so Grillparzer rightly perceived that the explanation to modern minds of so incredible a crime as Medea’s must be sought and presented in the untoward circumstances under which her relations with Jason began.  Accordingly, he showed in The Guest Friend how Phryxus, obedient to what he believed to be the will of the gods, bore the Golden Fleece to Colchis, only to meet death at the hands of AEetes, the king of that land, who coveted the precious token.  Medea, the king’s daughter, vainly tries to prevent the crime, but sees herself included in the dying man’s curse; for she shares her father’s desire for the treasure and is appalled only by the sense of outraged hospitality, even to a haughty intruder.  When, in The Argonauts, Jason comes to recover the Fleece, Medea, still an Amazon and an enchantress, is determined with all her arts to aid her father in repulsing the invaders.  But the sight of the handsome stranger soon touches her with an unwonted feeling.  Against her will she saves the life and furthers the enterprise of Jason; they become partners in the theft of the Fleece; whereupon Jason, fascinated by the dark-eyed barbarian and gratified with the sense of subjugating an Amazon, assures her of his love and takes her and the Fleece in triumph away from Colchis.

[Illustration:  GRILLPARZER’S HOUSE IN THE SPIEGELGASSE]

Four years elapse before the action of Medea commences.  Medea has borne two sons to Jason; as a husband and father he returns to Greece with the object of his quest.  But he is now received rather as the husband of a sorceress than as the winner of the Fleece.  Ostracism and banishment accentuate the humiliation of marriage to a barbarian.  Medea has sacrificed all to serve him; without her aid his expedition would have been fruitless, but with her he cannot live in the civilized community where she has no place.  She frantically endeavors to become a Greek, but to no purpose.  Jason strives to overcome a growing repugnance and loyally makes common cause with her; but he cannot follow her in banishment from Corinth, nor appreciate the feelings of the wife who sees him about to marry Creusa, and of the mother who sees her children prefer Creusa to herself.  Then the barbarian in Medea reasserts herself and the passion of a just revenge, stifling all other feeling, moves her to the destruction of all her enemies and a final divorce from her heartless husband.  To Jason she can give no other words of comfort than that he may be stronger in suffering than he has been in acting.

Such an eminently personal tragedy Grillparzer constructed on the basis of a mythological story.  The Fleece, like the hoard of the Nibelungen, is the occasion, but the curse attached to it is not the cause, of crimes; this cause is the cupidity of human nature and the helplessness of the individual who allows the forces of evil to gain sway over him.  Jason, in overweening self-indulgence, attaches himself to