes.

 432

Montenegro's drama is free of the irrelevant

theatricalism which has characterized a number of the

plays in this study; and, with one exception, the play­

wright avoids the use of dramatic conventions borrowed

from classical Greek drama. The five betrothed maidens

do, at times, function as a sort of Greek chorus. As

such, they add nothing to the play and for the most part

do little more than offer some of the necessary exposition

to the story and serve as listeners for Alcestis1 mono­

logues.

Finally, Montenegro's use of language does little

to improve the quality of her drama. Alcestis is written

in strict blank verse. Although it contains a few passages

of true poetic intensity and lyric beauty, particularly in

the scene in which Hercules makes love to Alcestis, on the

whole the poetry of the play tends to be, as one critic

noted, "prolix and prosaic."1 Furthermore, because of a

preponderance of end-stopped lines and too-regularly-

placed caesuras, the verse lacks variety. As this study

suggests, it was almost inevitable that Alcestis be

written in verse; and it is unfortunate that Montenegro

is no more a poet than she is a dramatist.

In summary, although Montenegro has added details

and altered character relationships in her handling of the

^ h e Nation, February 3, 1910, p. 119.

 433

Alcestis-Admetus myth, her play remains essentially

faithful to the classic story. In the degree of freedom

which she has taken with the legendary materials,

Alcestis resembles most closely those plays included in

the third part of chapter ii and The Cretan Woman in

chapter iii. As in so many of the dramas previously

examined, Montenegro's drama focuses on the female agent

of the myth and, in spite of the supernatural dimensions

of the story, makes the human figures responsible for

their own acts. The shortcomings of the play— lack of

integration of theme and action, too-obvious didacticism,

unintentional contradictions, and characters which lack

human significance— are equally familiar.

 Laurence Housman's The Wheel: Myth

and the Oneness of Life

The Wheel, a three-act verse drama by Laurence

Housman, was published in 1919* Although by that date

Housman had already published a number of plays, novels,

and short stories, and was well known in literary circles,

The Wheel attracted almost no critical attention. Nor

' has the play, to my knowledge, ever been produced on the

professional stage.

Because Housman has given each of the acts of his

play a different title, it might be argued that The Wheel

is a group of one-act plays, and that each must be treated

as a separate artistic entity. Closer examination re­

veals, however, that although The Wheel is more episodic

than many other modern dramas, each act is only one seg­

ment in the total action. The characters remain con­

sistent throughout, and it would be impossible to under­

stand the second or third acts without the events which

precede them.

Housman has treated the Alcestis-Admetus myth

with far greater freedom than Montenegro did. The

settings and characters are Greek in appearance, and the

first act remains within the framework of the classic

434
 435
legend; but the balance of the play is almost wholly

Housman1s own. As a result, in terms of the degree of free­

dom which its author has taken with the myth, the play re­

sembles most closely those Atreidae dramas included in the

final part of chapter ii, particularly William Alfred's

Agamemnon: and Kenneth Rexroth's Phaedra, discussed in

chapter iii.

The first part of The Wheel is entitled "Apollo in

Hades"; it concerns, as the title suggests, Apollo's jour­

ney to the Pates in order to bargain with them for the life

of Admetus. As the play begins, Hades, enthroned in a

black-pillared hall of the Underworld, speaks to the audi­

ence. He explains that he is sole god of the dead and master

of a realm in which time goes without haste and in which

there is eternal night. In this kingdom, Hades says, sorrow

and joy are dumb since the dead have no need of such emo­

tions, and wrath, jealousy, and fear are ended.

. . . To and fro
Phoebus Apollo travelleth, working woe
Por all that trust in him. But my throne
Stays fixed eternally, and peace alone
Dwells with the dead. . .

Within his realm, Hades adds, he has set ministers to work

"the unchanging Will" (10), the three Pates who blindly,

without love or hate, weave the web of destiny for those

they know not.

Thanatos appears, bows before his master, and tells

^Laurence Housman, The Wheel (Londons Sidgwick &

Jackson Ltd., 1919), p. 10.
 436

him that he has come from the world above where one can

"hear the hum/ Of that great Wheel where the world's

mortal coil/ Speeds to its end" (10). Hades bids his

servant to return so that he may continue to "fill up anew/

This world of shades" (11). Suddenly darkness descends,

covering Hades and the throne. In its place appears a

stairway which leads to the upper world.

In a pillared recess to the right of the stairway

sit the Three Pates, plying their task. Clotho turns her

wheel, Lachesis draws out the thread and gathers it into

a skein of varying lengths, and Atropos cuts the skeins

with her heavy shears. Thanatos nods to the sisters and

mounts the stairs. As he goes, the Shade of a youth,

hitherto unobserved, moves forward and watches him. Por

an instant the faint ray of light which illumines the stair

increases, as though a door at the far end had been opened.

A few bars of a song are heard; then a door clangs, and

darkness settles again. The sisters exchange a few desul­

tory words about their unceasing toil. Then darkness

closes over them and they disappear.

A Chorus of Shades enters and speaks to the audi­

ence. When they were alive, they say, they feared the

Underworld and were not anxious to entei^ the realm of the

dead; now, however, they have learned that the feet that

journey no more and the hands which forever remain empty

are most blest. Having experienced death, they no longer

 437

fear it, and do not wish to take up again the cares of

the living. In response to these remarks, the youthful

Shade, who appeared as Thanatos departed, asks,

Since when have I seen a flower

Arise, and blossom, and fade;
Or heaven, at the twilight hour,
Cover earth with her shade?
Since when have I looked on bliss,
The brief-comer, and been afraid? (13)

An elder Shade replies that here there is no need to

reckon time or look for flowers, since day and night are

forgotten. He asks the youth, "Of what hope hast thou been

betrayed?" (13). The young man answers that his memory has

been stirred by the beam of light from the world of the

living and the song of strange birds; the old man exclaims

that these things are of no importance to him and that he

should learn to embrace his fate and find peace.

Now the Chorus notices in the distance the arrival

of Charon's barge and soon a group of Shades who are newly-

arrived in Hades enter. The youth asks one of the new­

comers if he can recall his life on earth, but the man

answers that he has drunk of Lethe's waters and can re­

member nothing. In return he asks the identity of those

about him. When he is told that all are Shades, he notes

that in the crowd there is one man whose face seems more

alive than the rest. The elder Shade tells him that the

man whom he sees is Tiresias;

Blind, he still sees; the woe he bore on earth

Afflicts him yet; and power to prophesy
Holds him from peace. (15)
 438

The newcomer asks if Tiresias still foretells the future

and the elder Shade replies:

He may: we heed not. Rumour runs not here.

For in this world, things hidden, or things
foretold,
Concern us not. (15)

The newcomer exclaims that there is one thing which he

would learn; and Tiresias replies:

I know thy mind. Seek not, for it is vain.

Look no more backward now; no profit dwells
In lives outworn. Men wither till they die.
Then fixed remain for ever. But forward still,
Affronting these blank orbs, the world wheels on:
It rests not yet. And we, like shadows with it,
Are slowly borne to ends which have no end—
That lips may utter. (15-16)

The Shades seat themselves and there is a moment's pause.

Then Tiresias begins to speak again. He tells those about

him that he hears footsteps from the world above and that

the sound presages the entrance of pain, grief, and

calamity into the Underworld.

There is a crash of cymbals and singing is heard.

This is followed by the sound of doors opening and the

stairway to the upper world is flooded with light. Grad­

ually the music from above grows louder, more joyous and

triumphant, and the voice of Apollo proclaims:

. . . . I am the Life Immortal'.

Awake, arise, ye Dead, and look on Day'.

I am Apollo'. Turn, and look on me! (17)

Apollo appears descending thestairs; he bears a harp,

and at his belt hang a wineskin and a golden cup. The

 439

Shades gather around the god. In spite of Tiresias1 warn­

ing that their peace will he destroyed if they heed

Apollo, they stand entranced, hanging eagerly upon his

words as he announces that he brings the beams of Heaven

to shatter the bars of Hell. Then he seats himself and

tells the Shades that he has entered the Underworld in

order "to fulfil the sum/ Of one man's heart's desire"

(20). The god explains that for nine years he was banished

from his high place and forced to serve Admetus who treated

him with kindness ("Friendship I found to be a holier

thing/ Than Heaven had taught me" /20-21 J) . In return,

when the nine years had passed, Apollo promised to grant

one request, and Admetus asked to be allowed to live until

he was quite old. Apollo has come to Hades to settle this

matter with the Fates. For a moment Tiresias emerges from

the crowd, exclaiming,

And lo, thy blessing shall become a curse;

And Death shall tell the better for the worse'. (21)

Tiresias disappears, and the Hall of the Fates is again

revealed.

Apollo takes the cup from his belt, unslings the

wineskin, and pours out the wine. Telling the Shades that

whoever drinks of it becomes his subject, Apollo steps for­

ward, greets the three Fates, and after exchanging a few

words with them, offers them the wine which he holds. At

first they refuse, but when he explains that all who taste

this wine are given the power to see as "the Gods see in
 440

Heaven" (23), and, as a result, no longer fear what fate

has in store for them, they cannot resist the temptation.

They drink the wine and are at once seized by a kind of

ecstasy. They describe, first individually, then in uni­

son, the visions which they have and conclude by offering

Apollo to "save the soul thou prizest,/ Making his brief

days long" (26). The Shades utter a cry of joy and immedi­

ately the Pates are themselves again. At first they re­

fuse to fulfill their promise, but when Apollo tells them

that he will find another soul to take Admetus' place in

death, they accept his offer and disappear. Apollo turns

to the Shades, says farewell, and goes up the stairs.

There is the clang of a closing door and once more Hell is

dark and desolate. The Shades, having watched the god's

departure with straining eyes, remain motionless. Presently

they turn and look at one another in wonder and in grief.

They realize that Apollo has only delivered them to a sec­

ond death, for they are more miserable now than before he

came; but Tiresias assures them that soon they will again

be at peace. He continues speaking, mentioning a queen

Whose name and whose goings are blest.

Hither she cometh of her own choice,
Her years were brief, and their end was grief,
Yet with death hath she crowned her days:
There is wisdom in all her ways,
And comfort for them that hear her voice. (30)

The act ends as one of the Shades asks piteously if there

is any altar where the dead may kneel and, as if in answer

to his own question, says that he hears the hum of The

 441

Wheel and realizes that his doom runs on endlessly.

The second act of The Wheel, entitled "The Death

of Alcestis," takes place in the garden of Proserpine.

A great wall of rock fills the "background except where a

stairway ascends toward the right. Tiresias is seated at

the center of the stage on a deep cleft from which falls

without sound a thin stream of water. Around him are the

Shades who stand motionless, with heads bowed. As the act

begins, Tiresias fortells the arrival of Proserpine. The

Shades take little notice of him, however, for they are

still grieving over the vision of life which Apollo brought

them, and wishing aloud that they might forget it by drink­

ing once more of Lethe's waters.

Once more Tiresias speaks of Proserpine, and as he

does so, a dim light mysteriously begins to burn in the

cleft of the rock. Its radiance increases, and presently

in the midst of it Proserpine appears, her head crowned and

her hands laden with flowers. She speaks first to her

absent mother Earth, asking her not to mourn the death of

her daughter and assuring her that she (Proserpine) feels

no fear. "To me," she says, "all things are blest:"

Life, Birth, and Death, these with an equal hand

I keep and cherish.

. . . . And with me cometh a wonder;

For I, that strawed, have reaped and gathered sheaves:
Prom Earth's brief years I sunder
(Hear, 0 ye DeadI)
Life that loves death, lost joy that no more gives,
And light of eyes which shone to shine no more.
 442

These to black night and dark bridal bed

I bring, and strew them at my bridegroom's doorl
(40)

She announces that she gives herself to Death and then

stands quietly in an attitude of invocation. Suddenly the

air becomes full of the noise of rushing wings, and the

shrill cries of the Furies are heard, welcoming Proserpine.

There is a roll of thunder and "up from the stream1s basin

rises a light of fire" (41). The radiance in which

Proserpine stands begins to deepen and gradually her form

is lost to view. Tiresias tells the Shades that her soul

is now at rest and she feels no pain. The chorus of

Shades notes, however, that Proserpine, in spite of her

dream of death, remains immortal and will return each

spring to the realm of the living. Piteously they adds

Oh, could I see the face

Of one, who for death was fain'.
Who had tasted, and wished not again
For one breath of the life that was lost;
But only that summer and spring
And the years which they bring
Might cease'.
Surely, then, in this place,
As of old would my soul find peace'. (43)

As if in answer to their prayer, Tiresias announces the

arrival of Hermes who brings with him one "whose lips

have tasted death,/ But Lethe's draught— not yet" (44).

Consequently, he adds, the Shades will see in her eyes the

light of memory and hear from her lips tidings of earth.

Hermes enters, bringing Alcestis with him. He ex­

plains that Alcestis has died for her husband, and that
 443

because to immortal eyes she appears "blameless, perfect,

and pure" (45)» she has been brought to the garden of

Proserpine, where she is to remain until "God's will be

made known" (45). Hermes departs and the Shades begin to

discuss what he has told them, marveling particularly that

any mortal should be willing to die for another.

At length the Shades turn to Alcestis and ask her

what she sees of life on earth. She replies that she sees

Death "as a door to birth, where the soul breaks free"

(46). Surprised by her answer, they continue their

questionings

2nd Shade: Shall souls be free in a world where all

lie bound?

Alcestis: Where the dead rest, there, surely, is

freedom found.

1st Shade: Thou hast come far: art thou content

to stay?

Alcestis: My feet are weary from the downward way.

3rd Shade: Turned not thy thoughts from the path

thou didst descend?

Alcestis: Where should they turn? Here is the

traveller's end.

2nd Shade: For longer life hadst thou no will to

stay?

Alcestis: Brief life remained when brief life

passed away.

1st Shade: Was there no sorrow for thee when thou

wert dead?

Alcestis: Aye, sorrow heaped on sorrow: from that

I fled.
 444

3rd Shade: Was there no friend to wish thee hack

again?

Alcestis: Much he so wished, by whose wish I am

slain. (46)

But the Shades can hardly believe what Alcestis tells them

and continue to ask her questions. They find it most

strange that one who still beholds life could have a soul

which does not wish to return to life. Alcestis answers

that all things which "taste of time" (47) must learn change.

Hearken to me'. Between two worlds I dwell:

Life I now know, having known death as well.
So from deep night one looketh upon a star;
Yea, and it shineth; but round its rays stretch far
Dark regions, and the undiscovered skies.
Such is man's life: the heavens are full of eyes,
But round them spreadeth darkness, and beyond,—
He knoweth not what. And this truth having conned,
Surely I learned how, for brief life, 'twere well
Within one Being to rest inseparable;
And as the stars lie in the hand of Night,
Which takes and turns them, severing light from light,
And moon from sun and day, even so do we
Lie in the Hand of that Infinity
Whose shape is round us. . . .

. . . Ye Shades, this rest, which ye now share,

Is but a showing of that which Life shall bear
Hereafter unto Death: here ye behold
D imly that peace which cometh to enfold
All things made equal,— yes, both Gods and men'. (47- 48)

In reply, the Shades tell Alcestis that her words bring

them comfort.

Abruptly, Tiresias begins to describe a vision

which is passing before his sightless eyes. He tells how

Death, who has stopped to enjoy the meats which the mourners

have brought to Alcestis' funeral, is set upon by Heracles.

They wrestle, and at length Heracles emerges triumphant

 445

from Alcestis' tomb, bearing the body of the Queen.

Throughout the recital the Shades have listened in amaze­

ment, and Alcestis, at first doubtful of what she was

hearing, now stands stricken with terror. Realizing that

she must return once again to the realm of the living,

Alcestis recalls her wedding day and the part which Apollo

played in it:

Aye, now is the will of the God

Made plain from the days of yore:
Yonder I see again
The bright wheels, and the golden car,
When the minstrels and singers drew me,
A maid, from my father’s door;
And a bier was my bridal bed that day,
When the Bow and the Quiver made straight the way,
And the hand of Apollo slew me'.
Bor yoked to the shaft came then
The lion, and the fierce black boar,
And they led me forth mid a dance of men,
With minstrels going before.
But here was my doom foretold,
And this shall be cried for a jest,
How to the tomb I was taken in vain;
For the boar and the lion have drawn me again
Prom the place of my rest'. (51-52)

The unseen door above opens, earthly light floods the

stairway, and Hermes appears. He tells Alcestis that it

is the will of Heaven that she return to her husband. The

Shades cry out to her not to go, but she no longer sees or

hears them and she follows Hermes up the stairway which

leads to life. The Shades watch her depart, lamenting the

loss of one who comforted them, and murmuring to one

another that when she awakens to the light of day she will
i

not remember her visit to Hades. Tiresias replies:

 446

She shall return!

Not on that soul hath immortality,
Heaven's greater curse, been laid. . . . (53)

As the Shades continue to gaze upward, there appears in

the cleft of the rock a vision of the sleeping Proserpine.

The radiance of the vision fills the garden and a sleep of

enchantment falls upon the Shades. Only the blind Tiresias

remains awake.

The final act of The Wheel, entitled "The Doom of

Admetus," is set in the bridal chamber of Admetus1 palace.

As the act begins, Hymen, bearing a torch, stands by a small

domestic altar near the center of the stage. He addresses

the audience, recalling the events which have led to this

moment. Briefly, he explains that to celebrate Alcestis'

return from death, Admetus plans to repeat his marriage

vows; Hymen blesses this "second marriage" and departs.

A Chorus of Alcestis' handmaidens enter, singing a

hymn of thanksgiving, but Alcestis' nurse does not join them.

When they ask her why she does not rejoice over the return

of the Queen, she answers, in a noncommittal way, that she

has seen her mistress, who appears to be as beautiful and

as perfect as when she first became a bride. Suddenly she

pauses in her recital, cries out, "They that be wise,/

Dying, let them stay dead" (60), and rushes from the chamber.

The Chorus is astounded. Surely, they say, life is sweeter

than death, and one ought to cling to the little breath

which God has given him.

 447

Alcestis enters, supported by her servants and her

Nurse. The Chorus greets the Queen, but she remains

motionless before them. The Nurse laments that Alcestis'

lips have remained mute even to her.

Death's hold is loosed; but mouth and heart

stay dumb.
Lo, from the grave she looks, yet sees not
life! (62)

Even the names of wife and mother have not moved the Queen.

In an attempt to awaken Alcestis' spirit, the Chorus speaks

of the love which exists between animals and their young

and then recalls the funeral of Alcestis and the grief of

Admetus and his children. As if in answer to these words,

Alcestis rises and stands with arms half-lifted in an

attitude of prayer. Thinking that at last human contact

has been established with the Queen, the Nurse sends one

of the attendants to fetch the children. When they are

brought in, they run to their mother with outstretched

arms and cries of joy. For a moment Alcestis stands m o ­

tionless, as if she hears a far-off cry whose sound she

remembers. Still without moving she says, more to herself

than to those about her, "These were my children" (64).

She turns toward her daughter and bends over her with a

strange look; then she takes the child's hair in her hands

and begins plaiting it. As she gazes at the girl, she sayss

And thou, also, must die

Some day, fair child, and in the grave must lie.
Hark, what I tell thee: do not rise again'.
Quiet is that dwelling, and therein is no pain. (64)
 4-48

Surely, the Nurse argues, this world is more bright than

the dim realm helow where men can neither see, nor hear,

nor touch.

Alcestis; Surely the light goes forth to many lands,

And seeth all things. Yet our lord, the
Sun,
In heaven stands lonely, and is known of
none.

Nurse: Yet was not great Apollo both guard and

guide
When to this place thou earnest as a bride?
And round thy chariot's yoke such spells
were cast
That lion and boar thereto stood harnessed
fast.

Alcestis: I mind me of it. It was as thou hast said.

Therefore I came; and therefore hence went
dead. (64-65)

With a gesture of despair, the Nurse signals to the attend­

ant to remove the children. She orders thatthe Queen be

decked in her bridal raiments and while she is being

attired, the sound of music and singing draws near.

Alcestis, a look of frozen horror on her face at the sounds

which she hears, is led from the room by the Nurse and the

Chorus follows her out.

A Chorus of men enter singing a celebration hymn;

they are soon joined by Admetus and his attendants. The

King stands before the altar, offers incense, and prays to

various gods, thanking them for the return of his wife and

asking their continued blessing on his marriage. As

Admetus turns from the altar, one of his attendants an­

nounces the arrival of Pheres. "Let him go'./ I need him

 449

not," the King answers, "He lived to be my foe" (68).

Pheres enters and explains that he has come to wish his

son joy on this blessed day, adding that when he saw the

sum of Admetus' affliction, he at once repented of the

wrath he earlier felt for his son. Admetus refuses to

accept his father's overture, however, and soon the two

are quarreling. Admetus taunts him for his selfishness

in refusing to give up his life for that of his son, and

Pheres answers that he loved life better than Admetus

loved his wife. "Go," Pheres shouts,

dull thy conscience with fresh lust;

Embrace the body which thou didst cast to dusts
Feast on the flesh again, thou carrion fly'. (69)

Admetus advances on him threateningly, but an attendant

intervenes just in time and the old mancteparts.

At once the wedding ceremony begins. Cymbals

clash; from one door the Nurse enters carrying a cup and

from the other comes the bridal procession. Alcestis,

veiled, comes last, supported by two of her women. Admetus

orders the attendants to leave the bridal chamber and all

except the Nurse go out. She brings the cup to Admetus,

who takes it and drinks. Then she goes to Alcestis and

offers her the cup. The Queen, however, does not take the

cup, and as the Nurse raises it to her lips, she drinks

the contents with closed eyes. The Nurse goes out, leaving

the couple alone.

Admetus approaches his wife and greets her. "I

 450

give thee greeting, having journeyed far" (71)« she

answers. When the King asks if she can tell whether the

journey was his or hers, she replies that they have both

journeyed, but that hers was the longer. As Admetus con­

tinues to question his wife, she tells him that while life

was still hers, the thought of death was bitter; now she

has learned that man knows not life until he knows death

as well.

Admetus j Learns he from death more than from

Heaven above?

Alcestis: Yea: More of God himself, and life,

and love.

Admetus: Where foundst thou— love?

Alcestis: Not where the dead be bound,

Nor here on earth, one lover have I found.
(71)

Admetus insists that he is her true lover and reminds her

that he chose her "before all on earth" (72), but Alcestis

answers that the doom of God lay on her from her birth.

When the King protests that it was, after all, his call

that brought her back from Hades, she replies that she

returned to fill his need, not her own.

Admetus: But having died, was there no looking

back?

Alcestis: I looked, and lo, the doors of life

were black.

Admetus: Didst thou not love the children of

thy womb?

Alcestis: They still were mine when I was in the

tomb.
 451

Admetus: Home hungered for thee, and the marriage-

bed,
Where thou wast fruitful.

Alcestis: And where I lay dead,

Having borne all'.

Admetus: What means that stricken cry?

Foundst thou no bliss?

Alcestis: Yea, bliss enough to die

When thou didst ask it of me, 0 my lord!
Oft times he might have slain me with
his sword:
Yet was I spared to die another death.

Admetus: Breathe not upon the past such bitter

breath*.
Surely thou knowest, great was my need
of thee!

Alcestis: A greater need befell: I set thee free.

(72-73)
The conversation continues along these lines until Admetus

prays that "the God" (74) give Alcestis bliss.

Alcestis: What God in heaven or hell shall grant

me this?

Admetus: Ask of Apollo: he that made thee mine!

Alcestis: Of that vine-treading thou hast drunk

the wine.

Admetus: Give me to drink again. That cup recall!

Alcestis: Again thou askest of me— and I give all!

(74)
Falling back into her husband's arms, she dies. Admetus

cries out that Apollo's "dart has slain . . . ^iin^" (74),

and his cry brings first the Nurse, and then the children

and attendants to Alcestis. The Nurse is beside herself

with grief and the attendants stand awe-struck by what has

happened. Amid the lamentations of Admetus and the Chorus,

 452

Pheres enters and seeing that Alcestis has died once more,

tells those who will listen that they are fools to try to

call her hack. "Death," he says , "untasted is feared,—

hut tasted is sweet" (76). Pheres departs, leaving behind

the mourning Admetus; the play ends as 1he Chorus delivers

a speech on the inevitability of death.

Since so much of Housman's work is original, it is

impossible to make the customary analysis of the changes

which he has made in the myth. Although the first act of

The Wheel remains within the framework of the classic

legend, the rest of the play is almost wholly Housman's own.

Of the action in the second act, Alcestis' first journey

to Hades, the myth includes only the fact of her death,

and gives no details of her visit. The third act, Alcestis1

return to life and her second death, are entirely original

with the author; the myth ends at the point at which

Hercules returns Alcestis to her husband. Nevertheless,

it is appropriate to note here the modifications which

Housman has made of the various mythic elements which he

has retained.

Most of the changes concern the character of Apollo

and the part which he plays in the story. Housman's god,

unlike his prototype, has labored in the service of Admetus

for nine years instead of one. Since the playwright omits

any mention of Admetus' failure to sacrifice to Artemis on

 453

the day of his wedding, Apollo seeks out the Pates as a

part of a favor to Admetus, in return for his kindness

during the years of servitude. Admetus, apparently with­

out any knowledge that his death is imminent, asks the god

to promise him a long life. In order to grant the King's

request, Apollo goes to Hades, but learns from the Pates

that Admetus' life is nearly over. The god wins a re­

prieve for his favorite not by getting the sisters drunk,

but by offering them a magic wine which puts them in his

power. Furthermore, Apollo, unlike his classic models,

already realizes that Alcestis will take her husband's

place in death and promises the Pates her life in exchange

for that of Admetus.

In more general terms, while the Apollo of the

Alcestis-Admetus myth is a sympathetic character, Housman's

Apollo is presented in essentially negative terms. For

example, we might expect Hades to says

To and fro
Phoebus Apollo travelleth, working woe
For all that trust in him. (10)

But this opinion is reinforced by Tiresias' description of

Apollo as one who brings "pain/ Grief, and calamity" (16)

to those whom he visits, by the Shades' despair after

Apollo's departure from Hades, and by Alcestis' repeated

assertion that Apollo is her husband's friend, not hers.

All of these details are, of course, additions to the

classic story. Admetus is also presented as a less

 454

attractive character than he is in the myth, particularly

in his interview with his father; but the play makes the

changes in Apollo more evident than those in the King.

Housman's other modifications of the legend can

be briefly noteds (1) In The Wheel Alcestis has had

three children; no version of the myth gives her more than

two. (2) In some versions of the legend, Alcestis is re­

turned to life through the intervention of Persephone (or

Proserpine, as she is called in The Wheel) . Although

Housman retains the goddess, she no longer plays an active

part in the story. (3) Housman al30 adds two characters,

Tiresias and Hermes, who do not appear in any versions of

the Alcestis-Admetus myth.

The major defect of The Wheel lies in Housman's

inability to give the action of his drama any meaning

beyond the events themselves. As a result, it is difficult

to isolate any central thesis upon which the play seems to

focus. The theme which appears to underlie at least a

part of the action concerns the relationship of life as we

know it to the life which continues after death. There is

a oneness, the play suggests, to both these forms of life;

in a sense, the life after death is a continuation, in a

different realm, of the life on earth, and one Being con­

trols both spheres. To learn this lesson is to dispel the

fear of death, and to gain a measure of peace that most

 455

individuals never achieve. This thesis is stated most

clearly in the second act of The Wheel, during Alcestis'

initial visit to the Underworld. She says to the Shades

who have gathered around her;

Must not all things which taste of time learn change?

Hearken to me'. Between two worlds I dwell:
Life I now know, having known death as well.
So from deep night one looketh upon a star;
Yea, and it shineth; but round its rays stretch far
Dark regions, and the undiscovered skies.
Such is man's life: the heavens are full of eyes,
But round them spreadeth darkness, and beyond,—
He knoweth not what. And this truth having conned,
Surely I learned how, for brief life 'twere well
Within one Being to rest inseparable;
And as the stars lie in the hand of Night,
Which takes and turns them, severing light from light,
And mood from sun and day, even so do we
Lie in the Hand of that Infinity
Whose shape is round us. Life fails as it flies,
But where it travels not, there darkness lies
Forever. Ye Shades, this rest, which ye now share,
Is but a showing of that which Life shall bear
Hereafter unto Death: here ye behold
Dimly that peace which cometh to enfold
All things made equal,— yes, both Gods and men'. (47-48)

But, the play maintains, instead of resting inseparable

with the "one Being," most men turn for assistance and

comfort to one another, only to find, as Alcestis did,

that "the hand/ Which once I leaned on helped me not to

stand/ Nor brought salvation" (48).

If this is the central thesis of The Wheel, then

Housman's failures in handling his theme are readily appar­

ent. Perhaps the most serious of these flaws is the in­

consistency with which the theme is treated. If Alcestis

has found the oneness of which she speaks, the oneness

 456

which seems to raise her above the other characters of the

drama, then why does she fear to return to life? At one

point near the end of Act II the Shades speak of the "grief

and the pain life brings" (50). But surely an individual

who has achieved a union with the "one Being" loses the

fear of life just as he loses the fear of death. This is

not to say that Alcestis should desire to return to life,

but neither should she wish to remain among the dead. If

she has learned, as she claims, that we "Lie in the Hand

of that Infinity/ Whose shape is round us" (47), then she

also knows that human will is subsumed by Divine will, and

she will return to earth as willingly as she will remain

among the dead.

Other aspects of the play contribute to Housman’s

failure to develop his theme with clarity and consistency.

No attempt is made to explain the relationship which exists

between the supernatural figures which appear in the play

and the supreme Being, "the infinity," who controls the

world. Clearly the gods and goddesses are more powerful

than the human agents; the Shades claim that Apollo has de­

stroyed their happiness and Alcestis blames him for her un­

fortunate marriage and for the necessity of her return to

life. Yet if we believe Alcestis, there exists a Being

before whom gods and men are equal; but while the play

offers several demonstrations of the gods' power, it con­

tains no evidence of the authority of the supreme Being.

 457

This issue is complicated even further by the fact that

the word God is used to refer to both levels of the super­

natural .
Nor does Housman's depiction of Alcestis aid his

development of the theme. Although the Queen tells the

Shades that "'twere well/ Within one Being to rest insep­

arable" (47), she seems not to have learned how to submerge

her will in that of the Infinite. Furthermore, her conver­

sations with the Shades in the second act and with her

husband in the third seem inappropriately sarcastic and

bitter. Alcestis' reaction may be a thoroughly human one,

but it negates the heroic terms in which the play presents

her. We expect a more charitable response from an individu­

al whose soul the gods find "blameless, perfect, and pure"

(44), and who has achieved the oneness with God which the

play preaches.

The play also contains a number of characters and

events which have little or no relation to the theme.

That part of the second act devoted to Persephone and her

relationship to Hades, and the argument between Admetus

and Pheres in the final act, are completely gratuitous.

The introduction of Hermes as Alcestis' guide to the Under­

world is equally unrelated to the theme. Even Apollo's

bargaining with the Pates which serves as the principal

dramatic event of the first act, although a part of the

action of the myth, seems to have only the most tenuous

 458

relationship with the central thesis of the play. For a

variety of reasons, then, The Wheel evidences the same

confusion about what the theme is, and the same failure

to relate theme and action, which are characteristic of

the other works in this study.

Equally important and closely allied to the above

point is the fact that Housman has, for the most part,

simply failed to write genuine drama. What he offers in­

stead is a series of lyrical passages loosely strung to­

gether on a narrative thread. Far too much of the play

is given over to choral passages which contain little or

no dramatic interest. When events do occur, their dramatic

potential nearly always goes unrealized. For example,

Apollo achieves his objective in the first act without a

struggle and there is no opportunity for tension to build

between him and the Fates. Again, in the second act when

Alcestis learns that she must return to her husband, in­

stead of allowing her to declare her reluctance to return,

Housman gives her a lengthy narrative speech in which she

cryptically describes her wedding to Admetus. In the

interview between Admetus and the Queen in the last act,

there is at least some sense of tension. But even here

the two characters talk at such cross purposes and Admetus

so fails to understand the meaning of his wife's words that

the struggle seems a very limited one. By far the most

dramatically successful scene is the argument between

 459

Admetus and his father Pheres, and this, unfortunately,

bears no relation whatever to the thesis. Furthermore,

Housman places many of the most exciting events of the

legend offstage. As a result, the drama inherent in the

myth is vitiated, and we are left with a play that is thin,

vague, and narrowly esthetic.

4

It should come as no surprise that Housman's

characters are equally unsatisfactory. They are, without

exception, two-dimensional figures, more suitable to a

dramatic lyric than to a drama. This is partially a re­

sult of the playwright's unwillingness to let any of his

characters hold the stage for any length of time. We see

only slightly more of Alcestis, upon whom the play focuses,

than we do of her husband or Apollo, and less of all three

of these than we do of Tiresias, who is so useful for pur­

poses of exposition and foreshadowing.

Although Housman has been unable to create charac­

ters who are believable human beings, he has provided most

of them with enough human traits to destroy the majesty

which characterized their prototypes. Alcestis, we are

told, is one whose "name and goings are blest" (30), one

who in immortal eyes is "blameless, perfect, and pure, and

wise/ In all her words and ways" (44). Like the Alcestis

of the myth, she has willingly agreed to take her husband's

place in death and in so doing she "hath . . . crowned her

days" (30). She is, it would appear, a model of virtue and

 4-60

a warm-hearted, selfless woman who learns from her experi­

ences the oneness of all life, both the life which we know

on earth and that which continues after death. Yet this

is hardly the impression we get of Alcestis from the two

scenes in which she appears. When she tells the Shades

about her life with Admetus, her tone is bitter and sar­

castic. And when she returns to her former life, she is

so cold, so aloof, not only toward her husband but toward

her children as well, that we lose any sympathy which we

may have had for her. It is difficult to believe that such

a woman could have sacrificed her life for another.

Both Admetus and Apollo are presented in essentially

unsympathetic terms. Housman has retained for Admetus the

pride which characterized his prototype, but this quality

is unsupported by the kindness and the sense of kingship

which were so much a part of the legendary Admetus. There

is no evidence that Admetus appreciates or even understands

the sacrifice which his wife has made. When she returns,

he treats her as he might any of his possessions; she is

useful as a means of satisfying his sensual appetites,

and because she provides him with heirs to the throne.

When, in the argument between Admetus and Pheres, the King

asks his father what use his life is to him, the reader

can hardly avoid feeling that Pheres' answer, "I loved it,

better than thou thy wife" (69), is an accurate evaluation.

The meanness with which Admetus treats the old man only
 461

makes him appear an even greater tyrant.

Admetus' champion, Apollo, is presented in equally

unfavorable terms. Although he claims to have learned the

value of friendship as a result of his years of servitude—

"Friendship I found to be a holier thing/ Than Heaven had

taught me" (20-21)— his treatment of all the characters of

the play except Admetus seems to deny this fact. At best,

Apollo appears no more than an irresponsible meddler.

Although both he and Admetus are more interesting as dra­

matic characters than Alcestis is, neither is sufficiently

delineated to hold our attention for any length of time.

Nor does Housman make any use, in terms of theme or plot,

of the changes which he has made in these characters.

The other characters tend to be either fairly

obvious devices of one sort or another, or to have no func­

tion whatever. Tiresias remains almost uncharacterized

except for the fact that he has retained his power to fore­

tell the future; Hermes and Persephone play no part in the

action.

In spite of the essentially lyric quality of The

Wheel, Housman has filled his play with moments of elabo­

rate spectacle: the Fates appear in a pillared recess which

opens and closes as if by magic; the entrance of Apollo is

accompanied by the clash of cymbals, the sound of harp

music, "joyous and full of triumph" (17), and a brilliant

flash of light; Proserpine appears in the midst of a light

 462

which "begins mysteriously to burn" (39) in the cleft of

a rock, and which gradually becomes brighter until the

goddess can be seen; the symbolic marriage of Proserpine

and Hades is accompanied by the "noise of rushing wings:

the scene darkens, overhead is heard the shrill crying of

the Furies, like the scream of sea-gulls" (40); when the

goddess magically disappears in a cleft in the rock,

thunder is heard; the wedding of Alcestis and Admetus

includes, among other things, a bridal procession in which

all of Alcestis' handmaidens enter the bedchamber two by

two, "dropping sprays of myrtle from folded napkins which

they carry between them. The moment is sad and full of

solemnity, sacrificial in character" (70). It is as if

Housman, aware of the dramatic inadequacies of his script,

has attempted to make his play more stageworthy by the

introduction of theatrical effects. The result, however,

is an irrelevant theatricalism which not only calls atten­

tion to itself, but which makes the play's dramatic short­

comings even more apparent.

Unlike many of the plays included in this study,

The Wheel is almost entirely free of conventions common to

classic Greek drama. Even Housman's Chorus is considerably

different from those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

From time to time certain members of the Chorus are in­

dividualized, and the playwright makes no attempt to use

his Chorus as a means to universalize or extend the meaning

 463

of the action in which the major characters participate.

Housman creates, then, a Chorus which is peculiarly his own

and which is at least poetically interesting for the first

two acts of his play. In the third act, when the locale

changes from Hades to the court of Admetus, Housman appar­

ently feels compelled to retain the convention and yet can

find no function for his Chorus— or Choruses, since there

are now two of them. As a result, they seem to be only

embarrassingly in the way.

It must be apparent at this point that whatever

artistic merits The Wheel may have are primarily a result

of Housman's ability as a poet rather than as a playwright.

The drama contains a wide variety of verse forms ranging

from fairly strict anapestic trimeter to something that is

close to free verse. A few examples will demonstrate this

variety.
X X X
Those hands, the holders of doom,
x x x
And the pit, and the cavernous gloom
X X X
Of the graves which open and gape?
X X X
Ah, God, in what shape, in what shape. (50)

Although the anapestic foot appears frequently throughout

the play, it is often used with considerably more freedom

than it is in the above passage. In the following lines,

note that an iamb is often substituted for an anapest, and -

that the number of accented syllables changes from one

line to another:
 464
X X X X
To this world empty of hand I came,
X X X X
And surely my feet, as they passed, were slow,
X X X
And the life they had left seemed best.
X X X
But now have I seen, and know
X X X X
That the feet which journey no more are blest. (13)

Housman also makes use of iambic pentameter, but the five-

stress line appears with less frequency than one of three

or four stresses.
X X X X X
Alcestis, Queen of Pherae, learn and know
X X X X X
The Will of Heaven'. Thou (' tis ordained) shalt go
X X X X X
forth from the shades and live again. This end
X X X X X
Stands wrought by Heracles, thy husband's friend,
X X X X X
To whom Death yields thy fate. The light of God. . ,
(52)

Finally, the following passages demonstrate the freedom

of verse form which sometimes characterizes the language

of the play. Although neither of these examples is free

verse, both move toward that condition.

x x
'Tis the crying of the Furies,
X X X
Power upon power attending.
X X X
Look, overhead ye can see
X X X X X
Red Eyes, and the black wings beating'. (41)
X X X X X X
Deep bed of slumber, where the most holy Feet
X X X X X
Bring in their train faint semblances of spring,
X X X X X
Dim forms which change not, yet in sleep seem
x
fair. . . . (35)
 465

In spite of this variety of forms, the predominance of

lines which contain three or four accented syllables gives

the verse adequate unity. The pentameter line appears

infrequently, and a line of only two accented syllables

is rare.

Yet, in spite of Housman's technical proficiency,

his language is rarely a satisfactory vehicle for dramatic

action; it is seldom able to convey the dramatic intensity

of a situation. Too often, when the action builds to what

should be a moment of self-revelation, the playwright

offers only a passage of narrative exposition. Perhaps

the most obvious example of this occurs at the end of the

second act. The stage directions tell us that Alcestis is

"stricken with horror" (51) at the prospect of returning to

her former life, but instead of allowing the Queen to ex­

press her horror, Housman gives her a speech which describes

the details of her marriage.

In summary, Housman has used the Alcestis-Admetus

myth with greater license than Montenegro did. Although

the first act of The Wheel remains within the outlines of

the legend, the rest of the play is almost entirely

Housman's own invention. In this respect, it resembles

most closely William Alfred's Agamemnon and Kenneth

Rexroth's Phaedra.

Like so many of the works which have been

 466

previously examined, The Wheel focuses on the major female

character of the myth. Unlike many of the other plays,

however, it neither turns the characters of the story into

neurotics nor does it make them primarily responsible for

their own fates in spite of the supernatural dimensions of

the story.

The flaws of Housman's work recall similar failures

in other modern dramas based on myth. These include the

inconsistency with which Housman develops his theme, his

inability to create characters who are believable and yet

who have human significance, and the inclusion of irrele­

vant theatricalism. Finally, it should also be noted that

in Housman's tendency to create a work which is more lyric

than it is dramatic, there is a noticeable resemblance to

H. D.'s handling of the Phaedra-Hippolytus legend.

 T. S. Eliot's The Cooktail Party:

Myth and the Two Ways toward Salvation

T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, a three-act verse

play, was written in 1949 and first performed at the

Edinburgh Festival in August of the same year.1 The

critical reaction in London to the brief five-day run of

the play was mixed. The Daily Telegraph called the work
2
"one of the finest dramatic achievements of our times,"

but the Daily Mail stated that it was a "bewildering mud­

dle of a play,"^ and the Daily Express agreed.^- Certainly

no one, including the playwright and the cast, expected

5
the reception it received when it opened on January 21,

1950, at New York's Henry Miller Theatre^ and quickly be­

came both the subject of intense critical controversy and

^ o h n Chapman (ed.), The Burns Mantle Best Plays of

1949-1950 (New Yorks Dodd, Mead and Co., I$50), p. 46.
2
Daily Telegraph, as quoted in "New Play in
Edinburgh,'* Time, September 5, 1949, P'. 58.

^Daily Mail, as quoted in Time, September 5, 1949,

p. 58.

^Time, September 5, 1949, P* 58.

c;
Chapman, The Burns Mantle Best Plays of 1949-1950,
pp. 10, 46.

6Ibid., p. 347.

467
 468

an immense commercial success.^

The immediate critical response was generally

favorable. At least three New York newspaper critics

2
called the play a "masterpiece"; Euphemia Van Rensselaer

Wyatt proclaimed it "the most brilliant m o d e m comedy" of

the century,^ and Robert Coleman said that it was "one of

4.
the great plays of our time." But several critics, par­

ticularly those who wrote in the weeks following the open-

ing of the play, were less impressed. Wolcott Gibbs' and

John Mason Brown^ were confused by what they considered to

be the obscurity of the play; Brooks Atkinson felt that the

"essential parts" of The Cocktail Party were not "resolved

^Ibid., p . 10.
2
John Chapman, "'Cocktail Party1 a Masterpiece;
Cast Gives Superb Performance," Daily News, January 23,
1950, as reprinted in New York Theatre dritics' Reviews,
1950, January 30, 1950, p. 377; Robert Garland, ^Here's a
Masterpiece; A 'Comedie Humaine,'" New York Journal Amer­
ican, January 23, 1950, as reprinted in New ¥ork theatre""
driiios1 Reviews, 1950. January 30, 1950, p. 278; fcichard
Watts, Jr., "The Theatre Event of the Season," New York
Post, January 23» 1950, as reprinted in New York Theatre
dritics' Reviews, 1950. January 30, 1950, p. 376.

■^Euphemia Van Rensselaer Wyatt, "Theater," The

Catholic World, CLXX (February, 1950), 466.

^Robert Coleman, "Eliot's Fine 'Cocktail Party'

Goes Right to the Head," Daily Mirror, January 23» 1950,
as reprinted in New York Theaxre dritics' Reviews, 1950,
January 30, 1950, p. 379.

^Wolcott Gibbs, "Eliot and Others," The New Yorker,

January 28, 1950, p. 46 .

^John Mason Brown, "Honorable Intentions," The

Saturday Review of Literature, February 4 , 1950, p . 29.
 469

in terms of theatre" and that it left a theatregoer "im­

pressed without being enlightened."^ Still others found

the play almost totally unsatisfactory: George Jean

Nathan insisted that what Eliot had written was little more
2
than "bosh sprinkled with mystic cologne," while William

Barrett, writing for the Partisan Review, found the play

"thin and unconvincing as drama." Barrett added that the

audiences apparently did not wish to separate the play and

its success from the author and his fame, and he claimed to

sense in the audiences' enthusiasm "a certain self-congrat­

ulation that it was able to enjoy what it felt it ought to

enjoy, and had feared, coming to the theatre, it might not

be able to e n j o y . B u t whatever the reason, the audiences

came and The Cocktail Party played 409 performances before

4
it closed on January 13, 1951. London, tired of waiting

for the original company to return, set up its own produc-

5
tion which also became a commercial success. Since 1951

the play has been revived at least once in New York— at the

^Brooks Atkinson, "At the Theatre," The New York

Times, January 23, 1950, as reprinted in New York Theatre
Critics' Reviews, 1950, January 30, 1950, p. ^78.
2George Jean Nathan, "The Theatre," The American
Mercury, LXX (May, 1950), 558.

^William Barrett, "Dry Land, Dry Martini," Partisan

Review, XVII (April, 1950), 354.

^John Chapman (ed.), The Best Plays of 1950-51 (New

York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1951), p. 376.

Chapman, The Burns Mantle Best Plays of 1949-1950«

p. 10.
 470
Equity Library Theatre during the 1957-58 season"1-— and on

countless college and university stages. It has also re­

mained a controversial work in literary circles and has

been the subject of more critical attention than any other

play included in this study.

Until Eliot made public the origins of The Cocktail

Party, no literary scholar had recognized that the play was

2
based on classic myth. The action is placed in a con­

temporary setting, and there is little surface resemblance

between the myth and the play; yet a thorough analysis

reveals more parallels than one might expect. Nevertheless,

The Cocktail Party is far more an original work than it is

a reinterpretation of Greek legend, and in this respect

resembles most closely Rexroth's Phaedra, Alfred’s

Agamemnon, and Eliot's earlier play, The Family Reunion.

The first act of The Cocktail Party is set in the

drawing room of a London flat occupied by Edward and Lavinia

Chamberlayne, an upper-class English couple nearing middle

age. A small cocktail party is in progress. Present, in

addition to the host, are Julia Shuttlethwaite, a talkative

old woman with a penchant for minding other people's busi­

ness; Alexander MacCogie Gibbs, a world traveler and self-

■*Julia S. Price, The Off-Broadway Theater (New

York: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1962;, p. 230.
2
T. S. Eliot, Poetry and Drama (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 38.
 471

acclaimed culinary artist; Celia Coplestone, an attractive

young woman who spends her time attending concerts, art

exhibitions, and the theatre; Peter Quilpe, an Oxford

graduate and would-be script writer for the motion pictures,

about Celia's age; and a mysterious unidentified guest.

Lavinia Chamberlayne, the hostess, is noticeably absent.

The cocktail party conversation is desultory and

pointless. At length Mrs. Shuttlethwaite turns to Edward to

observe pointedly that this is the first time she has ever

seen him without Lavinia. Edward lamely explains that his

wife has gone to Essex to care for a sick aunt. Presently,

Julia and Peter depart and are followed quickly by Alex and

Celia.

When the other guests have left, Edward turns to

the Unidentified Guest (Reilly) to offer him another drink,

and to apologize for the party, explaining that he had tried

to call it off but could not contact all of the guests in time.

When Reilly starts to leave, Edward stops him, pleading a need

"to talk to somebody."^ He tells Reilly that Lavinia has left

him, and describes their relationship during five years of

childless marriage. He adds that there was no other man in

Lavinia's life, at least none that he knew of, and no other

woman in his. "Then no doubt it's all for the best" (26), says

Reilly; if there were another man, then Lavinia might have

■^T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (New York

Harcourt, Brace and C o ., 19$0), p. 24.
 472

made a mistake and might eventually wish to return, or

Edward might feel it necessary to re-marry to prove to the

world that somebody wanted him; if Edward were involved with

another woman, Lavinia might decide to be forgiving and

thereby gain an advantage, or Edward might have to marry

the other woman— even imagine that he wants to marry her.

. . . If there's no other woman

And no other man, then the reason may be deeper
And you've ground for hope that she won't come back
at all. (26)

When Edward insists that he wants his wife back, Reilly

brushes aside his remark, noting that Lavinia's departure

is embarrassing and inconvenient, but little more than that.

When Edward objects to this apparent presumption from a total

stranger, Reilly remindshim that to share a confidence with

astranger is to invite the unexpected, to begin a train of

events of which one has no control. Reilly goes on to ex­

plain that gradually Edward will begin to enjoy his inde­

pendent state and will, as time passes, find life becoming

cosier and cosier without the "consistent critic, the patient

misunderstander/ Arranging life a little better than you like

it" (28). And when Edward starts to protest again, Reilly

adds, "Are you going to say, you love her?" (29). Edward,

now thoroughly shaken and confused, says:

Why, I thought we took each other for granted.

I never thought I should be any happier
With another person. Why speak of love?
We were used to each other. So her going away
At a moment's notice, without explanation,
Only a note to say that she had gone
 473

And was not coming back— well, I can't understand it.

Nobody likes to be left with a mystery:
It's so . . . unfinished. (29)

Reilly agrees, but insists there is something more to it

than that. Edward, he explains, has suffered a loss of

personality; he has lost touch with the person he thought

he was and is suddenly reduced to the status of an object—

"A living object, but no longer a person" (29). Such an

experience leads "To finding out/ What you really are.

. . ./ What you really are among other people" (30-31).

Most of the time, he adds, we take ourselves for granted.

Now Edward is nothing more than a set of obsolete responses

and the only thing he can do is wait. Waiting, however, is

the one thing which Edward finds most difficult. Suddenly

he realizes that even though he saw his wife earlier in

the day, he can no longer remember what she was like. Al­

though he can find no reason to want Lavinia back, he does

want her back, if only "to find out what has happened/

During the five years that we've been married./ I must

find out who she is, to find out who I am" (32). Reilly

tells him that his awareness of "being in the dark" is of

value since it can help to

clear from the mind

The illusion of having ever been in the light.
The fact that you can't give a reason for wanting her
Is the best reason for believing that you want her.
(32)

Reilly adds that he will bring Lavinia back if Edward

promises not to ask her where she has been. Edward agrees;
 474

the doorbell rings and Julia and Peter enter.

Julia's excuse for returning is that she has left

her glasses. As she and Peter hunt for them, Reilly sings

a chorus of "One Eyed Riley," and then departs. Immedi­

ately Julia begins to question Edward about Reilly, but

Edward cannot tell her who he is or where he came from.

Julia finally finds her glasses in her purse and departs,

leaving Peter behind to talk to Edward.

At once Peter launches into a description of his

problems with Celia, to whom he was introduced at one of

Lavinia's parties. During the following months they saw

each other frequently and even dined together on occasion.

"And what happened after that?" (44), asks Edward. "Oh,

nothing happened," Peter replies,

But I thought that she really cared about me.

And I was so happy when we were together—
So . . . contented, so . . . at peace: I can't
express it;
I had never imagined such quiet happiness.
I had only experienced excitement, delirium,
Desire for possession. It was not like that at all.
It was something very strange. There was such . . .
tranquility . . . (44)

When Edward asks Peter what interrupted "this interesting

affair" (44), Peter answers that that is exactly what he

would like to know. Celia no longer wants to see him; she

makes implausible excuses and seems preoccupied with some

sort of secret excitement which he cannot share. Edward

tells Peter that he ought to realize how lucky he is; in

another six months it might have become an ordinary affair

and he might have discovered that Celia was another woman

 475

from the one he envisioned. He advises Peter to do nothing,

to wait, to return to California; hut Peter insists that he

must see Celia again, if for no other reason than "to make

her tell me/ What has happened, in her terms" (46). Fin­

ally, Edward promises to talk to Celia for Peter.

As Scene 2 opens, Edward is alone in the drawing

room, playing Patience; it is a quarter of an hour later.

Suddenly the doorbell rings and Celia enters. She has re­

turned to tell him that it is obvious to everyone that

Lavinia has left and that this well-timed departure has

settled all the difficulties of their relationship. Before,

it was necessary for her to accept the situation because a

divorce would ruin Edward's career; but now Lavinia has

given Edward grounds for divorce. Edward answers, however,

that the recent events have only brought to light the real

difficulties of their situation; and he adds that the

Stranger who attended the cocktail party is to bring Lavinia

back the following day. Celia cannot understand why the

Stranger would want to bring Lavinia back, or why Edward

himself would want her to return, unless the Stranger is

the Devil and has some sort of power over him. Celia can­

not believe that Edward wants his wife to return simply to

avoid an unpleasant situation; nor can it be a question of

vanity. Therefore, Edward must be on the edge of a nervous

breakdown. She asks him to see a very great doctor of whom

she has heard— a man named Reilly— but Edward answers that
 476

"It would need someone greater than the greatest doctor/

To cure this illness." (61). They continue to discuss

their dreamlike relationship, and the fact that Lavinia's

departure has destroyed it instead of solidifying it.

Edward insists that Celia was far more to him than a pass­

ing diversion and tauntingly asks her if Peter Quilpe was

only that to her. Celia answers that she never gave him

any reason to suppose that she cared for him, and that as

time went by she simply found him less interesting and

rather conceited. All that matters at the moment, she says,

is that Edward wants Lavinia back, though she cannot ■under­

stand why he would want Lavinia to return if he is not in

love with her. Edward admits that he does not understand

it either; he only knows that he has suddenly met himself

as a middle-aged man beginning to know what it is to feel

old.

Musingly, Celia answers that she thinks she under­

stands Edward as she has never done before, that he is for

the first time being himself with her. She realizes that

what she has seen in the past was only a projection of

something that she wanted—

No, not wanted— something I aspired to—

Something that I desperately wanted to exist.
It must happen somewhere— but what, and where is it?
(67)
As the third scene of Act I begins, Edward is alone

in the drawing room. It is late afternoon of the next day.

The doorbell rings and Reilly enters. He has come, he

 477

explains, to remind Edward that he has made a decision—

one which has set in motion forces in his own life and in

the lives of others which cannot he reversed. It is a

serious matter, the Guest concludes, to bring someone back

from the dead. When Edward objects to the melodramatic

figure of speech, the Stranger answers:

Ah, but we die to each other daily.

What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed
since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
(71-72)

Reilly tells Edward that he must not ask Lavinia any ques­

tions when she returns, and must give no explanations; in

addition, he says,

I must ask you not to speak of me to her;

And she will not mention me to you. (73)

After Reilly leaves there is a pause, and Edward

moves restlessly about the room. Then the doorbell rings,

and in the space of a few minutes Celia, Peter, Alex, and

Julia appear, one after another. Each has come in response

to a telegram from Lavinia. Yet when Lavinia arrives, she

denies having sent any telegrams.

During the course of the conversation we learn

that Peter has secured, with Alex's help, a position with a

motion picture company in California and so will be leaving

England soon. Celia exclaims that she, too, is going away,

perhaps abroad. As the guests are exchanging farewells,

 478

the following dialogue occurs:

Lavinia: Stop'. I want you to explain the telegram.

Julia: Explain the telegram? What do you think,

Alex?

Alex: No, Julia, we can't explain the telegram.

Julia: Alex, do you think we could explain anything?

Alex: I think not, Julia. She must find out for

lisrssif •
That's the only way. (86-87)

When Lavinia and Edward are alone, they begin to

discuss the events of the past two days. Lavinia exclaims

that Edward might better have told Julia and the others

the truth about her leaving him. "I shall always tell the

truth now," she says; "We have wasted such a lot of time

in lying" (90). The discussion quickly turns into a family

squabble. Lavinia accuses Edward of being humorless and

indecisive, while he contends that she is pushy and de­

manding.

The argument continues, each taunting the other

with his failures, each claiming to have been the one who

has changed during the past few hours, until the fight ends,

at least momentarily, with Edward's telling Lavinia that

one of the most infuriating things about her has been her

perfect assurance that she understood him better than he

understood himself, and Lavinia's answering that he has

always been equally infuriating in his placid assumption

that she was not worth the trouble of understanding.

Finally, they admit that they are once more back in

 479

the trap, "With only one difference, perhaps— we can fight

each other" (96). "Oh, Edward," says Lavinia,

. . . I should like to be good to you—

Or if that's impossible, at least be horrid to you—
Anything but nothing, which is all you seem to want
of me.

. . . I thought that if I died

To you, I who had been only a ghost to you,
You might be able to find the road back
To a time when you were real— for you must have been
real
At some time or other, before you ever knew me. (97-98)

But Edward insists that Lavinia is still trying to invent

a personality for him, a personality which only keeps him

from himself. Then suddenly he says:

There was a door

And I could not open it. I could not touch the handle.
Why could I not walk out of my prison?
What is hell? Hell is oneself,
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone. (98)

Lavinia cannot understand these words and, thinking

her husband on the edge of a nervous breakdown, tells him

he must see a doctor. It is not a doctor he needs, he

answers, for he is simply in hell, where there are no doc­

tors. Both Lavinia and Edward realize, to some degree,

what a corrosive effect his indecisiveness is having on him.

As she concludes that there is no more advice which she can

offer, the act ends.

The second act is set in the consulting room of Sir

Henry Harcourt-Reilly, London psychiatrist and the Uniden­

tified Guest of the previous act. Several weeks have

 480

passed. As the act begins, Reilly is finishing his in­

structions to his nurse-secretary concerning three patients

whom he is to see during the morning. The nurse shows

Alexander Gibbs into Reilly's office and departs.

In the brief scene which follows we learn that

Alex and Reilly are well acquainted, and that Alex has

convinced Edward that Reilly is the man for his case.

Edward will, in fact, appear for his appointment within

a few minutes. He does not know, of course, that Reilly

has already seen Lavinia. Just as Edward is shown into

Reilly's office, Alex slips out by the side door.

Recognizing Sir Henry as his mysterious party guest

of a few weeks earlier, Edward at once suspects that he has

been caught in a trap set by his wife. The doctor assures

him, however, that although he has seen Lavinia, she did

not invite him to the party. There is, he says, no trap;

or if there is, then it is one from which Edward cannot

escape. Reilly adds that things would have been no better

if Lavinia had not returned; they might, in fact, have been

much worse, for Edward might have ruined three lives with

his indecision. Now there are only two— and there is still

a chance of redeeming them.

Gradually Edward begins to describe his symptoms.

He has, he says, ceased to believe in his own personality

and is obsessed by the thought of his own insignificance.

Reilly explains that Edward's ailment is a very common

 481

malady and that he could make him feel important again.

He refuses to do so, however, for such a cure would not

only bring Edward to grief, but give him the ability to

harm others as well.

Edward says that he now realizes that he cannot

live with his wife and yet he cannot live without her, "for

she has made me incapable/ Of having any existence of my

own" (112). She has made the world a place in which Edward

cannot live except on her terms. He can no longer act for

himself, and his decision to consult Reilly was the last he

was capable of making.

At this moment Lavinia is shown in; she is as sur­

prised to see Edward as he is to see her. Reilly pays no

attention to their reactions and tells Lavinia that her

husband wishes to enter a sanatorium. She asks if it will

be the same sanatorium to which Reilly sent her and is sur­

prised when the doctor tells her that the place to which he

sent her was not a sanatorium but a kind of hotel,

A retreat
For people who imagine that they need a respite
From everyday life. They return refreshed;
And if they believe it to be a sanatorium
That is good reason for not sending them to one.
The people who need my sort of sanatorium
Are not easily deceived. (117)

Lavinia and Edward begin to argue about the nature

and degree of their ailments, but Reilly interrupts them to

explain that though they are both sick, patients who qualify

for his sanatorium are suffering from, among other things,

 482

an honest mind, an illness with which neither Edward nor

Lavinia is afflicted. Each has concealed certain impor­

tant facts: Edward failed to mention his relation with

Celia Coplestone, while Lavinia pretended that her illness

was the result of Edward's infidelity, although it was

really the result of the defection of her lover, Peter

Quilpe. Edward is astounded by the news of Lavinia's

affair with Peter, and both he and his wife wish to know

how Reilly learned these facts. Sir Henry refuses to an­

swer their question, however, saying only that he has his

own methods of collecting information.

Now, Reilly says, it is time for Edward and Lavinia

to recognize the real nature of their disturbances and to

become aware that they are ideally suited to each other.

Reilly explains that when Lavinia left Edward he discovered

that he was not in love with Celia and began to suspect

that he was incapable of loving. Similarly, when Peter

fell in love with Celia, Lavinia came to see that no one

had ever loved her and she began to fear that she was in­

capable of being loved. Lavinia wonders if what she and

her husband have in common might not be just enough to

loathe one another, and Reilly tells her:

See it rather as the bond which holds you together.

While still in a state of unenlightenment,
You could always say: 'He could not love any woman';
You could always say: 'No man could love her.'
You could accuse each other of your own faults.
And so could avoid understanding each other.
Now, you have only to reverse the propositions
And put them together. (125)
 483

When Lavinia asks what they must do, Edward answers that

what the doctor means is that they must make the best of

a bad job; and Reilly adds:

When you find, Mr. Chamberlayne,

The best of a bad job is all any of us make of it—
Except of course, the saints— such as those who go
To the sanatorium— you will forget this phrase,
And in forgetting it will alter the condition. (126)

As the Chamberlaynes prepare to leave, Edward asks

about the future of Celia and Peter for, he says, "I don't

want to build on other people's ruins" (127). Reilly tells

Edward that it is not necessary that he clear his con­

science, but that he learn how to bear the burdens of his

conscience; with the future of the others he is not to be

concerned. "Go in peace. And work out your salvation with

diligence" (128), Reilly says, and the couple departs.

A brief scene between Reilly and Julia follows.

Julia explains- that Celia, too, is ready to make her de­

cision, and so Julia has brought her to see Sir Henry.

Celia cannot believe, however, that he will take her seri­

ously or that she deserves to be taken seriously. Julia

goes out, and Celia is shown into the consulting room.

Unlike Edward, Celia has not come to declare a

nervous breakdown, nor does she pretend that her trouble

is interesting. She has no delusions, she says, "Except

that the world I live in seems all a delusion'." (132).

But, she adds, she should like to think that something is

wrong with her

 484

Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong,

Or at least, very different from what is seemed to be,
With the world itself— and that's much more frightening'.
(132)

Celia can think of only two things which Reilly might con­

sider symptoms. The first of these is "a sense of solitude"

(133), and the realization that everyone is always alone;

the second is a "sense of sin" (134), but not sin "in the

ordinary sense" (135), not immorality.

It's not the feeling of anything I've ever done,

Which I might get away from, or of anything in me
I could get rid of— but of emptiness, of failure
Towards someone, or something, outside of myself;
And I feel I must . . . atone— is that the word?
Can you treat a patient for such a state of mind?
(136-37)

As Celia attempts to explain her need for atonement, she

begins to describe her relationship with Edward which ended,

she says, in her discovery that they had been

only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made use of each other
Each for his purpose. . . . (137-38)

Edward was, it seems, a wrong turning; yet there were mo­

ments when the ecstasy seemed real,

Although those who experience it may have no reality.

Eor what happened is remembered like a dream
In which one is exalted by intensity of loving
In the spirit, a vibration of delight
Without desire, for desire is fulfilled
In the delight of loving. A state one does not know
When awake. But what, or whom I loved,
Or what in me was loving, I do not know.
And if that is all meaningless, I want to be cured
Of a craving for something I cannot find
And of the shame of never finding it.
Can you cure me? (139)

Sir Henry replies that the condition is curable but

 485

that the form of treatment must be her own choice. There

are two types of vocation, he explains, in which the soul

may regain its health. The first is to become reconciled

to the "human condition," "the common routine" (139). Those

who choose this way learn to "avoid excessive expectation,"

to "Become tolerant of themselves and others" (139). They

Are contented with the morning that separates

And with the evening that brings together
For casual talk before the fire
Two people who know they do not understand each other,
Breeding children whom they do not understand
And who will never understand them. (140)

It is a simple and unspectacular life for those who are

simple and without special gifts; but

In a world of lunacy,
Violence, stupidity, greed . . . it is a good life. (140)

There is also a second way, another vocation, which requires

courage and faith,

The kind of faith that issues from despair.

The destination cannot be described;
You will know very little until you get there;
You will journey blind. But the way leads toward
possession
Of what you have sought for in the wrong place.

. . . Neither way is better.

Both ways are necessary. . . .

Both ways avoid the final desolation

Of solitude in the phantasmal world
Of imagination, shuffling memories and desires.
(141-42)

Celia selects the second way and is told by Reilly that she

must go "to the sanatorium" (142), must, in fact, leave

that evening. When Celia asks Sir Henry what becomes of

those who enter the sanatorium, he answers that they choose

 486

their future way of life and that many of them return to

the world to lead very active lives. As she leaves, he

says to her, just as he did earlier to the Chamberlaynes:

Go in peace. . . .
Work out your salvation with diligence. (145)

Julia returns, followed shortly by Alex. In a

brief final scene the Guardians— Julia, Alex, and Reilly—

drink libations to Celia and to the Chamberlaynes and per­

form a ritual in which they chant the "words for the build­

ing of the hearth" (149) and the "words for those who go

upon a journey" (150).

The setting of the final act is again the drawing

room of the Chamberlaynes' London flat, on a late afternoon

in July two years later. The occasion is a cocktail party.

As Lavinia and Edward sit quietly awaiting the arrival of

their guests, they speak to each other as a man and woman

who have achieved, if not love, at least a mutual consider­

ation and a comfortable sort of peace. Soon the guests be­

gin to arrive. Julia is accompanied by Alex, who has just

returned from the island of Kihkanja where he has been on

a government mission. He regales his friends with tales of

the monkeys of Kinkanja who have caused friction between

the heathens of the islands, who hold them in peculiar ven­

eration, and those natives who have become Christian con­

verts and, as a result, have taken to trapping and eating

the monkeys. In reprisal, the heathens have begun killing

and eating the Christians. Alex's recital is cut short by

 487

the arrival of Peter Quilpe, who is now doing a film on

English life for a Hollywood studio and has returned to

England for a few days to gather material on English life.

Again the conversation is interrupted, this time by the

entrance of Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly.

Only Celia is missing, and Alex explains that his

story about the monkeys in Kinkanja was simply an intro­

duction to news about her. She had joined a nursing order,

he tells them, and had been sent to Kinkanja to minister to

the natives during an epidemic. While she was there, an

insurrection broke out among the heathens. Although Celia

knew of the danger, she refused to leave the dying natives;

as a result she was murdered— "crucified/ Very near an ant­

hill" (175). The "sanatorium" to which Celia was sent was

not a hospital in which she could seek a cure, nor a mon­

astic retreat, but simply a corner of the world in which

she could lose her life in the lives of others, and by doing

so, gain it. Her actual death was only incidental to this

vocation.

The others are stunned by Alex's news. Peter ex­

claims that Celia's death was a waste, and that his own

life these past two years, dedicated to Celia, is now worth­

less. But Lavinia and Edward are quick to point out that

Celia's death has only brought Peter to the point at which

he must begin, where he can find out things about himself

which must be faced if he is to achieve peace.

 488

Lavinia turns to Sir Henry and tells him that she

believes he was not^disturbed by the report of Celia's

death. Who knows, he answers, what difference Celia's de-

cision to remain made to the "natives who were dying/ Or

the state of mind in which they died?" (179)*Furthermore,

he says, he realized that Celia would die a violent death

when he first met her; but he could not know how she might

die since it was for her to choose her way oflife. All he

could do, he adds,

Was to direct her in the way of preparation.

That way, which she accepted, led to this death.
And if that is not a happy death, what death is ha
(181-

In reply, Edward says that if such a death was right for

Celia, then there must be something else that is terribly

wrong; somehow all of them are involved, somehow they are

all responsible for what happened to Celia. And when

Lavinia replies that she feels much the same, Reilly tells

them:

Let me free your mind from one impediment:

You must try to detach yourself from what you still feel
As your responsibility.

If we all were judged according to the consequences

Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention
And beyond our limited understanding
Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.

You will have to live with these memories and make them
Into something new. Only by acceptance
Of the past will you alter its meaning. (183-84)

All of us, Julia adds, must make a choice, of one kind or

another, and then must take the consequences.

 489

As Peter and the Guardians prepare to leave,

Lavinia, thinking of the guests that are yet to arrive,

says: ". . . 1 don't want to see these people" (187).

But the departing Reilly reminds her that it is her

"appointed burden" (187); and as the play ends, the door­

bell is heard and Lavinia says, with relief, "Oh, I'm glad.

It's begun" (189).

It should be apparent from the above summary that

Eliot has used the Alcestis-Admetus myth with great free­

dom. He so disguised the legendary elements which serve as

the basis of his play, in fact, that this aspect of the work

went unnoticed until 1951, when Eliot himself disclosed his

debt to the classic story:

I was still inclined to go to a Greek dramatist for

my theme, but I was determined to take this merely
as a point of departure, and to conceal the origins
so well that nobody would identify them until I
pointed them out myself. In this at least I have
been successful; for no one of my acquaintance (and
no dramatic critics) recognized the source of my
story in the Alcestis of Euripides. In fact, I have
had to go into detailed explanation to convince ^
them . . . of the genuineness of the inspiration.

Furthermore, as Eliot points out, his debt is not simply

to the myth, but more specifically to Euripides' drama.

2
Because of the alterations made by Euripides, particularly

in the character of Admetus, it will be necessary to divide

^liot, Poetry and Drama, pp. 38-39.

?
Supra, p. 401, n. 2.
 490

the following analysis into two parts, describing first the

parallels which exist between The Cocktail Party and the

myth per se, and then noting those elements of the play which

Eliot seems to have borrowed directly from Euripides and

which have no basis in the earliest versions of the myth.1

Eliot has, then, transformed the elements of the

Alcestis-Admetus myth, placing the action in a contemporary,

naturalistic setting, .and creating characters which resemble

their mythic prototypes only in some respects. For the most

part, Eliot's treatment of the myth is, as Denis Donoghue

has pointed out, "characterized by the assignment of a

2
spiritual dimension to physical facts."

In Poetry and Drama Eliot acknowledged only one

correspondence bexween his play and the Alcestis of Euripi­
des, that of Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly to Heracles (p. 39).
In 1953, however, in an interview with Henry Hewes, he ex­
plained; "The idea for . . . 'The Cocktail Party' started
out with my wondering about 'Alcestis.' I was interested in
what happened at the point Euripides leaves off. What was
it going to be like when the wife is brought back from the
dead? After all, it isn't the same as losing her on a shop­
ping expedition. Then I added Reilly to get Heracles in the
triangle. And after that the other characters developed.
Celia, at first, was brought in just to throw light on the
relationship between the man and his wife, but later became
much more important" (Henry Hewes, "T. S. Eliot— Confiden­
tial Playwright," The Saturday Review, August 29, 1953,
pp. 26-27). And in 1^39 in another interview, Eliot added:
"Those two characters /Lavinia and Edward7 were the center
of things when I started and the other characters only de­
veloped out of it. The character of Celia, who came to be
really the most important character in the play, was ori­
ginally an appendage to the domestic situation" (Donald
Hall, "The Art of Poetry I: T. S. Eliot," The-Paris Review,
XXI /^pring-Summer, 19597, 61, as Quoted by Carol H. Smith,
T. S. Eliot's Dramatic Theory and Practice /Princeton, N. J.s
Princeton University Press, 19^^/, p. 177n).
2
Denis Donoghue, The Third Voice (Princeton, N. J.:
Princeton University Press, l9$9), p. 121.
 491

Perhaps the most obvious parallel between the leg­

end and the play is that both are stories of death and

resurrection; or, as Carol Smith suggests, "the theme of

renewal and rebirth"1 is common to both. Lavinia, by

leaving her husband, dies spiritually jfco him, as Alcestis

dies literally for Admetus. Alcestis is consigned to Hades,

the realm of the dead, and Lavinia goes to visit her aunt

in Dedham, which may suggest "the hamlet of the dead."

Furthermore, as Robert B. Heilman has explained, "Death has

come literally to Admetus1 palace to snatch Alcestis, a fact

surely alluded to, humorously, in Julia's exclamation to the

newly returned Lavinia, 'Don't tell me you were abducted1

.'

(84)."2

Edward desires the return of his wife just as Admetus

wishes that he had not allowed his wife to have taken his

place in death. Lavinia is returned to her husband through

the intervention of Sir Henry, while Alcestis is restored to

Admetus by Heracles. Moreover, by means of a kind of quasi­

psychiatric counseling, Reilly saves Edward from spiritual

death and restores him to his wife, just as Admetus is saved

from physical death by Apollo's arrangement with the Fates.

Not only do both Heracles and Reilly effect rescues, but

both enter the situation at the proper moment and both

^ a r o l H. Smith, p. 178.
2
Robert B. Heilman, "Alcestis and The Cocktail
Party," Comparative Literature, V (Spring, 195$)> 108.
 492

demonstrate great power.1 This parallel relationship be­

tween the myth and the play is underlined by Reilly's com­

ment to Edward that "it is a serious matter/ To bring some­

one back from the dead" (71); and, as Heilman suggests, it

2
is an "easy phonetic leap" from Heracles to Harcourt-Reilly.

Other parallels are less basic and can be noted

briefly. (1) When Heracles arrives at Admetus' palace on

the day of Alcestis' funeral, Admetus receives him hospit­

ably and conceals the fact that it is his wife who has died.

In a similar manner, Edward carries on with the cocktail

party, attempts to play the role of the good host, and

tries to hide Lavinia's desertion. (2) Heracles' arrival

is unscheduled; Reilly, as the Unidentified Guest, appears

to have "crashed" the party.3 (3) During the first scene

of The Cocktail Party, Reilly drinks and sings a cleaned-up

4
version of a bawdy song; Heracles eats and drinks heartily.

The mythical hero, of course, behaves in ignorance of the

actual situation, while Reilly knows more about Lavinia'a

departure and possible return than Edward does. (4) As

Carol Smith points out, Celia al30 suffers spiritual death

1Ibid., p. 114.

2 I bid.

3Ibid., p. 107.

^David Paul says that "as a traditional Satyric

figure in Greek drama Heracles is always appearing in a
state of Bacchic jollity" (David Paul, "Euripides and Mr
Eliot," The Twentieth Century. CLII /August, 19527, 175).
 493

and resurrection, and "achieves another kind of Christian

marriage in the union of the saint with God."'1' In this

sense, her situation is analogous to those of Lavinia and

Alcestis.

Several of the details of The Cocktail Party which

seem to have no basis in the myth itself, but which cor­

respond to aspects of Euripides' Alcestis,can also be

noted briefly. (1) The action of Euripides' play takes

place on the day that Alcestis dies; The Cocktail Party

begins on the day Lavinia leaves her husband. (2) Admetus

is grief-stricken at the loss of his wife; Edward is "cha-

2
grined and even seriously disturbed" by Lavinia's depar­

ture. (3) Heracles' courage and resourcefulness, which

are established soon after his entrance in Alcestis, cor­

respond to the self-confidence and authority which the

Guest exhibits as soon as he and Edward are alone.3

(4) Heracles' questioning of Admetus as to the identity of

the person who has died "is exactly paralleled by the

4 / x
Guest's blunt interrogation of Edward." (5) Just as the

Servant in Alcestis reproaches Heracles for his conduct,

Julia mockingly reproves Edward, sayings

■^Smith, pp. 178-79.

p
Heilman, Comparative Literature, V (Spring, 1955)*
107.
3Ibid.

4Ibid.
 494

You've been drinking together'.

So this is the kind of friend you have
When Lavinia is out of the way'. Who is he? (34)

(6) As Heilman explains, "Heracles makes a game of urging

Admetus to give up his grief and find consolation in a new

marriage, and similarly the Guest enjoys pointing out to

Edward the advantages of independence from his wife. . . ."1

(7) In Alcestis, Heracles promises to "bring back" Admetus1

wife; in The Cocktail Party, Sir Henry, referring to

Lavinia, uses the phrase "if I bring her back" (33).

(8) During the second scene of Eliot's play, when Reilly

returns to the Chamberlaynes' flat to prepare Edward to

meet his wife, Edward asks, "So you want me to greet my

wife as a stranger?" (72); Sir Henry replies, "When you see

your wife, you must ask no questions." This is, as Heilman

suggests, "a recasting of Euripides' final scene, in which

the veiled Alcestis is a 'stranger' to Admetus and in which

Admetus is told Alcestis must preserve a three-day silence.

The ritual requirement is translated into a psychiatric

stratagem."^ The parallel relationship between the two

scenes is made even more apparent by Lavinia's refusal to

speak, which is analagous to Alcestis' inability to speak

until she has been unsanctified by the appropriate rites.

1Ibid.
2
Euripides, Alcestis, trans. Richard Aldington,
Vol. II, The Complete Greek Drama, ed. Whitney J. Oates and
Eugene O'Neill, Jr. (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 705.

^Heilman, Comparative Literature, V (Spring, 1955),

109n.
 495

Furthermore, as Carol Smith observes, "Admetus does not

know his wife at first," just as "Edward does not 'know'

Lavinia nor she him."^ (9) Sir Henry's arranging to have

Edward and Lavinia meet unexpectedly in his office is com­

parable to the sudden -unveiling of Alcestis by Heracles at

the end of Euripides' play. (10) Finally, as Donoghue

makes clear, Eliot has even borrowed certain images from

Alcestis, particularly the images of blindness and sight.^

Some few additional comments must be made concerning

resemblances between Eliot's characters and their proto­

types. Although Lavinia's temporary separation from her

husband and her "spiritual death" parallel Alcestis' physi­

cal death, she contains no more than a hint of the unself­

ishness and spirit of self-sacrifice which are so much a

part of Alcestis. As many critics have noted, Eliot has

seen in Alcestis the germ of two different individuals—

the ordinary woman and the saint. In a sense, he has split

the character in two, using the physical facts of her exis­

tence for Lavinia, but giving the most significant parts of

her personality to Celia. Obviously, both Celia and

Alcestis undergo spiritual death and resurrection.

Not only does Edward resemble Admetus in certain

■^Carol H. Smith, p. 178.

p
Heilman, Comparative Literature, V (Spring, 1955),
pp. 107-08.

^Donoghue, pp. 118-21.

 496

details of the action, but, as Heilman has shown, "in the

general outlines of the moral experience"1 as well. Just

as Admetus, after the loss of his wife, suffers from pangs

of guilt which lead to self-incrimination and eventually to

self-recognition, so Edward, after Lavinia's departure,

realizes his failure to establish a satisfactory relation­

ship with his wife. Eliot, of course, goes on to dramatize

Edward's achievement of a more successful union with

Lavinia; the myth only hints that Admetus and Alcestis

attained a similar relationship and Euripides does not ex­

plore this aspect of the story.

Clearly, Reilly's actions parallel those of Heracles

in a number of ways. Yet there are more important resem­

blances between the two characters. There is in Heracles

a certain dualism which Eliot seems to have made a part of

his characterization of Sir Henry. Heilman explains this

relationship in some details

. . . Heracles, as the son of Alcmena and Zeus, is

half human, half divine; and in Reilly there is an
ambiguity which makes a limited naturalistic view of
him seem continually inadequate. Not that Reilly is
wholly "transhumanized," to use the word applied by
Julia to the experience undergone by Celia in her
"journey"; just as Heracles, in the words of a recent
handbook, "erred occasionally, being half-mortal," so
Reilly "must always take risks," and, as he himself
says, " . . . sometimes I have made the wrong decision."
Nor is he omniscient; Julia reminds him, "You must
accept your limitations." But he has remarkable in­
sight and exercises a special power affecting human
destiny. And, although his actions may virtually all

Heilman, Comparative Literature, V (Spring, 1955),

111.
 497

be accounted for in naturalistic terms, Eliot has been

most successful in creating an air, if not of the in­
explicable, at least of the unexplained, of the quiz­
zically irregular, of the modestly elusive, -,of the
herculean at once urbane and devoted. . . .

Reilly is not, however, simply modeled on Heracles. In one

respect at least he bears a closer relationship to Pheres.

In Alcestis Pheres' denunciation of Admetus forces the king

to see himself as he is; and in The Cocktail Party Reilly

is assigned the role of telling Edward unpleasant truths

which drive him to a new self-recognition.

The theme of The Cocktail Party is the same as that

of Eliot's earlier play, The Family Reunion, discussed in

chapter ii: the individual's search for salvation and his

discovery that salvation may be attained only through the

power of Christian love. But The Cocktail Party differs

from The Family Reunion in two important ways: the major

figures of the drama do not suffer from any curse, at least

not from one which is mysterious and "ultimately incompre-

2
hensible"; and now Eliot's investigation of the road to sal­

vation concerns not only the way of the saint but the way of

the ordinary human being as well. Stated in somewhat more

specific terms the play is, as Carol Smith has suggested,

"an exposition of the multiple meanings of Christian love

1Ibid., pp. 114-15.

2
J. Middleton Murry, "Mr. Eliot's Cocktail Party,"
The Fortnightly, CLXVIII (December, 1950), 392.
 498

l
and marriage" — Celia's marriage to God and the revital­

ization of the earthly marriage of Edward and Lavinia.

There are, the play insists, two ways to salvation,

the way of "ascent" and the way of "descent," to use the

2
terms assigned by J. Middleton Murry. Carol Smith explains

that in

the history of Christian mysticism from the time of

the writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite,
there have traditionally been two paths by which the
soul could come to God— the Negative Way and the
Affirmative Way.3

Those who choose to follow the Negative Way arrive at the

experience of the Godhead by rejecting all things which are

not God; or, in the terms which Eliot himself most fre­

quently used, they learn to follow the advice of St. John

of the Cross: "Hence the soul cannot be possessed of the

divine union, until it has divested itself of the love of

A
created beings." Those who follow the Affirmative Way,

on the other hand, recognize that

because the Christian God is immanent as well as

transcendent, everything in the created world is
an imperfect image of Him. Thus, all created things

-‘-Carol H. Smith, p. 154.

^Murry, The Fortnightly, CIXVIII (December, 1950),

395.
3Carol H. Smith, p. 157.

4St. John of the Cross, as quoted by T. S. Eliot in

the epigraph to "Sweeney Agonistes," The Complete Poems and
Plays of T. S. Eliot (New York: Harcouri, Brace, and Co.,
1952), p. 74.
 499

are to be accepted in love as images of the Divine.^-

In short, then, while the follower of the Affirmative Way

finds God in the world, the individual who chooses the

Negative Way finds Him in withdrawal from the world. While

the Affirmative Way may appear less rigorous, it has its

implicit difficulties, "for the price of loving created

2
beings ultimately involves suffering and loss."

In The Cocktail Party Celia chooses the Negative

Way. It is apparently the only path for one who suffers

from "an awareness of solitude" (133) and "a sense of sin"

(134), for her first symptom has, as Smith points out,

"made her perceive the spiritual truth that man without God

is separated from real understanding of others or himself,"^

while the second has made her aware of the necessity of

atonement. The way which she has chosen, Reilly tells her,

calls for great courage; it is

. . . unknown, and so requires faith—

The kind of faith that issues from despair.
The destination cannot be described. . . . (141)

It is, Reilly concludes, a "terrifying journey" (142); al­

though no lonelier than the Affirmative Way, those who travel

it cannot forget their loneliness as the others can. And

so, as Smith says, "because the goal of the Negative Way

■^Carol H. Smith, pp. 156-57.

2Ibid., p. 157.

^Ibid., p. 171.
 500

demands the dissolution of self in order to purify the

spirit for union with God,"^ Celia is sent to the sanatorium

so that she may be cured of the disease of self; she joins

a Christian religious order and becomes the bride of God.

In the final act of the play we learn that Celia

has been successful in her quest for salvation. In dis­

cussing her death, Reilly calls it "a happy death" (182),

"triumphant" (184), by which he does not mean that she

suffered any less than an ordinary person would have suf­

fered;

I ’d say she suffered more, because more conscious

Than the rest of us. She paid the highest price
In suffering. That is part of the design. (182)

Lavinia and Edward choose the Affirmative Way.

They come to recognize, with the aid of Sir Henry, that the

flaws which they find in each other are really a result of

their own inadequacies; and they go on to learn that they

"must make the best of a bad job" (126). Although the

Affirmative Way may seem pale by comparison to the road

which Celia chooses, Reilly insists that "Neither way is

better./ Both ways are necessary" (141).

In the final act we see that the Chamberlaynes

have achieved, if not love, at least a degree of respect

and tolerance and consideration for each other. They have

learned that everyone makes a choice and then must take the

consequences, and that only by accepting the past can one

1Ibid., p. 170.
 501

begin to alter its meaning.

Before an individual can choose either of the two

ways to salvation, he must first recognize and accept his

true identity. This means not only finding out what one

is to himself but also what he is to others and what they

are to him. One must destroy the illusions, the "affec­

tionate ghosts" (72) which have been created for social

convenience.

The quest for the true self is complicated by the

fact that no man is ever the same person from one moment

to the next. Eliot has taken the Heraclitean doctrine,

that man cannot step twice into the same river, and extended

it into the area of psychology. We must realize that not

only does the river change because the water flows on, but

that time changes the wader. The extension of this idea—

that "we die to each other daily" (71)— is less important

to Eliot as a psychological construct than it is for its

Christian theological implications. David Jones connects

it with

the creative remedy of the Christian religion. By

constant spiritual rebirth or renewal, we are pre­
served in the mystical body of Christ, through which
a permanent communion or fellowship is possible. In
that greater faith, moreover, the faith in one another
by which alone we can live— knowing so little of one
another as we do— is strengthened. The expedient rem­
edy of the Unidentified Guest /to "remember/ That at
every meeting we are meeting a stranger" X72/7 is dif­
ficult to maintain. Because it is impossible to have
any permanent knowledge of others, we tend to create
our own images of them. The danger for ourselves in
doing this is that we shall accept the image as
 502

reality and lose what contact we may once have had

with the real person; the danger for others is that
we shall try to impose it on them.

This is exactly what has happened to four of the

2
characters in The Cocktail Party; and since the theme of

salvation through Christian love is basic to the play,

Eliot demonstrates the failures and the dangers of which

Jones speaks through a series of mismanaged love affairs.

In his Notes towards the Definition of Culture

Eliot has observed, by way of analogy to misunderstandings

among cultures, that "It is human, when we cannot under­

stand another human being, and cannot ignore him, to exert

an unconscious pressure on that person to turn him into

something that we can understands many husbands and wives

1Eavid E. Jones, The Plays of T. S. Eliot (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, i960), p. 133•
2
In a sense, it is also what happens to an audience
viewing the play. Eliot chooses to postpone until Act II
giving the audience any accurate information about the kind­
ly conspiracy of "Guardians"— Reilly, Julia, and Alex; in
fact, what they say consciously misleads the viewers and so
they take their measure of Julia and her fellow-conspirators
from the view of Edward and Lavinia. Furthermore, Eliot has
drawn Julia and Alex in terms of certain stock types which
appear in conventional drawing-room comedy; Alex is the
tiresome Scot who "knows everybody," and Julia is the friv­
olous gossip and busybody. The audience, as well as
Edward, Lavinia, Celia, and Peter, must learn to see other
human beings (including the Guardians) as "strangers" (72);
"only then," as William Arrowsmith points out, "can they
learn, of themselves, 'the change that comes/ From seeing
oneself through the eyes of other people."' Eliot has very
neatly made the audience's initial reaction to his drama a
metaphor of a part of the meaning of his play. A more de­
tailed discussion of this point may be found in William
Arrowsmith, "English Verse Drama (II): The Cocktail Party,"
Hudson Review, III (Autumn, 1950), 414-17.
 503

exert this pressure on each other.”'*' It is this kind of

relationship which Edward and Lavinia seem to have. But

fortunately, with Reilly's assistance, Lavinia and Edward

come to realize that their extra-marital affairs have not

been based on love, but have been merely attachments formed

to meet their own psychological needs. Gradually the

Chamberlaynes begin to see how much they "have in common"

(125), and begin to realize that they need, even depend

on, each other.

Celia recognizes her failure more fully and states

it more explicitly. The effect on Celia of Edward's

announcement that he wants his wife back is similar to

Edward's shock at Lavinia's departure. Suddenly Celia

sees that the man whom she thought she loved has never

existed. Now, Celia tells Edward,

I see you as a person whom I never saw before.

The man I saw before, he was only a projection—
I see that now— of something that I wanted—
No, not wanted— something I aspired to—
Something thai I desperately wanted to exist. (67)

The outcome of Celia's recognition is, of course, her ac­

knowledgement that she can never love any human being fol­

lowed by her decision to enter the sanatorium.

Even Peter seems to have achieved a clearer vision

of himself and his relation to others, although his real­

ization is the least complete. When Celia's death is

^T. S. Eliot, Notes towards the Definition of

Culture (Londons Faber and Faber, Ltd., 194tf), p. 64.
 504

reported in the final act, he has learned enough to say,

"I suppose I didn't know her,/ I didn't understand her"

(177), and a little later,

. . . I've only been interested in myself:

And that isn't good enough for Celia. (179)

Here again it is the Christian implications of

these misguided love affairs that are most important.

Carol Smith suggests that

the point of the comic situations of unreciprocated

love . . . is that the human condition without grace
involves . . . mismanaged attempts to "find oneself"
through the adoration of the chimerical image of
another. The author's point is not that the world is
without love nor that the creature is without the cap­
acity to seek love but rather just the reverse. The
human creature is conceived with the necessity for
love implicit in his being. His dilemma is that with­
out grace, without the recognition of his dependence
on God, he continually seeks improper objects for his
love. When unregenerate man falls in love, his worship
of another person is in reality a love affair with an
image of his own needs. He denies the spark of divinity
in other creatures and, like Narcissus, sees in the face
of another a reflection of himself or, even worse, of
the self he imagines he would like to be. Prom the
Christian point of view this kind of love affair can
lead only to the mutual disillusionment and destruc­
tion of both persons. The proper view of Christian
love necessitates both the recognition of the spark
of divinity in every other creature and the act^of
loving as a reflection of love for the creator.

The Cocktail Party also makes explicit the idea

that the proper choice of a way to salvation depends not

upon desire but upon capabilities, and the consultations

with Sir Henry reveal the capabilities of each of the three

major characters. Although Lavinia and Edward insist on

■^Carol H. Smith, pp. 166-67.

 505

the severity of their illnesses, Reilly recognizes them

as "self-deceivers" (119) and refuses to send them to his

sanatorium, explaining that they are not suited to such an

experience and would find it "a horror beyond . . . ^theii7

imagining" (125). Instead, he explains that their symp­

toms indicate that they mu3t find their true selves and

make peace with their new identities.

Celia, on the other hand, admits that she feels

perfectly well, and that she has no delusions— "Except that

the world I live in seems all a delusion" (132). Yet she

would like to think that there is something wrong with her

because that would be less frightening than the elusive

feeling that the world had gone wrong. Celia's symptoms

suggest that she is best suited for the Negative Way, and

so Sir Henry sends her to his sanatorium where she will

lose her own identity in the larger identity of God.

One additional theme which is basic to The Cocktail

Party is expressed primarily through the dominant imagery

of the play, the related metaphors of sight and blindness,

light and dark. Eliot introduces the visual motif during

the first interview between Edward and the Unidentified

Guest. Edward asks:

And what is the use of all your analysis

If I am to remain always lost in the dark? (32)

Reilly, catching the cliche, answers:

There is certainly no purpose in remaining in the dark

Except long enough to clear from the mind
The illusion of having ever been in the light. (32)
 506

The imagery of vision is repeated here and there throughout

the play, as, for example, in Julia's "I must have left my

glasses here,/ And I simply can't see a thing without them./

. . . But I'd know them, because one lens is missing" (33);

in Reilly's "And me bein' the One Eyed Riley" (34); in

Celia's "I see another person,/ I see you as a person whom

I never saw before" (67), followed a few pages later by her

"I can see you at last as a human being" to which Edward

answers, "I'm completely in the dark" (76); in Julia's "I

shall keep an eye on them" (146), and her "You must have

learned how to look at people, Peter,/ . . . That is, when

you're not concerned with yourself/ But just being an eye"

(179); and in this sequence:

Julia: Well, my dears, I shall see you very soon.

Edward: When shall we see you?

Julia: Did I say you'd see me? (87)

Finally, as Arrowsmith has pointed out, it must be remem­

bered that "Cecilia" means "lacking blindness" and that

Celia is said to have gone the "way of-illumination."'1'

The visual metaphors work in two closely related

ways. First, they help to connect the Guardians to the

other four characters of the play and aid in making Eliot's

concept of guardianship understandable; secondly, they de­

scribe, metaphorically, the action of the play.

■^Arrowsmith, Hudson Review, III (Autumn, 1950), 413.

 507

There are, as Arrowsmith suggests, three meta­

phorical states: blindness, half-sight, and full vision,

represented respectively by Edward (and Lavinia), Julia

(and her cohorts), and Celia. The meaning of the half­

sight of Julia, Reilly, and Alex is to be found in the

proverb, "In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is

king."^ The guardians, because they are endowed with at

least half-sight in a world populated by the blind, have

the power to lead others at least some distance along the

path of illumination, and to lead Celia in particular to

the state of complete vision.

Denis Donoghue suggests that the relationship of

the imagery of the play to the movement of the dramatic

action may be represented somewhat as follows:

At the beginning
Condition of the play_____ At the end

Full Vision
or Beatitude No one Celia

Half-Sight or Reilly, Julia, Reilly, Julia,

the positive, and Alex Alex, Edward,
Christian life Lavinia, and
in the near
future Peter

Total Blindness, Edward, Lavinia,

or the negative Peter, and Celia
life, correspond­
ing to Wishwood
in The Family
Reunion

"On this basis," Donoghue says,

‘Ibid.
 508

we would describe the play as an imitation of an action

of spiritual "guardianship," the kind of action which
Eliot outlined in The Idea of a Christian Society.
There he argued that the Community of Christians is
not an organisation /sic7 but a body of indefinite
outline composed of both clergy and laity, of the
more conscious, more spiritually and intellectually
developed of both. It will be their identity of be­
lief and aspiration, their background of a common sys­
tem of education and a common culture which will enable
them to influence and be influenced by each other, and
collectively to form "the conscious mind and con­
science of the nation." . . .1

As J. L. Styan points out, it is "because to a

large extent he /Eliot7 succeeds . . . in affecting us,

because many of his poetic statements have the weight of

realized feeling," and because the issues of The Cocktail

Party are necessarily "nebulous and complex" ones, that

"we may be encouraged to find values in this play that do

2
not in fact exist there." The Cocktail Party is not with­

out flaws, and it is important to realize that these flaws

are similar to those which we have found in many of the

other dramas examined here.

The most serious criticism which can be leveled at

The Cocktail Party is that the theme or themes do not rise

naturally and unobtrusively from the dramatic action. This

general weakness has three specific causes: (1) a stylis­

tic shift which occurs between the first and second acts,

(2) the fact that the major characters attain new insights

^Donoghue, pp. 119-20.

2J. L. Styan, The Elements of Drama (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 19^0), p. 275.
 509

through the manipulative efforts of an outside force

rather than through dramatic struggle and conflict, and

(3) Eliot's inability to integrate the two different ways

to salvation.

The first act of The Cocktail Party appears to be

written as more or less realistic drawing-room comedy,1

and as such, is highly successful. The situations and

characters are believable and by the time the act is over

we have learned what we need to know about the emotional

and spiritual problems which beset the Chamberlaynes, Celia,

and Peter without feeling that this knowledge has been

forced upon us in any undramatic way. In the second act,

however, Eliot begins to write in a much more artificial

and obviously schematic form. In a sense the play becomes

a kind of allegory in which we are shown two different

kinds of Everyman who, with the aid of a spiritual advisor,

confess their sins and proceed on their different ways to

salvation. An allegorical play is, of course, dramatically

possible, even in the twentieth century; but, as W. H.

Auden has explained recently, "it must be allegorical

throughout— the dramatist must not begin by making us

accept the historical reality of his characters, and then

^ t y a n also argues that this first act is not

written "within any known realistic convention," that the
act is clearly a travesty of Noel Coward's "cocktail-and-
cigarettes drama," and should, therefore, be played "styl­
istically and formally." Yet even Styan admits that "the
author's hints at this kind of playing are so weak as to be
almost a handicap . . ." (Styan, pp. 276-78).
 510

deprive them of it."'*' Eliot's shift in style creates a

discontinuity of tone which confuses the viewer, leaving

him wondering if he has missed some symbolic level on which

the first act moved. His confusion is not lessened by the

third act, which slips back and forth between the realistic

and non-realistic modes.

As the play moves from the realistic to the alle­

gorical it also leaves off demonstrating and begins to

preach, or at least to teach in a very self-conscious way.

There is, as Stephen Spender says, a "forcing of the moral

pace to underline the 'message' of the play, as though

. . . /Eliot/
did not feel confident that he could create
2
a situation from which this would arise," a forcing which

is made more evident by the contrast of styles. Gerald

Weales rightly concludes that if the "preconception of the

playwright is so great that he comes to believe that his

idea is intrinsically so powerful that the play can stand

aside and let the idea speak for itself . . . then he had

better be writing tracts rather than p l a y s . I n a sense,

the second and third acts of Eliot's drama are more like a

H. Auden, "Forewords Brand versus Peer," in

Henrik Ibsen, Brand, trans. Michael Meyer ("Anchor Books";
Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., I960),
pp. 37-38.
2
Stephen Spender, "After the Cocktail Party," The
New York Times Book Review, March 19, 1950, p. 7.

^Gerald Weales, Religion in M o d e m English Drama,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I960;, p. £75.
 511

religious tract in dialogue form than a play.

The Cooktail Party is essentially undramatic in

another way. The crises (there are two of them) are the

moments at which the Chamberlaynes and Celia gain a measure

of insight into the nature of their psychological or moral

dilemmas. Unfortunately, this knowledge is attained not

through their own struggles, but rather through the guid­

ance and counsel of Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly who remains

always an external force, outside the central action of the

play, and who manipulates the responses of Edward, Lavinia,

and Celia, as Bernard Knieger observes, "until he is in a

position to give them the requisite knowledge."'*' The whole

process seems too neat, too easy; as J. L. Styan says, "We

are not aware of struggle or pains all the guinea-pigs

have their choices made for them and face their futures
2
too resolutely." Eliot's undramatic scaffolding becomes

even more apparent in the third act which, Eliot himself

admits, "only just escapes, if indeed it does escape, the

accusation of being not a last act but an epilogue."^ The

real action of the play ends with the decisions which the

Chamberlaynes and Celia make, and the last act does little

more than describe the consequences of their decisions;

^Bernard Knieger, "The Dramatic Achievement of

T. S. Eliot," Modern Drama, III (February, 1961), 387.

^Styan, p. 280.

^Eliot, Poetry and Drama, p. 40.

 512

even the quasi-struggle of the first two acts has disappeared.

The third flaw in Eliot's handling of the theme re­

sults from his inability to unify successfully the

Chamberlaynes' decision to follow the Affirmative Way to

salvation with Celia's selection of the more difficult

Negative path. The first act is so well constructed that

the spectator is not aware of any disparity between what

Celia and the Chamberlaynes stand for, but the remainder

of the play is not as tightly organized. Yet even the

separation in the second act might be acceptable if the

playwright had been able to reunite the actions in Act III,

but he has not done so. Celia, of course, by her decision

to enter the "sanatorium" has cut herself off from the

other people of the play; her life hardly depends upon or

is affected by anything they might do. And in spite of

critical opinion to the contrary,'1' there is little evidence

that Celia's life or death has fertilized the lives of

Lavinia and Edward. It is apparent as the act begins that

the Chamberlaynes have already taken the first few steps

along the Affirmative Way and have achieved at least a

certain tolerance of routine and a consideration for each

other which was not characteristic of their former life.

Celia can hardly have had anything to do with their altered

relationship; that is Sir Henry's doing. Later, when

^See, for example, Carol H. Smith, p. 166; and

Jones, pp. 141-43.
 513

Edward advises Peter to accept the fact that he must face

the truth about himself and make a new beginning, it is

clear that Edward's words are not the result of some new

wisdom which he has only just attained; they come, rather,

as a result of his earlier consultation with Sir Henry.

Still later, Edward and Lavinia begin to feel a certain

responsibility for Celia's death, suggesting that they

have begun to realize that "the blood of the martyrs and

the agony of the saints/ Is upon our h e a d s . T h i s jLs new

knowledge, but the Chamberlaynes attain it only after Sir

Henry has explained in some detail the meaning of Celia's

death. Again we feel, as we did in the second act, that

the psychiatrist has manipulated their responses. Finally,

it can be argued that Peter's life has been made more

meaningful through Celia's sacrifice, but this does little

to unify the two basic actions of the drama. And so we

conclude with Denis Donoghue that The Cocktail Party "pre­

sents the life of the common routine and the way of beati-
2
tude as totally discrete."

Reilly says at one point that "Neither way is

better./ Both ways are necessary" (141). But since the two

ways are not integrated, they compete for the interest of

the audience and the Affirmative Way loses the competition.

^T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (New York:

Harcourt, Brace and Co” 1^35), p. .
2
Donoghue, p. 125.
 514

As Styan points out, the "particular problems of a few

misfits" develop into "two diametrically opposed situa­

tions," and

it is inevitable that the more powerful story of

tragic individuality will detract from the interest
the author wishes to^stimulate in the social normality
of the others. . . .

In Act III The Cocktail Party becomes two plays to

which we give divided allegiance, and in doing sog
damage and destroy the meaning and value of both.

Styan goes on to explain that the audience is sup­

posed to experience both alternatives, and to "discover

within . . . /ftaemselves7 aspects of Celia or Lavinia or

Edward. ... At least we were to recognize, -understand and

tolerate them in others."3 But, Styan says, the audience

has been granted insights which permit more understanding

of Celia's decision and her death than the Chamberlaynes

are ever able to muster; and once their lack of understand­

ing becomes apparent, we lose whatever rapport we may have

had with them. "If we do respond in part to their admirable

humility, we must detach ourselves from Celia and view her

4
distantly as they do."

^Styan, p. 279.

2Ibid., p. 282.

3Ibid., pp. 279-80.

4Ibid., p. 282.
 515

Thus the play fails in its

impossible task of persuading us both at the rational

level of social comedy and at the emotional level of
tragedy. Both must integrate to form the inclusive
religious drama that Mr. Eliot is working towards.
The comprehensive-.value of the play will turn upon
this integration.

Because Eliot so frequently sacrifices character

delineation to the schematic arrangement of his drama and

to his major thesis, the characters seem thin and blood­

less. The emphasis on the two separate ways toward salva­

tion and the resultant dichotomy between the worldlings

and the elect tend not only to destroy the unity of the

play but also to diminish the substance of both Celia and

the Chamberlaynes. "In The Cocktail Party," John Gassner

explains,

the sheep are categorically divided from the goats,

and in this lies the prime limitation of this ably
written drama: The characters remain sheep and goats
instead of rounded people. The commonplace indivi­
duals have no real dimension, . . . and the heroine
turned saint loses all dramatic reality and becomes
a subject for conversation.2

But it is more than simply the dramatic arrangement

that is at fault. Kenneth Muir has suggested that the "two

best poets of our time /Yeats and Eliojt7 have failed to

write plays as great as their non-dramatic poetry" because

despite Yeats's assumption of "masks" . . . and de­

spite Eliot's belief that all poetry is dramatic, they
both lacked the power of creating vital characters.

^Ibid., p. 279.
2
John Gassner, The Theatre in Our Times (New York:
Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954), p. 101.
 516

They, much more than Shaw, used their characters

to express themselves.1

Or, as Brooks Atkinson points out, the characters of The

Cocktail Party axe "hardly more than illustrations for Mr.

2
Eliot's ideas." None of the figures have about them a

sense of dramatic wholeness and as a result they and their

society seem impoverished. They are devoid of exuberance

or passion. As John Gassner concludes, "In the process of

seeking to redeem mankind, Eliot . . . appears to have lost

humanity. . . ."^

A second flaw in Eliot's treatment of his charac­

ters is his failure to include the Guardians— Sir Henry,

Julia, and Alex— within the framework of the action. The

playwright himself admits;

In "The Cocktail Party" only four of the seven char­

acters are characters in the true sense. The psy­
chiatrist and his two assistants are outside the
action of the play. They interfere, but there is
no character development in these three. They just
perform a job. 4

Such characters might be acceptable in a more formalistic

play, but they are hardly appropriate to one which is

written in essentially realistic terms.

^Kenneth Muir, "Verse and Prose," Contemporary

Theatre ("Stratford-upon-Avon Studies," No. 4; New V'ork:
St. Martin's Press, 1962), p. 114.
2
Brooks Atkinson, "At the Theatre," The New York
Times, January 23, 1950, as reprinted in New York Theatre
Critics' Reviews, January 30, 1950, p. 37FI

^Gassner, The Theatre in Our Times, p. 278.

4
Eliot, as quoted by Hewes, The Saturday Review,
August 29, 1953, p. 26.
 517

Several years ago Kenneth Tynan wrote an article

for The Atlantic in which he discussed the state of English

verse drama. In it he suggested that the characters in

Christopher Fry's The Dark is Light Enough are unsuccessful

dramatic creations because "they tell us, with ruthless

fluency, what kind of people they are, instead of letting

us find out for ourselves."^ In a sense the same is true

of the characters in The Cocktail Party. Because so much

of the play is devoted to self-analysis or to psychoanalysis

by Sir Henry, the spectator is told a great deal about

Lavinia, Edward, and Celia, but has little opportunity to

see them in action and to judge them for himself.

The last point to be made about characterization

is that Sir Henry, supported by his spiritual assistants,

Julia and Alex, is so much in control of the lives of the

three major characters that they seem, particularly in the

second and third acts, to be little more than robots, re­

sponding to the commands of a priestly superman. Conse­

quently, although we may be convinced that the Chamberlaynes

achieved the only kind of spiritual success of which they

were capable, we feel that Celia achieves her particular

kind of sainthood more because this is the outcome Reilly

wants for her than because it is the inevitable result of

her own choice.

^Kenneth Tynan, "Prose and the Playwright," The

Atlantic, CLXLIV (December, 1954), 76.
 518

Moreover, Reilly's manipulation of Celia and the

Chamberlaynes destroys for the spectator any sense of dra­

matic conflict and struggle; these characters do not strive

to attain whatever realization they achieve, the realiza­

tions are delivered to them. As a consequence, the char­

acters never gain any sense of dignity or worth, and any

sympathy which we might have had for them earlier in the

play is destroyed.

Eliot was well aware that his use of Greek dramatic

conventions in The Family Reunion had been generally un­

successful,^ and he avoided them almost entirely in The

Cocktail Party. The Guardians are used very briefly as a

chorus at the end of Act II, but their function is so dif-

ferent from the typically Greek dramatic chorus that it

seems pointless to insist that this is of classic deriva­

tion.

Finally, some attention must be given to Eliot's

use of language. The verse of The Cocktail Party is, in

some respects, similar to that of The Family Reunion. Once

again the four-stress line is basic to the play, al'though

Eliot still maintained in 1951> two years after The Cocktail

Party was written, that his dramatic verse is characterized

2
by a caesura and three stresses. Later, however, he

^Eliot, Poetry and Drama, p. 38.

2
Hewes, The Saturday Review, August 29, 1953,
pp. 27-28.
 519

admitted:

Auden says I have four stresses and he may be right.

All I know is that when a line sounds wrong to me,
which is the only time I think about the meter, I go
back and use the three-stress test.l

Although some critics have argued that one or another of

the traditional patterns of metrical feet dominates the

2
poetry of Eliot's plays, my own feeling is that in The

Cocktail Party, just as in The Family Reunion, Eliot han­

dles the verse with such flexibility that it is difficult

to discern any one basic pattern.

There are, however, important differences between

the verse of The Cocktail Party and that of The Family

Reunion. The language of The Cocktail Party is far easier

for the spectator to comprehend, partially because it is

simpler in its diction and syntax, but more importantly

because it contains a minimum of metaphor and allusion.

The verse is "clean and 'easy,'" as Denis Donoghue says,

because the "smoke and shadow of The Family Reunion have

been very largely eliminated."-^ And finally, there is an

increased flexibility to the verse which permits the play­

wright to move more easily from the everyday small-talk

■^Eliot, as quoted by Hewes, The Saturday Review,

August 29, 1953, p. 28.
2
See, for example, Lucy, p. 207; and E. Martin
Brown, "The Dramatic Verse of T. S. Eliot," T. S. Eliot:
A Symposium, ed. Richard March and Tambimuttu (London:
PL Editions Poetry London, Ltd, 1948), p. 205.

■^Donoghue, p. 135.
 520

which occupies much of the play to the occasional pas­

sages of heightened poetry.

I cannot agree with Allan Lewis's comment that

Eliot employed verse in The Cocktail Party "not as it was

dictated by what must be said, but mechanically, as an

obligation, to add a cloalc of otherworldliness";1 or with

Bernard Kneiger's conclusion that Eliot's language is

p
"prose masquerading as poetry." The otherworldliness,

whether we like it or not, is at the heart of the play,

not an embellishment put on with the poetic form. And

Kneiger is equally mistaken for a number of reasons. For

one thing, Eliot's use of rhythm is, for the most part,

much too strict for prose. For another, Eliot's language

is marked by what W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., calls a "heavy reli­

ance on the logic, the word repeated and modulated . . .

the phrase parallels and contrasts"^ which gives it a for­

mality more characteristic of poetry than prose. Third,

and most important, the verse form is, Raymond Williams

explains,

the kind which imposes its control at a level which

is often below conscious observation. If you try to
alter almost any line in the play you lose something
of this form, and the effect could never be the same.

^ l l a n Lewis, The Contemporary Theatre (New Yorks

Crown Publishers, Inc., 1962), p. 166.

^Kneiger, M o d e m Drama, III (February, 1961), 391.

% . K. Wimsatt, Jr., "Eliot's Comedy," The Sewanee
Review, LVIII (October, 1950), 670. -
 521

Eliot dicLnot want the speech to be recognised as

"poetry."

If the speeches are written as prose paragraphs we lose a

movement of the language which, though close to ordinary

speech, is absolutely fundamental to the work.

It is quite true, as Wimsatt says, that the poetry

of The Cocktail Party possesses the virtues of "chasteness,

2
restraint, terseness, and precision"; but it lacks the

poetic brilliance and intensity of his non-dramatic verse.

Furthermore, Eliot is still unable to write dialogue which

reveals and defines the character who speaks it. Certainly

he has moved in that direction, and sometimes, particularly

in some of Celia's speeches in the second act, he seems to

have achieved the desired effect. But Eliot is not always

so well in control of his poetry. Yet in spite of these

shortcomings, The Cocktail Party contains some of the most

effective dramatic verse of any play included in this study.

This analysis has shown that The Cocktail Party is

essentially an original work which uses details of the

classic legend in a very limited way; in this respect it

resembles Eliot's earlier play, The Family Reunion, as well

as William Alfred's Agamemnon and Kenneth Rexroth's Phaedra.

^Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 243.

^Wimsatt, The Sewanee Review, LVTII (October, 1950),

670.
 522

The Cocktail Party has a number of characteristics

in common with other twentieth-century dramas based on

classic myths its psychological, essentially realistic

approach to character; its reduction of the supernatural

dimensions of the story; and its tendency to focus on the

female agent of the legend. In a more specific way, Eliot's

play, with its emphasis on the mystic and symbolic levels

of meaning and its concern with the salvation of the major

figures, recalls the dramas of Rexroth and Jeffers.

Finally, The Cocktail Party contains many of the

same flaws which have been noted here before. It especially

suffers from Eliot's inability to realize his theme in es­

sentially dramatic terms, and his failure to create charac­

ters who are believable and yet who have enough human sig­

nificance to hold our attention.

CHAPTER Vs CONCLUSION
 It is difficult to know at what point a study of

this sort should be concluded. In a sense, an examination

of twentieth-century drama based on myth, even if limited

only to those plays written in English, can never be com­

pleted. For one thing, there are far too many plays for

any one individual to examine all of them with sufficient

thoroughness. Moreover, since new plays based on myth are

still being written, currently valid conclusions about

today's mythic drama may be modified or reversed by a play

which appears tomorrow. Nevertheless, there are limits to

which any kind of study may go, and fourteen plays based on

three different classic myths seem sufficient to justify

certain generalizations about m o d e m English and American

drama based on classic legend. In the next few pages I will

attempt to answer the questions with which this study be­

gan, and then will go on to compare my answers with the con­

clusions reached by others who have studied the m o d e m myth­

ic drama of other countries, particularly France and Germany.

What classic myths have been used by twentieth-

century English and American playwrights? This question is

by far the easiest to answer. As the chart on the following

page shows, contemporary dramatists writing in English have

used a large number of different classical myths. The

524
 THE NUMBER OP TIMES THAT SPECIFIC CLASSIC
MYTHS APPEAR IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN DRAMAS1

Achilles - 3 Medea-Jason - 4

Alcestis-Admetus - 5 Minos - 1

Andromache - 1 Niobe - 1

Apollo - 1 Odysseus - 1

Ariadne - 1 1 (at Ithaca)

3 (at Naxos) 1 (his death)

Atreidae - 13 2 (his return)

Aurora-Tithonus - 1 2 (with Circe)

Demeter - 3 1 (with Lotus-eaters)

Echo-Narcissus - 1 Oedipus - 1

Eurydice-Orpheus - 3 Oenone-Paris - 3

Hecuba - 1 Phaedra-Hippolytus - 5

Hector - 1 Pleiads - 1

Helen - 3 Prometheus - 1

1 (in Egypt) Psyche-Ero® - 4

1 (with Achilles) Pygmalion - 1

1 (with Paris) Theseus - 1

Herakles - 1 2 (with Amazons)

Hero-Leander - 1 1 (with Hippolyta)

2
Ion - 1 Impossible to classify - 16

^Infra, p. 548, n. 1.
2
These are plays which so mix the mythic elements
they contain that it is impossible to claim that they are
based on any specific myth.

525
 526

Atreidae myth is obviously the most popular; more than

twice as many plays have been based on this legend as on

any other. However, since the Atreidae myth extends over

i*

several generations and includes many incidents, it is

possible for an entire play to be based upon a fairly small

segment of the story. Consequently, not all the plays

which are designed as Atreidae dramas include exactly the

same materials, although most tend to concentrate primarily

on two major events of the legend: the murder of Agamemnon

and the subsequent murder of Clytemnestra by her children.

The Phaedra-Hippolytus myth and the Alcestis-

Admetus myth rank second in popularity. There are also a

number of plays based on various incidents of the Trojan

War, although there is little duplication and little over­

lapping in this last group.

Why have these particular myths been chosen rather

than others? Who can say for certain why one old tale

attracts a writer and another does not? Obviously, each

playwright must have believed that the myth which he used

would help him to say whatever it was he wished to communi­

cate to his audience.

The myths which have been chosen most frequently are

among the most exciting of all ancient legends and have been

popular in nearly every period of literary history. But

there are other myths which have been equally popular dur­

ing the last 2500 years and have been used frequently by
 527

continental playwrights of our century that have "been

generally ignored by m o d e m British and American drama­

tists. Chief among these are the stories concerning

Oedipus and Antigone.

How have the myths been altered and for what

purposes? This is a more difficult question and demands

a more complex answer. In general, the myths have been

altered in almost every conceivable way and for a variety

of purposes. It has been possible to group the plays which

have been examined here into four categories according to

the degree of freedom with which the authors treat the myth.

At one extreme is a small number of plays in which the leg­

end is used in a very literal manner: the classical setting

is retained, little of the legend is omitted, only minor

alterations are made in the details of the story, and al­

most no original material is added. The plays which belong

to this category illustrate the simplest use which twenti­

eth-century Anglo-American playwrights have made of myth.

At the other extreme is a group of plays which owe

only the slightest debt to their myths. The ancient Greek

setting may or may not be retained, but in all cases the

myth furnishes primarily a point of departure and the great

bulk of material which makes up the plot is original. This

group includes some of the most complex and sophisticated

plays in this study.

Between these two extremes are two other categories.

One group is made up of plays which retain the original

 528

setting of the myth, hut in which details have been al­

tered, parts of the legend omitted, and new details added.

For the most part, however, none of these changes could be

considered major alterations in the myth.

The last category is the most difficult to describe.

To it belong those plays which remain more or less within

the general framework of the myth, although the incidents

borrowed from the myth have been greatly altered and most

of the characters bear little relationship to their proto­

types. Some authors whose works belong to this group re­

tain the original locale of the action, while others do not.

A number of more specific alterations in the myth

reoccur frequently enough to be worth noting. The Atreidae

myth focuses generally on the male agents of the story,

while the Phaedra-Hippolytus myth and the Alcestis-Admetus

myth place equal emphasis on the male and female figures.

Ten of the fourteen plays, however, shift the focus of the

story from the male character or characters to the female.

The titles of some of these plays make this apparent:

Daughters of Atreus, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Cretan

Woman, Phaedra, Alcestis; the other works— Beyond the

Mountains, Agamemnon, Hippolytus Temporizes, The Wheel,

and The Cocktail Party— make the shift less obviously. Of

the remaining four plays, one— Orestes— places equal empha­

sis on Orestes and Clytemnestra. In the other three, the

male figure remains the protagonist, but in two of these,

 529

The Tower Beyond Tragedy and The Family Reunion, the female

figure or figures are dramatically more interesting. The

Orestes of The Prodigal is the only continually interesting

male protagonist in the entire group.

In ten of the fourteen plays the dramatists have

given their characters motives which do not appear in the

myths involved and which are presented in contemporary psy­

chological terms, generally Freudian or pseudo-Freudian.

Orestes, Daughters of Atreus, The Tower Beyond Tragedy, The

Prodigal, Mourning Becomes Electra, Beyond the Mountains,

Agamemnon, The Family Reunion, The Cretan Woman, and The

Cocktail Party include at least some emphasis on psycho­

logical motivation, and more than half of these plays in­

clude at least one psychotic character. The characters of

Rexroth's Phaedra are such abstractions that it is difficult

to assign it to this group, although the play does include

a heavy emphasis on sexual desires; the motivation in

Montenegro's Alcestis is so confusing that it seems unsafe

to place it in any category. The two remaining plays,

Hippolytus Temporizes and The Wheel, are essentially lyric

rather than dramatic.

It should not be surprising, then, to learn that

eight of the fourteen plays examined tend to reduce the

supernatural dimensions of the legend. Much less emphasis

is placed on the gods and goddesses and on the workings of

Fate; simultaneously the human figures are made more re­

sponsible for their own actions. In this group are

 5 30

Daughters of Atreus, The Tower Beyond Tragedy, The Prodigal,

Mourning Becomes Electra, Beyond the Mountains, Agamemnon,

Phaedra, and The Cocktail Party.

Three of the remaining six plays retain most of the

supernatural elements of the myth but add human motives so

that the characters act partially because of a force exerted

upon them from without and partially of their own volition.

In the other three plays, Hippolytus Temporizes, Alcestis,

and The Wheel, the supernatural figures seem to be the con­

trolling agents of the action. It should be added, however,

that the motivation of the human characters is never clear

in any of these plays, and Montenegro, in her Alcestis,

seems to insist that human beings are responsible for their

actions even though they do not control their own fates.

The characters in most of the plays examined here

are reduced in size and magnificence from their mythic

prototypes. Such is the case in Orestes, Daughters of

Atreus, The Prodigal, Agamemnon, The Family Reunion,

Alcestis, The Cocktail Party, and to a lesser extent in

The Cretan Woman. When, as in Orestes, Daughters of Atreus,

Agamemnon, and Alcestis, the characters occasionally per­

form moderately heroic deeds, the contrast between the size

of the deed and the size of the doer is jarring. In

Mourning Becomes Electra the characters are such mechanical

creations, so obviously created to fit a pattern which the

playwright imposes on the action of his drama, that a similar

 531

reduction occurs. In Beyond the Mountains and Phaedra,

while the characters are not reduced in stature, they tend

to he philosophic abstractions. The other three plays,

The Tower Beyond Tragedy, Hippolytus Temporizes, and The

W heel, include characters who, for one reason or another,

have little dramatic interest.

Two other tendencies appear in a smaller number of

plays, although they are not strictly alterations of the

myth. In five plays— Orestes, Daughters of Atreus, The

Family Reunion, Hippolytus Temporizes and The Wheel— there

is no final resolution of the action; and in an equal num­

ber of plays there is an unusually heavy emphasis on sexual

abnormality, particularly incest and homosexuality— The

Tower Beyond Tragedy, Mourning Becomes Electra, Beyond the

Mountains, The Cretan Woman, and Phaedra.

Apparently, dramatists who have turned to myth in

our century have altered their material primarily to make

the stories more acceptable to a contemporary audience which

is accustomed to essentially Naturalistic drama and which is

familiar with a number of m o d e m theories on the psychology

of human behavior. Some critics might also argue that these

modifications of the myths suggest that we are an essential­

ly agnostic and female-oriented society, although this would

be difficult to prove.

What results have been achieved by the use of myth?

This study clearly shows that the efforts of twentieth-

 532

century British and American playwrights to create effect­

ive m o d e m dramas out of classic mythology have been, for

the most part, unsuccessful. Moreover, a number of flaws

have appeared frequently enough to suggest that they are

characteristic of the errors which may be found in con­

temporary British and American dramatic literature based

on classic legend, and that they are symptomatic of the

problems which beset any contemporary dramatist who turns

to myth for his subject matter.

Every one of the fourteen plays included in this

study gives evidence of its playwright’s inability to pro­

ject a significant thesis in effective dramatic terms.

Some, like Orestes, and to a lesser extent The Wheel, seem

to be without any meaning beyond the events themselves.

In others, particularly Mourning Becomes Electra, the work

is sacrificed to some over-all pattern which the playwright

imposes heavy-handedly upon the action; the theme becomes

overly explicit and machine-made. In most of these plays,

however, the writers have simply been unable to fuse theme

and action. Too frequently the most direct thematic state­

ments occur in choral interludes or in set speeches which

seem to have little to do with the events of the play.

Consequently some passages are much too obviously didactic

and others seem to have little relationship to the theme.

None of these playwrights seems to have been able to create

drama in which the theme rises naturally out of the actions

which make up the play.

 533

Ten of the fourteen plays are abstruse, full of

ambiguities, or unclear in other ways. Some are so highly

personal and poetically complex that theatre audiences

would find them impossible to follow; these include The

Tower Beyond Tragedy, Beyond the Mountains, The Family

Reunion, Phaedra, and perhaps Hippolytus Temporizes. Some,

like Agamemnon, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party,

contain several themes which are not adequately related to

one another or properly subordinated to a single major

thesis. And some, The Cretan Woman, Hippolytus Temporizes

and Alcestis, for example, include a number of contra­

dictory elements.

Most of the playwrights whose works are included

in the study have been unable to transform the figures of

the myths into effective dramatic characters. Several have

reduced the stature of their characters without making any

use of this reduction, with a resultant loss of significance

in the play itself. Neither of these problems is unavoid­

able, however; Jeffers in The Tower Beyond Tragedy manages

to retain much of the old majesty for his characters, and

Richardson uses the reduction in the figurative size of his

characters to reinforce the theme of his play.

The characters of some of the plays are unsuccess­

ful dramatic creations for other reasons. The figures of

Beyond the Mountains and Phaedra never rise above the level

of philosophic abstractions; those in Mourning Becomes

Eleotra and to a lesser extent The Cocktail Party are like

 534

puppets, manipulated to illustrate whatever concepts the

playwrights have in mind; the characters of Alcestis are

wholly unsympathetic, those of Hippolytus Temporizes are

thin and bloodless, and those of The Wheel are unbelievable

— none hold our interest nor seem to have much human sig­

nificance.

Three other flaws appear in a smaller number of

plays. Eight plays— Orestes, Daughters of Atreus, The

Tower Beyond Tragedy, Mourning Becomes Electra, Beyond the

Mountains, Agamemnon, The Cretan Woman, and Phaedra— are

unjustifiably melodramatic. In most of these accident and

coincidence play far too important a role. Five plays—

Orestes, Daughters of Atreus, The Tower Beyond Tragedy,

The Wheel, and Phaedra— are marred by irrelevant theatri-

calism. In ten plays the authors have used one or more

conventions borrowed from the Greek theatre of the fifth

century B. C. In The Tower Beyond Tragedy, Beyond the

Mountains, and Phaedra the playwrights have made these

conventions work effectively; but in the other seven works

— Orestes, The Prodigal, Mourning Becomes Electra, The

Family Reunion, The Cretan Woman, Hippolytus Temporizes,

and Alcestis— the use of such conventions seems pointless

and calls attention to itself.

Finally, some comment must be made about the langu­

age of these dramas. All but three— The Prodigal, Mourning

Becomes Electra, and Daughters of Atreus— are written in

 535

verse, and even the last of these has a strongly iambic

pentameter rhythm, although the dialogue is printed as

prose. Unfortunately most of the authors of these plays

are not poets, and many of those who have genuine poetic

abilities are not dramatic poets. At its worst, the

language is artificial and pretentious, and has the sound

of third-rate Marlowe or a bad nineteenth-century transla­

tion of Greek drama. Jeffers, and to some extent Rexroth

and Eliot, have the ability to write fine poetry which is

also serviceable dramatic dialogue; Richardson's language,

while not distinguished prose, is usually interesting, fre­

quently witty, and as successful dramatic dialogue as is to

be found in any of the plays included in this study.

Why have twentieth-century English and American

dramatists used classic myth as subject matter for their

plays? Any but the most obvious conclusions can be little

more than guesswork. Undoubtedly all playwrights who use

myth are attracted to the story itself; they see in it the

nucleus of a number of exciting dramatic episodes. They

must also believe the myth to be a suitable vehicle for

whatever they wish to convey. There is an obvious affinity

between myth and poetry, but it is impossible to know

whether any given playwright decided first to write a play

based on myth and later chose verse as the most appropriate

medium, or decided first to write a poetic drama and later

hit upon a classic legend as suitable subject matter.

 536

Finally, although it would be unfair to suggest that the

myths had been selected chiefly for their proven dura­

bility, it is reasonable to suppose that most playwrights

could expect the elemental nature of mythology to give

their plays a certain desirable universality and timeless­

ness .

European playwrights in this century have used as

wide a variety of ancient legends as have m o d e m dramatists

writing in English, and it is pertinent to this study to

compare the opinions of writers who have examined these

European plays (especially those of French and German ori­

gin) with the conclusions reached here. The two most ex­

haustive studies written in English on modern continental.

European dramas which use classic myth as their subject

matter are Mary Frances McFeeters1 "The Use of Greek Myth­

ology in the French Theater from 1918 to 194-8," and Donald

W. Heiney's "Elements of Greek Mythology in Twentieth-

Century French and German Drama."1

The evidence which McFeeters offers suggests that

the myths most used by twentieth-century French playwrights

are not the same as those most frequently selected by

British and American dramatists. She notes that modern

^ a r y Frances McFeeters, "The Use of Greek Myth­

ology in the French Theater from 1918 to 1948" (unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1954); Donald W.
Heiney, "Elements of Greek Mythology in Twentieth-Century
French and German Drama" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Southern California, June, 1952).
 537

French playwrights generally "avoid the myths most popular

in the seventeenth century, especially those used by

Racine."1 The most obvious reason for avoiding subjects

already chosen by Racine is, she says, "a lack of enthusi-

2
asm for competition with Racine on his own ground," but adds

that a more fundamental reason is the difference in the

preoccupation of the playwrights. Racine was "especially

concerned with character portrayal, with sounding the depths

r

of tormented personalities";^ he drew the subjects of all

his tragedies on Greek mythology from Euripides, who gave

"less emphasis to man's struggle with the gods and with

destiny than to his struggle with himself."4 By contrast,

the " m o d e m French playwrights, in their preoccupation with

m a n 1s struggle against the gods and with the worth and

5
heroism of man," have been drawn to the plays of Sophocles

(particularly Oedipus R e x , of which there have been nine

versions since 1918, Electra, and Antigone), who was "not

so much concerned with probing the depths of human psy­

chology as in discovering the dignity and heroism of man."^

McFeeters1 comments indicate that the concerns of m o d e m

McFeeters, p. 400.

2Ibid.

^Ibid., p. 401.

4Ibid.

5Ibid., p. 402.

6Ibid.
 538

French dramatists who have turned to classic mythology

are different from those of British and American play­

wrights who have used the same body of material, and sug­

gest that a natural relationship exists between the English-

speaking writers' use of myths which attracted Euripides

and their conoern with the emotional states of their char­

acters and their tendency to de-emphasize the supernatural

dimensions of the ancient legends.

No writer, so far as I know, has made any detailed

study of the ways in which contemporary playwrights have

altered the Greek myths with which they have worked, al­

though a number of scholars and critics have noted certain

tendencies which seem to be characteristic of modern mythic

drama. McFeeters claims that twentieth-century French dram­

atists have "fitted in with, and indeed given impetus to"

a general trend in the modern French theatre to move away

"from realism in dramatic technique and subject matter."1

She also concludes that French playwrights of our century

have used their materials, not so much to create

living characters nor to appeal to the spectator's
emotions, as to present moral and philosophical ideas
in symbolic form.

It has been found that the modern adaptations do not

treat primarily of social and psychological problems
of contemporary life. On the contrary, they are
chiefly concerned with restating, in terms intelligi­
ble to man in the twentieth century, the eternal but

1Ibid., p. 402.
 539

ever changing problems of man’s relation to himself,

to the society about him, and to the universe.1

M y own study would give only partial support to both of

these conclusions. Only slightly more than half of the

plays included in this study could actually be considered

non-realistic drama, and more than half seem as much con­

cerned with the social and especially the psychological

problems of life as with the ethical, moral, religious,

and theological ones. There is, of course, no period in

the history of twentieth-century Britain or America which

parallels the German occupation of Prance, a period in

which, as McFeeters observes,

there was a noticeable increase in the number of

dramas borrowed from Greek sources . . . ^There were
at least 13 of these plays written between 1940-19457.

The reasons for this wave of enthusiasm for Greek

mythology are multiple. At a time when intellectual
activity was censored by a watchful enemy, the tradi­
tional myths were safe vehicles for the writer's
thought. Ostensibly innocuous in subject matter,
they could be used to present in oblique fashion ideas
which would not otherwise have passed the censors.
. . . In the second place, realistic plays about prob­
lems of everyday life are no adequate fare for the
spectator whose world has collapsed about him and
whose very life might be at stake. The fundamental
questions of morals and metaphysics are more appro­
priate subjects in such a time of crisis. . . . In
occupied Prance there was a crying need for a faith
in the heroic possibilities of man and in his ability
to exert his will to overcome an^adverse destiny in
an apparently meaningless world.

^Ibid., p. 403.

^Ibid., pp. 405-07.

 540

Heiney1s conclusions, based on his study of modern

French and German mythic drama, are different from

McFeeters1, but for the most part do not contradict them.

Heiney claims that "the attitude of the modern dramatist

toward Greek mythology is subjective and personal rather

than historical";"1' that modern playwrights who have turned

to Greek myth do not share any inherent admiration for

classic culture, and do not attempt to reconstruct that

culture in any authentic manner for their audiences. None

of the writers which Heiney studied "achieved anything like

a truly Hellenic philosophy, a historically accurate por­

trayal of Greek mythology, or an authentic classic environ-

2
ment." Heiney also concludes that the Greek myth has

proved "surprisingly suitable for presenting modern social,

political, or religious arguments."^ Because no ethical

meaning is attached to the myths in their original state,

a personal argument can be implanted without much diffi­

culty. And finally, Heiney claims, as a group, authors who

base their works on classic myth

tend to be liberal, humanistic, and international.

No author used Greek mythology to convey authoritar­
ian, ecclesiastical, or nationalistic viewpoints. The
author who is attracted to Hellenic culture is by na­
ture a humanist; he finds his values in the sum of
human knowledge and experience rather than in the
spirit of any one nation or doctrine. . . . Greek
mythology not only attracts authors who are human­
istically inclined, but it tends to encourage humanism

heiney, p. 350.
2Ibid.
3ibid., p. 353.
 541

in authors who are attracted to it for other

reasons.

The findings of this study seem to support completely

Heiney's first conclusion, that the playwrights' interest

in the myths is primarily subjective and personal, rather

than historical. There is less evidence to suggest that

English-speaking writers using myth have found the classic

legends suitable vehicles for social, political, or religi­

ous arguments. At least if these terms are narrowly de­

fined, only a few of the plays could be said to contain

specific political or religious arguments. It is even

clearer that the terms "liberal, humanistic, and inter­

national" do not fit many of the playwrights. Eliot, H. D.,

and Montenegro are certainly not liberal in their views,

and Jeffers and O'Neill are not humanistic. Turney,

Rexroth, and Richardson are the only three playwrights in

this study to whom these terms seem to apply.

It is interesting to note that not all would agree

with Heiney's final conclusion. Oskar Seidlin, for exam­

ple, in an article entitled "The Oresteia Today: A Myth

Dehumanized," uses the Atreidae plays of Jean-Paul Sartre,

Gerhart Hauptmann, Robinson Jeffers, Eugene O'Neill, and

Hugo von Hofmannsthal to prove that contemporary writers

1Ibid., pp. 356-57.

 542

give the classic legends an anti-humanistic bias.1 Appar­

ently neither Heiney nor Seidlin is completely accurate

in his evaluation.

Before moving on it might be of interest to note

one other observation about modern dramas based on myth.

Thierry Maulnier, writing in a 1957 issue of World Theatre,

claimed that modern dramatists who used myth, "whether of

French or other nationality," have "avoided demanding from

2
their sources of inspiration, lessons in technique." If

by "technique" Maulnier means the use of classic Greek

dramatic conventions, then my own study would seem to deny

this conclusion almost entirely.

Most writers who have examined modern mythic drama

have avoided making any judgments concerning its over-all

artistic merit. Both McFeeters and Heiney evaluate individ­

ual plays, but neither offers any final statements concern­

ing the quality of the genre as a whole. From my own exam­

ination of a limited number of French and German plays and

from my reading of McFeeters' and Heiney1s dissertations,

I believe that Continental dramas which use myth appear to

be more artistically successful than are such plays in

English. In France nearly all of the best m o d e m playwrights

^ s k a r Seidlin, "The Oresteia Today: A Myth De­

humanized," Essays in German and Comparative Literature
(University of North Carolina Studies in Comparative iitera-
ture, No. 30; Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of
North Carolina Press, 1961), pp. 237-54.
2
Thierry Maulnier, "Greek Myth, a Source of Inspira­
tion for M o d e m Dramatists," World Theatre, VI (Winter,
1957), 291.
 543

have tried their hands at myth; such is certainly not the

case in England or the United States.1 Maulnier does state

that the return to classic mythology has produced "some of

the most original works of the theatre of this century,"

but adds that they have been, for the most part, "a little
p
too intentional, a little too allegorical," a conclusion

with which I agree.

Although few scholars have been willing to evaluate

the body of modern mythic drama, nearly everyone seems to

have an opinion as to why writers turn to myth. In his

essay on "Ulysses, Order, and Myth," T. S. Eliot states

that the use of any sort of mythology is "simply a way of

controlling, or ordering, of giving a shape and a signifi­

cance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which

is contemporary history."^ Robert Corrigan, in his "The

'Electra' Theme in the History of Drama," explains that it

is the search for "some definable order of things assumed

within the structure of . . . & play" which "has led mod­

ern dramatists to return to Greek mythology in the hopes

that there they could find that form which could provide

^ h i s may, of course, have something to do with the

ways in which these writers have been educated.

^Maulnier, World Theatre, VI (Winter, 1957), 292.

^T. S. Eliot, "Ulysses, Order, and Myth." Forms of

Modern Fiction, edited by William Van O'Connor (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1948), p. 123.
 544

the necessary o r d e r . M y t h becomes for these writers,

Corrigan says, "a structural framework upon which to build

. . . /theii^ new ordering of human experience." And

Charles Moorman adds that

the present interest in myth reflects a need and a

search for order and certainty in the midst of the
apparent chaos and disorder of the twentieth century.
. . . Thus it is that poets have stepped outside the
contemporary scene into a world of myth, a world that
contains order and meaning within itself. Myth offers
the poet a complete and ordered cosmos, an irreducible
system of coherent belief upon which he can construct
an ordered and meaningful poetry. 3

No other reason has been offered so frequently as this one.

Maulnier suggests that contemporary dramatists turn

to ancient myth because it contains a "metaphysical dimen­

sion" that allows the writer to "escape from the narrow

walls, padded with bourgeois comfort, and the prison of

psychology, to make the human voice ring out in the vast

space of the universe, to reconcile poetry and theatre."^

McFeeters agrees that the return to myth is, in part, a

5
desire to shun contemporary realism, and adds that the

R o b e r t Willoughby Corrigan, "The 'Electra' Theme

in the History of Drama" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Minnesota, 1955), p. 109.

2Ibid., pp. 29-30.

^Charles Moorman, Arthurian Triptych: Mythic

Materials in Charles Williams, fl. S. Lewis, and I. S. Eliot
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), pp. 2-3.

Maulnier, World Theatre, VI (Winter, 1957), 290.

McFeeters, pp. 391-95.
 545

myths also offer "the kind of hero the twentieth century

dramatist has been looking for,"1 and are characterized by

"shadowy outlines and often ambiguous meaning" which

"intrigue the reader and encourage renewed interpreta-

2
tions." Heiney states that contemporary playwrights turn

to the ancient myths because of their "universally familiar

p l o t s , b e c a u s e they enable the writer "to attack anthro­

pomorphic Theism in a way that would have been impossible

had . . . /tlaey/ attacked the deities of modern society

A
openly and undisguised," and because they see in the myths
5
"a profound structure of moral and philosophical allegory."

Finally, Bert Leefmans suggests in a more general way that

modern dramatists have been attracted to classic legend be­

cause "each of them found in one of these themes what may

have seemed the final way of putting into the form of action

his most important preoccupations."^ Undoubtedly, all of

these theories are partly true, but each of them is at

least partially a matter of conjecture rather than fact.

If, at last, we were to paraphrase one of Hamlet's

famous questions and ask, "What's Hecuba to us?" we would

1Ibid., p. 43.

2Ibid.

^Heiney, p. 63.

^Ibid., p. 109.

'’ibid., p. 268.

^Leefmans, p. 192.
 546

be compelled to answer, "Less than we had hoped." Modem

British and American dramatists have failed to justify

their use of Greek mythology because they have been unable

to fashion from it first-rate dramatic literature.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Twentieth-century English and American
Plays Based on Classic Myth1

Abel, Lionel. The Death of Odysseus, in Playbooks Five

Plays for a New Theatre. ITorfolk, Conn.s Mew
directions, 1956.

Alfred, William. Agamemnon. New Yorks Alfred A. Knopf,

1954.
Anderson, Maxwell. The Wingless Victory. Washington,
D. C.s Anderson Souse, 1936.

Ashbery, John. The Heroes, in Artists1 Theatre. Ed.

Herbert Machiz. New York's Grrove Press, Inc., I960.

Baring, Maurice. Ariadne in Naxos, in Diminutive Dramas.

Bostons Houghton Mifflin Co., T9TST

________ . The Aulis Difficulty, in Diminutive Dramas.

Bosion: Hough-fcon Mifflin Co., 1912.

________ . Jason and Medea, in Diminutive Dramas. Bostons

Houghton Mifflin d o ., 1^12.

Bax, Clifford. Circe. Londons Frederick Muller, Ltd.,

1949.
Binyon, Laurence. Paris and Oenone, in M o d e m Short Plays,
1st Series. Londons University of London Press,
w n : ------

Bridges, Robert Seymour. Demeter. Oxfords Clarendon

Press, 1905.
Brighouse, Harold. Cupid and Psyche, in Six Fantasies.
New Yorks Samuel French, Inc., 1$31.

________ . Oracle of Apollo, in Six Fantasies. New Yorks

Samuel French, Inc., 1931.

Since no complete index of twentieth-century

English and American drama exists, this list is not com­
plete. Moreover, I have omitted children's plays, radio
dramas, and many short plays which seemed to be of no sig­
nificance.

548
 549

Carpenter, Edward Childs. Pipes of P a n . New York: Samuel

French, Inc., 1926.

Chapman, John Jay. Cupid and Psyche. New York: Laurence

J . Gomme, 1916.

________ . Hector's Farewell, in Homeric Scenes. New York:

Laurence J. Gomme, 1914.

________ . Wrath of Achilles, in Homeric Scenes. New York:

Laurence J. Gomme, 1914.

Crane, Burton. House of Atreus. Boston: W. H. Baker,

1952.

Damon, S. Foster. Persephone in Eden, in The Dial, LXXVIII

(June, 1925), 445-46.
Dargan, Olive Tilford. Son of Hermes, in Mortal Gods and
Other Plays. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1912.
Dransfield, Jane. The Lost Pleiad. New York: James T.
White & Co., l91ti.

Drinkwater, John. X = 0 ; A Night of the Trojan W a r , in

One-act Plays for Secondary Schools! Eds. James P.
Webber and Hanson H. Webster. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1923.

Eliot, Samuel A., Jr. Polyxena, in Little Theatre Classics,

Vol. I. Boston! L i TTFI^ Brown & Co., 19ld.

Eliot, T. S. The Cocktail Party. New York: Harcourt,

Brace and Co., 1950.

The Confidential Clerk. London: Faber & Faber,

Ltd., 1964.
________ . The Family Reunion, in The Complete Poems and
Plays. New York: Harcouri, Brace and Co., 1952.

Erskine, John. Helen Retires. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co.,

1934.
Fields, Annie Adams. Orpheus and Eurydice. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1^00.

Flagg, Isaac. Circe. Berkeley: By the Author, 1200

Shattuck Ave., 1915.
 550

Persephone. San Francisco: Paul Elder & Co.,

19 isr
Fontana, F. House of Oedipus, in Canadian Magazine,
XXXVIII (no date;, 34-1, 423, 520.

Gosse, Edmund. Hypolympia, of the Gods in the Island.

New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1901.

Grant, Percy Stickney. Return of Odysseus. New York:

Brentano's, 1912.

Gray, Elenor. Eros and Psyche. London: Kegan Paul,

Trench, Truebner & Co., 1918.

H. D. ^Aldington, Hilda Doolittle7. Hippolytus Temporizes.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927.

Hankin, St. John. Hercules Victus, in Dramatic Sequels.

New York: Minton, Balch, and Co., 1926.

Heath-Stubbs, John. Helen in Egypt, in Helen in Egypt and

Other Plays. London: Oxford University Press,
T9f55; 1' ■ ■*"-

Herbert, Alan Patrick. Helen. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd.,

1932.

Hewlett, Maurice Henry. Argive Women, in Helen Redeemed

and Other Poems. New York: The Macmillan Co.,
-------------

________ . Ariadne in Naxos, in The Agonists. A Trilogy of

God and Man. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1911.

________ . The Death of Hippolytus, in The Agonists, A

Trilogy of Ood andJMan. ITew York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 19ll.

________ . Minos King of Crete, in The Agonists, A Trilogy

of God and ManT foew York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1911.

Hole, W. G. Paris and Oenone, in Contemporary Review,

XCIV (December, 1908), Literary Supplement 1, 1-5.

Housman, Laurence. Death of Orpheus. London: Sidgwick &

Jackson, Ltd., l92l.
 551

The Wheel. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.,

1919.
Hulley, Lincoln. Ananias and Sappira, in Dramas, Vol. IX.
Deland, Fla.: E. 0. tainxer C o ., 1934.

________ . Apollo and the Muses, in Dramas, Vol. XIX.

Deland, Fla.: fi. 6. Painter Co., 1934.

________ . Lotus-eaters, in Dramas, Vol. XX. Deland, Fla.:

E. 0. fainter Co., 1934.

________ . Pan and the Nymphs, in Dramas, Vol. XX. Deland,

Flail E. 6. fainter Co., 1934.

________ . Pygmalion and Galatea, in Dramas, Vol. IV.

Delana, Fla.: E. 0. Painter 6o., 1934.

________ . Rivals on the Styx, in Dramas, Vol. XV. Deland,

Flail E. 0. Painter Co., 1934.

Jeffers, Robinson. At the Full of an A g e , in The Selected

Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. New York: Random
House, 1933.

________ . The Cretan Woman, in Hungerfield and Other Poems.

New York: Random House, 1954.

________ . The Tower Beyond Tragedy, in Roan Stallion, Tamar,

and Other £oems. New York: Boni and Liveright,
T9251-------------
________ . The Tower Beyond Tragedy, in Roan Stallion, Tamar,
and Other Poems. New York: The M o d e m Library,
T5T51
LeGallienne, Richard. Orestes. New York: Mitchell
Kinnerley, 1910.

Levy, Benn W. Cupid and Psyche. London: Victor Gollancz,

Ltd., 15521

________ . The Rape of the Belt, in Theatre Arts, XLVI

(March, l96l), 25-56.

Lister, Henry Bertram. Clytemnestra. San Francisco:

La Boheme Club, 1923•
________ . Hecuba. San Francisco: La Boheme Club, 1940.

. Medea. San Francisco: La Boheme Club, 1933.

 552

________ . Phaedra. San Francisco: La Boheme Club, 1934.

________ . Teiresias. San Francisco: La Boheme Club, 1931.

Lodge, George Cabot. Herakles. Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Co., 1908.

MacLeish, Archibald. The Trojan Horset in Collected Poems,

1917-1952. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1952.

Mather, Frank Jewett. Ulysses in Ithaca. New York: Henry

Holt & Co., 1 9 2 S T

Merrill, James. The Immortal Husband, in Playbook: Five

Plays for a New Theatre. Norfolk, Conn.: New
Directions, 1956.

Miller, Joseph William. Helen of Troy. Boston: Christopher

Publishing House, 1952.

Miller, Marion Mills. Return of Odysseus. Boston:

Stratford Co., 191?.

Moeller, Philip. Helena’s Husband, in Thirty Famous One-Act

Plays. Ed. Bennett Cerf. New York: Random House,
1943.

Montenegro, Carlotta. Alcestis. Boston: The Poet Lore

Co., 1909.

Moody, William Vaughn. Fire Bringer, in The Poems and Plays -

of William Vaughn Moody. Vol. I . Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1912.

Moore, Thomas Sturge. Medea, in Tragic Mothers. London:

Grant Richards, 1922.

________ . Niobe, in Tragic Mothers. London: Grant

Richards, 1922.

________ . Orpheus and Eurydice, in Fortnightly Review,

LXXXVI C1909), literary Supplement 1, 1-26.

Murray, G. Andromache. Portland, Maine: Thomas Bird

Mosher, 1913.

Oakden, E. C., and Sturt, Mary. The Play of the Luck of

Troy, in Pattern Plays. London: Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1921T.
 553

O'Neill, Eugene. Mourning Becomes Electra, in Three Plays

of Eugene O'NeillT New York: Vintage Books, n. d.

Phillips, Stephen. Ulysses. New York: The Macmillan Co.,

1902.

Rattigan, Terence. The Browning Version, in The Collected

Plays of Terence Rattigan, Vol. I I . London:
Hamlsh Hamilton, 1953.

Rexroth, Kenneth. Beyond the Mountains. New York: New

Directions, 1951.

________ . Phaedra, in Beyond the Mountains. New York:

New Directions, 1951.

Richardson, Jack. The Prodigal. New York: E. P. Dutton

& Co., Inc., l36ti.

Robinson, Edwin Arlington. Demos and Dionysus, in Theatre

Arts, IX (January, 1925), 32-42.

Rogers, Margaret Douglas. Echo and Narcissus. Pequa, Ohio:

Little Classics Press, 1924.

________ . Kiss of Aphrodite. Pequa, Ohio: Little Classics

Press, 1925.

Schutze, Martin. Hero and Leander. New York: Henry Holt

& Co., 190F:

Scudder, Antoinette. Rescue, in The World in a Matchbox.

New York: The Exposition tress, 1949.

________ . The Star and the Centaur, in The World in a

Matchbox. New York: The Exposition Press, 1549•

________ . A Woman's Victory, in The World in a Matchbox.

New York: The Exposition Press, 1949.
Smith, Jeanne Oliver Davidson. Seal of Hellas. Boston:
Sherman, French & Co., 1915.

Talbot, A. J. The Spartan Girl, in One-Act Plays of Today,

5th Series. Comp. J. W. Marriott. London: George
G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1931.

Thompson, Julian F. The Warrior's Husband, in The Appleton

Book of Short Inlays, 2nd Series. Ed. Nicholson
Kenyon. New Vork: D. Appleton & Co., 1927.
 554

Trevelyan, Robert Calvery. Bride of Dionysus, in The

Collected Works of R" C. Trevelyan,""Vol. ITT~
London: Longmans Green & Co., Ltd., 1939.

Turney, Robert. Daughters of Atreus. New York: Alfred

A. Knopf, 1936.

Van Winkle, Margaret. Ariadne. Oakland, Calif.:

Eucalyptus Press, 1937.

Wheelock, John Hall. Paris and Oenone, in Harvard Monthly,

XLIV (May, 1907), 142-50.

Wilder, Thornton. The Drunken Sisters, in The Atlantic,

CC (November, 1957), 92-95.

________ . Proserpina and the Devil, in The Angel that

Troubled The Waiers and Other Plays. New York:
Coward-McCann, Inc., 192ti.

Books

Aeschylus. Agamemnon, trans. Herbert Weir Smyth. Vol. II,

Aeschylus. Ed. Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1963.

Avery, Catherine B. (ed.). The New Century Classical Hand­

book. New York: Appleton-Ceniury-Crofts, Inc.,
1962 .
Baxter, K. M. Speak What We Peel: A Christian Looks at the
Contemporary Theatre" London: SCM Press Ltd., 1965.

Bentley, Eric. The Dramatic Event. New York: Horizon

Press, 1954.

________ . In Search of Theater. New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1953.

________ . The Playwright as Thinker. New York: Harcourt,

Brace and Co., 1946.

Bishop, John Peale. The Collected Essays of John Peale

Bishop. Ed. Edmund Wilson. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1948.

Bodkin, Maud. The Quest for Salvation in an Ancient and a

M o d e m Play7 London: Oxford tJniversity Press, 1541.
 555

Bush, Douglas. Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in

English Poeiry. New 'York: Pageant Book Co., 1957.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New

York: Pantheon Books, 1949.

Cargill, Oscar. Intellectual America. New York: The

Macmillan Co., 1941.

Carpenter, Frederick I. Eugene O'Neill. New York: Twayne

Publishers, Inc., 1964.

Robinson Jeffers. New York: Twayne Publishers,

---------- m c 7 7 T s s r . ----------

Cary, M. et al. (eds.). The Oxford Classical Dictionary.

Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 194-9.

Chapman, John. The Best Plays of 1950-51. New York:

Dodd, Mead and Co., 1951.

Chase, Richard V. Quest for Myth. Baton Rouge: Louisiana

State University Press, 1949.

Clark, Barrett H. European Theories of the Drama. Rev. ed.

New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 194-7.

Clark, Barrett H., and Preedley, George. A History of

M o d e m Drama. New York: D. Appleton-Centurv Co.,
Inc., 1947.

Clurman, Harold. Lies Like Truth. New York: Grove Press,

Inc., 1958.

Commager, Henry Steele. The American M i n d . New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1950.

Donoghue, Denis. The Third Voice. Princeton, N. J.:

Princeton University Press, 1959.

Eliot, T. S. Murder in the Cathedral. New York: Harcourt,

Brace and Co., 1935.

________ . Notes towards the Definition of Culture.

London: Paber and Paber, Ltd., 1948.

________ . Poetry and Drama. Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Harvard University Press, 1951.

Engel, Edwin A. The Haunted Heroes of Eugene O'Neill.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953.
 556

Euripides. Alcestis, trans. Richard Aldington. Vol. II,

The Complete Greek Drama. Ed. Whitney J. Oates and
Eugene O'Neill, Jr. New York: Random House, 1938.

Fairchild, Hoxie Neale. Religious Trends in English Poetry,

Vol. V; 1880-1920; Gods of a Changing Poetry.
New Yorks Columbia University Press, 1962.

Falk, Doris V. Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension.

New Brunswick, N. J.s Rutgers University Press, 1958.

Fergusson, Francis. The Human Image in Dramatic Literature.

"Anchor Books"; Garden City, tf. Y.s I)oubleday & Co.,
1957.

Gassner, John. The Theatre in Our Times. New Yorks Crown

Publishers, Inc., 1954.

Gayley, Charles Mills. The Classic Myths in English Litera-

ture and Art. New edition. New Yorks Ginn and
Co., 1939.

Gorelik, Mordecai. New Theatres for O l d . New Yorks E. P.

Dutton & Co., Inc., 1962.

Gregory, Horace, and Zaturenska, Marya. A History of

American Poetry, 1900-1940. New Yorks Earcourt,
Drace and Co., 194-2.

Henn, T. R. The Harvest of Tragedy. Londons Methuen &

Co., Ltd. j 1956.------

Highet, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition. "Galaxy Books";

New Yorks Oxford University Press, 1957.

Howarth, Herbert. Notes on Some Figures behind T. S. Eliot.

Bostons Houghton Mifflin Co., 1^64.

Hughes, Glenn. Imagism and the Imagistss A Study in

M o d e m Poetry. Stanfords Stanford University Press,
1931.
Jobes, Gertrude. Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and
Symbols. 3 vols. New Yorks The Scarecrow Press,
Inc., 1961.

Jones, David E. The Plays of I. S. Eliot. Torontos

University of Toronto Press, 196b.

Jung, C. G. Psychology of the Unconscious.

Unconsci' New Yorks
Dodd.., Mead ana Co., Inc., 1916.
 557

Kreymborg, Alfred. A History of American Poetry. New York:

Tudor Publishing Co., 1934.

Kronenberger, Louis (ed.). The Best Plays of 1959-60.

New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., I960.

The Best Plays of 1960-61. New York: Dodd

Mead and Co., 1961.

Langer, Susanne K. Philosophy in a New K e y . Cambridge,

M a s s .: Harvard University Press, 1957.

Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. New York: Prometheus

Press, I960.

LeComte, Edward S. Endymion in England; the Literary

History of a Greek M y t h . New York: King* s crown
Press, 104-4.

Lewis, Allan. The Contemporary Theatre. New York: Crown

Publishers, Inc., 1962.

Liddell, Henry George, and Scott, Robert (comps.). A Greek-

English Lexicon. 7th ed., rev. and aug. New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1883.

Lucy, Sean
>an. T. S. Eliot and the Idea of Tradition. New
York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., i 960 .

Lumley, Frederick. Trends in Twentieth Century Drama.

2d ed., rev. Pair Lawn, N1. J.: fissenxial Books,
1962.

McCollom, William G. Tragedy. New York: The Macmillan

Co., 1957.

Mantle, Burns (ed.). The Best Plays of 1931-32. New York:

Dodd, Mead and C o ., 1932.

_________. The Best Plays of 1936-37. New York: Dodd,

Mead and do., 1937.

Matthiessen, P. 0. The Achievement of T. S. Eliot. 3d ed.,

rev. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959-

. American Renaissance. London: Oxford University

Press, 1941.

Melchior e Walkers. London:

 558

Merezhkovshii, Dmitrii. The Secret of the W e s t . Trans.

W. A. White. New York: rfarcourt, Brace and Co.,
Inc., 1931.

Monroe, Harriet. Poets and Their A r t . New York: The

Macmillan Co., 1926.

Moorman, Charles. Arthurian Triptych: Mythic Materials

in Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and T. S. Eliot.
Berkeley: University of California Press, I960.

Muller, Herbert J. The Spirit of Tragedy. New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 195 6 .

Myers, Henry Alonzo. Tragedy: A View of Life. Ithaca,

New York: Cornell University Press, 1956.

Nathan, George Jean. The Theatre Book of the Year; 194-9-

1950. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 195C.

________ . The Theatre Book of the Year; 1950-1951. New

Yorks! Alfred A. Knopf, 1951.

Nicoll, Allardyce. The Theatre and Dramatic Theory. New

York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1962.

Norton, Dan S., and Rushton, Peters. Classical Myths in

English Literature. New York: Holi, Rinehart and
Winston, 1952.

Nyren, Dorothy (comp.). A Library of Literary Criticism:

M o d e m American Literature. New York: Frederick
tJngar Publishing Co., i960.

O'Hara, Prank Hurburt. Today in American Drama. Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press, 1939.

Olson, Elder. Tragedy and the Theory of Drama. Detroit:

Wayne State University Press, l96l.

Peacock, Ronald. The Poet in the Theatre. New York:

Hill and Wang, 1946. :

Powell, Lawrence Clark. Robinson Jeffers: The Man and

his Work. Pasadena, Calif.: San Pasqual fress,

Power, Sister Mary James. Poets at Prayer. New York:

Sheed and Ward, 193'B'I

Price, Julia S. The Off-Broadway Theater. New York: The

Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1962.
 559

Rank, Otto. The Myth of the Birth of the H e r o . New York:

Robert Brunner, fubls., 1952.

Rexroth, Kenneth. The Dragon and the Unicorn. Norfolk,

Conn.: New Directions, 1952.

Riding, Laura, and Graves, Robert. A Survey of Modernist

Poetry. London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 192$.

Rose, H. J. Gods and Heroes of the Greeks. London:

Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1957.

A Handbook of Greek Mythology. New York: E. P.

"Dutton and Co., inc., 1959.

Schwab, Gustav. Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of

Ancient Greece. New York: Pantheon Books, I n c ..
I v w . -----------

Scott, Nathan A., Jr. Rehearsals of Discomposure. New York:

Columbia University tress, 1952.

Selden, Samuel. Man in His Theatre. Chapel Hill: The

University of North Carolina Press, 1957.

Skinner, Richard Dana. Eugene O'Neill: A Poet's Quest.

New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1935.

Smith, Carol H. T. S. Eliot's Dramatic Theory and Practice.

Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 19^3.

Smith, Grover, Jr. T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A

Study in Sources and Meaning. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press7 1956.

Smith, William. A Classical Dictionary of Biography,

Mythology, and Geography. London: John Murray,
1883.
________ . A Smaller Classical Dictionary of Biography,
Mythology, and Geography. New York: 1). Applexon
and C o .7 1866.

Squires, Radcliffe. The Loyalties of Robinson Jeffers.

Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1956.

Steiner, George. The Death of Tragedy. New York: Hill

and Wang, 1$61.

Styan, J. L. The Dark Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge

University £ress, 1962.
 560

________ . The Elements of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, I960.

Swann, Thomas Burnett. The Classical World of H. D.

Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska, 1962.

Thompson, Alan Reynolds. The Anatomy of Drama. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 194-6.

Tynan, Kenneth. Curtains. New York: Atheneum, 1961.

Untermeyer, Louis. American Poetry Since 1900. New York:

Henry Holt and Co., 1923.

________ . Modern American Poetry. 6th ed., rev. New

YorE: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1942.

Weales, Gerald. American Drama Since World War I I . New

York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1^62.

________ . Religion in Modern English Drama. Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961.

Wellwarth, George. The Theater of Protest and Paradox.

New York: New York University Press, 1$64.

Wilder, Amos N. The Spiritual Aspects of the New Poetry.

New York: Harper and Brothers Pubis., 1940.

Williams, Raymond. Drama from Ibsen to Eliot. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1953.

Winters, Yvor. Primitivism and Decadence. New York:

Arrow Editions, 1937.

Winther, Sophus Keith. Eugene O'Neill: A Critical Study.

New York: Russell & Russell, i96l.

Articles

Aldington, Richard. "A Young American Poet," The Little

Review Anthology, ed. Margaret Anderson, pp. 24-28.
New York: Hermitage House, Inc., 1953.

Alexander, Doris M. "Psychological Pate in Mourning Becomes

Electra," PMLA, LXVIII (December, 1953), 923-34.

Arrowsmith, William. "The Comedy of T. S. Eliot," Modern

Drama: Essays in Criticism, eds. Travis Bogard and
William Oliver, pp. 134-51. "Galaxy Books"; New
York: Oxford University Press, 1965.
________ . "English Verse Drama (II): The Cocktail Party,"
Hudson Review, III (Autumn, 1950), 411-30.

Atkinson, Brooks. "At the Theatre," New York Times,

January 23, 1950, as reprinted in New Y o r k T h e a t r e
Critics* Reviews, 1950, January 30, 1950, p. 378.

Auden, W. H. "Foreword: Brand Versus Peer," in Henrik

Ihsen, Brand, trans. Michael Meyer, pp. 23-40.
"Anchor Books"; Garden City, New York: Doubleday
& Co., Inc., I960.

Barber, C. L. "Strange Gods at T. S. Eliot's 'The Family

Reunion,'" T. S. Eliot: A Selected Critique, ed.
Leonard Unger, pp. 415-43. New York: Rinehart and
Co., Inc., 1948.

Barnes, Howard. "Modern Morality Play," New York Herald

Tribune, January 23, 1950, as reprinted in New "York
Theatre Critics' Reviews, 1950, January 30, 1950,
p. 377.

Barrett, William. "Dry Land, Dry Martini," Partisan Review

XVII (April, 1950), 354-59.

Benet, William Rose. "From Pieria to Mediocria," The Out­

look, December 30, 1925, pp. 674-75.

Bentley, Eric. "Theatre," The New Republic, August 9»

1954, p. 22.

Beyer, William H. "The State of the Theatre: ANTA Storms

Broadway," School and Society, December 23, 1950,
pp. 416-21.

________ . "The State of the Theatre: Seasonal High

Lights," School and Society, September 16, 1950,
pp. 180-8T^

Blackmure, R. P. "The Lesser Satisfactions," Poetry, XLI

(November, 1932), 94-100.

Brandt, G. W. "Realism and Parables: From Brecht to Auden

Contemporary Theatre. "Stratford-upon-Avon Studies
Ifo. 4, pp. 33-56; New York: St. Martin's Press,
1962.
Braybrooke, Neville. "Introduction," T. S. Eliot: A Sym­
posium for His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Neville
Braybrooke, pp. 9-23. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Cudahy, 1958.
 562

"Briefly Noted," The New Yorker, May 8, 1954, pp. 141-48.

Brown, John Mason. "Honorable Intentions," The Saturday

Review of Literature, February 4, 1950, pp. 28-30.

Browne, E. Martin. "The Dramatic Verse of T. S. Eliot,"

T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, eds. Richard March and
Tambimuttu, pp. 196-207. London; PL Editions
Poetry London, Ltd., 1948.

________ . "Prom The Rook to The Confidential Clerk,"

T. S. Eliot: A Symposium for His Seventieth Birth­
day, ed. Neville Braybrooke, pp. 57-69. New Yorks
Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1958.

Canby, Henry Seidel. "Scarlet Becomes Crimson," The Saturday

Review of Literature, November 7, 1931, pp. 257-5b.

Carroll, Joseph. "Not with a Bang but a Whimper," Theatre

Arts, XXXVII (February, 1953), 12-13, 94-95.

Carruth, Hayden. "Verse-Dramas," The Nation, April 7, 1951.

pp. 328-29.

Chapman, John. "'Cocktail Party' a Masterpiece; Cast Gives

Superb Performance," Daily News (New York), January
23, 1950, as reprinted in New York Theatre Critics'
Reviews. 1950. January 30, 1950, p. 377.

Chase, Richard. "Myth Revisited." Partisan Review, XVII

(November-December, 1950;, 885-91.

"The Study of Myth," The Nation, December 4,

1948, pp. 635-38.

Chatfield-Taylor, Otis. "The Latest Plays," Outlook and

Independent, November 11, 1931, p. 34TI

Clark, Barrett H. "Aeschylus and O'Neill," The English

Journal, XXI (November, 1932), 699-710.

Clurman, Harold. "Theatre," The Nation. November 8, 1958,

pp. 346-47.

________ . "Theatre," The Nation, March 5, I960, pp. 213-14.

"Theatre: Cocktail Poetry," The New Republic,

February 13, 1950, pp. 30-31.

________ . "Theatre: From the Sublime to the Enjoyable,"

The New Republic, January 8, 1951, p. 22.
 563

"'The Cocktail Party,"' Life, September 26, 194-9* pp. 16-23.

Coleman, Robert. "Eliot's Pine 'Cocktail Party' Goes Right

to the Head," Daily Mirror (New York), January 23,
1950, as reprinted in New York Theatre Critics'
Reviews, 1950, January 30, 1950, p. 379*

Conrad, Sherman. "T. S. Eliot's New Play," The Saturday

Review of Literature, April 1, 1939* p. 12.

Corbin, John. "O'Neill and Aeschylus," Essay Annual: 1933*

pp. 159-70. Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Co., 1933.

Deutsch, Babette. "T. S. Eliot and the Laodiceans," The

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Hayes, Richard. "Two Masterpieces," The Commonweal,

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Kemelman, H. G. "Eugene O'Neill and the Highbrow Melodrama,"

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Unpublished Material

Burian, Jarka Marsano. "A Study of Twentieth-Century

Adaptations of the Greek Atreidae Dramas." Unpub­
lished Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1955.

Corrigan, Robert Willoughby. "The 'Electra' Theme in the

History of Drama.1* Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Minnesota, 1955.

Heiney, Donald W. "Elements of Greek Mythology in Twentieth-

Century French and German Drama." Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Southern California,
1952.

Leefmans, Bert Mallet-Prevost. "Modern Tragedy: Five

Adaptations of Oresteia and Oedipus the K i n g ."
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University,
1953.
McFeeters, Mary Frances. "The Use of Greek Mythology in the
French Theater from 1918 to 1948." Unpublished Ph.D,
dissertation, Syracuse University, 1954.

Mayleas, Ruth. Director, National Theatre Service, American

National Theatre and Academy. New York City, July
10, 1964.
 572

Mickel, Jere C. "Amphitryon: A Study in the Techniques

of Comedy." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Denver, 1949.

Squires James Radcliffe. "Robinson Jeffers and the

Doctrine of Inhumanism." Unpublished Ph.D. disser­
tation, Harvard University, 1952.

Wilder, Isabel. Personal letter, Hamden, Conn., July 28,

1965.
 VITA

Name: Philip Hunt Decker

Place of birth: Lakewood, Ohio

Date of births April 19, 1932

Colleges and Degrees: B. A. - Knox College - 1954

M. A. - Northwestern University - 1955

Publications: Baker, Roberta H., Decker, Philip, Gade, Nancy

E., and Reinhardt, Paul D. "An Annotated
Bibliography of Sources for Period Patterns,"
Educational Theatre Journal, XIV (March, 1962),
W t t ----------------------

573