Regarding Electra.

by Maurice Valency

The time is the present, the place the ruins of Agamemnon's palace at Mycenae, where a guide points out matters of interest to a group of tourists. As they move on, a young man stays behind to speak to the young girl who has been silently watching the group and, magically, almost imperceptibly, the centuries begin to fall away. She is Electra, and he is Orestes, the children of the slain Agamemnon. They are joined shortly by their mother, Clytemnestra, and her paramour, Aegisthus, and the great tale of crime and retribution begins to unfold. Electra thinks only of revenge against her mother, who killed Agamemnon father and married her lover, and she has been waiting anxiously for Orestes to return and carry out the dreaded punishment. At first Orestes pleads that he wants nothing to do with his family and its troubles but, gradually, inexorably, the force of events draws him on to the fatal deed the slaying of his mother and her conspirator. But then, in the shocked silence which follows, the past vanishes as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving us once again to contemplate the quiet, dusty ruins, and the haunting, terrible secrets which they hold.

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Maurice Valency was a playwright, author, critic, and popular professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, best known for his award winning adaptations of plays by Jean Giraudoux and Friedrich Duerrenmatt. He wrote several original plays, but is best known for his adaptations of the plays of others.

He is also noted for his book The Flower and the Castle: An Introduction to Modern Drama. John Gassner in his review of this book said that Mr. Valency brought to his work "a lifetime of study and experience as well as a viewpoint both Olympian and engaged." Valency also wrote television plays, adaptations of librettos, novels, and academic works on Chekhov, Strindberg, Ibsen and Shaw.