Greek Tragic Theatre by Rehm Rush

Author:Rehm, Rush.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2011-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

I call on my husband—

sheepdog of the flock

mainstay and mast of a warship

central pillar of a great hall

a father’s only son

land to the sailor lost at sea

calm after a night of storm

spring water to the parched traveller.

(896–901)

The hyperbole generates its gestural counterpart, as the queen orders her slaves to spread the tapestries before Agamemnon, so that ‘justice may lead him to the home/ he never hoped to see’ (911).

For a long moment the talking stops, as the servants lay out the lush red tapestries in the orchestra for Agamemnon to walk on. Do they flow out of the palace to suggest the bloodshed that lies ahead, and the past violence that has stained the house of Atreus? Or are the tapestries spread out from Agamemnon’s chariot leading up to the palace entrance, as if the blood spilt at Aulis and Troy symbolically swamps the orchestra? Or are they strewn from both ends, linking the fates of Troy and Argos, binding the past to the present? However the scene is staged, the tapestries cut the orchestra with a dark-red path, a striking visual field that draws together the various images of bloodshed in the play.

Agamemnon contemptuously rejects the oriental excess and obsequiousness of his wife’s welcome, fearing that by trampling such wealth he might inspire envy from the gods. Now Clytemnestra raises the dramatic stakes, initiating a rapid stichomythic exchange with her husband, and after a dialogue of only fourteen lines, Agamemnon yields to her request. Critics have tried to glean the rational basis for his change of heart, but in performance the crucial shift is less a question of argument and deliberation than of rhythm—Agamemnon is swept up by Clytemnestra’s verbal pace and energy. Put in psychological terms, tragic stichomythia respects the mystery of decision without attempting to explain it away, acknowledging that men and women often pretend to rational choice while really making a stab in the dark.

Before stepping down from the chariot, Agamemnon introduces Cassandra and orders his wife to welcome her as a new slave into the house. But Cassandra quickly is forgotten once Agamemnon tramples down the dark-red path. His conduct is not sacrilegious (the cloth is not sacred); rather it symbolizes Agamemnon’s destruction of the wealth of the house. Clytemnestra enforces that sense as she coaxes her husband inside, vowing to drain the sea for the dyes needed to colour miles of such fabric, willing ‘to lay out all the bounty of the house to be trampled,/…/weaving the strands that bring this life home’ (963–65). Her verbal excess matches the boldness of the action, and when her husband reaches the palace, she utters a final prayer that seems to signal his imminent death: ‘Zeus, Zeus, harvester! Ripen my prayers./Turn your mind to the harvest at hand’ (973–74). She follows Agamemnon inside, the carpets are removed, and the chorus are left to consider what has happened, and what lies ahead.

In a quick-paced, agitated ode, they admit that the king has returned safely, but they cannot silence their premonitions, a ‘dirge of the Furies’ that sings within (900–02).

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