HIPP OLYTU S
Phaedra
If you could say for me what I must say for myself, 345
Nurse
I am no prophet to know your hidden secrets.
Phaedra
What is this thing, this love, of which they speak?
Nurse
Sweetest and bitterest, both in one, at once.
Phaedra
One of the two, the bitterness, I've known.
Nurse
Are you in love, my child? And who is he? 350
Phaedra
There is a man, ... his mother was an Amazon. . . .
Nurse
You mean Hippolytus?
Phaedra
You
have spoken it, not I.
Nurse
What do you mean? This is my death.
Women, this is past bearing. I'll not bear
life after this. A curse upon'the daylight!
A curse upon this shining sun above us! 355
I'll throw myself from a cliff, throw myself headlong!
I'll be rid of life somehow, I'll die somehow!
Farewell to all of you! This is the end for me.
The chaste, they love not vice of their own will,
but yet they love it. Cypris, you are no God.
195