No More Learning

The son is an exile, bred in the desperate hopes and wild schemes of
exile; he is a prince without a kingdom, always dreaming of his wrongs and
his restoration; and driven by the old savage doctrine, which an oracle
has confirmed, of the duty and manliness of revenge. He is, as was shown
by his later history, a man subject to overpowering impulses and to fits
of will-less brooding. Lastly, he is very young, and is swept away by his
sister's intenser nature.

That sister is the central figure of the tragedy. A woman shattered in
childhood by the shock of an experience too terrible for a girl to bear; a
poisoned and a haunted woman, eating her heart in ceaseless broodings of
hate and love, alike unsatisfied--hate against her mother and stepfather,
love for her dead father and her brother in exile; a woman who has known
luxury and state, and cares much for them; who is intolerant of poverty,
and who feels her youth passing away. And meantime there is her name, on
which all legend, if I am not mistaken, insists; she is _A-lektra_, "the
Unmated. "

There is, perhaps, no woman's character in the range of Greek tragedy so
profoundly studied. Not Aeschylus' Clytemnestra, not Phaedra nor Medea.
One's thoughts can only wander towards two great heroines of "lost" plays,
Althaea in the _Meleager_, and Stheneboea in the _Bellerophon_.

G. M.

[Footnote 1: Most of this introduction is reprinted, by the kind
permission of the Editors, from an article in the _Independent Review_
vol. i. No. 4.
]




ELECTRA




CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY


CLYTEMNESTRA, _Queen of Argos and Mycenae; widow of Agamemnon_.

ELECTRA, _daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra_.

ORESTES, _son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, now in banishment_.

A PEASANT, _husband of Electra_.

AN OLD MAN, _formerly servant to Agamemnon_.

PYLADES, _son of Strophios, King of Phocis; friend to Orestes_.

AEGISTHUS, _usurping King of Argos and Mycenae, now husband of
Clytemnestra_.

The Heroes CASTOR and POLYDEUCES.

CHORUS of Argive Women, with their LEADER.

FOLLOWERS of ORESTES; HANDMAIDS of CLYTEMNESTRA.

_The Scene is laid in the mountains of Argos. The play was first produced
between the years_ 414 _and_ 412 B. C.




ELECTRA


_The scene represents a hut on a desolate mountain side; the river Inachus
is visible in the distance. The time is the dusk of early dawn, before
sunrise. The_ PEASANT _is discovered in front of the hut_.