INTRODUCTION TO ANDROMACHE. IN N this tragedy, which made its appearance in 1667, there is a more intricate plot than is usual in Racine's plays, and it offers a greater variety of character and motive. Love, jealousy, friendship, conjugal fidelity, maternal tenderness, anger, and despair are all portrayed with skilful touches; and if the language is that of the French Court of the seventeenth century, the natural emotions of the human heart, the same in all ages, show themselves plainly under the mask of conventional mannerism. 66 66 Racine has taken the subject of his drama from the third book of Virgil's Eneid," 11. 291-322, and the Andromache" of Euripides, but has modified the ancient tradition so far as to make Hector's son Astyanax the object of the heroine's solicitude, instead of Molossus, the fruit of her subsequent union with Pyrrhus. CHARACTERS. ANDROMACHE, Widow of Hector, Captive of Pyrrhus. ORESTES, Son of Agamemnon. HERMIONE, Daughter of Helen, betrothed to Pyrrhus. PYLADES, Friend of Orestes. CLEONE, Friend of Hermione. CEPHISSA, Friend of Andromache. PHOENIX, Tutor of Achilles, and afterwards of Pyrrhus. The scene is laid at Buthrotum, a town of Epirus, in a hall at the Palace of Pyrrhus. ANDROMACHE. A TRAGEDY. ACT I. Scene 1. ORESTES, PYlades. ORESTES. Yes, since I find again a friend so true, Who would have thought that this detested coast And, lost six months and more, you should be found Where in Epirus Pyrrhus holds his court? PYLADES. Thanks be to Heav'n, that has detain'd my steps Of this Epirus. How I mourn'd and wept, Dreading for him ever some danger new, Which I have seen so long your soul o'ercloud; |