THE BRADFIELD "AGAMEMNON "
By GILBERT MURRAY
IT is no wonder that many people should consider the Agamemnon absolutely the greatest play ever written by man, but it is rather a mystery why it should so often be the special " Greek Play " selected for performance in England, and still more so perhaps why the performances should on the whole be so successful. The Agamemnon is not a complete drama. It is the first part of a great trilogy on the problem of Sin, Retribution and Forgive- ness, and is hardly intelligible without the rest. The business of the first play of the trilogy is to explain certain fundamentals : the eternal Law of Justice by which Transgression inevitably involves Retribution, or Sin Punishment, and the power of Delusion by which, in spite of the known law, man is led on to sin. Then it shows the sins of the past, all the unatoned cruelties of the House of Atreus which have mounted to an intolerable mass that the world can no longer bear ; and lastly, how, and for what reasons, both good and evil, this particular woman, Clytemnestra, hates this man and cannot rest till he is dead. The Choephoroe takes up the tale : the eternal law of justice must work ; Orestes must avenge his father, Clytemnestra must die, though her death will leave on Orestes the still more ghastly sin of matricide. Then the Eumenides -has to face the problem of " The ancient blinded vengeance and the wrong that amendeth wrong." Is the chain of sin and punishment, vengeance calling for further vengeance, to go on for ever, or is there behind the law some way of escape from this " Burden of futility " (76 pcirav Opozrz-18o; ax0os), some Power which can forgive ?
The first half of the Agamemnon is largely occupied by long philosophical lyrics, which are relevant, necessary and even splendid as an introduction to the whole trilogy, but lose their meaning when the second and third parts of it are missing. The Greek chorus is always a difficulty to English producers, and must expect to be cut pretty severely : at Bradfield they cut very drastically indeed. All the Iphigenia chorus, practically all the second Stasimon, the greatest poetry of all ; indeed very nearly all the lyrical parts have disappeared. Terrible, no doubt ; but what is a producer to do ? Would an average audience sit through them? Would even the most intel- ligent audience understand them, especially if they were sung ? Have we any modern technique which can do justice, or anything like justice, to this most splendid achievement of Aeschylean drama ? No : I recognize the disastrous loss, but I definitely hold Mr. Cecil Bellamy 'Not Guilty' of blasphemy.
Still, without the lyrics the play not only loses its best poetry, it loses much of its deeper meaning, and becomes little more than a tale of adultery and murder with good psychology behind.
Yet how delightful the Bradfield performance is ! The deeper meaning of the trilogy may not " get across," nor of course the full tragic majesty of the original. That would need sterner and vaster surroundings and actors of heroic mould with a lifetime of experience behind them. But the Bradfield theatre in its chalky hillside, with blue sky above and the steady beeches overshadowing the topmost rows of seats, is something to soothe and delight the imagination. The clear unaffected voices of the boys, with their fine and almost flawless pronunciation of the Greek, bring the beautiful lines ringing about our ears unspoiled, and the enthusiasm with which for months past they have " scorned delights nd lived laborious days " in order to understand and interpret this tremendous drama seems somehow to communicate itself to the audience and be felt in the air. (One boy, a considerable cricketer and only a moderate Grecian, was asked by sonic Mephistopheles whether it was really worth while giving up cricket on so many half-holidays in order to do the Greek play, but answered without hesitation, " Oh, rather ! ") To one who knows the play well the omissions do not much matter. He knows the things that are not said and, with imagination quickened by the acting and surroundings, can " look before and after and realize sufficiently where he is." It is harder, perhaps, to under- stand what it all means to those of the audience who do not know Greek. There is, of course, the beauty of the place and probably some personal interest in the actors. Then most of the dramatic effects of the Agamenznon are broad and simple : a hard-faced conqueror, full of pride, coming home in triumph to a wife who hates him, dreads him, and means to kill him : a wife standing triumphant and " possessed " over her husband's murdered body and giving thanks to God that at last, at last, the thing she has so long dreamed of is done. These are not hard to understand, and Cassandra, though more subtle and complex, seldom fails to " get across." A prophetess under a curse, she is doomed to know but never to be believed, and we see her labouring to surmount her doom this time at least, and warn the Elders to stop the coining crime before it is too late.
She proves that she knows the past, and they are amazed at her knowledge. She goes on to the future and they neither believe nor understand. They are kind, considerate, troubled, hilt the curse is too strong and she sees that she can never be believed. What, after all, does it matter ? She goes into the house where death is waiting for her, like a " god-driven " victim to the altar of sacrifice. The present veteran remembers weeping over the Cassandra in Frank Benson's production at the St. George's Hall when he was a boy of fifteen and had not yet read the play through. Since then he has seen many Cassandras. None of them failed to produce an. effect, but not many have been better than that of Mr. Bova at Bradfield. The one thing wrong with him was not his fault. Cassandra should be a tragic, almost a ghastly figure ; and Mr. Bovell was made neat and fair, and prettily dreSsed. This sort of thing is the beset- ting sin of producers of Greek plays : I have seen an avenging Orestes dressed in pink silk! Mr. Granville Barker is the only one who has been free from it.
Clytemnestra's -is a more difficult and much longer part. Mr. Miles spoke his words well and did justice to their subtleties of meaning. Through the earlier scenes he was, in my opinion, too persistently hard and almost shrewish. There might have been more signs of depth and possible tenderness. But in the great scene where she stands in the doorway over the two prostrate bodies, Clytemnestra rose to real heights of tragic power. She seemed transfigured, as Aeschylus intended her to be. Another of the difficult and important parts is always the leading of the Chorus. At Bradfield this was excellently sustained by Mr. Mathewson. It is no easy task to be always on the stage, always making brief remarks meant merely to keep the other actors going, without ever having the centre of the stage oneself ; but Mr. Mathewson never let the play drop and never became mechanical. I think an effect was perhaps missed in not accentuating the contrast between the Herald and Agamemnon. The Herald comes in almost beside himself, in tears of joy and thankfulness to be home again : he kisses the dear earth, hails the " beloved roof " of his king, and is brimming over with human feeling. Agamemnon enters without a word of joy or of kindness or indeed of any human feeling ; only hard self-confident pride and some grim threats to any who may have been false to him. This contrast helps the somewhat thankless part of Agamemnon. Aegisthus was played as a cool ironic villain ; a possible conception, but one which rather hampers the end of the play. After Clytemnestra's relapse into exhausted silence at 1. 1576 the scene flashes suddenly into life with Aegisthus' -entrance, and, to my mind, grows hotter and mire passionate till it comes to the drawing of swords at 1. 1650, to be quieted again by " the woman's " appea1 for peace. One needs a fiercer and less controlled Aegisthus than Mr. Cecil Bellamy allowed us.
But only those who have had experience of the pro- duction of Greek plays can realize the enormous difficul- ties in the producer's way. There are a thousand things to decide, which, however you decide them, will not be really right ; only, one hopes, less bad than they might be if you decided otherwise. The Bradfield performance is a fine act of imagination, piety and hard work, and England should be grateful for it.
Previous page
