Penny Dreadfuls, 1912 · page 90 of 118
The Medea — page 90: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis This is a page of running prose—specifically, a dramatic dialogue from what appears to be a theatrical adaptation. The page number "74" and header "EURIPIDES" indicate this is from a Victorian edition of classical drama, likely a stage version rather than a penny dreadful. Jason delivers an extended curse against his wife (Medea, though unnamed here), accusing her of murdering their children and betraying him after he brought her from a foreign land to Greece. The language is archaic and melodramatic verse typical of Victorian theatrical adaptations of classical tragedy. This is classical literature repackaged for Victorian audiences, not original sensation fiction.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
74 EURIPIDES Shall scathe me more. Out of his firmament My fathers’ father, the high Sun, hath sent This, that shall save me from mine enemies’ rage. JASON. Thou living hate! Thou wife in every age Abhorréd, blood-red mother, who didst kill My sons, and make me as the dead: and still Canst take the sunshine to thine eyes, and smell The green earth, reeking from thy deed of hell; I curse thee! Now, Oh, now mine eyes can see, That then were blinded, when from savagery Of eastern chambers, from a cruel land, To Greece and home I gathered in mine hand Thee, thou incarnate curse: one that betrayed © Her home, her father, her . . . Oh, God hath laid Thy sins on me!—I knew, I knew, there lay A brother murdered on thy hearth that day When thy first footstep fell on Argo’s hull... . Argo, my own, my swift and beautiful That was her first beginning. ‘Then a wife I made her in my house. She bore to life Children: and now for love, for chambering And men’s arms, she hath murdered them! A thing | Not one of all the maids of Greece, not one, Had dreamed of; whom I spurned, and for mine own 3 Chose thee, a bride of hate to me and death, Tigress, not woman, beast of wilder breath Eomichbooks.com