begins with the approach of the Maenads, Agave bearing her son's head
on a thyrsus. In a brief _lyric concerto_ between her and the mocking
Chorus her phrensied triumph is brought out, and how she takes the
bleeding object to be head of a young lion. At that moment the trumpet
sounds, and the army that had been summoned appears at the Electran
gate. Agave turns to them, and (in blank verse) calls all Thebans to
behold the quarry she has taken without the useless weapons of the
hunter; it shall be nailed up a trophy before her father's house.
_Shortly after enters on the right a melancholy procession of Cadmus
and his servants bearing the fragments of Pentheus' body, with
difficulty discovered and pieced together_. In extended parallel
dialogue between Cadmus and Evadne the phrensy gradually passes away
from her and she recognizes the deed she has done. Cadmus sums up the
final situation: all the house enwrapped in one dread doom. The Chorus
sympathize with Cadmus, but have no pity for Agave. She then follows
with a rhesis of woe, interrupted by {1365}