_Chorus now changing to Blank Verse_. We meant well, but do as you
will, we will follow you.--_Elec._ I am indeed ashamed; but remember
the trouble I am in: to be hated by my mother, house-mate with my
father's murderers; with Aegisthus sitting on my father's throne by day
and pouring libations on the hearth he violated; my mother not living
in fear of the Erinnys, but making a red-letter day of the day my
father died: I, alas! keep his birth day in solitary feast. I am
bitterly chidden when caught weeping, and threatened when news comes of
Orestes: all hope is far.--Aegisthus is from home, or she dared not
have indulged her grief even thus far. {327}
_Enter her sister, Chrysothemis, bearing funeral offerings_. She
remonstrates with Electra for uselessly wailing, instead of adapting
herself to her fate.--_Elec._ retorts that she has learned her lesson
by rote. She advises to hate when there is strength to back hatred,
yet she will not join in working revenge.--_Electra_ covets not her
choice of ease and wealth, and to be called her mother's child, while
it is open to her to be her father's!--_Cho._ moderates: each may learn
something from the other.--_Chrysoth._ is accustomed to Electra's want
of charity and would not now have accosted her except to warn her of
new evils: they mean to get her out of the country and shut up in a
dungeon where she shall never see the light of day.--A rapid
stichomuthic dialogue follows as to temporizing and resisting, and then
_Chrys._ is going to do her errand.--_Elec._ enquires what this is, and
learns that Clytaemnestra, disturbed by a dream, is sending
propitiatory libations.
A rumor ran {417}
That she had seen our father's presence come
(Yes, thine and mine) a second time to light,
And then that he upon the hearth stood up,
And took the sceptre which he bore of old,
Which now Aegisthus bears, and fixed it there,
And from it sprang a sucker fresh and strong,
And all Mycenae rested in its shade.
This tale I heard from some one who was near
When she declared her vision to the Sun;
But more than this I heard not, save that she
Now sends me hither through that fright of hers.
Electra catching a gleam of hope, adjures her to disobey, and in place
of Clytaemnestra's offerings to put on the tomb their own: Electra's
own withered lock and untrimmed girdle; and instead of propitiatory
prayer pray to send Orestes.--_Cho._ approves and _Chrysothemis_
catches the spirit and _exit_. {471}