Taurians in the Herdsman's speech. Yet they have none of the
unreality that is usual in such figures. The shadow of madness and
guilt hanging over Orestes makes a difference. At his first
entrance, when danger is still far off, he is a mass of broken
nerves; he depends absolutely on Pylades. In the later scenes,
when they are face to face with death, the underlying strength of
the son of the Great King asserts itself and makes one understand
why, for all his madness, Orestes is the chief, and Pylades only
the devoted follower.

Romantic plays with happy endings are almost of necessity inferior
in artistic value to true tragedies. Not, one would hope, simply
because they end happily; happiness in itself is certainly not
less beautiful than grief; but because a tragedy in its great
moments can generally afford to be sincere, while romantic plays
live in an atmosphere of ingenuity and make-believe. The Iphigenia
is not of the same order as The Trojan Women. Yet it is a
delightful play; subtle, ever-changing, full of movement and
poignancy. The recognition scene became to Aristotle a model of
what such a scene should be; and the long passage before it, from
the entrance of the two princes onward, seems to me one of the
most skilful and fascinating in Greek drama.

And after all the adventure of Euripides is not quite like that of
the average romantic writer. It is shot through by reflection, by
reality and by sadness. There is a shadow that broods over the
Iphigenia, though it is not the shadow of death. It is exile,
homesickness. Iphigenia, Orestes, the Women of the Chorus, are all
exiles, all away from their heart's home, among savage people and
cruel gods. They wait on the shore while the sea-birds take wing