Prince Hal and Tragic Style

Summary

There is one stage direction in an interlude of 1567, called Horestes, or an interlude of Vice, probably by John Pickeryng, which is worth, I think, all the rest of the text. After Horestes’s assault upon the castle of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, and his battle (which, we are told, must be as long as possible), the play becomes for some pages a moral debate between Nature and Horestes over the punishment of his mother. Once Horestes has captured Clytemnestra, and ordered Aegisthus killed, he has to decide what to do with her – and he must decide this by himself, for Electra doesn’t appear in this little interlude. He gets counsel, however, from another source – the Vice, of course, who has been previously unnamed, but who soon identifies himself: his name is Revenge. Horestes is given very few lines at this point in the play, though the decision is one of some moment; and one can’t help the feeling that John Pickeryng, whoever he was, suddenly found himself with a character on his hands who needed more words than he knew how to provide. Nature urges Horestes not to become a matricide, and offers all the right reasons in lumbering fourteeners; but the Vice approaches, tells Horestes that his name is, after all, Revenge, and offers to solve his problem for him; let him kill Clytemnestra. It is here, in the margin of the text, where the stage direction to which I have referred is printed: ‘Here Horestes sigheth hard.’