EURIPIDES Shall find salvation in the opposite course.
DIONYSUS Good, O Palamedes! Good, you genius you. [Is this your cleverness or Cephisophon’s?
EURIPIDES This is my own: the cruet-plan was his.]
DIONYSUS (To Aesch.) Now, you.
AESCHYLUS But tell me whom the city uses. The good and useful?
DIONYSUS What are you dreaming of? She hates and loathes them.
AESCHYLUS Does she love the bad?
DIONYSUS Not love them, no: she uses them perforce.
AESCHYLUS How can one save a city such as this, Whom neither frieze nor woollen tunic suits?
DIONYSUS O, if to earth you rise, find out some way.
AESCHYLUS There will I speak: I cannot answer here.
DIONYSUS Nay, nay; send up your guerdon from below.
AESCHYLUS When they shall count the enemy’s soil their own, And theirs the enemy’s: when they know that ships
AESCHYLUS Are their true wealth, their so-called wealth delusion.
DIONYSUS Aye, but the justices suck that down, you know.
PLUTO Now then, decide.
DIONYSUS I will; and thus I’ll do it. I’ll choose the man in whom my soul delights.
EURIPIDES O, recollect the gods by whom you swore You’d take me home again; and choose your friends.
DIONYSUS ’Twas my tongue swore; my choice is—Aeschylus.
EURIPIDES Hah! what have you done?
DIONYSUS Done? Given the victor’s prize To Aeschylus; why not?
EURIPIDES And do you dare Look in my face, after that shameful deed?
DIONYSUS What’s shameful, if the audience think not so?
EURIPIDES Have you no heart? Wretch, would you leave me dead?
DIONYSUS Who knows if death be life, and life be death, And breath be mutton broth, and sleep a sheepskin?
PLUTO Now, Dionysus, come ye in,
DIONYSUS What for?
PLUTO And sup before ye go.
DIONYSUS A bright idea.
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