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Updated: June 12, 2025
The Clytemnestra glance came into Miss Willoughby's grey eyes for a moment, but she was not to be put out of humour. 'To be here as a kinswoman, and an historian, with a maid fancy me with a maid! and everything handsome about me, is sufficiently excellent for me, Mr. Logan; and if it were otherwise, do you disapprove of the proceedings of your own Society?
The poverty of Electra, the more certain identification of Orestes by a scar than by a lock of hair, the mention of Cassandra as the real motive for the murder of Agamemnon all indicate that Euripides was not content with the accepted legend. His Clytemnestra is a feeble creation even by the side of that of Sophocles.
The middle entrance opens, and discloses in the interior of the palace a body lying on the bed, but closely covered over: Orestes stands beside the body, and invites Aegisthus to uncover it; he suddenly beholds the bloody corpse of Clytemnestra, and concludes himself lost and without hope. He requests to be allowed to speak, but this is prevented by Electra.
The vague horror which in the commencement of the play prepares us for the catastrophe by the dream of Clytemnestra how a serpent lay in swaddling-clothes like an infant, and she placed it in her breast, and it drew blood; the brief and solemn answer of Orestes "Man's visions never come to him in vain;"
She advises her to use good counsel, then departs to pour on Agamemnon's tomb some libations which Clytemnestra offers in consequence of a dream. The Queen finds Electra ranging abroad as usual in the absence of Aegisthus. She defends the murder of her husband, but is easily refuted by Electra who points out that, if it is right to exact a life for a life, she ought to suffer death herself.
Clytemnestra calls upon Iphigenia to thrust her betrayer from her bosom, and Iphigenia replies so heroically that it seems as though Agamemnon's plot to save his daughter's life might actually succeed. Unfortunately Achilles himself appears, and, after a scene of reproach and recrimination, succeeds in dispelling Iphigenia's doubts and winning her to complete reconciliation.
Even the formal elevation of women to positions of authority is not uncommon. “There is nothing,” says Homer, “better and nobler than when husband and wife, being of one mind, rule a household. Penelope and Clytemnestra were left in charge of the realms of their husbands during their absence in Troy; the beautiful Chloris ruled as queen in Pylos.
"But," answered the man, "you must have an 'Armande' for Les Femmes Savantes, an 'Agememnon' and a 'Clytemnestra' for Iphygenia." "But we did not know that," stammered Madame Darbois. The official smiled and assumed still more importance. "Wait just a moment, ladies." Soon he returned, leading a tall, young girl with a dignified bearing, and a young man of evident refinement. "Here is Mlle.
Hereupon enters Clytemnestra, and in a speech of rhetorical exaggeration tells of her anxious waiting for her lord and her inexpressible joy at his return. In conclusion she directs that purple cloth be spread upon his path that he may enter the house as befits a conqueror. After a show of resistance, Agamemnon yields the point, and the contrast at which the dramatist aims is achieved.
"Even such I saw their sisters, one swan white, The little Helen, and less fair than she, Fair Clytemnestra, grave as pasturing fawns, Who feed and fear the arrow; but at whiles, As one smitten with love or wrung with joy, She laughs and lightens with her eyes, and then Weeps; whereat Helen, having laughed, weeps too, And the other chides her, and she being chid speaks naught, But cheeks and lips and eyelids kisses her, Laughing; so fare they, as in their blameless bud, And full of unblown life, the blood of gods."
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