Penny Dreadfuls, 1912 · page 76 of 118
The Medea — page 76: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis This is a page of running dramatic verse (page 60) from a classical text attributed to Euripides, not a Victorian penny dreadful as the prompt suggests. The page contains a soliloquy in which a character struggles with violent impulses toward her children, initially resolving to spare them, then reversing that decision in escalating emotional turmoil. Stage directions indicate "The Children go in." The speaker invokes Hell and fate, declaring the deed is "doomed" and inevitable, while wearing royal regalia ("the crown is on the brow, / And the robe girt"). The text appears to be from a tragedy dealing with maternal conflict and tragic inevitability.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
60 EURIPIDES Those shining faces. . . . I can do it not. - Good-bye to all the thoughts that burned so hot Aforetime! I will take and hide them far, Far, from men’s eyes. Why should I seek a war So blind: by these babes’ wounds to sting again Their father’s heart, and win myself a pain Twice deeper? Never, never! I forget Henceforward all I laboured for. , And yet, ‘What is it with me? Would I be a thing - Mocked at, and leave mine enemies to sting \Unsmitten? It must be. O coward heart, Ever to harbour such soft words!— Depart Out of my sight, ye twain. | Ze CHILDREN go in. And they whose eyes Shall hold it sin to share my sacrifice, On their heads be it! My hand shall swerve not now. - Ah, Ah, thou Wrath within me! Do not thou, Do not. . . . Down, down, thou tortured thing, and spare My children! They will dwell with us, aye, there Far off, and give thee peace. Too late, too late I By all Hell’s living agonies of hate, They shall not take my little ones alive To make their mock with! Howsoe’er I strive The thing is doomed; it shall not escape now _ From being. Aye, the crown is on the brow, © And the robe girt, and in the robe that high Queen dying. I know all. Yet . . seeing that I Eomicbooks.co