Romantic plays with happy endings are almost of necessity inferior in artistic value to true tragedies.  Not, one would hope, simply because they end happily; happiness in itself is certainly not less beautiful than grief; but because a tragedy in its great moments can generally afford to be sincere, while romantic plays live in an atmosphere of ingenuity and make-believe.  The Iphigenia is not of the same order as The Trojan Women.  Yet it is a delightful play; subtle, ever-changing, full of movement and poignancy.  The recognition scene became to Aristotle a model of what such a scene should be; and the long passage before it, from the entrance of the two princes onward, seems to me one of the most skilful and fascinating in Greek drama.

And after all the adventure of Euripides is not quite like that of the average romantic writer.  It is shot through by reflection, by reality and by sadness.  There is a shadow that broods over the Iphigenia, though it is not the shadow of death.  It is exile, homesickness.  Iphigenia, Orestes, the Women of the Chorus, are all exiles, all away from their heart’s home, among savage people and cruel gods.  They wait on the shore while the sea-birds take wing for Hellas, out beyond the barrier of the Dark-Blue Rocks and the great stretches of magical and ‘unfriended’ sea.  Nearly all the lyrics are full of sea-light and the clash of waters, and the lyrics are usually the very soul of Euripidean tragedy.

G. M.

CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY

Iphigenia, eldest daughter of Agamemnon, King of Argos; supposed to have been sacrificed by him to Artemis at Aulis.

Orestes, her brother; pursued by Furies for killing his mother, Clytemnestra, who had murdered Agamemnon.

Pylades, Prince of Phocis, friend to Orestes.

Thoas, King of Tauris, a savage country beyond the Symplegades.

A herdsman.

A messenger.

Chorus of Captive Greek Women, handmaids to Iphigenia.

The Goddess Pallas Athena.

The play was first performed between the years 414 and 412 B.C.

THE IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS

[The Scene shows a great and barbaric Temple on a desolate sea-coast.  An altar is visible stained with blood.  There are spoils of slain men hanging from the roof.  Iphigenia, in the dress of a Priestess, comes out from the Temple.]

Iphigenia.

Child of the man of torment and of pride
Tantalid Pelops bore a royal bride
On flying steeds from Pisa.  Thence did spring
Atreus:  from Atreus, linked king with king,
Menelaus, Agamemnon.  His am I
And Clytemnestra’s child:  whom cruelly
At Aulis, where the strait of shifting blue
Frets with quick winds, for Helen’s sake he slew,