Denied to greater crimes – think of the price,
The penalty within, the conscious heart’s
Deep dread, the mind burdened with guilt, the soul
That dare not face itself. Some may have sinned
With safety, none with conscience unperturbed.1
No – you must kill these fires of impious love,
This crime which every barbarous land abhors,
From which the Getan nomads, and the Scythian
Wild tribes and Taurian savages abstain
Purge your thoughts clean of this abomination;
Learn from your mother; dare no strange affection.
Do you intend to be the common spouse
Of son and father, to conceive in sin
Two husbands’ progeny at once?… Go, then!
Confound all nature with your wicked passions!
Let there be monsters still! Your brother’s house2
Requires a tenant. Has it come to this?
Will nature waive her laws, will the world hear
Of monstrous prodigies each time love comes
To a Cretan woman?
PHAEDRA: All you say is true,
Good nurse. Unreason drives me into evil.
I walk upon the brink with open eyes;
Wise counsel calls, but I cannot turn back
To hear it; when a sailor tries to drive
His laden vessel counter to the tides,
His toil is all in vain, his helpless ship
Swims at the mercy of the current. Reason?…
What good can reason do? Unreason reigns
Supreme, a potent god commands my heart,
The invincible winged god, who rules all earth,
Who strikes and scorches Jove with his fierce fire.
The God of War has felt that flame; the forger
Of triple thunderbolts himself has felt it;
The feeder of the never-sleeping furnace
In Etna’s depths can feel this tiny flame;
Phoebus is lord of the bow, but one small boy
With more unerring aim can shoot an arrow
Straight to his heart, for he is everywhere,
Menacing heaven and earth.
NURSE: That love is god
Is the vile fiction of unbridled lust
Which, for its licence, gives to lawless passion
The name of an imagined deity.
Venus from Eryx, we are to believe,
Sends her son wandering over all the earth,
And he, skyborne, shoots out his wicked darts
From one small hand – the littlest of the gods
Endowed with such almighty power! Vain fancies
Conceived by crazy minds, they are all false!
Venus’ divinity and Cupid’s arrows!
Too much contentment and prosperity,
And self-indulgence, lead to new desires;
Then lust comes in, good fortune’s fatal friend;
Everyday fare no longer satisfies,
Plain houses and cheap ware are not enough.
Why, tell me, does this sickness seldom taint
A humble home but strikes where life is soft?
Why is pure love found under lowly roofs,
And why do common people generally
Have wholesome appetites where modest means
Teach self-control – while wealth, propped up by power,
Always asks more than its fair share of things?
A man who can do much would like to do
More than he can. But there – you know what conduct
Is fitting for the great ones of the land;
Await your lord’s return with fear and reverence.
PHAEDRA: I fear no man’s return. Love is my sovereign.
And when has any man set eyes again
Upon this bowl of sky, having descended
Once to the silence of perpetual night?
NURSE: Never trust Pluto; though he keeps the key
Of his infernal realm, and has his hound
To guard the gates of death beside the Styx,
If any man can find the way, despite him,
That man is Theseus; he will find the way.
PHAEDRA: Perhaps he will forgive me for my love.
NURSE: He had no mercy for a virtuous wife;
That foreign one, Antiope, had cause
To know his wrath. But, be it possible
To charm an angry husband, who of us
Will move the obstinate young man? Women…
He hates the whole sex, he avoids them all,
He has no heart, he dedicates his youth
To single life; marriage is not for him –
Which proves him a true Amazonian.
PHAEDRA: Ah, let him never leave the white hillsides,
The rugged rocks down which he lightly leaps,
Across the mountains and through thickest woods
I mean to follow him.
NURSE: And will he stop
To pay attention to your blandishments?
Will he exchange his virgin exercises
For the illicit rites of Venus? Will
His hatred cease for you, when, very like,
It is for hate of you he hates all women?
No prayers can ever turn that man.
PHAEDRA: He is
A creature of the wild; have we not known
Wild creatures to be overcome by love?
NURSE: He’ll run from you –
PHAEDRA: – run, even through the sea,
I’ll follow still.
NURSE: Do you forget your father?
PHAEDRA: No, nor my mother.
NURSE: But he hates all women.
PHAEDRA: The less I’ll fear a rival.
NURSE: And your husband
Will soon be here.
PHAEDRA: What, with Peirithous?
NURSE: Your father will be here.
PHAEDRA: He will have pity,
The father of Ariadne.
NURSE: Oh, by this heart
Worn out with age and care, these silvered hairs,
This breast you loved, I do implore you, child,
To stop this folly. Be your own best friend;
The wish for health is half the remedy.
PHAEDRA: Well, have your way. Shame and nobility
Live in me still. If love will not obey,
It must be vanquished; honour shall be kept
Unstained. One way, then, only one way out
Of danger still remains. I’ll join my husband.
By death I shall avert transgression.
NURSE: No!
That is too rash; restrain that impulse, child!
Hold these hot thoughts in check. Yourself to say
That you deserve to die, is proof enough
That you deserve to live.
PHAEDRA: But I must die,
Of that I am resolved. The manner, how,
Is yet to find. A noose? A sword? A leap
Precipitate from the high rock of Pallas?
NURSE: Leap to your death? Shall these old bones allow it?
Curb that wild will. No one returns from death.
PHAEDRA: No one that means to die, and ought to die,
Can be forbidden to die. This hand must fight
To save my honour.
NURSE: Mistress, only joy
Of my spent age, hear me: is your heart heavy
With this immoderate passion? Then ignore
The tongue of reputation. Reputation
Takes no account of truth; it often harms
The innocent, and treats the guilty well.
This is what you must do, try out the strength
Of that perverse austerity. I’ll do it;
I’ll speak to the young savage presently
And bend the stiffness of his stubborn will.
CHORUS
O daughter of the never gentle sea,
Goddess divine, mother of Cupids twain
–
For twofold is his power; with fire
And arrows sharp he plays
His wanton game,
A smile upon his wicked face
As he prepares his bow
With never erring aim.
He can send madness to consume the heart,
A flame of hidden fire to dry the blood.
His wound makes little show,
But eats into the secret soul.
He is a boy who gives his enemy
No peace; the wide world over,
Ever alert, he makes his arrows fly.
The land that sees the sun newborn, the land
Beside the western gates,
The lands that burn under the Crab,
And those that the wild plainsman cultivates
Under the cold Great Bear –
Love’s fire is everywhere.
Love stirs the leaping flame of youth,
And warms the dying ash of age,
Kindles the first fire in a maiden’s heart,
Brings gods from heaven to walk the earth
In strange disguises.
Phoebus came down to Thessaly,1
To be a neatherd; left his lyre and quill,
And learnt to use a scaled reed-pipe
To call the cattle home.
Time and again, the very god who made
Heaven and the clouds, assumed a humbler shape:2
A bird, with white wings waving –
A voice, sweeter than any swan’s last song –
A lusty grim-faced bull, stooping to carry
A playful maiden on his back and away
To a world his brother owned, not his;
In he plunged and mastered it,
Paddling with his hoofs for oars, anxious
As any boatman for the safety
Of his stolen cargo.
The shining goddess of the darkened sky3
Knew love, gave up her rule of night
And left her chariot of light
To other hands, her brother’s; he found out
A way to handle the nocturnal equipage
Around its narrower course, but with his weight
The wheels drove hard and night ran late
Delaying the return of day.
So too Alcmena’s son1
Dropped quiver and lion-skin – that huge
And formidable garment – and allowed
His shaggy hair to be reduced to order
And emerald rings to grace his fingers,
Bound his legs with yellow ribbons,
Cased his feet in golden slippers,
And with a hand that used to wield a club
Spun yarn upon a twirling spindle.
Thus in an oriental land,
In a rich court of wealthy Lydia,
Was seen, instead of the wild lion’s mane,
A silky robe of Tyrian workmanship
Upon that back which once held up
The kingdom of the sky.
Great is the power,
And baneful, of that flame,
As they whom it has touched can tell.
Where the earth’s edge is skirted by the sea,
Where bright stars ride across the upper world,
The pitiless child holds sway.
Under the waters the blue Nereid hosts
Do not escape his darts; nor can the sea
Wash that flame’s scars away.
Love drives the desperate bull
To battle for his herd.
When danger threatens any of his wives,
The meekest stag will fight.
At such a time, as the black Indian knows,
The motley tiger is a menace; boars
Whet their sharp tusks and fleck their cheeks with foam.
The Punic lion shakes his mane,
And speaks his passion with a roar.
Love moves, and the whole forest roars again.
Love moves the monsters of the senseless sea,
And the bull elephant in Luca’s fields.1
All nature is his prey;
Nothing escapes; at the command of Love
Old angers die, and enmity gives way.
And, let us not forget, this malady can take
A hard stepmother’s cruelty away.
ACT TWO
Nurse, Phaedra, Hippolytus
CHORUS: Nurse, have you news? How is it with the queen?
Does she yet find relief from her great torment?
NURSE: There is no hope; there can be no relief
From suffering such as hers; the rabid fire
Will never end. The fever silently
Burns in her heart; only her face betrays
The inner anguish which she tries to hide.
Her eyes are bright as flame, while her wan face
She hides from daylight; nothing long contents
Her wandering mind; this way and that she turns,
Her body racked with shifting pain. Sometimes
Stumbling she falls as if she’d live no longer,
Cannot hold up her head, then, calm again,
Lies down to rest, but with no thought of sleep
Weeps all night long. Now ‘Lift me up’ she cries,
Then ‘Lay me down’. ‘Unbind my hair’ – and soon
She’ll have it braided up again; no dress
Pleases her long, but she will have it changed.
She takes no interest in her food or health;
She wanders aimlessly, her strength all spent –
How different from the old activity,
The bright blush painting those clear cheeks! Ravaged
With care her body now, feeble her tread,
Lost all the grace of that sweet loveliness!
Those eyes, the very torches of the sun,
Reflect no trace of what was once their birthright.
Tears flood her face; upon her cheek drops down
The warm rain falls to melt away the snow.…
Now they are opening the palace doors,
And there she lies upon a golden couch…
Throwing her customary garments off.…
She will have none of them… she is deranged.
PHAEDRA [seen within]: Out of my sight, slaves, take these broidered robes,
Of gold and purple! Take that Tyrian scarlet,
And silkstuff culled from far-off Seric1 trees.
Give me a light robe and a simple sash,
No necklace at my throat, no pendant pearl
From Indian seas hung in my ear; my hair –
Let it be loose and free of Syrian perfume.…
So… falling anyhow about my neck…
Down to my shoulders… let it toss in the wind
As I run… the left hand reaching for the quiver,
The right hand wielding a Thessalian spear.
I shall be like the mother of Hippolytus –
That cruel one – a woman of Maeotis
Or Tanäis, leading her warriors
From frozen Pontus on to Attic soil.…
Hair knotted up… or falling free… her side
Protected by a crescent shield; so I
Will away to the woods.…
CHORUS: Do not weep over her.
Grief cannot help the afflicted. Let your prayers
Invoke the virgin goddess of the wild.
[The doors are closed]
NURSE: Queen of the forests, Thou who walk’st apart
On the high hills, goddess alone among
The lonely mountains: turn thou into good
These ill-portending omens. Hecate,2
Of triple aspect, great divinity
Of groves and woods, bright lantern of the sky,
Light of the world, making night beautiful
With thy recurrent beams… ay, with us now
To bless our work! Bend the hard heart
Of that stern youth.
Let him relent and hear us.
Soften his iron soul; teach him to love;
Let him too feel that flame; capture his heart;
Let love’s law win again that silent, cold,
Reluctant man. For this let all thy powers
Work with us – as we pray thy face may shine
And no cloud dim the glory of thy crescent,
No dark Thessalian witchcraft draw thee down
From where thou ridest through the night, no shepherd
Make thee his thrall.1 O Goddess, hear our cry!
Come, and be gracious to our supplication!…
Yonder I see the man himself. He comes
To make an act of worship, and alone.…
What better time? Here is the chance, the place,
The opportunity. I must be artful.
Am I afraid? It is no easy thing
To be the agent of an evil business
Dictated by another; royalty
Commands, and he who fears to disobey
Must banish honour from his thoughts. Conscience
Is always royalty’s worst minister.…
HIPPOLYTUS: Good nurse, what brings your old feet toiling hither –
Your face so sad – and trouble in your brow?
My father – surely all is well with him?
And Phaedra? And their two sons?
NURSE: Have no fear.
The kingdom prospers, and good fortune smiles
Upon the royal house. More cause that you
Should smile upon good fortune. I am grieved
And anxious for you, that you lay this hard
Relentless discipline upon yourself.
When fate compels, a man may well be wretched;
But go out of your way to look for trouble,
Torment yourself – then you deserve to lose
The gifts you had no use for. You are young;
Then be young! Free that heart! Salute the night
With fire and revelry! Let Bacchus lift
That heavy load of sadness from your soul.
Life is to be enjoyed; it quickly passes.
Now is the time for ease, the time for youth
To know the joy of love. Let your heart live!
Why do you sleep alone? Unlock those chains
That bind your joyless youth; seize pleasure now,
Give it the reign; the best days of your life
Must not be left to drain away. God gives
Each age its proper occupation, guides
Man’s life from step to step; joy is for youth,
The frown for old men’s faces. Why should you
Bridle yourself and stifle your true nature?
A farmer reaps the richest crop from fields