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| Character | Deianeira | |
|---|---|---|
| Gender | Female | |
| Age Range(s) | Adult (36-50), Senior (>50) | |
| Type of monologue / Character is | Crying, Depressed, Lamenting, Afraid, Reminiscing life story/Telling a story | |
| Type | Dramatic | |
| Period | Ancient Greek | |
| Genre | Tragedy, Drama | |
| Description | Deianeira tells the Chorus she is afraid her husband's dead | |
| Location | Scene 1 | |
Summary
The play deals with Deianeira's jealousy for her Heracles', her husband, attraction for a younger woman, Iole. Iole is a young woman that Heracles brings back to Trachis as a slave after having won a battle. Determined to keep her husband, Deianeria tries a love charm on Heracles but accidentally injuring him. Realizing what she has done, she kills herself. Heracles, being in agony, asks to be killed by being burned alive.
This monologue is in the first scene of the play. Deianeira is addressing the Chorus of Trachinian maidens. She laments about her griefs and anxieties. She tells them the thing that worries her the most is that she is afraid her husband, that she hasn't seen for more than a year, is now dead.
This monologue is in the first scene of the play. Deianeira is addressing the Chorus of Trachinian maidens. She laments about her griefs and anxieties. She tells them the thing that worries her the most is that she is afraid her husband, that she hasn't seen for more than a year, is now dead.
Written by Administrator
| Excerpt |
|---|
| DEIANEIRA Ye have heard of my trouble, I think, and that hath brought you here; but the anguish which consumes my heart- ye are strangers to that; and never may ye learn it by suffering! Yes, the tender plant grows in those sheltered regions of its own! and the Sun-god's heat vexes it not, nor rain, nor any wind; but it rejoices in its sweet, untroubled being, til such time as the maiden is called a wife, and finds her portion of anxious thoughts in the night, brooding on danger to husband or to children. Such an one could understand the burden of my cares; she could judge them by her own. Well, I have had many a sorrow to weep for ere now; but I am going to speak of one more grievous than them all. When Heracles my lord was going from home on his last journey, he left in the house an ancient tablet, inscribed with tokens which he had never brought himself to explain to me before, many as were the ordeals to which he had gone forth. He had always departed as if to conquer, not to die. But now, as if he were a doomed man, he told me what portion of his substance I was to take for my dower, and how he would have his sons share their father's land amongst them. And he fixed the time; saying that, when a year and three months should have passed since he had left the country, then he was fated to die; or, if he should have survived that term, to live thenceforth an untroubled life. Such, he said, was the doom ordained by the gods to be accomplished in the toils of Heracles; as the ancient oak at Dodona had spoken of yore, by the mouth of the two Peleiades. And this is the precise moment when the fulfilment of that word becomes due; so that I start up from sweet slumber, my friends, stricken with terror at the thought that I must remain widowed of the noblest among men. |
