accordingly his Medea, though deeply wronged, is yet a woman who loved not wisely but too well. Even Lady Macbeth, though far more criminal than the heroine of this tragedy, since she had no wrongs to avenge, but sins for ambition's sake alone, is not entirely devoid of human feeling. With similar truth, both of art and observation, the Greek poet gives Medea a woman's heart even in the moments when she is meditating on her fell purpose.
Aristotle's judgment that Euripides, although he does not manage everything for the best in his plots or his representations of life, is the most pathetic of dramatic poets, is especially true of this tragedy. The hold that it has in every age retained upon spectators as well as readers, is a proof of the subject being chosen well. It was translated or adapted by Roman dramatists; it was revived in the early days of the modern theatre in Europe; it is still, wedded to immortal music, attractive; and no one who has seen the part of Medea performed by Pasta or Grisi will question its effect on an audience.
On the stage Medea appears under some disadvantage. The worse elements of her nature are there active; the better appear only now and then. She is placed in the situation described by Shakespeare:—
"Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream:
The genius, and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
