Clytaemnestra

“ Here the Central Door of the Stage is thrown open, and enter Clytaemnestra to welcome her lord, followed by attendants bearing rich draperies of purple and dazzling colors. {827}
Clyt. Notwithstanding your presence, Senators of Argos, I must pour out my heart to my lord. Ah! a sad thing is a wife waiting at home for her absent husband! hearing of wounds, which if true would have made you a riddled net, of deaths enough for a three-lived Geryon: again and again I have been stopped with the noose already on my neck! ”

“ It is true that Pylades was absent from the actual slaying of Clytaemnestra, but a short time previously he was present at the death of Aegisthus, [31] although he took no actual part in the slaying. From the standpoint of historical Attic law, he was therefore as guilty (or as innocent) as Orestes and Electra were. Hence this decree of Castor and Pollux must be interpreted prophetically; they are speaking of the future, which, as gods, they foresee. Therefore they regard the exile of Electra as temporary and her guilt as that of extenuated matricide. ”

“ The bare ground is not fit for the foot that has trampled on Ilion: strew (to Attendants) tapestry on the floor as the Conqueror steps from his car. The Attendants commence to lay down the draperies: Agamemnon (hastening to stop them) rebukes Clytaemnestra for the excessive tone of her welcome, and bids her not make him offensive to the Gods, by assuming an honor fit for the Gods alone, no man being safe in prosperity till he has died; fame, not foot-mats, and never to lose the path of Wisdom, are his glories. ”

“ For one thing, he represents Agamemnon, the nominal hero of the play, as rather wooden, weak and bombastic—not very unlike Julius Caesar, the nominal hero of Shakespeare’s play, where the dramatist had a similar but less difficult problem. The result is that the sympathies of the reader are not too deeply stirred in favour of the victim. Again, Clytaemnestra appears to be really in love with Aegisthus, while her feeling towards her husband is not merely the thirst for revenge or the hate a woman conceives of the man she has wronged; it is a physical abhorrence. She loathes him in her flesh. ”

“ Will you not be silent and let me perform my rites without disorder?—Elec. Now I am silent (Retires) .—Clyt. then proceeds to offer her gifts to Phoebus, with prayer to avert the ill omen of the past night: as her prayer "is not amongst friends," she can allude but darkly to all she means, but He is a God and will understand all she leaves unsaid. {659}
Enter by the Distance-door Attendant of Orestes.
Enquiring of Chorus he finds he is arrived before the people he is seeking, and announces to Clytaemnestra that Orestes is dead. Electra utters a wail of agony, while Clyt. asks for particulars. ”

“ As in her speeches in the Agamemnon (vv. 595, 884) , Clytæmestra's words here also are full of significant ambiguity. The “things that befit the house,” the proposed conference with Ægisthos, her separation of Orestes from his companions, are all indications of suspicion already half aroused. The last three lines were probably spoken as an “aside.”
442. Suasion is personified, and invoked to come and win Clytæmnestra to trust herself in the power of the two avengers.
443. An alternative rendering is,
“Nay, say not that to him with show of hate.” ”

“ The solidity of Clytemnestra's character is impressed upon us with a force and a reality of presentation that have never been surpassed. She maintains the same aplomb, the same cold glittering energy of speech, the same presence of mind and unswerving firmness of nerve, whether she bandies words of bitter irony with the Chorus, or ceremoniously receives the king, or curls the lip of scorn at Cassandra, or defies the Argives after Agamemnon's death. She loves power, and despises show. ”

“ Clytemnestra prays to Apollo to avert the omen of her dream, her prayer seemingly being answered immediately by the entry of the old tutor who comes to inform her of the death of Orestes, killed at Delphi in a chariot race which he brilliantly describes. Torn by her emotions, Clytemnestra can be neither glad nor sorry.
"Shall I call this happy news, or dreadful but profitable? Hapless am I, if I save my life at the cost of my own miseries. Strong is the tie of motherhood; no parent hates a child even if outraged by him. Yet, now that he is gone, I shall have rest and peace from his threats." ”

“ No, I did but wrong ye ... a tear trembles on that eyelash, a smile flickers upon that lip! I am pardoned. Clytemnestra—wife, embrace me ... we both have much to forgive!'
This speech (which was not unlike some he had heard in thrilling dramas at the 'Hæmabronteion,' Corinth, where the prophetess Cassandra had been greatly admired in her impersonations of persecuted and distracted heroines) touched Clytemnestra's heart, in which, hard as it was, there was a strain of sentiment—and she fell sobbing into her husband's arms. ”

“ The conversation which ordinarily fills up such intervals in the performance can hardly find place now, for all minds have been oppressed with a weight of awe which does not easily pass away. A confused mass of giant forms and deeds of blood is before our eyes, and mingled tones of triumph and despair are still ringing in our ears. But gradually, as we gaze, the several parts sink back into due proportion, and gradually there comes out into distinctness the supremely great figure of Clytemnestra. ”

“ Clytemnestra, though she appears only for two short scenes, preserves still the almost superhuman grandeur which was hers in the Agamemnon, Her simplest word has power to arrest the attention; and while she is present other people seem small and their emotions ordinary. Her own emotions lie deep and complex, fold behind fold. It is shallow to dismiss her as a hypocrite, feigning grief at the death of the son whom she fears. ”

“ It leaves one very little to add, but I cannot help saying that I think the management of Clytemnestra especially admirable throughout. She loves Aegisthus with the fatal passion which no scorn or cruelty on his part can quench; but while he is in power and triumphant, her heart turns tenderly to her hapless children, whom she abhors as soon as his calamity comes; then she has no thought but to save him. She can join her children in hating the murder which she has herself done on Agamemnon, but she cannot avenge it on Aegisthus, and thus expiate her crime in their eyes. ”

“ There is no groaning in her last life-struggle. She dies, as she lived, self-sustained and equal to all emergencies. This terrible personality endures even in the grave. When she rises in the Eumenides, a ghost from Hades, it is with bitter taunts and a most biting tongue that she stirs up the Furies to revenge. If we are to seek a parallel for Clytemnestra in our own dramatic literature, I should be inclined to look for it in the Vittoria Corrombona of Webster. The modern poet has not developed his [Pg 394] "white devil of Italy" with the care that Æschylus bestowed on Clytemnestra. ”

“ Clytemnestra never breaks down. Her sin feeds and nourishes her nature, instead of starving and palsying it; her soul grows fat and prospers, nor does she know what conscience means. She is never more imposing in her pride of intellectual strength than when she receives the feigned news of Orestes' death. Just as the superior nature of Lady Macbeth is enhanced by contrast with her weaker husband, so Clytemnestra appears to the greatest advantage by the side of Ægisthus. Ægisthus in the last scene of the Agamemnon brags and blusters ”

“ Clytemnestra.
To kill thy mother, Child: is that thy will?
Orestes.
I kill thee not: thyself it is doth kill.
Clytemnestra.
A mother hath her Watchers: think and quail!
Orestes.
How shall I 'scape my Father's if I fail?
Clytemnestra (to herself) .
Living, I cry for mercy to a tomb!
Orestes.
Yea, from the grave my father speaks thy doom.
Clytemnestra.
Ah God! The serpent that I bare and fed!
Orestes.
Surely of truth prophetic is the dread
That walketh among dreams. Most sinfully
Thou slewest: now hath Sin her will of thee. ”

“ The scene opens, disclosing Clytemnestra, who comes forward. The body of Agamemnon lies, muffled in a long robe, within a silver-sided laver; the corpse of Cassandra is laid beside him.
Clytemnestra.
Ho, ye who heard me speak so long and oft
The glozing word that led me to my will—
Hear how I shrink not to unsay it all!
How else should one who willeth to requite
Evil for evil to an enemy
Disguised as friend, weave the mesh straitly round him,
Not to be overleaped, a net of doom. ”

“ When Aigisthos appears, and the scene suddenly becomes filled with the wrangling of common men, Clytemnestra fades into a long silence, from which she only emerges at the very end of the drama to pray again for Peace, and, strangest of all, to utter the entreaty: "Let us not stain ourselves with blood!" ”

“ Clytemnestra!" Agamemnon could not be got to show in his classical tunic, but stood in the background with Aegisthus and others of the performers of the little play. Mr. Bedwin Sands led on Zuleikah and Clytemnestra. A great personage insisted on being presented to the charming Clytemnestra. "Heigh ha? Run him through the body. Marry somebody else, hay?" was the apposite remark made by His Royal Highness.
"Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was quite killing in the part," said Lord Steyne. Becky laughed, gay and saucy looking, and swept the prettiest little curtsey ever seen. ”

“ The chorus receives Clytemnestra's news with joy and prepares to sing praises to the gods, as the queen with her train leaves the stage.
First episode.—Clytemnestra, conscious of guilt, and fearing that her returning husband will severely punish her on account of her adulterous life with Aegisthus, resolves to add crime to crime and murder Agamemnon as soon as he comes back to his home. She is further impelled to this action by his conduct in the matter of her daughter, Iphigenia, and by his own unfaithfulness to her during his long absence. ”

“ Of all things, as many as have life and intellect, we women are the most wretched race ; we must first purchase a husband with excess of money, then receive him as our lord," is the bitter protest of the wronged Medea, and the key-note to her tragical destiny. Clytemnestra says that she has always been trained to obey, but she towers far above her warrior husband in force as in crime. She resents his unfaithfulness; she does not forgive him for the inhuman sacrifice of their innocent daughter ”

“ Thou reck'st not of a Mother's Curse, my child?
Orestes.
Not hers who cast me out into the wild.
Clytemnestra.
Cast out? I sent thee to a war-friend's Hall.
Orestes.
A free man's heir, ye sold me like a thrall.
Clytemnestra.
If thou wast sold, where is the price I got?
Orestes.
The price! . . . For very shame I speak it not.
Clytemnestra.
Speak. But tell, too, thy father's harlotries.
Orestes.
Judge not the toiler, thou who sitt'st at ease!
Clytemnestra.
A woman starves with no man near, my son.
Orestes.
Her man's toil wins her bread when he is gone. ”

“ The great difference of the dramatic management lies in the recognition; and the lock of hair, of which so important a use is made in the one, is barely mentioned in the other. Another character is besides introduced, Chrysothemis, the sister of Electra, a woman of a gentle and timid mind, subdued by the tyranny of her mother and Ægysthus, and well contrasted with Electra. Clytemnestra, who in the play of Æschylus seldom appears till the scene of her own assassination, is here much on the stage, and, by the bitterness of unmerited reproach, exasperates the haughty spirit of Electra. ”

“ She, on her part, is surprised at a modesty so uncommon in young men. The old slave, the same whom Menelaus so roughly handles at the opening of the drama, now comes forward and unfolds the mystery. Clytemnestra sues to the captain of the Myrmidons for protection against the cruel "black-bearded kings:" he is highly incensed at having been made a cat's-paw of by Agamemnon, Calchas the seer, and the crafty Ulysses, and promises to do all in his power to rescue Iphigenia from her fearful doom, even at any risk to himself from his impatient soldiers. ”

“ This was when the beacons had announced the fall of Troy, and before the entry of Agamemnon.
Clytemnestra is not like Gertrude, but a much grander and more tragical figure. Shakespeare leaves you in no doubt as to his queen's relation to Claudius; he enlarges on their guilty passion ad lib. Aeschylus never mentions love at all in any of his extant plays; only barely hints at it here. It may be supposed to exist; it is an accessory motive; it lends irony to Clytemnestra's welcome to Agamemnon—in which only the audience and the Chorus are aware that the lady does protest too much. ”

“ The last act ends with the reconciliation of Athena and the Furies; and the latter receive a shrine and worship at Athens, and promise favour and prosperity to the great city. The scope for human drama seems deliberately restricted, if not closed, by such a story so handled. Nevertheless, as a fact, the growth of characterization is, in spite of all, not only visible but remarkable. Clytemnestra is one of the most powerfully presented characters of the Greek drama. ”