en I must also give over
The sight of the fishes at play.

[Illustration: THE GRILLPARZER MONUMENT AT VIENNA.]

FRANZ GRILLPARZER

* * * * *

MEDEA

A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

CREON, _King of Corinth

CREUSA, _his daughter

JASON

MEDEA

GORA, _Medea's aged nurse_

_A herald of the Amphictyons_

_A peasant_

_Medea's children_

_Slaves and slave-women, attendants of
the King, etc._

MEDEA (1822)

TRANSLATED BY THEODORE A. MILLER, PH.D.

ACT I

_Before the walls of Corinth. At the left, halfway up stage, a tent is
pitched; in the background lies the sea, with a point of land jutting
out into it, on which is built a part of the city. The time is early
morning, before daybreak; it is still dark.

At the right in the foreground a slave is seen standing in a pit digging
and throwing up shovelfuls of earth; on the opposite side of the pit
stands MEDEA, before a black chest which is strangely decorated with
gold; in this chest she keeps laying various utensils during the
following dialogue.

MEDEA. Is it, then, done?

SLAVE. A moment yet, my mistress.

[GORA _comes out of the tent and stands at a distance_.]

MEDEA. Come! First the veil, and then the goddess' staff.
I shall not need them more; here let them rest.
Dark night, the time for magic, is gone by,
And what is yet to come, or good or ill,
Must happen in the beamy light of day.--
This casket next; dire, secret flames it hides
That will consume the wretch who, knowing not,
Shall dare unlock it. And this other here,
Full-filled with sudden death, with many an herb,
And many a stone of magic power obscure,
Unto that earth they sprang from I commit.

[_She rises_.]

So! Rest ye here in peace for evermore.
Now for the last and mightiest thing of all!

[Illustration: MEDEA _From the Painting by Anselm Feuerbach_]

[_The slave, who has meanwhile climbed out of the pit and taken his
stand behind the princess awaiting the conclusion of her enterprise,
now turns to help her, and grasps at an object covered with a veil and
hanging from a lance that has been resting against a tree behind MEDEA;
the veil falls, revealing the banner, with the Golden Fleece glow