Electra
Euripides
Euripides. The Plays of Euripides, Translated into English Prose from the Text of Paley. Vol. II. Coleridge, Edward P., translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1891.
- Child, it was always your nature to love your father. This is what happens: some children are for their fathers, others in turn love their mothers more than a father.
- I will forgive you; for I do not rejoice so very much at what I have done, child.
- You, a woman who has just given birth—why is your body so unwashed and meanly clad? Alas for my schemes!
- I drove on in anger against my husband more than I should have.
- You sigh too late, when you have no remedy. My father is dead; but why do you not recall that exile, your own wandering son?
- l am afraid; I am looking to my interests, not his.
- For he is angry, they say, over the murder of his father.
- And why do you cause your husband to be cruel to me?
- Such are his ways. You have a stubborn nature also.
- Yes, for I am in distress. Yet I will cease from my anger.
- And then he will no longer be harsh to you.
- He is proud; for he lives in my home.
- You see? Again you are rekindling new quarrels.
- I am silent; I fear him—as I fear him.
- Stop this talk! But why did you summon me, child?
- You have heard, I suppose, that I have given birth;
- in thanks for this, please sacrifice—for I do not know how—on the tenth day, as is the custom for the child. For I have no experience, being childless before.
- This is work for another, the one who delivered you.
- I was all alone in my labor and at the baby’s birth.
- Is this household situated with no friends as neighbors?