No More Learning

During the long rigours of a cruel prison,
I never called on your immortal person. 1070
Eager for the help I expect from your care,
For this greater need I retained my prayer.
Today I beg you, avenge an unhappy father.
I now abandon a traitor to your anger.
Drown his outrageous desires in his own blood. 1075
Theseus by your fury measures his own good.

Hippolyte

Phaedra accuse Hippolytus of a guilty passion!
Such excess of horror renders my spirit numb:
So many unforeseen blows together rain on me
They stifle my words, and rob me of my speech. 1080

Theseus

Traitor, you imagined that in cowardly silence
Phaedra would bury all your brutish insolence.
You should never have dropped your sword as you fled
Which, left in her hands, condemns you instead:
Or rather in order to complete your treachery, 1085
You should have robbed her of life and speech.

Hippolyte

Rightly indignant at such a dark deceit,
My Lord, I should allow the truth to speak.
But I'll suppress a secret that touches you.
Respect closes my lips: which you should approve. 1090
And without wishing you to increase your pain
Reflect on my life, and think who I am, again.
Crime of sorts ever precedes some greater crime.
Whoever crosses lawful boundaries, in time
Violates the most sacred rights with impunity: 1095
As well as virtue, crime too has its degrees,
And no one has ever seen shy innocence
Suddenly transform itself to extreme licence.
A single day can't make a man who's virtuous
A treacherous assassin: cowardly, incestuous. 1100
Nurtured in the womb of a chaste heroine,
I've never betrayed my blood, and my origin.
Pittheus, accounted wise amongst all men,
Deigned to instruct me when I left her hands.
I do not seek to present myself to advantage: 1105
But if any virtue fell to my share by parentage,
My Lord, I've shown hatred above all I believe
For the errors that men dared to impute to me.
Throughout Greece they know this of Hippolytus,
That I've carried virtue to the point of rudeness. 1110
They know the inflexible rigour of my sadness.
The daylight is not so pure as my heart's depths.
Yet they say Hippolytus, drunk with base desire. . .

Theseus

Yes, you're condemned for that same cowardly pride.
I can see the shameful reason for your coldness. 1115
Phaedra alone bewitched your lustful senses.
And for every other object your soul, indifferent,
Disdained to burn with any flame so innocent.

Hippolytus

No, father, this heart - a truth too great to hide -
Has never disdained to burn with chaste desire.