INTRODUCTION TO HERACLES
The Heracles of Euripides is seldom assigned a high place in
the corpus of extant tragedy. If no one any longer quite ac-
cepts Swinburne's description of the play as a "grotesque abor-
tion/' the reason is less real disagreement than a habit of
respect for the author, supported by a cautious intuition of the
play's extraordinary power. Of caution there should be no ques-
tion. However dislocated in structure the Heracles may be, its
dramatic power and technical virtuosity are unmistakable.
With the possible exception of the Bacchae, there is no play
into which Euripides has put more of himself and his mature
poetic skills than this one. In scene after scene one senses that
sureness of movement and precise control of passion which
come only with the dramatist's full mastery of his medium.
One thinks first of the staggering brutality and shock which
erupts in the madness scene, a brutality made all the more
terrible by the tenderness which precedes it; or of the great
dirge which celebrates the labors of Heracles, and then the
confrontation of that ode with the hero's simple "Farewell
my labors"; or, again, of the exquisite ode in praise of youth
and the service of the Muses, poetry tense with the full pres-
sure of the poet's life behind it; and, last of all, that anguished
exchange between Theseus and Heracles in which the hero,
broken by his suffering, weak, reduced to his final humanity,
comes on his greatest heroism, surely one of the most poignant
codas in Greek tragedy.
Technically, at least, it is a brilliant performance, boldness
of dramatic stroke and vigor of invention everywhere visible,
but particularly in the brisk counterpoint of peripeties on
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