But now that spirit has been broken in me,
And broken by that thing which, in another,
Might well have caused it – by the gift of Fortune.
Priam has made me proud – and made me fearful.
Why then should I think kingship anything
But name, o’erlaid with shallow gilt, a brow
Adorned with a mock diadem? A chance,
A moment, may sweep all these things away –
And, like as not, without the aid of ships
Numbered in thousands, or a ten years’ war;
Not all find Fortune’s hand so long suspended.
If I may speak my mind – forgive me, Argos –
I own I wanted to see Phrygia conquered,
Conquered and punished; but reduced to ruin,
Razed to the ground – I would have spared her that.
Would that I had! No power on earth can curb
The invader’s lust, no hand restrain the licence
Of victory let loose upon the night.
If anything of what we did that night
Could have been called inhuman or unseemly,
It was the work of anger, and of darkness –
Itself a spur to cruelty – the work
Of the triumphant sword, whose appetite,
Once it has tasted blood, outruns all reason.
If anything of ruined Troy can live,
Then let it live; vengeance enough, and more,
Has been exacted. A princess to die,
A sacrificial victim, to imbrue
The ashes of the dead – a brutal murder
Called by the name of marriage – never! No!
That I will not allow. For upon me
The guilt of all comes back. Who, having the right
To ban wrongdoing, bans it not, commands it.
PYRRHUS: So shall Achilles’ soul not have its due?
AGAMEMNON: It shall. All men on earth shall sing his praise
And lands unknown shall hear of his great name.
If blood must flow to give his ashes rest,
Let there be slaughtered finest Phrygian cattle;
Shed blood for which no mother’s eyes need weep.
Where is such custom known? Where is man’s life
Poured out in payment to the human dead?
Your duty is to shield your father’s name
From hatred and dishonour, not ask us
To serve him with an act of brutal vengeance.
PYRRHUS: Oh, you are puffed with pride, now that success
And safety have set up your confidence.
You did not use to be so bold, when danger
Was drumming the alarm – great king of kings!
No doubt your thoughts have turned to love again;
Some new-found mistress fires your passion. Why
Should you so often be the only one
To win a prize? Well, I shall give Achilles,
With my own hands, the victim he demands.
If you refuse to give her up, I’ll find
Another, a better gift, a gift more worthy
To be the gift of Pyrrhus. This right hand
Has too long paused from shedding kingly blood.
Priam needs company.
AGAMEMNON: Pyrrhus deserves,
I’ll not deny, the credit for that deed,
His noblest exploit in the war, the murder
Of Priam, his father’s suppliant.
PYRRHUS: I know
Who were his suppliants, and his enemies.
Priam at least made his appeal in person;
You would not dare to make your own request;
You skulked in safety, you were too afraid
To meet your enemy; the king of Ithaca,
And Ajax, had to do the asking for you.1
AGAMEMNON: Your father was no coward, I suppose,
That day when Greeks were dying all around him,
Their ships in flames, and he lay indolent,
Far from all thought of battle, lazily
Strumming sweet music on a tinkling lyre.
PYRRHUS: The songs Achilles sang, you may be sure,
Daunted great Hector more than all your armour
Which scared him not a jot; in that dread hour
Peace reigned in the Thessalian camp.
AGAMEMNON: And there
Was peace, I think, for Hector’s father too.2
PYRRHUS: It is a lordly act to spare a king.
AGAMEMNON: And yet you raised your hand to kill a king?
PYRRHUS: It may be mercy to grant death, not life.
AGAMEMNON: And now in mercy you would have a maiden
Slaughtered upon a tomb?
PYRRHUS: Since when have you
Thought it a crime to sacrifice a maiden?
AGAMEMNON: A king must put his country above his children.
PYRRHUS: No law forbids a prisoner’s punishment.
AGAMEMNON: Where law does not forbid, shame may forbid.
PYRRHUS: The victor has the right to please himself.
AGAMEMNON: Who has most right, should least indulge his pleasure.
PYRRHUS: Dare you say that to those who for ten years
Endured your tyranny – till Pyrrhus freed them?
AGAMEMNON: Is this the breed of Scyros?
PYRRHUS: Scyros breeds
No brother-feuds.
AGAMEMNON: An island in the sea!
PYRRHUS: Our mother sea! For Atreus and Thyestes –
We know their noble lineage.
AGAMEMNON: And yours?
Son of a girl raped by a boy Achilles,
A stripling –
PYRRHUS: An Achilles, by his birthright
Lord of all spheres of heavenly dominion –
The sea through Thetis, the infernal world
Through Aeacus, the heavens through Jupiter.
AGAMEMNON: Whom Paris killed –
PYRRHUS: Whom no immortal god
Dare challenge to his face.
AGAMEMNON: I could find punishment to stop that tongue
And curb that insolence. But my sword too
Knows how to spare a prisoner in my power.
Let us have Calchas here, the interpreter
Of heaven’s will; let someone bring him hither.
If the Fates ask, I will not fail to give.
[Enter Calchas]
Calchas, you loosed the knot that held our fleet
Back from this war; your skill unlocks the sky;
Your art can read the message of the Fates
In flesh of beasts, the thunder of the heavens,
The flaming passage of a shooting star –
And many a time I have paid heavily
For your pronouncements. Calchas, tell me now
What our god wills; instruct us by your wisdom.
CALCHAS: For fate’s permission to depart, the price
Is as before. A young girl must be given
In sacrifice on the Thessalian’s tomb.
She must be dressed as a Thessalian bride –
Or Mycenean, or Ionian –
Pyrrhus himself must give the bride away
To his father, so that she be duly wedded.
That is not all our ships are waiting for:
A debt is to be paid in nobler blood
Than that of Priam’s daughter. One more victim
The Fates demand; and he must fall to death
From the top of Troy… Priam’s grandson… Hector’s son.
That done, your thousand ships may take the sea.
CHORUS
Is it the truth, or but an idle tale
To give false comfort to our fears,
That the soul lives on when the body is laid to rest,
When the wife has sealed the husband’s eyes,
When the last sun has set,
When the ashes are shut into the solemn urn?
Do we in vain give up our life to death?
Has the poor mortal still more time to live?
Or do we wholly die?
Does nothing remain of us,
After the breath has fled and the spirit of life
Gone, to be mingled with the air above us,
After the fire has been laid to the naked body?
Swift as the feet of Pegasus, Time will gather
All to itself–
All that the sun looks down upon,
From east to west;
All that the blue sea touches
With its morning and its evening tides.
Onward we speed to our fate –
As fast as the twelve signs speeding through the sky,
As the stars’ king turning the cycle of the years,
As Hecate, running her chequered course –
Onward we speed.
To reach the river, by whose name
The gods themselves take oath, that is
To be no more.
As smoke from burning fire floats away,
A quickly vanishing dark smudge;
As clouds, one moment lowering, are dispersed
By cold north winds;
So will this spirit, this master of our being,
Pass away.
There is nothing after death; and death is nothing –
Only the finishing post of life’s short race.
Ambitious, give up your hopes; anxious, your fears.
Vast Chaos, and the hungry mouth of Time,
Consume us all.
Death is inseparable; it destroys the body,
And does not spare the soul.
For Taenarus – the realm of the grim king –
The jealous hound that guards the infernal gate –
These are all idle tales, fables,
The stories of a troubled dream.
You ask, where will you be when you are dead?
Where the unborn are.
ACT THREE
Andromache, an Elder, Astyanax, Ulysses
ANDROMACHE: O women of Troy, now do you pull at your hair,
And beat your sorrowful breasts? Now do you flood
Your cheeks with weeping? Have we endured so little –
Is weeping enough? It is only now you have seen
The fall of Troy; I saw it long ago,
When the murderer dragged the body – my own dear body–
At his chariot-wheels; when the load of Hector’s weight
Made those wheels creak and groan. That was my hour
Of utter downfall and destruction.
For what has happened since, I have no feeling;
My senses are all dead and numbed by pain.
I should by now have given the Greeks the slip
And gone the way my husband went – to death –
But for this child, who puts restraint on me;
He will not let me die; for his sake now
I must still ask the mercy of the gods,
And must prolong my time of suffering.
For him I must deny myself that comfort,
Which is the only comfort in great sorrow,
Freedom from fear. All hope of better things
Is lost; the way to worse lies open still.
When hope is gone, fear is ten times more fearful.
ELDER: Is some new fear yet added to your griefs?
ANDROMACHE: Out of our great calamity still greater
Calamity is grown. Troy falls, but yet
We have not seen her end.
ELDER: Can the gods wish
Greater disaster to fall on us, and what
Can they contrive?
ANDROMACHE: The doors of deepest death
Have been unlocked, the caves of darkness opened;
As if we vanquished had not feared enough,
Our buried enemies from the pit of hell
Are coming back to earth; nor is the way
From death to life allowed to Greeks alone –
No, death treats all alike. And while one ghost1
Is spreading terror through all Troy, another
Night-haunting vision fills my dreams with dread.
ELDER: What vision? Tell us what it is you fear.
ANDROMACHE: The first half of the night had passed in peace,
The Seven Stars turned their shining wain for home,
When I found rest, such as I had not known
For long in my despair, and for a while
My weary cheeks were soothed with sleep – if senses
Dazed beyond feeling can be said to sleep.
Suddenly Hector stood before my eyes –
But not the man who stormed the Grecian camp,
Attacked their ships with brands from Ida’s woods,
Spread havoc in their ranks, fought a pretender
Bearing Achilles’ arms and won them from him.2
Gone was the light of battle from his eyes;
His face was weary and dispirited,
A face too like my own, ravaged with grief,
Half hidden under unkempt hair. But yet
It was a joy to see him. ‘Wake,’ he said,
Shaking his head at me. ‘Wake, faithful wife,
And save our son from danger. You must hide him.
No other way can save him. Do not weep.
You weep for Troy’s fall? Would that it were over!
Come, lose no time, but get our son and heir
Away at once to any place but this.’
Frozen with fear and horror I awoke.
It was not of my son that I thought first;
I looked for Hector, turning frightened eyes
This way and that, but the deluding ghost
Slipped silently away from my embrace.
And now, my son – true son of your great father,
Phrygia’s one hope, all that our shattered house
Has left, sole offspring of our ancient blood,
Last of our old, our too illustrious line:
Child in your father’s image – ah, too like;
This was my Hector’s face, his walk, his carriage;
His stern commanding brow, the hair he shook
About his tossing head. O little son,
You have been born too soon for Troy, too late
To be your mother’s comfort. Shall we see
That happy day – will the time ever come,
When you will be Troy’s saviour and avenger,
To set our city on her feet once more,
And bring her scattered people home again,
And to restore her name to Phrygia,
Our fatherland? I dare not make that prayer,
Knowing my fate; enough to pray for life,
All that a prisoner can ask.
But now,
Alas, where can I hide you? Where can fear
Find refuge? Troy’s great citadel,
The envy and the wonder of the world,
With all her treasure and her mighty walls
Which gods had built, is now a mound of dust;
Fire has consumed it; of the whole vast city
There now remains no fragment large enough
To hide a little child. What place will serve
To baffle the pursuit?… My husband’s tomb –
A hallowed place, which even the enemy
Must reverence…. His father Priam spent all
To make it huge and handsome – the old king
Was prodigal in grief… I’ll put the child
Into his father’s care… what better place?…
Ah, but my limbs grow cold with sweat; I fear
The ominous presence of this place of death.
ELDER: When out of danger you can pick and choose;
In time of trouble seize what help there is.
ANDROMACHE: Is there not danger, hide him where we may,
The place may be betrayed?
ELDER: Let no
one see.
ANDROMACHE: What if the enemy come searching for him?
ELDER: He perished in the city’s fall. Many
Have owed their lives to rumours of their death.
ANDROMACHE: There is small hope for him; his noble birth
Lies heavy on his head. He will be caught;
And then what good will hiding him have done?
ELDER: The conqueror is never again so cruel,
Once his first rage is spent.
ANDROMACHE: O son, what place
Is far and inaccessible enough
To keep you safe? Where can we turn for help
In our extremity? Who will protect us?
Hector! Defend your loved ones now, as ever!
This is your loving wife – guard thou
The treasure she has stolen – keep him safe
With your dear ashes – let him live again!…
Son, go into the tomb… ah, you shrink back;
You do not like to hide? It shows your breeding;
You are ashamed to be afraid. But now
You must forget your manly pride, forget
Your courage of former days; now you must wear
The nature that misfortune puts upon you.
You see… all that is left of us… we three –
A tomb, a child, a captive woman… no,
We cannot fight against our fate. Be brave,
And go into this holy place in which
Your father rests. If Fortune can be kind
To those who suffer, you will live; if not,
Here is your grave.1
[The boy enters the tomb]
ELDER: He is safe behind the gates.
Now go; and keep away, lest by your fear
You cause his hiding-place to be discovered.
ANDROMACHE: One may fear less when one is near the danger.
But if you wish it, I will go away.
ELDER: But wait… be silent and refrain from mourning.
Our enemy, the villainous Cephallenian,2
Is on his way.
ANDROMACHE: Open, O earth! O husband,
Command the earth to open to its centre
And hide my treasure in the Stygian deep!
Ulysses comes, and, by his crafty looks
And walk, he has some evil plot in mind.…
ULYSSES: Sent as the instrument of cruel Fate,
Let me first say that though I speak the words
You must not think them mine; this is the voice
Of all the Greek commanders: Hector’s son
Still stands between them and their long-sought homes,
And him the Fates demand. While there remains
A son of Hector and Andromache