Enter Nurse.
Nurse.
O dear my friends, how evil in the steps
Of evil on this day still followeth!
For now my lady Hermionê within,
Deserted by her father, conscience-stricken 805
For that her plotted crime of slaughtering
Andromachê and her son, is fain to die,
Dreading her husband, lest for these her deeds
He drive her from yon halls with infamy,
Or lest she die, who would have slain the guiltless. 810
And scarce, when she essayed to hang herself,
Her watching servants stayed her, from her hand
Catching the sword and wresting it away;
With such fierce anguish seeth she her sins
Already wrought. O friends, my strength is spent 815
Dragging my mistress from the noose of death!
Oh, enter ye yon halls, deliver her
From death: for oft new-comers more prevail
In such an hour than one's familiar friends.
Chorus.
Lo, in the palace hear we servants' cries 820
Touching that thing whereof thou hast made report.
Hapless!—she is like to prove how bitterly
She mourns her crimes: for, fleeing forth the house
Eager to die, she hath 'scaped her servants' hands.
Hermionê rushes on to the stage.
Hermione.
(Str. 1)
Woe's me! with shriek on shriek
I will make of mine hair a rending, will tear with ruining fingers my red-furrowed cheek!
