Ah! hapless mother,Pasiphae, wife of Minos, deceived by Aphrodite into a fatal passion for a bull. Cf. Verg. Aen. vi. ad init., also Ovid Metam., viii, 131 sqq. what a love was thine!NurseHer love for the bull? daughter, or what meanest thou?PhaedraAnd woe to thee! my sister,Ariadne, deserted by Theseus in the isle of Naxos, where Dionysus found her. bride of Dionysus.NurseWhat ails thee, child? speaking ill of kith and kin.PhaedraMyself the third to suffer! how am I undone!NurseThou strik’st me dumb! Where will this history end?PhaedraThat love has been our curse from time long past.NurseI know no more of what I fain would learn.PhaedraAh! would thou couldst say for me what I have to tell.NurseI am no prophetess to unriddle secrets.PhaedraWhat is it they mean when they talk of people being in love?NurseAt once the sweetest and the bitterest thing, my child.PhaedraI shall only find the latter half.NurseHa! my child, art thou in love?PhaedraThe Amazon’s son, whoever he may be,—NurseMean’st thou Hippolytus?Phaedra’Twas thou, not I, that spoke his name.NurseO heavens! what is this, my child? Thou hast ruined me. Outrageous! friends; I will not live and bear it; hateful is life, hateful to mine eyes the light. This body I resign, will cast it off, and rid me of existence by my death. Farewell, my life is o’er. Yea, for the chaste have wicked passions, ’gainst their will maybe, but still they have. Cypris, it seems, is not a goddess after all, but something greater far, for she hath been the ruin of my lady and of me and our whole family.

ChorusO, too clearly didst thou hear our queen uplift her voice to tell her startling tale of piteous suffering. Come death ere I reach thy state of feeling,Or before thou accomplish thy purpose. loved mistress. O horrible! woe, for these miseries! woe, for the sorrows on which mortals feed! Thou art undone! thou hast disclosed thy sin to heaven’s light. What hath each passing day and every hour in store for thee?