The Hippolytus of Euripides, to which we turn for the story of PhÆdra, is frequently called the earliest love-tragedy in European literature. That is to say, it is the first to deal fully and frankly with the power of love toward tragic issues. This can hardly be said about the Medea, for that drama is only the last incident of a story wherein love has been changed to hatred; and the motive is revenge. But in the Hippolytus the story is unfolded from its inception; and PhÆdra’s passion is found to be the force that moves the whole action of the tragedy. This fact has a peculiar attraction for the modern mind; but the drama has other claims upon us too. First, for its sheer beauty, as poetry and as dramatic art of a special type; then, for its accurate study of character, three people at least gripping our interest as complete and convincing human creatures; and again, for its lofty tone and a reflective element which, though characteristically original, is calm and clear. But the most wonderful fact of all is the surprising contrast between the nature of the theme and the austere beauty of the drama which has been built upon it.

The crude facts of the story are almost repulsive on the face of them. PhÆdra, the young wife of Theseus, King of Athens and Trozen, had fallen in love with her husband’s illegitimate son Hippolytus. That is the initial situation; and the further data of the old Attic legend do not soften it. For we know that PhÆdra’s love was unrequited, a fact which, with curious unreason, seems to accuse her; and we know too that when her love was betrayed to Hippolytus, she took her own life in shame and fear, first making a false charge against him which she knew would bring upon him the punishment of death.

Such, in harsh outline, is the story of unhappy love and wild impulse which has been made by this poet who was before all things a seeker of truth, into a work of supreme spiritual beauty. More wonderful still, PhÆdra, who by conventional canons would seem to have forfeited all claim to respect or sympathy, is found to be a woman of sweet and gentle purity, cruelly betrayed by forces without and within, and driven by desperation to a frantic attempt to save her honour.

The means to such an end are interesting, although behind them all lies the explanation of them all—the poet’s higher and broader perception of truth. He has seen the passion which ruled PhÆdra as a great world-force, an elemental power which could neither be escaped nor overcome. This power is personified as Aphrodite or Cypris, goddess of love; and she is conceived as the mortal enemy of Hippolytus, because he has scorned her in his spiritual pride and refused her her need of worship.

The key to the tragedy lies in this conception of Cypris, and in the mystical, ascetic spirit of Hippolytus against which she has set her offended godhead. They represent eternally opposing forces, and warfare between them is inevitable and deadly. For that reason, the opening monologue of the Drama is of great importance. The scene is placed before the castle of Theseus at Trozen. A statue of a goddess stands on either side—that of Artemis, chaste Moon-goddess, on the one hand, decked with flowers and carefully tended; and on the other hand, bare and unhonoured, is the statue of Aphrodite. While beside the latter, musing in evident anger, is the gleaming form of the goddess herself. We learn the cause of her anger as she speaks. She is grieved on account of Hippolytus, who in his excessive devotion to Artemis, despises Aphrodite and looks upon love as a thing unclean. His arrogance and neglect are an unbearable insult, and she has determined to punish him, swiftly and without mercy. She has already prepared the pitfall, long ago in Athens, when Hippolytus came to be solemnly initiated into the Mysteries.

Thus PhÆdra tried to exorcise her passion; but there came a time when Theseus, to expiate some sin, retired to Trozen with his queen. There, meeting the young prince daily, love reawakened; and at the opening of the tragedy it is secretly consuming her very life.

Now Aphrodite’s hour has come, and PhÆdra is the weapon with which she will strike. The young queen’s vigilant honour, proud and enduring, shall be overthrown, by a broken word uttered in weakness; and she shall die, dragging down Hippolytus with her. Even while the goddess is invoking the prince’s doom, there are cheery distant sounds of the returning hunt; and the voice of Hippolytus raised above the rest in a hymn to Artemis. Aphrodite lingers an instant longer, and the menace of her final words shatters the blithe harmony that is approaching:

The next moment the goddess has vanished, and Hippolytus leads in his troop of huntsmen, laden with spoil and bearing fresh-culled field flowers for the honour of the goddess of all wild things. Straight to the statue of Artemis goes the prince, and standing in an attitude of supplication, he proffers a wreath from the uncropped meadows that she loves. There is in his prayer a curious note of exaltation. Young, brave and fair, there is something at once beautiful and sinister in his claim to perfect purity: his naÏve assumption that he alone of all men is worthy to worship the goddess: in the ascetic vow he takes; and the mystical touches, hinting of personal converse with the deity. We vaguely feel that there is a shade of excess in it; that the limit of holy confidence has been passed; and that, with all its intensity, there is something narrow and hard in his devotion. A pious old huntsman has to remind him that he has not paid service at the second shrine; when, with a perfunctory salute to the statue of Aphrodite, Hippolytus and his train go into the castle.

There follows a lovely ode by the Chorus, which prepares for the entrance of PhÆdra. They tell of a mysterious sickness that has fallen on the queen, and of their fears for her life.

Many a surmise they ponder, to account for the strange malady: perhaps some god is angry with the queen for stinted rites: or the absent king her husband is unfaithful: or she has had ill tidings from her Cretan home. Their musing brings no light to the problem; but its purpose is served, for when PhÆdra is presently borne out on her couch, we are prepared to see a being in whom vitality is burning low; but in whom suffering is overshone by stainless honour and an unconquerable will. She is attended by her maids, and by an old nurse whose delineation is wonderful. She is one of the humble characters whom Euripides drew so often: whose sterling qualities he seems to delight in, but whose limitation and error he puts in too, with absolute fidelity. Like Medea’s nurse, she probably came with her mistress from her maiden home; and she has grown old in faithful service. She has the tenderness of a mother for the young queen; but age has made her fretful, and slavery has hardened the fibre of her mind. With pathetic solicitude, she is yet inclined to be querulous at the feverish caprices of her charge. Moreover, she divines that there is something weighing upon her mistress which PhÆdra will not reveal, even to her; and she is hurt at the lack of confidence.

As the queen’s languid voice follows the wandering thought that has almost escaped control, the old woman grows impatient. She cannot comprehend the yearning flight of fancy which, in phrases of wild beauty, betrays its longing for escape: to flee to the mountain spaces and the woods and fields, and thread the mazes of the pines with arrow and spear, like Artemis herself.

There is a significance in the half-conscious utterances which lies very near the surface of the words: the fair soul unwittingly hinting its secret in delirium as lovely as itself. Presently her mind grows clear again, and she starts in fear of what she may have betrayed.

The sight of her anguish and humiliation stings the nurse to another protest. She had not possessed the clue to PhÆdra’s raving, and the sudden access of shame is inexplicable. She longs to soothe and help, out of her deep and genuine affection; and she has also some touch of quite human curiosity which she cannot restrain. But every way she is baffled by the silence of the queen. She feels that she is slighted, but much more she feels the cruelty of unsuccoured pain to one whom she dearly loves.

The thought that PhÆdra is surely dying from this mysterious malady flings her down in supplication; and she pours out a torrent of entreaties until we feel that the queen is growing exhausted by them. But there is no sign given until the nurse, reminding her mistress of the children whom she will leave unprotected by her death, speaks of Theseus’ bastard son who may disinherit them, and lets fall his name, Hippolytus. The word brings a cry from PhÆdra at last; and then, reluctantly, in slow and broken phrases, all the secret is wrung from her.

The old woman now is horrified and remorseful at her own persistence. Terror seizes her, and an unreasoning sense that her mistress must perforce yield to dishonour. PhÆdra’s chastity rises indignantly at so base a thought, giving her strength to face the women about her with a magnificent defence of her honour. She begins almost hesitatingly, on a note of sadness for all the sum of human misery; but she gathers courage as the story is unfolded and rises to sublimity at last:

But while the queen is speaking, winning a painful way upward to her spirit’s height, the nurse is lagging after her on a much lower path. She has rallied from the first shock, when PhÆdra’s confession had driven her to mere panic; and is now revolving the matter in a mind where perception has been dimmed by age and the moral fibre coarsened by long servility. Calling up all her store of doubtful experience and worldly wisdom, she opposes every cunning and plausible argument to PhÆdra’s virtue. Can her mistress not see that she is visibly caught in the snare of Cypris? Of what use is it to struggle against so mighty a goddess? No human heart can resist the power of love; and it is wiser to yield at once than to be broken by Aphrodite’s anger.

PhÆdra listens patiently, seeing that the faithful old creature is prompted by real devotion; and her reply has more of pity than of anger in it, for the crooked counsel.

But when the nurse, irritated, flings a rank word at this love that she cannot comprehend, PhÆdra’s anger blazes in a vehement rebuke.

The old woman is not silenced, however: she merely changes her tactics. Will not the queen trust to her? She knows of love-philtres and salves that will cure her passion without fear of shame. PhÆdra is growing weary of the contest; and at last, when endurance is strained to breaking, she yields on a point which seems quite innocent and harmless. The nurse may fetch the potion of which she speaks; only—and on this she lays pathetic stress—no word of her secret must be breathed to the prince. There is a soothing, half evasive reply from the nurse: a muttered prayer aside to Cypris which has something ominous in it; and the old servant goes out to wreck the honour of her mistress in a foolish attempt to serve her. Hardly has she gone when, above the song which the women of the Chorus have taken up, PhÆdra catches the deep tones of an angry voice within the palace. She springs to her feet, every nerve tingling with apprehension; and calling to the singers for silence she bends her ear to the great door. A cry escapes her:

It is the voice of Hippolytus which she can hear, raging at her nurse in immeasurable scorn, for something that has been asked of him. As each brutal epithet falls, PhÆdra, in a trance of horror and shame repeats it to the listening women. Then she shrinks aside, as Hippolytus bursts out of the castle, the nurse at his heels, frantically entreating him to hold his peace. By no direct word does he acknowledge PhÆdra’s presence; and she, with every shred of self-respect gone, cowers apart as though she were indeed guilty of the foulness he imputes to her. But in noisy indignation, with every word barbed for the trembling queen, he raves against the nurse, against the whole of womankind, and love and marriage, ending by a threat to reveal the story to Theseus upon his return. His anger is just; but in the hardness of youth and the bitterness of a narrow spirit it is savage, merciless and all too prompt. Blind to everything but his own wounded pride, he cannot see that PhÆdra has been cruelly betrayed by the meddling zeal of her servant; and he heaps insult upon her until her sensitive soul lies prostrate—a thing that seems even to herself as black as he believes it. All through the tirade she, who is the central figure in this extraordinary scene, takes no part in it: she remains mute, as though literally smitten dumb with shame, until Hippolytus rushes out. Then she sinks to the ground, sobbing:

Some of the women try to comfort her, and raising her eyes as they speak, she catches sight of the figure of the nurse. She springs from the ground, a wave of anger sweeping away her weakness:

The old woman is deeply contrite for the wrong that she has done; but garrulous and plausible to the last, she pleads her love as an excuse, and claims that had her plan succeeded she would have been praised for what she now is blamed. PhÆdra’s wrath abates a little after its first uncontrolled outburst: she cannot long be angry with one so old and lowly; and besides, there are other, darker things to be thought about and done. But when the nurse, deceived by her calmness, tries to broach some other scheme, the queen dismisses her peremptorily. She will henceforth guide her own affairs, she says; and we know she means that there remains only one thing for her to do. The old woman goes sorrowfully away, and PhÆdra is left to face the thought of her intolerable humiliation, of the threatened exposure to her husband, and of the stain upon her children. As reflection brings back the assurance that she is innocent, despite all, it does but increase her anguish at the thought of dishonour, and stir her to frenzy against Hippolytus. She is resolved to die: that she sees to be inevitable now. But how save her fair name, and the honour of her young children, and the fame of her dear old Cretan home? How secure to herself, in spite of false appearances, the innocence that is hers by virtue of every act and thought of her life? Beating backward and forward in the narrow circle of shame and fear, the poor baffled mind can only see one path, crooked and dark, to the thing she craves for. It is the way of a lie—a false charge against Hippolytus. It will mean the death of a good man: that she knows—and rejoices in—so completely are truth and justice shrivelled in the monstrous injustice that she is suffering.

She goes in, and the Chorus break into a song of foreboding. A few minutes later there are cries of alarm within the castle, the sound of hurrying feet and voices calling to come and help the queen. Then there are ejaculations of pity: a sudden, ominous silence, and again another voice—“Let it lie straight.” PhÆdra is dead by her own hand.

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We must pass quickly over the fate of Hippolytus, though that is really the crisis of the tragedy. Hardly had the poor body of PhÆdra been composed upon a bier than Theseus himself was announced, returning garlanded and joyful from a visit to the oracle of some god. Met by the news of his wife’s death, he tore off all the signs of joy that he was wearing and threw himself beside her in bitter lamentation. A little tablet hanging from her wrist caught his eye, and believing it to be some dying wish, he gently disengaged it. It was the false charge against Hippolytus; and as the king read, his brow darkened with terrible anger. The pitiful figure before him seemed to claim swift and terrible vengeance; and Theseus uttered an awful curse against his son. Calling upon the god Poseidon to ratify an ancient promise, he demanded instant death for Hippolytus. The petition was uttered rashly, in anger and grief; and Theseus himself hardly dreamed that it would be fulfilled; but the answer came with dreadful promptitude. There was one stormy scene between father and son; and Hippolytus, pleading in vain for mercy, went out to banishment. But Poseidon in his far sea-caves had heard Theseus’ invocation; and as the young prince urged his chariot along the shore, a mighty wave, crested by a fierce sea-monster, rolled destruction on him. Hurled from his chariot, and dragged at the heels of the maddened horses, Hippolytus was barely saved alive by his attendants. They carried him back to the castle, and brought him into the presence of the king, wounded and dying. But before life closed for him he was gloriously vindicated, and the tragedy ends, as it began, with the appearance of a goddess. It is not Aphrodite now, however. She has done her worst with the two young lives she has chosen to despoil; and now Artemis will justify their innocence and leave their memory clean and sweet.

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