20 LITERATURE AND DRAMA 



some acquaintance with Antigone and Electra, while very few 

 know anything of Deianira or the death of Heracles as Sophocles 

 conceived it. For this very reason the attempt shall be made to 

 give, with Mr. Campbell's help, such comment on this play as 

 may in some feeble way supply the elements which actual re- 

 presentation affords. 



The story of Iphitus is the background from which the 

 action of the play stands out. Heracles, upon a trifling quarrel, 

 killed both Iphitus and his father Eurytus, king of (Echalia, 

 sacked the unoffending town, and sent the dead chief's daughter, 

 lole, home to supplant his own true wife. What wonder if the 

 ancient oracles, promising him rest at this very hour, mean not 

 happy rest, but swift death ? Deianira, in mere simplicity of 

 guileless love, sends him a poisoned robe, and, learning the 

 result of her action, takes her own life before the hero is brought 

 in agony by his son Hyllus to their home in Trachis. Heracles 

 and Deianira do not meet. Dialogue between them would have 

 distracted our mind from greater tragic issues. If they met 

 after the poison began to work, we should for a while be chiefly 

 interested in watching whether the woman would or would not 

 be able to exculpate herself, whether the man would or would 

 not believe her. This situation belongs to melodrama, being 

 pathetic, not tragic. Whether this woman does or does not win 

 credence is a mere accident, and after all does not much concern 

 the world at large. Pain, failure, hate where love should be, 

 onr crimes, our follies, and their bitter fruits, the irony of the 

 gods these are the tragic points which pierce men's souls for 

 ever, and from these Sophocles allows no distraction. Our 

 author here, as in the i Philoctetes,' accepts physical pain as 

 thoroughly tragic, and, we think, rightly. Surely those who 

 call pain a small thing can never have felt it, and it lies with 

 the actor to prevent the ugliness of all suffering from alienating 

 our sympathy. When we meet with the written Greek cries 

 arranged so as not to break the metre, we must remember that 

 in Greek every sob is indicated. In our freer form of art the 

 actor puts in exclamations where he feels they are required. If 

 all Mr. Irving's cries were found in Shakespeare's text, unthink- 

 ing readers might call Hamlet chicken-hearted. Heracles 

 would have met simple death with defiance ; but in the fangs 



