The Trojan Women Essay Example For Students

The Trojan Women Essay A monologue from the play by Euripides NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from The Plays of Euripides in English, vol. i. Trans. Shelley Dean Milman. London: J.M. Dent Sons, 1920. HECUBA: Forbear, ye virgins; what was pleasing once Pleases no more: here let me lie thus falln, A fall that suits what I have suffered, what I suffer, and shall suffer. O ye gods, Unkind associates I indeed invoke, Yet when affliction rends the anguished heart, We with becoming grace invoke the gods First it is pleasing to me to recount My happier fortunes: thus my woes shall raise A stronger pity. Royal was my birth, And marriage joined me to a royal house; There I was mother of illustrious sons, Sons with superior excellence adorned Above the Phrygians; such no Trojan dame, No Grecian, no Barbarian eer could boast; These I saw falln beneath the Grecian spear, And laid my several tresses on their tomb. For Priam too, their father, flowed my tears; His fate I heard not from report, but saw it, These eyes beheld him murdered at the altar Of Guardian Jove; my vanquished city stormed; My daughters, whom I nurtured high in hope Of choosing honourable nuptials for them, For others nurtured from my hands are rent; There is no hope that me they eer shall see, And I shall never see them more. Th extreme, The height of my afflicting ill is this: I to some house shall go a hoary slave, To some base task, most irksome to my age, Assigned; or at their doors to keep the keys A portress shall I wait, the mother once Of Hector, or to labour at the mill; For royal couches, on the ground to make My rugged bed; and oer these worn-out limbs The tattered remnant of a worn-out robe, Unseemly to my happier state, to throw. Ah, for one womans nuptial bed, what woes Are mine, and will be mine! Alas, my child, My poor Cassandra, maddning with the gods, By what misfortunes is thy purity Defiled? And where art thou, Polyxena, O thou unhappy! Thus of all my sons And all my daughters, many though they were, Not one is left to soothe my miseries. Why do you raise me, virgins? With what hope Lead you this foot, which once with stately port In Troy advanced, but now a slave, to seek A bed of leaves strewn on the ground, a stone My pillow, there to lie, to perish there Wasted with tears? Then deem not of the great Now flourishing as happy, ere they die. We will write a custom essay on The Trojan Women specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now