Laudator Temporis Acti

Excerpts from Terence Rattigan, The Browning Version:

TAPLOW. Well, anyway, sir, it's a good deal more exciting than this muck. (Indicating his book.)

FRANK. What is this muck?

TAPLOW. Aeschylus, sir. The Agamemnon.

FRANK. And your considered view is that the Agamemnon of Aeschylus is muck, is it?

TAPLOW. Well, no, sir. I don't think the play is muck — exactly. I suppose, in a way, it's rather a good plot, really, a wife murdering her husband and having a lover and all that. I only meant the way it's taught to us — just a lot of Greek words strung together and fifty lines if you get them wrong.

[....]

He picks up a text of the Agamemnon and TAPLOW does the same.

Line thirteen hundred and ninety-nine. Begin.

TAPLOW. Chorus. We — are surprised at —

ANDREW. (Automatically.) We marvel at.

TAPLOW. We marvel at — thy tongue — how bold thou art — that you —

ANDREW. Thou. (ANDREW'S interruptions are automatic. His thoughts are evidently far distant.)

TAPLOW. Thou — can —

ANDREW. Canst —

TAPLOW. Canst — boastfully speak —

ANDREW. Utter such a boastful speech —

TAPLOW. Utter such a boastful speech — over — (In a sudden rush of inspiration.) — the bloody corpse of the husband you have slain —

ANDREW looks down at his text for the first time. TAPLOW looks apprehensive.

ANDREW. Taplow — I presume you are using a different text from mine —

TAPLOW. No, sir.

ANDREW. That is strange for the line as I have it reads: ἥτις τοιόνδ' ἐπ' ἀνδρὶ κομπάζεις λόγον. However diligently I search I can discover no 'bloody' — no 'corpse' — no 'you have slain'. Simply 'husband' —

TAPLOW. Yes, sir. That’s right.

ANDREW. Then why do you invent words that simply are not there?

TAPLOW. I thought they sounded better, sir. More exciting. After all she did kill her husband, sir. (With relish.) She's just been revealed with his dead body and Cassandra's weltering in gore —

ANDREW. I am delighted at this evidence, Taplow, of your interest in the rather more lurid aspects of dramaturgy, but I feel I must remind you that you are supposed to be construing Greek, not collaborating with Aeschylus.

TAPLOW. (Greatly daring.) Yes, but still, sir, translator's licence, sir — I didn't get anything wrong — and after all it is a play and not just a bit of Greek construe.

ANDREW. (Momentarily at a loss.) I seem to detect a note of end of term in your remarks. I am not denying that the Agamemnon is a play. It is perhaps the greatest play ever written —

TAPLOW. (Quickly.) I wonder how many people in the form think that?

Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1399-1400 (tr. Eduard Fraenkel):

We marvel at thy tongue, at the boldness of its speech, to utter such boasting words over thine own husband.

θαυμάζομέν σου γλῶσσαν, ὡς θρασύστομος,
ἥτις τοιόνδ' ἐπ' ἀνδρὶ κομπάζεις λόγον.

See Thomas G. Palaima, "The Browning Version's and Classical Greek," in Bettina Amden et al., edd., Noctes Atticae: 34 Articles on Graeco-Roman Antiquity and its Nachleben. Studies Presented to Jørgen Mejer on his Sixtieth Birthday March 18, 2002 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002), pp. 199-214.