For whom? Hippolytus. When I have said
his name, blood
fills
my eyes, my heart stops dead.
Imposture, incest, murder! I have passed
the limits of damnation; now at last,
my lover's lifeblood is the only well
that cools my homicidal thirst for hell.
Yet I live! I live on, looked down upon
by my progenitor, the sacred sun,
by Zeus, by Europa, by a universe
of gods and stars, my ancestors, who curse
their daughter. Let me perish. In the night
of Hades, I'll find shelter from their sight.
What am I saying? I've no place to tum:
Minos, my father, holds the judge's urn.
The gods have placed damnation in
his
hands,
the shades in Hades follow his commands.
Will he not shake and curse
his
fatal star
that brings his daughter trembling to his bar?
His child by Pasiphae forced to tell
a thousand sins unclassified in hell?
Father, when you interpret what I speak,
I fear your fortitude
will
be too weak
to hold the urn. I see you fumbling for
new punishments for crimes unknown before.
You'll be your own child's executioner!
You cannot kill me; look, my murderer
is Venus, who destroyed our family;
Father, she has already murdered me.
I killed myself-and what is worse my waste
of life for pleasures I shall never taste.
My lover flees me still, and my last gasp,
alas, is for the flesh I failed to clasp.8
3. From Act IV, Scene 6.
