Reckoning
Deianira,
Iole, and Heracles
After
Sophocles's The Trachiniae
Author: Benjamin Gavarre
Synopsis
What
happens when the myth strips off its disguise? In this bold rewriting of
Sophocles's The Trachiniae, the heroism of Heracles is nothing more than the
alibi of a domestic tyrant, rapist, and abductor. After twenty years of
administrative confinement and calculated silence, Deianira no longer awaits
the return of a divine husband, but the moment to settle accounts. With the
arrival of Iole—a stripped princess whose city has just burned—the ultimate
pact among the victims is sealed. Vengeance takes the form not of a hero's
funeral pyre, but of a blood-red velvet mantle that scorches the tyrant's flesh
whenever he attempts to lie or appeal to his false destiny. A contemporary,
ironic, and unflinching drama on the deconstruction of patriarchal power and the
final rupture of filial silence.
Author's
Note
This
play strips away the remnants of farce and cheap jokes to confront the pain and
impunity that classical myth used to wrap in hymns of glory. Heracles will not
ascend Mount Oeta transformed into a god: his punishment is mandatory silence,
the loss of his narrative, and the sentence to waste away in the gloom of an
abandoned stable.
Characters
- DEIANIRA (50): Princess of Calydon before becoming the wife
of Heracles. Stripped of her homeland, her lineage, and twenty years of
her life spent managing exile in another man's house. She possesses a cold
irony, sharp as glass, born of a long humiliation observed in silence.
- HERACLES (55): The "Hero." A man accustomed to
having his appetites called destiny and his massacres sung as feats. A
charismatic tyrant convinced of his own moral righteousness.
- HYLLUS (22): Their son. He grew up worshipping an absent
father through epic tales. He begins as a young man anxious to justify the
Hero and ends up confronting an indefensible man.
- IOLE (20): Princess of Oechalia. She wears a torn
haute-couture gown stained with real ash. In this play, she does not
remain mute as in The Trachiniae: she has just watched her world
burn and has nothing left to lose.
Setting
The main
hall of the residence in Trachis. A cold space with high ceilings and smooth
stone walls that resemble a vault or a private museum more than a home.
Internally lit glass display cases exhibit relics which, seen up close, lack
all glory: dried pelts, rusted weapons caked with old blood, yellowed fangs.
Upstage, a monumental oil portrait of Heracles in a triumphant pose. In a
corner, upon a black marble table, an ancient wooden chest sealed with dark
wax. There are no windows; only a heavy double door upstage and three bronze
light switches beside the doorframe.
Act
One
SCENE I: The Spoils of War and the Broken Herald
(At
rise, DEIANIRA stands motionless before one of the glass cases, watching her
own reflection superimposed over her husband's hunting trophies. She holds an
untouched glass of wine like a small shield. The upstage doors open with
restrained commotion and HYLLUS enters, agitated, trying to keep his composure
while glancing back into the outer hallway).
HYLLUS
Mother... Lichas has just
arrived from the harbor with the freight wagon. He brings a shipment from my
father out of Oechalia.
DEIANIRA
(Without turning, speaking against the glass of the display case)
Why did Lichas drive the
wagon all the way into the back courtyard? Ever since the horses I brought from
my father's house died, that stable has stood empty and bleak. The only beast
of burden left on this estate is Lichas himself, who has spent thirty years
covering up your father's rampages under the title of "faithful
herald." What did he bring this time? Another hunting trophy for the
cases?
HYLLUS
It isn't a trophy, Mother.
It is... a young woman. Lichas could barely help her down from the driver's
seat; he is injured, dragging his leg with his forehead split open, yet he says
my father ordered us to receive her under our roof with every consideration. (He steps toward his mother and lowers his voice,
disturbed and fascinated at once). I have never seen a woman like her. Despite the soot and the state of
her clothes, she looks... she looks as though she were doing us a favor by
stepping onto the marble.
DEIANIRA
(Turns slowly. Her face hardens into a mask of icy courtesy)
Send the new trophy in,
then. And have Lichas wait by the courtyard well; I don't want him staining my
carpets with his loyalty.
(HYLLUS
looks out into the hallway and gestures. IOLE enters. She walks barefoot,
unhurried, her back impeccably straight, wearing a fine fur coat draped over
her shoulders atop a silk gown torn and blackened with ash. She carries no
luggage. She stops in the exact center of the hall and surveys the glass cases
with the faintest, almost clinical smile, ignoring Hyllus's presence).
DEIANIRA
(Measuring her from head to toe with relentless attention)
Hyllus was right. You don't
look like a Peloponnesian boar, though you smell heavily of smoke. Step closer,
girl. Do you have a name, or did my husband strip you of that too with his
mighty hands?
IOLE
(In a clear, rapid voice, possessing an unsettling serenity that seeks
no pity)
My name is Iole. And the
ash, madam, comes from my father's library and the ceiling beams of my bedroom.
They cling tightly to the skin when a city burns in a dead calm. (She glances over the stone walls). What an immaculate hall you have. One can tell
that things here only die of boredom.
HYLLUS
(Taking a solicitous step toward her, trying to soften the tension)
You must be exhausted.
Lichas told me at the door that there was an insurrection in Oechalia, that my
father had to intervene to pacify the region, and that Lichas himself was
wounded in combat...
IOLE
(Looks at him for the first time, halting his speech with an ironic
tenderness that freezes him in place)
Is that what Lichas told
you? "Pacify the region." How well-trained you keep the dogs in this
house. (She
turns her eyes back to Deianira, speaking as an equal). Lichas wasn't wounded in any combat, madam. Half
an hour ago, down at the pier, the poor old man committed the indiscretion of
having an attack of decency. While they were bringing me off the ship, he dared
to tell your husband that putting me inside his own wife's house was an
unnecessary humiliation.
DEIANIRA
(Arching an eyebrow in bitter irony as she sets her glass down on a
console)
Lichas had a scruple? After
thirty years as a panderer, what a terrible moment he chose to break in a
conscience.
IOLE
(Steps forward, reconstructing the scene with surgical coldness)
It lasted very briefly. The
great Heracles didn't even shout at him. He grabbed him by the throat with a
single hand and slammed him against the stone wall of the pier. We heard the
snap of a rib and his skull cracking open, but your husband paid it no mind...
When the old man fell to his knees in the mud, he threw the reins into his face
and said: "Put her in the cart and tell Deianira what I ordered, or next
time I will dash you against the rocks of the cliff."
(Dead
silence. HYLLUS steps back, pale, searching his mother's face for some
refutation).
HYLLUS
(Shaking his head, clinging desperately to his ideal)
No... you are distraught
from the voyage. My father has a terrible temper when betrayed, but Lichas is
his comrade-in-arms; he would never treat him like a beast...
IOLE
(Speaking even faster, cornering Hyllus with a fixed, icy smile)
You are right, boy: beasts
he stuffs and puts in glass cases; friends he smashes against the stones. And
with my family he was even more considerate. He arrived Tuesday for dinner at
the house of my father, King Eurytus. He drank our wine, praised the horses,
and over dessert, pointed at me with a lamb bone. He said he had decided to
take me in his chariot that very night as payment for imaginary services. When
my father reminded him of the laws of hospitality and reminded him that you
existed, madam, the pacifier of Greece took my younger brother by the neck and
hurled him from the north terrace onto the courtyard flagstones. Then he
torched the palace, butchered my father on his throne, and when I walked out
through the smoke, threw this coat over me and said: "Go to Deianira's
house. She knows how to fold a hero's clothes and asks no questions when I come
home tired."
DEIANIRA
(Takes the sentence like a blow to the stomach; her fingers tighten
against the edge of the furniture, yet she does not blink. Her voice comes out
low, heavy with restrained venom)
He said that? That I know
how to fold his clothes without asking questions? (She walks slowly around Iole, enclosing her in a
circle). Of
course. And he used poor Lichas, half-dead, to deliver you to my door like a
bundle of freight. Two women for the price of a single roof: the old one to
keep the ledgers of decorum, and the new one to remind him he can still take by
storm whatever catches his eye.
IOLE
(Without lowering her gaze, turning her head slightly to follow
Deianira)
Make no mistake about me,
Deianira. I did not come to take your place. If it were up to me, I would be
performing funeral rites for my dead.
DEIANIRA
(Losing her composure for the first time, stepping close to her with
wounded fury)
That is what you should
have done... Yet here you are! Young, intact, breathing the air that has cost
me twenty years of confinement! Do you think you are the first princess that
animal has ripped from her homeland? I was Deianira of Calydon! I too watched
my father barter my body out of fear of his brute's club! I crossed rivers in
the arms of monsters while he played at saving me, only to leave me discarded
in this palace of silences like an old trunk! And now you come to take my
place!
IOLE
(Erupts for the first time: she tears the fur coat off her shoulders in
one violent pull and hurls it at Deianira's feet, revealing her soot-stained
skin and shredded silk)
There is no place to take!
I will not be the prisoner of a brute's appetites! I refuse to be the new
inmate! Look at yourself! You have spent twenty years tending the museum of
your own abductor! My clothes are scorched because I tried to throw myself into
the fire before he could touch me! What is your excuse for keeping the door
open for him?
HYLLUS
(Stepping between them, shaken, raising his voice)
Enough! You cannot speak to
my mother like that, nor speak that way of Heracles!
DEIANIRA
(With an icy calm that cuts Hyllus short, without even looking at him)
Be quiet, Hyllus.
HYLLUS
Mother, she is out of her
mind with grief, she doesn't know who my father is...
DEIANIRA
(Fixing her eyes on her son at last with absolute authority)
I told you to be quiet. (She looks at Iole at length. Her initial rage
dissolves into a cold, calculating, almost solemn lucidity. She bends down
slowly, picks up the coat from the floor, and lays it across an armchair). You are right, child. I have spent twenty years
polishing the bronze of a hollow statue so that this boy might have an
admirable, worthy lineage. How stupid I was. He never saw us as people, did he?
Neither you, nor me, nor Hyllus, nor wretched Lichas. We are merely utensils.
Some for the bed, some to pull the cart, and others to inherit—whether they
want it or not—his "heroic" legacy.
SCENE II: The Draught of Truth
(With
resolute step, DEIANIRA walks to the black marble table where the wooden chest
sealed with dark wax rests. She takes a silver letter opener, breaks the seal
with a sharp blow, and lifts the lid. From within she draws a ceremonial tunic
of blood-red velvet—heavy, austere, unadorned, hanging with a rigid, almost
mineral weight, which she holds up before them).
HYLLUS
(Recognizing the chest, stepping back in alarm)
Mother... what are you
doing with that? You said that chest must never be opened.
DEIANIRA
(Stroking the dark velvet with lethal reverence)
It was an insurance policy
against stormy days, Hyllus. Nessus the centaur gave it to me before bleeding
to death in the River Evenus from one of your father's arrows. Another heroic
"rescue": Nessus tried to violate me on the riverbank, and Heracles
saved me only to claim the exclusive right to do it himself that very night.
IOLE
(Approaching the table slowly to examine the heavy red fabric)
It looks like the mantle of
a disgraced king.
DEIANIRA
It is a mantle woven of
ancient poison... the robe of solemn sacrifices, steeped for twenty years in
the centaur's blood mixed with the bile of the Hydra. Whoever puts it on cannot
lie to himself or to anyone else. Every time he tries to disguise his baseness
with noble words, every time he uses a sophism—a specious truth to justify his
crimes—the poison will ignite his blood from within like an internal fire, like
a scorching of the soul.
HYLLUS
(Horrified, looking back and forth between the robe and his mother)
You are talking about
burning my father alive! If you send it to him and he finds us out...!
DEIANIRA
(With a frigid half-smile, folding the mantle over her arm like a
priestess)
Send it to him? No, Hyllus.
You know how tyrants love to stamp their name on every celebration, to be the
guest of honor, to sign with infinite narcissism every tribute bearing their
title. This tunic is not going to him; I am going to fasten it around his neck
myself, right here in his trophy room. He will come... He has a new mistress to
visit.
Act
Two
(The
same hall, minutes later. The wooden chest has been closed. Heavy, firm,
authoritarian footsteps echo across the flagstones of the outer vestibule).
IOLE
(Straightening her spine, her eyes fixed on the door)
He is here.
DEIANIRA
(In a low, steady voice, taking her position in the center of the hall
with the red mantle folded over a bench)
Do not greet him until he
looks at you, Hyllus. Let him find his place.
SCENE I: The Sophism and the Ember
(The
double doors fly open. HERACLES enters. He wears an impeccably tailored
military coat over dusty travel clothes. He radiates the crushing, expansive
certainty of men who have never had to apologize for anything. He occupies the
space as though everyone else were part of the furniture).
HERACLES
(Pulling off his leather gloves and tossing them onto a glass case,
without looking anyone in the eye yet)
What a funereal silence.
Anyone would think the master of this house returned on his shield rather than
on his own two feet. Deianira, you are going to have to buy another herald at
the market; I just saw Lichas lying by the courtyard well whining like a
strumpet. (His
gaze lands on Iole. He looks her over with the half-smile of a satisfied
proprietor). I see
he at least delivered the parcel I gave him properly. Have you fed her yet? She
refused to touch a bite on the ship; pretending royalty can do anything against
me merely by being royalty... I am the greatest, and her relatives know it now,
don't they, princess?
DEIANIRA
(Stepping forward half a pace with impeccable serenity)
Welcome, Heracles. Do not
worry about Princess Iole or delicate Lichas; we have already caught up on how
people pay with broken bones when they get too close... to you.
HERACLES
(Dismissing it with a wave of his hand as he walks to the decanter and
pours himself wine)
The world is full of
fragile people, woman. Eurytus was another stubborn old man who failed to
understand how the new order of things works. I offered him a blood alliance
and he answered me with insults. When a man like me extends his hand and has it
spurned, there is no choice but to deliver a historical lesson. It is
exhausting, I assure you. One carries the burden of civilizing this continent
and they still expect me to ask permission at every border.
IOLE
(Without moving a muscle, in a neutral, almost informative voice)
My brother Iphitus was
seventeen years old and unarmed when you threw him off the ramparts. What other
part of the continent did you civilize against its will?
HERACLES
(Pauses with the goblet halfway to his lips. He looks at her with
paternalistic annoyance)
My dear, in wartime,
reckless boys lose their footing on ramparts. It is a tragedy, yes, but history
is not written with domestic sentimentality. I saved your life, pulled you out
of a doomed city, and brought you to the most respected house in Greece. In
time, you will thank me for it.
DEIANIRA
(Takes the blood-red velvet mantle in her hands and approaches him with
studied solemnity)
Undoubtedly. Your
generosity leaves us all breathless, husband. That is why I prepared the
crimson mantle of heroic celebrations. Before you sit at the table, shed the
dust of the road. A man so convinced of his righteousness deserves to dress at
the height of his conscience.
HERACLES
(Flattered in his patrician vanity, drains the goblet, sets it on the
table, and sheds his military coat, opening his arms to be dressed)
At last, a gesture of sense
in this house. Ten months sleeping in campaign tents surrounded by
mediocrities... A man forgets what conjugal respect feels like. Help me with
the clasps, woman.
(DEIANIRA
places the heavy blood-red velvet tunic over HERACLES's shoulders and fastens
the metal clasp at his throat with slow, firm hands, like someone locking a
shackle. She takes two steps back. A pause. HERACLES squares his shoulders,
takes a deep breath before his own portrait, and suddenly frowns. He presses an
open hand to his sternum).
HERACLES
(Uneasy, looking down at the crimson velvet)
This cloth is freezing...
No, wait. It burns. Why does this fabric smell of blood, Deianira? I feel as
though a pound of flesh had been carved from my chest.
DEIANIRA
(Folding her hands before her skirt, watching him with clinical
coldness)
It is an ancient poison,
Heracles. It is blood. It is memory. Tell your son why you destroyed an entire
city of allies and why you crippled your loyal servant, Lichas. But tell him
without using the word "destiny."
HERACLES
(Enraged, yet still contained, tugging at the collar of the red mantle,
which seems to have welded itself to his skin)
What interrogation is this?
I do not answer to a boy or to two bitter women! What I did in Oechalia was an
act of sovereign justice! I am the son of Zeus, the one who cleansed the earth
of... filth!
(He cuts
off abruptly. A violent spasm buckles his knees forward. It is a dry, brutal
muscular contraction, as if a white-hot iron had been driven behind his ribs.
He gasps, suddenly pale, gripping the edge of the black marble table with both
hands to keep from falling flat on his face).
HYLLUS
(Taking an instinctive step toward him, frightened)
Father!
IOLE
(Stopping him with her voice, without moving from her spot)
Do not touch him, Hyllus.
Look at how his hand trembles. He said "sovereign justice" and his
throat refused to swallow.
HERACLES
(Hoarse, digging his nails into the red velvet over his chest, though
his fingers slip without tearing it or loosening the clasp)
What did you do to me, you
cursed...? Rip it off me, Hyllus! Call Lichas! It is fusing to my ribs! Every
time I breathe I feel as though I'm swallowing ground glass!
DEIANIRA
(Motionless, looking down at him as he struggles to rise)
Lichas cannot get up from
the well, remember? You left him so badly broken... And do not try to tear the
mantle off. It is the gift of Nessus. The poison is woven into your own tongue:
so long as you use grandiloquence to cover your crimes, the fire will eat away
your soul. Try telling the truth. It is the only antidote. Say why you
butchered Iole's family.
HERACLES
(Breaking into a cold sweat, his eyes bloodshot with ferocious hatred
aimed at Deianira)
Viper...! Treacherous
witch! I picked you up out of a wretched province, gave you my name, kept you
under my roof while I bled across the world, and you lay an ambush for me in my
own hall! (Another
brutal spasm brings him crashing down on one knee. He clenches his jaws to keep
from screaming; the internal pain suffocates him). I can't... my throat blazes before I even
speak...!
DEIANIRA
(Taking a step toward him, relentless)
Because you have not
stopped lying. You did not rescue me from any misery: you bought me like cattle
and locked me in here so someone would tend the museum of other people's
misfortune while you pillaged other men's beds. Come on, hero. Save your breath
and spare yourself the pain. Say what you went to do in Oechalia.
HERACLES
(Panting against the marble, spitting out the words with a rage that
distorts his face, forced by the unbearable scorching to release the naked
truth)
I went... I went because I
wanted her! (He
points at Iole with a trembling hand). Because I saw her a year ago and couldn't get her
out of my head! And because her father dared to tell me no to my face, in front
of my captains! And I slammed Lichas against the wall because he dared to
contradict me! Because no one judges me and no one tells me no! (The instant he finishes shouting it, the spasm
subsides for a second. He breathes deeply, humiliated to the marrow by his own
confession, glaring up at the three of them with animal rancor). Are you satisfied? Yes, I took her by force! Just
as I took everything I own! That is the privilege of the strong!
SCENE II: The Patriarch's Testament and the Gloom
HERACLES
(Bracing himself heavily against the marble table to pull himself
halfway up. Sweat darkens the blood-red velvet collar even further, fused to
his skin. He knows his legs will no longer hold him, so he locks his eyes on
Hyllus, appealing to his last trench of power: blood)
Hyllus... step closer. You
are my blood. The only one in this room who owes me his existence.
(HYLLUS
does not take a step toward him, but holds his father's gaze, taut as a
bowstring).
HERACLES
Your mother has caught me
in a coward's trap because she cannot bear that time has made her invisible. I
will not give her the satisfaction of seeing me beg. But I remain the master of
this house and my voice is still law. (He points at Deianira and then at Iole with a
trembling arm). I order
you to take command of this estate today. Repudiate your mother; lock her in
the north rooms until she withers alive. And as for Iole... since that woman
has already passed through my hands and no man outside my bloodline must touch
what was mine... I order you to take her as your wife this very night. Let her
stay in your bed, under my lineage, so that all Greece knows that what Heracles
conquers is never returned. Swear it by Zeus, son!
(A thick
silence falls over the hall. DEIANIRA and IOLE look at HYLLUS. They neither
move nor intervene; they know the final blow can only come from him).
HYLLUS
(Walks slowly until he stops six feet from his father. His posture has
changed: his voice holds no trace of shyness or youthful enthusiasm; it sounds
deep, clean, and final)
All my life I fell asleep
looking at your glass cases, Father. When other young men spoke of their
fathers, who taught them to sow or to sail, I told myself that mine was absent
because the world needed him more than I did. My mother swallowed twenty years
of bile in silence so as not to shatter that lie for me.
HERACLES
(Harshly, holding back a groan as he clutches his chest)
I did not ask for a speech,
Hyllus. I gave you an order. You are my heir.
HYLLUS
And what exactly are you
leaving me? Your abuses? Your unburied corpses? You ask me to sleep with a
woman whose family you murdered yesterday morning, solely so that no other man
may "use" your property. (He looks at him with a mixture of revulsion and icy pity). You do not see me as a son, Heracles. You see me
as a blind extension of your senile body. You want to use my hands to keep
grasping what already burns you to touch, and you want to use my bed as a
warehouse to store your spoils of war.
HERACLES
(Trying to draw himself up fully, struck by a fresh lash of fire across
his sternum as he raises his voice)
I am leaving you an
immortal name, you fool! I am making a man of you!
HYLLUS
(Taking a firm step toward him, commanding the stage)
A man is not made by
receiving the rubble of a rapist and a murderer! (The words echo off the stone walls. Heracles takes
the blow like a physical slap and recoils half a step). You made us believe you slew monsters out there to
protect us, when you only killed them out of competition: you couldn't bear for
there to be another beast more voracious than you in the province. You are not
a hero; you are the bully of the world. You have the strength to destroy, but
you are worth nothing. Iole is not yours, nor will she be mine, because she is
neither a province nor a looted vase. And this house no longer belongs to you
either; my mother paid for it with twenty years of solitude while you played at
being a faultless god. I will not touch your weapons, nor dishonor this
princess whom you turned into a prisoner. And as for you? You disgust me... I
will not even touch you.
HERACLES
(Staggers backward, crashing spine-first against the pedestal of his own
monumental portrait. The searing venom and the humiliation of being repudiated
by his son push him to the brink. He tears the air with a broken roar)
Then kill me at once! Do
not leave me to rot among the skirts of a scorned woman! Hyllus, if a single
drop of my blood remains in you, carry me to the summit of Mount Oeta! Build a
pyre of oak and burn me alive! Let all Greece watch the flesh of Heracles blaze
upward toward Olympus! I command you! Give me my fire!
DEIANIRA
(Advances toward him with devastating calm, stopping inches away to look
down at him from her full height)
A pyre on Mount Oeta? What
for, Heracles? So the flames can erase the trail of your crimes and tomorrow
the poets can sing that you turned into sacred smoke? No, my dear. The fire of
heaven is for tragic heroes, and you barely qualify as a thug with invincible
weapons. You will have no summit, no torches, and no choruses to weep for you.
And my son will not stain his youth carrying your filthy flesh.
IOLE
(Walks serenely to the upstage wall and flips the first bronze switch
with a dry click. The lights inside half the glass cases go out, plunging that
side of the hall into shadow)
No one in this room is
going to touch a single thread of your clothes, Heracles. We have already paid
you far too much attention, you wretched, miserable giant.
DEIANIRA
(In a serene, almost domestic voice, like someone organizing the
cleaning of a house after a banquet)
Tonight you will stay right
here, on the cold floor. And tomorrow at dawn I will ask poor Lichas to come
for you. With his ribs bandaged and making an effort he will surely relish, he
will manage to hoist you into the dung barrow and wheel you out to the old
stable—the one left abandoned at the back of the courtyard when my father's
horses died.
HERACLES
(His eyes wide with terror at the final humiliation and the advancing
darkness)
Lichas?! In a wheelbarrow
to the stable?! I am the one who cleansed the Augean stables! I am the
conqueror of Nemea! I am the favored son of—!
(He
cannot finish the sentence. The poison of Nessus reacts to this final boast
with fulminating violence: an atrocious spasm arches his back, as though
red-hot pincers had clamped his windpipe shut from within. He collapses to his
knees on the marble, his mouth open in a silent scream, both hands clutching
his throat. He tries to articulate another word, any justification, but the
instant he parts his lips the searing heat scorches his tongue and forces him
to shut his mouth at once, trembling, reduced to a wheezing, broken breath).
DEIANIRA
(Contemplating him in the half-darkness, leaning slightly toward him
with a merciless whisper)
Look at yourself. You
finally understood. The poison only grants you a truce when you keep silent.
Yet because your entire life has been a farce, you have not a single truth to
speak to relieve yourself. You cannot even pronounce your own name without it
burning your mouth, because even your name is cursed.
(HYLLUS
walks to the door and flips the second bronze switch. The remaining display
cases and the monumental portrait of Heracles go dark at once, sinking into
shadow. Only a pale halo of light remains, spilling from the outer hallway
through the half-open doorway).
HYLLUS
(From the gloom of the threshold, without anger, with the solemnity of
one bidding farewell to a stranger)
Out there in the stable
there will be no mirrors, no portraits, and no one to hear you, Father. Lichas
will tip you onto the dry straw, bar the heavy latch from the outside, and
leave you in the dark. And there you will waste away in silence, day after day,
because you have nothing left to say.
IOLE
(Beside the door, looking one last time toward the motionless heap on
the floor)
If you speak, you burn. And
if you keep silent, you are nobody.
DEIANIRA
(Walks unhurriedly toward the exit beside Hyllus and Iole. Before
crossing the threshold, she rests her hand on the third and final switch)
Let us go to sleep; it has
been a long journey. Early tomorrow I will tell Lichas to ready the wheelbarrow
to clear the rubble from the hall. Good night, Heracles. Take care not to think
yourself too grand in the dark... lest the very thought set you ablaze and
leave not even ashes of you by morning.
(DEIANIRA
switches off the final light. The hall is plunged into deep darkness, broken
only by a razor-thin line of light beneath the double doors as they close
softly from the outside. In the center of the gloom, that grazing thread of
light barely outlines the hunched bulk of HERACLES wrapped in blood-red velvet,
resembling a dying ember upon the cold marble: completely mute, motionless,
barely breathing so as not to fan his own coals in the sepulchral silence of
the house. SLOW FADE TO BLACK).
