_The Scene is in front of a Peasant's Cottage: the Centre is the door
of the Cottage, the scene on the two sides of it represents the ways to
fields and to the river. Time: early Morning, the stars still shining._
_Enter from the Cottage the Peasant on his way to his day's work_. In
the form of a Morning Prayer to the stream Inachus, he makes known the
situation of affairs, the murder of Agamemnon, etc.--and in particular
how Aegisthus, fearing lest some nobleman might marry Electra and be
her avenger, had forced her into wedlock with himself, a peasant,
honest but in the lowest poverty. But he is too good a friend to his
master's house and to the absent Orestes to wrong Electra; he has been
a husband only in name, to give her the shelter of his humble roof.
_Enter Electra from the Cottage with a watering pot_: not seeing the
Peasant she in a similar soliloquy announces that she is on her way to
the river to prosecute her unnatural toil.
_Peas._ Why will thou thus, unhappy lady, toil
For my sake bearing labours, nor desist
At my desire? Not thus hast thou been train'd.
_Elec._ Thee equal to the gods I deem my friend,
For in my ills thou hast not treated me
With insult. In misfortunes thus to find
What I have found in thee, a gentle pow'r,
Lenient of grief, must be a mighty source
Of consolations. It behoves me then,
Far as my pow'r avails, to ease thy toils,
That lighter thou may'st feel them, and to share
Thy labour, though unbidden; in the fields
Thou hast enough of work; be it my task
Within to order well. The lab'rer tired
Abroad, with pleasure to his house returns.
Accustom'd all things grateful there to find.
_Peas._ Go then, since such thy will; nor distant far
The fountain from the house. At the first dawn
My bullocks yoked I to the field will drive,
And sow my furrows; for no idle wretch
With the gods always in the mouth can gain
Without due labour the support of life. {95}
_Stage vacant a moment. Then enter by Distance-door Orestes and
Pylades._
_Orestes_ in conversation with his friend makes known he is come by
divine command to avenge his father's death: he has fulfilled the god's
first charge to present offerings on his father's tomb; the second is
that he must not enter the walls of the city; thus he wishes to find
his sister--now, as he hears, wedded to a peasant!--and consult--they
step aside as they see one whom 'female slave her tresses show'
approaching. {127}
_Re-enter Electra with her water-pot filled_: and in a _Monody_
(_strophe, antistrophe and epode_) laments her situation: laments for
her lost father, her brother afar off, in servitude it may be: and
adjures her father's spirit to send vengeance. {187}