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Updated: May 2, 2025
In the morning Penthesilea sprang up from sleep and put on her glorious armour, with spear in hand, and sword at side, and bow and quiver hung behind her back, and her great shield covering her side from neck to stirrup, and mounted her horse, and galloped to the plain. Beside her charged the twelve maidens of her bodyguard, and all the company of Hector's brothers and kinsfolk.
The battle is vividly depicted: Achilles caught on a high ledge with his war-chariot; the Amazon Queen storming the height from below. The full scene is witnessed from the stage, Penthesilea pursuing almost alone; Achilles suddenly dodges; the Queen as quickly halts and rears her horse; the Amazons fall in a mingled heap; Achilles escapes, though wounded.
The slowly moving action, constantly reverting to past incidents, makes a successful performance difficult; the fate of this work on the stage has depended upon finding an actor capable of bringing out all the possibilities in the part of Adam, who is a masterpiece of comic self-characterization. Penthesilea is a work apart.
Iron Age, the second part; a History containing the Death of Penthesilea, Paris, Priam, and Hecuba: the burning of Troy, the Deaths of Agamemnon, Menelaus, Clytemnestra, Helena, Orestes, Egistus, Pylades, King Diomede, Pyrrhus, Cethus, Synon, Thersetus, 1632, which part is addressed to the author's much respected friend Thomas Manwaring, Esq; for the plot of both parts, see Homer, Virgil, Dares Phrygius; for the Episodes, Ovid's Epistles, Metamorph, Lucian's Dialogues, &c.
"It is indubitably very natural that your ladyship should be downcast at the mention of military preparations, whilk I have observed to spread perturbation among women of all nations, and almost all conditions. Nevertheless, Penthesilea, in ancient times, and also Joan of Arc, and others, were of a different kidney.
Penthesilea recoils from the spell and dashes again into her ambiguous warfare. For once Greeks and Trojans are forced to fight in common defence. "The raging Queen with blows of thunder struck As she would cleave the whole race of the Greeks Down to its roots.... "More of the captives did she take Than she did leave us eyes to count the list, Or arms to set them free again.
When Memnon came, Priam gave him a great cup of gold, full of wine to the brim, and Memnon drank the wine at one draught. But he did not make great boasts of what he could do, like poor Penthesilea, "for," said he, "whether I am a good man at arms will be known in battle, where the strength of men is tried.
Our English Penthesilea no sooner saw this Turkish leader drop, than, struck with the magnificence of his own and horse's trappings, she sprung forward to seize them as her prize, and found the aga not dead, though in a good measure disabled by his misfortune, which was entirely owing to the weight of his horse, that, having been killed by a musket-ball, lay upon his leg, so that he could not disengage himself.
But around her are her chosen comrades, maiden Larina, Tulla, Tarpeia brandishing an axe inlaid with bronze, girls of Italy, whom Camilla the bright chose for her own escort, good at service in peace and war: even as Thracian Amazons when the streams of Thermodon clash beneath them as they go to war in painted arms, whether around Hippolyte, or while martial Penthesilea returns in her chariot, and the crescent-shielded columns of women dance with loud confused cry.
The last products of his muse show that this well-meant advice was bad. He ought to go back to reporting." An orchestral society in Vienna gave Wolf's Penthesilea a trial reading; and it was rehearsed, in disregard of all good taste, amid shouts of laughter.
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