A PLAY
In Three Acts

By

GILBERT MURRAY

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
MDCCCC

All rights, including Acting rights in the
English Language, reserved

Prefatory Letter
Dramatis PersonÆ
The First Act
The Second Act
The Third Act

PREFATORY LETTER.

My Dear ARCHER,
The germ of this play sprang into existence on a certain April day in 1896 which you and I spent chiefly in dragging our reluctant bicycles up the great hills that surround Riveaulx Abbey, and discussing, so far as the blinding rain allowed us, the questions whether all sincere comedies are of necessity cynical, and how often we had had tea since the morning, and how far it would be possible to treat a historical subject loyally and unconventionally on a modern stage. Then we struck (as, I fear, is too often the fate of those who converse with me) on the subject of the lost plays of the Greek tragedians. We talked of the extraordinary variety of plot that the Greek dramatist found in his historical tradition, the force, the fire, the depth and richness of character-play. We thought of the marvellous dramatic possibilities of an age in which actual and living heroes and sages were to be seen moving against a background of primitive superstition and blank savagery; in which the soul of man walked more free from trappings than seems ever to have been permitted to it since. But I must stop; I see that I am approaching the common pitfall of playwrights who venture upon prefaces, and am beginning to prove how good my play ought to be!

What I want to remind you of is this: that we agreed that a simple historical play, with as little convention as possible, placed in the Greek Heroic Age, and dealing with one of the ordinary heroic stories, ought to be, well, an interesting experiment. Beyond this point, I know, we began to differ. You wanted verse and the Greece of the English poets. I wanted, above all things, a nearer approach to my conception of the real Greece, the Greece of history and even—dare I say it?—of anthropology! I recognise your full right to disapprove of every word and every sentiment of this play from the first to the last, but I hope you will not grudge me the pleasure of associating your name with at least the inception of the experiment, and thanking you at the same time for the many gifts of friendly encouragement and stimulating objurgation which you have bestowed upon

Yours sincerely,
GILBERT MURRAY.

January 1900.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Certain Maidens, Myrmidons, Men-at-Arms.

The Action takes place in Phthia, on the Southern borders of Thessaly, about fifteen years after the Fall of Troy.