PHAEDRA:  This is what ruins cities in their prime
and wrecks their homes:  seductive rhetoric.
You shouldn't sap my strength with lulling words,
but bolster my resolve to save my honor.
NURSE:  Quit speechifying.  You don't need noble slogans,
you need your man, so let's get straight right now
exactly what we're going to do to get him.
If this were not a matter of your life,
if you had any hope of self-control,
I never would have urged such desperate measures
so you could just enjoy some fun in bed.
But now your life's at stake, and who can say
that anything we do to save it's wrong?
PHAEDRA:  Stop it!  Stop these pitiless excuses.
Quit spewing out foul reasons for a crime.
NURSE:  Foul?  Yes – but better for you than your nice ones:
better to choose reality and life
than die rejoicing in your phantom honor.
PHAEDRA:  No further, by the gods!  with this portrayal
of vicious sin as justified response.
My soul is made so vulnerable by passion
that if you paint my wickedness so fair
I'll yield to what has weakened my resistance.
NURSE:  All right.  You never should have slipped at all,
but since you have, at least take my advice,
that's all I ask you.  I've just now remembered
that in the house I have a formula,
guaranteed to gain control of love
discreetly, while it leaves the mind unharmed.
This formula will cure you, if you're brave.
But first I need to get some sort of token
from him, the man you love:  a lock of hair,
or a few threads from his clothes, and these I'll join
with what I have,  to bind in happy union.
PHAEDRA:  This formula … is it an ointment, or a drug?
NURSE:  It's something, dear.  Just use it, don't ask questions.
PHAEDRA:  I'm afraid your cleverness will be my ruin.
NURSE:  Oh, everything scares you.  What are you afraid of?
PHAEDRA:  That you'll tell – you know, Theseus' son – about me.
NURSE:  Hush, child, I'll make everything all right.
If only you, Queen Lady Aphrodite,
will guide me.  Whatever else I have to say
will be for certain people in the house.

CHORUS:  [sings, melody:  Alfonso X's Ben pode Santa Maria (CSM 189),
arrangement:  refrain as beginning of each stanza but not repeated at
end]

Eros, Eros, sweetly despoiling
all human hearts with your passionate fire,
never, never may you invade me
with so destructive a flood of desire.
Mightier, mightier than any gleaming
starlight endlessly piercing night's radiance,
stronger than any torch that paints the dark with flame,
flies the fatal shaft of the Love God,
child of all-seeing Zeus on Olympus
and Aphrodite: it strikes with deadly aim.

Vainly, vainly famous Olympia
and Delphi's holy oracular shrine
richly, richly garner their harvest
of sacrifice and libations of wine:
O my country, why do you never
make oblation in honor of Eros,
born of the Queen of Love to rule the minds of all?
Eros, guardian of Aphrodite's
sacred chambers is mightier than armies:
he is the conqueror whose power makes cities fall.

Aphrodite kindled in Helen
a passion stronger than duty or shame:
Priam's city, ancient and splendid,
is nothing now but a song and a name.
Death and terror, fire and destruction
blossomed forth from her heartbreaking loveliness,
leaving Troy's citadel in ashes soaked with blood.
Dreadful, dreadful comes Aphrodite,
whirling all in her devastating hurricane,
quick as a honeybee that seeks a springtime bud.

PHAEDRA:  Silence, women:  I think the worst has come.
CHORUS:  What is it, Phaedra – trouble in the house?
PHAEDRA:  Shh!  Let me hear what's happening inside.
CHORUS:  All right, but it's an ominous beginning.
PHAEDRA:  My sufferings are more than I can bear.
CHORUS:  What are you saying now?  What kind of words are these?
What noises from inside have made you so afraid?
PHAEDRA:  This is the end.  Come stand beside the door
and hear the outcry echoing through the hall.
CHORUS:  No:  you're already there; you tell us, what do you hear?
Tell us, what do you hear that means such dreadful news?
PHAEDRA:  Him – the son of that horse-breaking Amazon queen,
Hippolytos, hurling curses at my servant.
CHORUS:  I hear his furious roar.  I can't make out his words,
but the sound of his angry voice resounds behind the gates.
PHAEDRA:  But I can hear him clearly:  he calls her filthy
go-between who soils her master's bed.
CHORUS:  Poor lady, you are betrayed.  How can we help you now?
Everything's come to light, and now you are betrayed,
betrayed by that one person who should have been your ally.
PHAEDRA:  She's told him how I feel, and now it's over.
Her cure for my disease has made it fatal.
CHORUS:  Then now what can you do, with no way out?
PHAEDRA:  I see just one way out:  to die right now
and let death finally heal me of my pain.


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   Jon Corelis     www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/

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