DIONYSUS: Which of his prologues do you mean to criticize?
EURIPIDES: A whole pile of them—for starters, something from his
Oresteia.
DIONYSUS: Quiet, everyone. Let Aeschylus begin.
AESCHYLUS: [reciting]830
“Thou who visiteth the nether realms, O Hermes,
And also watcheth o’er my sire’s domain,
I have returned to this land and am back again.”
DIONYSUS: [to EURIPIDES] Do you have anything to criticize?
EURIPIDES: Plenty—at least a dozen things.
DIONYSUS: Even in only three lines?
EURIPIDES: Each of which contains a score of sins.
DIONYSUS: Keep quiet, Aeschylus. Otherwise
you’ll have to deal with more than three iambic lines.
AESCHYLUS: Keep quiet for him?
DIONYSUS: That’s what I advise.
EURIPIDES: It’s my opinion that he’s made a gargantuan blunder.
AESCHYLUS: Don’t be dim.
DIONYSUS: Proceed as you will. . . . What do I care!
AESCHYLUS: All right, show me the blunder that I made, Euripides.
EURIPIDES: Recite those lines again.
AESCHYLUS: “Thou who visiteth the nether realms, O Hermes, And also watcheth o’er my sire’s domain . . .”
EURIPIDES: Hold on. Aren’t these lines said by Orestes
at the tomb of his dead father?
AESCHYLUS: Correct.
EURIPIDES: I see. So what he’s saying is that when his father
was brutally murdered by his wife in a neatly arranged plot
Hermes was a conniver?
AESCHYLUS: He is not. The Hermes he addresses is not Hermes the Trickster but the Hermes of Hades, because it was over Hades that he had jurisdiction by Zeus his father’s dispensation.
EURIPIDES: That makes it an even bigger blunder than I thought,
because this jurisdiction granted by his father . . .
DIONYSUS: Suggests a grave robbing’s in the offing condoned by his
father.831
AESCHYLUS: Dionysus, have you been drinking sour wine?
DIONYSUS: Recite some more, Aeschylus.
Euripides, keep your ears cocked for a bloomer.
AESCHYLUS: [reciting] “I ask you now to be my helper and preserver, For I’ve returned to this land and am back again.”
EURIPIDES: The sapient Aeschylus has said the same thing twice.
AESCHYLUS: How, the same thing twice?
EURIPIDES: It’s obvious. Listen.
“I’ve returned to this land,” he says,
then, “and am back again.”
Aren’t they the same?
DIONYSUS: Of course they are.
It’s like saying, “Give me a kneading bowl,
but a bowl for kneading will do.”
AESCHYLUS: You’re missing the point, you birdbrain.
The line couldn’t be better.
DIONYSUS: Really? Please explain.
AESCHYLUS: Anyone can “come” into his native land
but if he’s coming back from exile he’s “returning.”
[There is a burst of applause.]
DIONYSUS: Bravo, by Apollo! What d’you say to that, Euripides?
EURIPIDES: I’d say that Orestes wasn’t simply “coming home.”
He slunk back secretly without telling the authorities.
DIONYSUS: Sounds smart, by Hermes! I wonder what the difference is.
EURIPIDES: Fine! Let’s have another line.
DIONYSUS: Off you go, Aeschylus. And you, Euripides,
keep your ears skinned for blunders.
AESCHYLUS: [reciting] “So by my father’s burial mound I call on him to hearken and to listen.”
EURIPIDES: There, he’s done it again: “hearken” and “listen” are indubitably the same.
DIONYSUS: But he’s speaking to the dead, you poor sap. I doubt that even three times would get to them. How do your prologues begin?
EURIPIDES: Let me tell you, and if you catch me saying anything
twice
or filling up the gaps with pap,
you can jolly well spit in my face.
DIONYSUS: Off with you, then. Recite a line. I can hardly wait to hear how you make your prologues precise.
EURIPIDES: [reciting] “Oedipus, once upon a time,
Was a happy man . . .”
AESCHYLUS: Tommyrot! He was unhappy the moment he was born—no, even before he was born. Apollo had predicted that he’d kill his father.
He wasn’t even conceived yet,
so how could he be “once upon a time a happy man”?
EURIPIDES: [ignoring the interruption] “. . . but of all mortals he became The most unhappy later on.”
AESCHYLUS: Not “became,” for heaven’s sake—he always was.
Take a look at the story line.
As a newborn baby, in the dead of winter,
he’s put in an earthenware pot and exposed
to keep him from murdering his father when he grows
up to be a man; but he does grow up and off he goes
limping along on swollen feet to Polybus,
who he thinks is his father.
He’s a young man and meets a woman who is older,
and who does she turn out to be but his own mother.
At which he blinds himself because he no more wants to
see.
DIONYSUS: [sarcastically] Sublimely happy!
He might as well have been Erasinides.832
EURIPIDES: Balls! . . . Anyway, I insist my prologues are a marvel.
AESCHYLUS: Look, I’m not going to go nitpicking through your
phrases
syllable by syllable.
All I need to wipe out your prologues, the gods willing, is a cruet
of oil.
EURIPIDES: Wipe out my prologues with a cruet of oil?
AESCHYLUS: Sure, one will do. . . . The way your metrics go
is: dumdi-dumdiddi-dum.
You can tag any old thing on to your iambs, like
“and a tuffet of wool,” “and a cruet of oil,”
“and a diminutive sack . . .” Look, I’ll show you.
EURIPIDES: You’ll show me, will you?
AESCHYLUS: That’s what I said.
EURIPIDES: All right, here’s a quote. “Aegyptus as the story goes
Put to sea with his fifty sons
Making for Argos,”833
AESCHYLUS: And lost his cruet of oil.
DIONYSUS: Cruet of oil, my hat! . . . Another prologue please,
so’s we can have another shot.
EURIPIDES: “Dionysus, clad in fawnskins834 Midst the pine trees of Parnassus Was waving his wand and prancing about . . .”
AESCHYLUS: And lost his cruet of oil.
DIONYSUS: That cruet of oil will be the end of us.
EURIPIDES: No matter. Here’s a prologue that’s non-cruet-of-oil-able.
“No man is fortunate in all.835
One is highborn but bereft,
Another lowborn and he’s lost . . .”
AESCHYLUS: His cruet of oil.
DIONYSUS: Euripides.
EURIPIDES: What?
DIONYSUS: Better shorten sail. We’re in for a cruet-of-oil squall.
EURIPIDES: Not a bit of it. I’m not worried. Just watch me knock that cruet right out of his hand.
DIONYSUS: Let’s have another quote,
and we’ll dodge that cruet with a feint.
EURIPIDES: “Cadmus, Agenor’s son, Left the citadel of Sidon . . .”836
AESCHYLUS: And lost his cruet of oil.
DIONYSUS: For heaven’s sake, mate, buy that cruet of oil
or we’ll have nothing left but wrecked prologues.
EURIPIDES: You’re kidding—me buy from him?
DIONYSUS: That’s right.
EURIPIDES: Never. And when it comes to prologues, I’ve got bags
more I can reci
te,
and they’re all proof against cruets of oil.
“Pelops son of Tantalus came
To Pisa on swift chargers . . .”
AESCHYLUS: And lost his cruet of oil.
DIONYSUS: Listen, buddy, we’re stuck with that cruet of oil. Do make an offer for it. It’s virgin and won’t cost more than an obol.
EURIPIDES: I certainly won’t, and I’ve got heaps more to come. “Oeneus once upon a time From his land was offering up . . .”
AESCHYLUS: A cruet of oil.
EURIPIDES: Oh, do let me finish a verse! “Oeneus once upon a time From his land was offering up The first fruits of the harvest when . . .”
AESCHYLUS: He lost his cruet of oil.
DIONYSUS: While the sacrifice was going on? Who went off with it, anyway?
EURIPIDES: No matter, pal. Let him get on with this: “Zeus, if the truth be told . . .”837
DIONYSUS: I can’t stand it. He’s going to say:
“Lost his cruet of oil.” That cruet of oil
fixes on your prologues like cold
sores on the eyes. For goodness’ sake, let’s switch to his choral
lyrics.
EURIPIDES: Very well, I’ll show that his lyrics are no good at all;
he keeps saying the same thing twice.
MEN AND WOMEN:
How is this turmoil going to unravel?
I have to confess I don’t have a clue
To the kind of stricture he will level
Against this man—to my mind—who
Composed more lyrics that were a marvel
Than anyone else to this very day.
So naturally I’m dying to know
What kind of strategy he’ll display
Against Aeschylus, a virtuoso who
Is master of the Bacchic form,
And naturally I fear for him.
EURIPIDES: “Lyrics that were a marvel,” eh?
We’ll soon see. . . . Watch me prune them to a single stem.
DIONYSUS: And I’ll pick up some pebbles to number them.
[There follow a roll of drums, the clash of cymbals, and the bleat of a flute. EURIPIDES breaks into a kind of pibroch—half challenge, half triumph—as he prepares to tear AESCHYLUS’s lyrics to pieces.]
EURIPIDES: “Are you not heeding the slaughter of heroes,838
Achilles of Thrace?”
[clash of cymbals]
“Are you not coming our way to help us
Who live by the lake and honor our forebear, Hermes?”839
[clash]
“Are you not coming our way to help us?”840
[clash]
DIONYSUS: He’s ahead of you, Aeschylus, by a couple of clashes.
EURIPIDES: “Most famous of Greeks, Agamemnon, Atreus’
offspring,841
are you not listening . . .”
[clash]
“. . . to me who am calling on you to help us?”
DIONYSUS: Clash number three, Aeschylus!
EURIPIDES:
“Pray hush! A holy hush.
The priestesses are coming
to open the temple of Artemis.”842
[clash]
“Is nobody coming our way to help us?
It’s still within my hope to declare the triumph of heroes.”843
[clash]
“Are you not coming to help us?”
DIONYSUS: Zeus, O king, what a fusillade of clashing.
I’ve got to get to the bathroom quick. My bowels are churning.
EURIPIDES: Hold on till you’ve heard the next batch of choral lyrics,
especially composed for the lyre whose tunes it mimics.
DIONYSUS: On with them then, but no more clashes.
EURIPIDES:
“See how the twin-throned might of Achaea844
Full-blown in Hellas . . . phlattothrattophlattothrat845
Dispatches that bitch of a Sphinx with a spear
phlattothrattophlattothrat
And armed to the teeth like a bellicose bird
Drops her into the claws of curs
Which wheel in the sky. That is why
Phlattothrattophlattothrat.
Ajax finds himself beset
Phlattothrattophlattothrat.
DIONYSUS: Wherever did you get all that Phlattothratto?
A spot of Persian from Marathon, rope-twisters’ ditties?846
AESCHYLUS:
Be that as it may, my sources
are impeccable,
Impeccable too my use of them;
they do not stem
Like blessed flowers of the Muses culled
from the same
Meadow of Phrynichus, whereas
this man here
Pinches stuff from everywhere:
the songs of tarts,
Erotic drinking madrigals
from, say, Miletus,847
Chantings from Caria played on flutes,
dirges and dances . . .
Will somebody go and fetch my lyre?
On second thoughts
No, one doesn’t require a lyre.
So let’s go
And get that girl who uses shards
for castanets.
Come out, you Muse of Euripides,
it’s you we’ll use
For these musical bits and interludes.
[The MUSE of EURIPIDES, a pretty and nearly naked dancing girl, appears as AESCHYLUS prepares to sing his parody of EURIPIDES.]
DIONYSUS: My word, I bet this Muse never gave tongue to a Lesbian
lay!848
AESCHYLUS: You twittering halcyons over the waving surf
Splashed by droplets of spume
Bedizened on the wing
And wet with rain of foam;
You spiders in crannies under the roof
Whose nimble fingers twiddle and fiddle and spin
Flexible threads for a loom
As strong as a minstrel’s song;
And you flute-loving dolphins that run
In the wake of the dark blue slicing prows;
And the blossoms that shine into grapes on the vine
In clusters that are a solace to man . . .
Fling out your arms my girl to me,
Muse of Euripides. [addressing EURIPIDES]
Look at that foot—make it scan?
EURIPIDES: I can.
AESCHYLUS: And the other, too.
EURIPIDES: I do.
AESCHYLUS: And you the writer of such tripe
Have the gall to damn my songs
When your own are such a flop
And worthy of a common tart.
So much for your choral lyrics—
now let’s have a look at your longer monologues.
[With a FLUTE PLAYER playing and perhaps someone else thumping a drum, AESCHYLUS opens his scroll again and launches into another parody of EURIPIDES, echoing many of his plays and not expected always to make sense.]
AESCHYLUS: O glistening black and somber Night,
What horrible dreams do you send?
Is it from hell these nightmares come?
Things alive that have no life
Yet black as the night they spawn a brat,
A terribly disconcerting sight,
Swaddled in necrophilic black
And glaring murder with a murderous gleam,
Baring enormous claws to attack.
I’ll thank you maids to light a light
And fetch a pail of dew from the stream
And heat the water till it is hot.
I want to scrub away the blight
Of that demonical dream.
Hey there, you god of foam,
Hey there, all in my home,
Extraordinary things are happening here.
Glyce’s grabbed the cock and gone.849
Nymphs of the mountainside and you,
Mania, come to my help, for I,
Wretched I, as I was busy
Twiddling a spindle
of flax in my fingers
To make me some cloth and sell it early,
As early as dawn, in the marketplace,
Up he soared into the sky
On pinions as light as lace
Abandoning me. My soul malingers.
Tears are streaming down my face.
Cry, cry, do I not cry
To you, Artemis, and you children of Ida850
To seize your bows and come to my succor.
So get to your feet, besiege her house,
Go with the exquisite Dictynna,851
Run with her bitches through her land.
And Hecate, daughter of Zeus,
Brandishing the double torch
Wildly flaring in each hand,
Light my way to Glyce’s house.
I’ll enter and begin my search.
DIONYSUS: Both of you can stop your songs.
AESCHYLUS: I certainly have had enough.
The next best step to test our art
is to weigh it on scales. It’s the ultimate proof.
We will now submit to that.
[A pair of exaggeratedly large scales is brought out and DIONYSUS walks over to them.]
DIONYSUS: Over here, please, the two of you. It belongs
to me to weigh the art of poetry like so much cheese.
MEN AND WOMEN: How thorough these experts seem to be!
What an extraordinary thing to see,
So novel and original.
Whoever could have thought of it?
If someone off the street had told me
Of such a curiosity
There’s not the faintest chance in hell
I’d have believed him. I’d have thought
Him to be incurably beyond the pale.
DIONYSUS: Ready, both of you? Over to your scales.
[AESCHYLUS and EURIPIDES step to their scales.]
AESCHYLUS: Ready.
EURIPIDES: Ready.
DIONYSUS: Now pick up your scales ready to speak a line.
Keep hold of your scale until I give the cuckoo call.
AESCHYLUS: Right.
EURIPIDES: Right.
DIONYSUS: Now each speak a line into the dish of your scale.